Category Archives: collaboration

The 6 Building Blocks of Great Teams

GUEST POST from David Burkus

Work is teamwork. And it’s no secret that some teams truly are greater than others.

A recent meta-analysis combined research conducted on over 200,000 teams in a variety of industries in order to answer that question. Across 274 dimensions of performance and over half a million individual team members, the researchers found that, in most fields, performance differences of teams followed a power-law—with a small number of high-performing teams achieving most of the results. In other others, high performing teams didn’t just perform a little better, they performed up to ten times better than normal teams.

With results like that, it’s worth looking at what makes a team great. Fortunately, there are a few elements of team culture that are found consistently in consistently great teams.

In this article, we’ll outline six building blocks that make a great team.

1. Clarity

The first building block of a great team is clarity. Teams need to be clear on what’s expected of them, what tasks they’re assigned—what tasks others are assigned—and how all of that fits together. Clarity is key to getting anything done. Without clarity, the ambiguity of assignments can make it feel as if others aren’t pulling their weight. One teammate will be working diligently on a project not knowing that a different teammate is waiting on her to complete a different task. But it’s not just clarity of tasks that makes a team great; it’s also clarity of people. How well teammates know the different work styles, personality differences, and strengths and weaknesses of a team can dramatically affect how well they collaborate. And that affects how well they perform.

2. Communication

The second building block of a great team is communication. Great teams have a synergy, where the eventual performance is greater than the sum of what the individuals could have done on their own. Achieving that synergy requires communication. Teammates need to be aware of what others are working on, and they need to be able to call for help (or offer) help easily. But surprisingly, this doesn’t mean that great teams are in constant communication all of the time. When it comes to knowledge work teams, it turns out that great teams communicate in bursts—spending long periods of time working uninterrupted and then short bursts of communication to solve problems and keep everyone in sync. They’re not in constant communication—because if they were they wouldn’t be able to focus on the deep work that really creates value on the team.

3. Diversity

The third building block of a great team is diversity. Diversity on a team matters because teams are often tasked with solving problems on their own—and the greater the differences in perspectives and experience, the greater the possible solutions will be generated. This “intellectual” diversity is what powers great teams. Mediocre teams may have surface level diversity—diversity in racial, ethnic, or gender characteristics—but their experiences, preferences, strengths, and weaknesses are more similar than they are different. Because of this, great teams often don’t stay together for long (because they would start thinking alike more often), or they find ways to continuously refresh the diversity of experiences and ideas on their team to keep it diverse—and hence keep it great.

4. Empathy

The fourth building block of a great team is empathy. Empathy goes alongside diversity and is really what unlocks the potential inside of a team’s diversity. Empathy here refers to how well team members understand and accept each other’s differences. Empathy on a team matters because diversity brings friction. When ideas differ, those ideas will fight for dominance. But empathy keeps the level of respect on the team high and ensures that teams are fighting to find the dominant idea and not just fighting their own personal battles or for personal dominance. Empathy teaches us how to harness idea friction into something truly powerful—and ensures that even those whose ideas don’t win out are committed to the team and the final decisions that are made.

5. Trust

The fifth building block of a great team is trust. Trust appears on great teams in two different but equally important ways. The first is task-based or cognition-based trust, which refers to how much the team trusts the knowledge, skills, abilities, and productivity of their teammates. Cognition-based trust matters because teammates need to know they’re not the only ones pulling the weight of the team. The second is person-based or affect-based trust, which refers to how much the team members genuinely likes their teammates and trust that they could be vulnerable in front of them. This matters because, on a team, all learning comes from vulnerability—the vulnerability to share new ideas or to admit mistakes and hence draw lessons from them. Both types of trust matter when building a great team.

6. Purpose

The final building block of a great team is purpose. And purpose here doesn’t mean how well the team memorized the company mission statement. Instead, it’s how well they’re internalized it. Purpose on a team refers to how well the team believes their work matters because it makes a meaningful contribution to the mission (good) and serves other people in a positive way (great). This purpose becomes a superordinate goal that has been shown in research to bond teams together better and faster than just about any other building block—and they build the other blocks faster as well. When teams have a great understanding of a great purpose—they almost can’t help but become great.

For that reason, purpose is often the best place to start when trying to take a normal team and make it great. Purpose provides the motivation for the team to work on the other building blocks and it reinforces the importance of continuing to work on them. Purpose is the foundation to build the team into one where everyone can do their best work ever.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

Originally published at https://davidburkus.com on February 20, 2023.

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Five Keys to Team Collaboration Success

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Five Keys to Team Collaboration Success

GUEST POST from David Burkus

As the world grows increasingly more complex, so will its challenges—both globally and for any given organization. To solve bigger and more complex problems, you need a bigger and more complex team. And to do that, you will need to foster collaboration in the workplace. But the enhanced need for collaboration brings a paradox.

According to a recent study summarized in Harvard Business Review, team success requires teams to be larger, more diverse, more virtual and more specialized. But those same four characteristics make it hard for teams to get anything done. Increased diversity, in and of itself, can bring more and better ideas—but it can also bring more friction as people fight for their own ideas or more stagnation as people decide to work in their own way and not collaborate with people who work differently.

Larger teams need more collaboration, but their very size and composition makes it harder. In this article, we’ll outline 5 ways to foster collaboration on teams—no matter how large or diverse those teams are.

1. Make Priorities Clear

The first way to foster collaboration on teams is to make priorities clear. For many employees, it’s surprisingly unclear exactly what the key tasks and objectives are. Especially for those working on matrixed teams, it can become really difficult to decide how best to spend their time each day. They need clarity, and especially need clarity to know who they need to connect with in order to achieve those key objectives. When new tasks come in or when changes are required, that’s when it’s most important to help the whole team refocus by outlining how priorities have been reordered (or stay focused by explaining that they haven’t). Beyond helping individuals know their own priorities, making them clear helps teammates know what each other are focused on in order to better offer them help.

2. Hold Huddles

The second way to foster collaboration on teams is to hold huddles. Huddles refers to the regular cycle of coordination meetings on your team—or starting that regular cycle if you’re not. Huddles aren’t long, agenda-driven meetings where everyone delivers slide deck laden monologues. Instead, they’re quick but frequent meetings where teammates take turns stating what they’ve completed, where they’re focused now, and where they need help. In some cases, huddles don’t even need to be a synchronous meeting (especially if you’re team already has too many meetings). The important thing for collaboration is that everyone on the team is aware of what others are working on and kept updated on any changes that have happened since the last time they huddled. They know how their work fits into the larger team objectives, and they know where they can best assist their teammate’s work.

3. Set If-Then Plans

The third way to foster collaboration on teams is to set “if-then” plans. When planning out a project, and perhaps towards the end of each huddle, it’s worthwhile to look at any possible roadblocks and derailers and determine what changes need to happen if those roadblocks appear. In other words, if this happens then we agree to that pivot. (“If we need to cut the marketing budget, then we’ll focus less on advertisements and more on direct response.”) “If-then” plans can even help individuals plan out their work. After a huddle, they’ll know what each teammate is working on so they can determine what they can start now and what needs to wait until another teammate completes a task. (“If I get the final numbers from Sarah, then I can start working on the slide deck for the report.”) “If-then” plans keep people informed and ready to act when planned for or unplanned or events happen, and that keeps them collaborating.

4. Write Teammate Manuals

The fourth way to foster collaboration on teams is to write teammate manuals. A teammate manual or “manual of me” happens when teammates reflect on themselves, their work preferences, and their strengths and weaknesses and then report those out to the team. The simplest way is by answering four, fill-in-the-blank questions: I’m at my best when _____, I’m at my worst when _____, You can count on me to _____, I need you too. Once someone shares those answers, her teammates immediately know her strengths and weaknesses and also some of her preferred tasks. That makes it easier to collaborate with her and makes it easier to know when to ask for help—and when to offer it. And when new employees join a team, teammate manuals ensure they get connected to and collaborating with their new teammates quickly.

5. Find Free Times

The fifth way to foster collaboration on teams is to find free times. It may sound counterintuitive, but for fostering collaboration some of the best time spent is time not working at all. It could be sharing a meal, grabbing a coffee, or a longer more elaborate off-site. But when teams spend time together that’s not work-related, they have broader conversations and start to self-disclose about other areas of their life. That helps them build “uncommon commonalities” that make them feel better connected to each other in the long-term (and gives them reasons to stay in touch with each other more often). Long-term, uncommon commonalities turn into work friendships—and being friends with even just one person on the team increases connection and collaboration to the whole team.

Looking at this complete list, the first three actions seem much more tactical and the last two seem much more cordial. That may make it tempting to start with the “hard” skills practices to foster collaboration. But it turns out the softer, more empathetic activities actually increase collaboration more. Because the “soft” skills practices help teammates better understand how each other works—and that helps everyone know how to support each other to do their best work ever.

Image credit: Unsplash

Originally published at https://davidburkus.com on February 13, 2023.

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Five Challenges All Teams Face

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Five Challenges All Teams Face

GUEST POST from David Burkus

Teams face a lot of different challenges. Leading a team involves leading through many challenges. You’re given performance objectives. You map out a plan of execution with your team. But pretty quickly, you will run into challenges—both seen and unseen. And while most of these challenges are unique to the work being done and the team doing that work, some challenges are universal for teams.

These challenges all teams face are less about the work and more about teamwork and collaboration. That’s what makes them so common. But because they’re so common, they can be anticipated—and overcome.

In this article, we’ll outline five challenges all teams face and offer some insight on how to overcome them.

1. Finding Direction

The first challenge all teams face is finding direction. Most teams in most organizations don’t get to decide what specifically they get to work on—it comes with their collective job descriptions. However, they still get to make decisions as a team about what the priorities around all their tasks are, and sometimes even who is going to do which task. This is the initial challenge of finding direction. But keeping direction in a changing environment can be just as challenging as well. Priorities often need to change or be rearranged. New tasks are assigned. New changes in the environment happen. And that could mean slight shifts in the direction need to be made.

As a leader, one of the easiest ways to find and keep direction is through a regular “huddle” or weekly meeting. In that meeting, give the team a chance to review what they’re focused on, what they’ve completed, what potential roadblocks they face, and who needs assistance. These weekly meetings help review the large-scale direction and provide space to make any small-scale shifts in direction as well.

2. Improving Communication

The second challenge all teams face is improving communication. Communication is the lifeblood of any relationship, including the relationships on your team. The challenge of improving communication arises because everyone has slightly different communication preferences. Some people prefer to talk in person, some on the phone, some in email. Some people write short, quick emails, others write five paragraph essays. These differences in communication preferences can lead to a lot of miscommunications as well. Many conflicts on a team happen because one person assumed their preferences were shared by everyone else, and they were not.

As a leader, taking the time to have conversations about communication preferences can go a long way toward improving communication. Outline the communication tools the team has available and discuss when the team would prefer to use each one, for what type of communication, and any best practices the team can think of for that tool. Ideally, this leads to a set of group norms around communication and communication tools. Those norms can be revised from time to time but should be done so collectively. Otherwise, everyone goes back to their typical preferences.

3. Building Trust

The third challenge all teams face is building trust. Trust is a core component of teamwork. We need to trust the competency of our teammates—that they’re going to do what they say they’re going to do. But we also need to trust the character of those teammates—we need to know we can admit failures or request help without being demeaned or ostracized. Teams need a climate of trust so that they can safely disagree with each other and engage in task-focused conflict that ensures the best ideas rise to the top.

Research suggests that trust builds through a reciprocal process. So as a leader, the way to build trust on a team is to step out and signal you trust them. The most powerful way to do this is to be vulnerable. Leaders need to share certain vulnerabilities they have. They need to be willing to admit they don’t have all the answers all of the time, and that they need help from the team as well. Lead with vulnerability and teammates will follow, which over time will lead the team into greater levels of trust.

4. Keeping Diversity

The fourth challenge all teams face is keeping diversity. To be fair, many teams still struggle with finding enough diversity, but most leaders and team recognize that diversity on a team is a worthy goal. That creates a new challenge, keeping diversity. Ideally, diverse teams are formed because people with diverse backgrounds bring a diverse set of experience and perspectives to the team. However, as the team works together over time, they start to share the same experiences and perspectives. Eventually, if a team works together long enough, their ideas and opinions will start to become really similar. They may still look like a diverse team, but they act like a monoculture.

As a leader, this means rotating the roster of your team more often than it might seem necessary. It means being comfortable with the idea that people leaving the team can be a net positive as new members, and new perspectives join. It could also mean looking for small scale additions to diversity such as inviting members of different teams into group discussions or encouraging the team to seek out new cross-functional colleagues or new sources of ideas and inspiration.

5. Maintaining Motivation

The fifth challenge all teams is maintaining motivation. Staying motivated as a team, especially when the work gets difficult is a huge challenge for any team. Motivation and engagement happen when the work people are asked to do challenges them just enough to engage their full skillset—but not so much that it seems impossible. It also requires those challenges to be connected to a broader mission or purpose. People want to do work that matters—and teams want to know why their team matters.

As a leader, this requires looking at motivation both individually and teamwide. Individually, pay attention to the task-load of each member of the team. Ensure that they’re being challenged, but not overwhelmed. This may require moving some assignments around to different people on the team. Teamwide, make sure the team understands how its mission and objectives fit into the larger purpose of the organization. Be ready to draw a clear and connecting line between the work the team is asked to do, and the way that work serves a bigger purpose. Perhaps the best way to convey this purpose is by answering the question “Who is served by the work that we do?” and then building in reminders around that “who.”

These five challenges are ones every team faces eventually. But they aren’t the only challenges teams face. However, teams that proactively work to overcome these challenges work together better—and are better able to overcome those new, specific challenges. All teams face these challenges, but the answers to these challenges are how any team can start to do its best work ever.

Image credit: Pexels

Originally published at https://davidburkus.com on January 23, 2023.

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Creating Productive Interactions During Difficult Times

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Creating Productive Interactions During Difficult Times

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

When times are stressful, it’s more difficult to be effective and skillful in our interactions with others. Here are some thoughts that could help.

Decide how you want to respond, and then respond accordingly.

Before you respond, take a breath. Your response will be better.

If you find yourself responding before giving yourself permission, stop your response and come clean.

Better responses from you make for even better responses from others.

If you interrupt someone in the middle of their sentence so you can make your point, you made a different point.

If you find yourself preparing your response while listening to someone, that’s not listening.

If you recognize you’re not listening, now there are at least two people who know the truth.

When there are no words coming from your mouth, that doesn’t constitute listening.

The strongest deterrent to listening is talking.

If you disagree with one element of a person’s position, you can, at the same time, agree with other elements of their position. That’s how agreement works.

If you start with agreement, even the smallest bit, disagreement softens.

Before you can disagree, it’s important to listen and understand. And it’s the same with agreement.

It’s easy to agree if that’s what you want to accomplish. And it’s the same for disagreement.

If you want to move toward agreement, start with understanding.

If you want to demonstrate understanding, start with listening.

If you want to demonstrate good listening, start with kindness.

Here are three mantras I find helpful:

Talk less to listen more.

Before you respond, take a breath.

Kindness before agreement.

Image credit: Wikimedia

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Hyper-Innovation

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A Change Management Strategy for Better, Faster Ideas

Hyper-Innovation

GUEST POST from Douglas Ferguson

The nature of innovation is that it is a hyper-fluid force that is never fully predictable. A well-curated change management strategy helps to harness the power of innovative change.

Innovation plays a significant role in driving positive change, as 51% of organizations attribute their success to innovative initiatives, all of whom also experienced an 11% increase in revenue.

In this article, we trace the pathway to innovative change in the following topics:

The Plan for Change
Designing Strategies for Change
An Agile Approach to Transformation
Getting Curious About Change

The Plan for Change

In charting a course to bigger and better ideas, a clear change management strategy helps to identify a direct path forward. Creating a thoughtful change management strategy allows you to plan several steps ahead and steer change in your favor.

The most intentional change management strategies focus on proactive change. The following are key elements in creating a proactive path for change:

1. Prepare to Plan

Preparing to create a change management strategy is essentially planning to plan. As you consider the best approach to creating change, take time to map out each step of your strategy. While it may seem more effective to just dive in, remember that intentionality is the name of the game in lasting change.

2. Cultivate Transparency

Many changes are unexpected and unwanted. For this reason, many organizations make the mistake of keeping changes quiet from the rest of the team. However, this type of secrecy can sabotage your organizational transformation.

Make it a point to cultivate a sense of transparency at every level of your organization. By including all parties in your plans for change, you’ll get a head start on driving innovation. When team members feel included in major decisions like a big change, they are more likely to accept and support it going forward.

3. Encourage High Tolerance

Tolerance for change is a muscle that should be exercised. Challenge your team members to fight their resistance to change by sharing the benefits of change. Explaining “what’s in it for me” gives team members a reason to root for change while increasing their tolerance for the unknown.

4. Monitor and Measure

Just as true change is a long-term endeavor, creating a change management strategy isn’t just a one-time event. Successful strategies for change will never be static, making monitoring and measuring key performance indicators a perpetual part of the change management process.

Design a fluid change management strategy by teaching your team to measure success, monitor potential problems, and resolve issues as efficiently as possible. This way, your strategy for change will evolve according to your needs.

Designing Strategies for Change

A design thinking change management strategy places team members at the heart of a change. This people-first approach to purposeful change lets team leaders curate a strategy with the greatest benefits for all parties involved. At Voltage Control, we explore design thinking as a change management practice to inspire the most innovative ideas, allowing team members to shape new initiatives together.

Apply design thinking to your change management strategy in the following ways:

1. Find the ‘What’ of Change

Design thinking facilitates purposeful change. Shape your change management strategy by determining the “what” of your change to inform your path to the most viable and innovative solutions.

2. Center Empathy

Successful changes tap into our emotions. Design thinking cuts to the heart of a change by prioritizing empathy from the very beginning. Harness empathy in your next change by considering your team members’ mindsets and perspectives before implementing change. Continue to research how all participants will be impacted by a change as you incorporate empathy into your change strategy.

3. Use Divergent Thinking

Employ divergent thinking in your change management strategy. Through a design-centered approach, shape a plan for change that encourages collaborative thinking, integrated innovation, and holistic decision-making.

4. Practice Constant Experimentation

Experimentation is the beating heart of design thinking. Make the strategizing process more tangible by testing new ideas and running experiments to see what works. By testing an idea on a small scale, you’ll be able to make the necessary changes to help shape your initiative for real change.

An Agile Approach to Transformation

An agile approach to change management zeroes in on a faster, more urgent need for transformation. Agile principles offer a valid framework for transformation. Agile is tailor-made for systemic problem-solving, allowing team members to find the most groundbreaking solutions to the most persistent problem.

According to Carie Davis, a corporate innovation specialist, inventing new methods for problem-solving is the key to driving innovative change. Regardless of how powerful an initial initiative is, lasting change won’t take hold until it truly transforms an organization. For this reason, Davis suggests that businesses initiate long-term shifts by starting small and by making little changes at the core of the company. These smaller changes are a key part of Agile change management strategy and are instrumental in catalyzing lasting transformation.

Consider applying agile methodology to your change strategy in the following ways:

1. Go Lean

Focus on a change strategy that provides increased value and positive change. Going lean allows for rapid transformation by limiting factors that waste resources, energy, and time.

2. Practice Continuous Improvement

Agile champions continuous improvement through small changes over time. These small changes lead to the most significant shifts.

3. Encourage Employee Authorship

Innovative change doesn’t happen with a top-down approach. Create an agile-informed change management strategy by bringing your employees into the decision-making process. This way, all team members can determine the most pressing areas for improvement and make meaningful contributions as they work together to co-create the next change.

4. Practice Reflective Improvement

In shaping a change management strategy to grow with your organization, practicing reflective improvement guarantees consistent long-term change. Regularly evaluate your organization’s performance and initiatives as you continue to shape your change management strategy into a better, leaner plan.

Getting Curious About Change

In designing the most innovative change management strategy, don’t forget to consider a sense of curiosity. Thrive through change and drive innovation by cultivating a curious desire to be better than ever.

Research shows that curiosity allows us to welcome new experiences with less defensiveness and aggressiveness. By responding to the unknown in uniquely positive and inquisitive ways, your teams can dream up the most imaginative solutions on their path to lasting change.

In addition to helping teams accept change, facilitating a sense of curiosity is an essential component in designing an innovative workplace. In creating a culture of curiosity, you’ll encourage team members to become change agents themselves. With a desire to learn more, be more, and do more, you’ll be able to reframe the potential pitfalls of change and the fears that come with it as an opportunity to get better and better.

Innovation and change are infinitely interconnected. Harness the power of both by designing a change management strategy that continues to transform your organization in the best ways possible. Explore our offerings to learn more about taking change management to the next level.

Image credit: Pixabay

Article first seen at VoltageControl.com

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Did You Know That I’m a Business Ninja?

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Neither did I!

At least until I appeared recently on the Business Ninja podcast hosted by WriteForMe, a modern content marketing company that helps their clients achieve their growth goals by telling their story across the Internet and social media.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Andrew Lippman for the podcast, which is available as a traditional audio podcast (on this link or via your favorite podcast provider) or as a YouTube video which I’ve embedded right here:

In this conversation we explore how the Human-Centered Change methodology and the Change Planning Toolkit came to be, and how the collection of more than seventy (70+) tools was designed to be used visually, collaboratively either in person using posters and sticky notes, or virtually using digital sticky notes in a tool like Miro, Mural, LucidSpark, or Microsoft Whiteboard.

Did You Know That I'm a Business Ninja? Don’t plan a change effort by starting with a blank Project Charter but instead get everyone literally all the same page for change. Using the Change Planning Toolkit employs more modern ways of working instead of legacy methods and by design will lead to increased buy-in, alignment and momentum towards your change or transformation goals.

We also explore the topic of change resistance and how to overcome it, and some of the tools that are part of the human-centered change methodology that help you in this quest. And, my conversation with Andrew also touches on the next set of tools that I’ll be introducing soon, which come together to form the FutureHacking™ methodology.

Finally, the podcast also dives into my origin story, just in case you’re curious who this Braden Kelley guy is and the journey that has brought me to you!

I hope you’ll check out the podcast and as always, if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to add them as a comment below and I’ll do my best to help you with your challenge!

Once again here are the links:

YouTube Video

Audio Podcast

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Back to Basics: The Innovation Alphabet

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Back to Basics: The Innovation Alphabet

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

You know ALL the innovation tools and frameworks:

Design Thinking
Lean Startup
Disruptive Innovation

But knowing and doing are two different things. When I first learned Jobs to be Done, it felt painfully obvious, exactly like the customer research I did for five years at P&G. Then I had to do it (conduct a Jobs to be Done interview), and it was difficult (ok, it was a disaster).

And teaching others to do it is a third entirely different thing. Because by the time you have the skills and expertise to teach others, you’ve forgotten what it was like to start from the beginning.

It’s easy to forget that before you can read a sentence, you must know how to read a word. Before you can read a word, you must recognize a letter.

So let’s go back to basics. Back before the methodologies. Before the frameworks. Before the theories. Let’s go back to the letters and words that are Innovation’s essence.

Let’s go back to the Innovation Alphabet.

Assumptions, every innovation has them, and every innovator tests them to reduce risk

Brainstorming, a great way to get lots of ideas and maybe even some new ones

Customers, the people we innovate for

Disruptive Innovation, cheaper, lower quality products that appeal to non-consumers

Experiments, how you test assumptions and reduce risk

Fun, what innovation should be

Hope, it springs eternal in the heart of every innovator

Ideas, where most innovations start

Jobs to be Done, the problems people have/the progress they want to make (and the hill I will die on)

Leadership, the most crucial element in innovation (and often the biggest barrier)

Mistakes, how we learn, grow, and make progress

No, the start of a conversation, not the end

Opportunities, a nice term for “problem”

Problems, where all innovations should start

Quiet, what we sometimes need to think big and create something new

Team, how innovation gets done

Uncomfortable, what innovation should make you (especially if you’re a senior executive)

whY, the one question you can never ask enough

Zzzz, what you finally get to do when you’ve changed the world

As you can see, some letters still need words. What should they be?

Are there better words for some letters?

Let me know in the comments!

Image credit: Unsplash

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Leading Your External Innovation Network

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Orchestrating Collaboration

Leading Your External Innovation Network

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

The days when a single organization could dominate innovation solely through internal R&D labs are over. In the age of exponential change, innovation is a contact sport. As a thought leader focused on human-centered change and innovation, I see the most successful companies shifting their focus from being self-sufficient inventors to becoming expert orchestrators of external networks. They understand that the collective intelligence of an ecosystem—comprising startups, universities, competitors, and even customers—far exceeds the capability of any lone corporation.

Leading an external innovation network is fundamentally different from managing an internal team. It requires shifting from command-and-control to influence and co-creation. It’s about building a robust, diverse, and fluid network of partners who share a common purpose but bring radically different skills and perspectives. This isn’t just “open innovation”; it’s strategic, purpose-driven collaboration, designed to achieve breakthroughs that would be impossible alone. The challenge for today’s leaders is not acquiring external assets, but mastering the art of the symbiotic relationship, where mutual value and growth are guaranteed.

The Three Imperatives of Network Orchestration

To successfully lead an external innovation network, a leader must focus on three core imperatives:

1. Define the Shared Problem, Not the Solution

External partners aren’t looking for a contract; they’re looking for a mission. Your organization must clearly articulate the Wicked Problem it aims to solve (e.g., “How do we make urban logistics carbon-neutral?” rather than “We need a faster drone model”). Defining the problem invites a diversity of approaches and technologies. Defining the solution constrains creativity and filters out the radical ideas often found outside your walls. This clarity establishes the shared purpose that binds the network.

2. Design the Interface for Trust and Speed

Bureaucracy kills collaboration. The interface between your company and its external partners must be lean, fast, and built on psychological safety. This means simplifying IP agreements, offering flexible contracting models (like joint ventures or co-development agreements rather than simple vendor contracts), and establishing clear, transparent communication channels. Trust is the transactional currency of the external network, and a fast, clear process is the best way to earn it, particularly with agile startups.

3. Cultivate a Portfolio of Relationship Models

Not all external partners are created equal. A startup requires venture capital and mentorship; a university needs joint research grants and data access; a mature competitor might require a formal standards consortium. Successful orchestrators manage a portfolio of relationship models, matching the right type of engagement (e.g., challenge, investment, acquisition, co-development) to the specific partner and the innovation maturity level. This avoids treating every partner like a transactional vendor.

The Internal Barrier: Managing Cultural Change

External innovation is doomed to fail if the internal culture remains resistant. Leaders must proactively combat the pervasive “Not Invented Here” (NIH) syndrome. This requires:

Mandating “External Ambassadors”: Creating roles or rotating assignments where internal experts are rewarded for successfully sourcing and integrating external ideas.
Measuring Network Health: Shifting innovation metrics to include Relationship Velocity (how fast partners move from ideation to pilot), Diversity Index (the variety of partners used), and the Rate of External Integration.
Celebrating External Wins: Publicly celebrating the external partners and the internal teams who worked with them, positioning collaboration as a prestigious act of corporate agility.

The goal is to transform internal employees from being gatekeepers of ideas into curators and integrators of solutions.

Case Study 1: P&G’s Connect + Develop (C+D) Program

The Challenge:

In the early 2000s, P&G realized its internal R&D productivity was declining, despite massive investment. They were constrained by the “Not Invented Here” syndrome and needed to source more ideas and technologies from the outside to meet ambitious growth targets.

Network Orchestration Model:

P&G fundamentally shifted its innovation strategy to Connect + Develop (C+D). This was not a passive idea submission portal; it was a global, active network orchestration effort. They created specialized internal “Technology Entrepreneurs” whose sole job was to scout, broker, and integrate external innovations. Key partnerships included:

NineSigma: Used to run open challenges and solicit solutions from a vast network of scientists and small firms worldwide.
Innovation Intermediaries: Partnering with consultants and organizations that specialize in linking technology with unmet consumer needs.

Crucially, P&G made its own proprietary technologies available to partners, fostering a two-way intellectual property exchange built on mutual benefit. P&G offered scale and market access; partners offered speed and radical concepts.

The Innovation Impact:

Within a few years, C+D was responsible for over 50% of P&G’s product initiatives and billions in revenue growth. Iconic products like the Swiffer Duster and Olay Regenerist were either fully or substantially developed using external technology. P&G demonstrated that external innovation is not a marginal activity but the main engine of corporate growth when expertly orchestrated.

Case Study 2: BMW’s Open Manufacturing Platform (OMP)

The Challenge:

BMW, like all automotive manufacturers, faced the challenge of digitizing its vast, complex global production network. Achieving real-time data analysis, predictive maintenance, and operational efficiencies required a common data and technology standard across its supply chain and factory floor, a goal too large for one company to tackle.

Network Orchestration Model:

Instead of building a proprietary solution, BMW co-founded the Open Manufacturing Platform (OMP) with Microsoft. OMP is an open, community-driven initiative built on open standards and open source technologies (specifically, the Microsoft Azure cloud platform). The goal was to create a common reference architecture for industrial IoT and AI solutions. BMW actively encouraged competitors and suppliers—including Daimler, Bosch, and hundreds of smaller tech firms—to join. They relinquished proprietary control to foster a pre-competitive collaboration space for infrastructure, ensuring they could focus their internal R&D on differentiated applications.

The Innovation Impact:

By orchestrating this platform, BMW gained access to a wider pool of talent and accelerated the development of key manufacturing solutions. The OMP rapidly became an industry standard, benefiting BMW by creating a harmonized, scalable technology ecosystem that they could then build differentiated applications on top of. This case illustrates leading an external network not through ownership, but through platform stewardship, focusing on shared infrastructure to unlock superior results for all participants, dramatically reducing the cost and risk of digital transformation.

The future belongs to the innovation ecosystem architect. To succeed, leaders must cultivate a culture that views external partners not as threats or transactional vendors, but as co-investors in a shared future. It requires courage to give up some control, trust to open up the IP discussion, and clarity to define the societal or market challenge you are collectively addressing. By mastering the orchestration of this dynamic network, your organization can move from incremental improvement to exponential, sustainable breakthrough.

Extra Extra: Futurology is not fortune telling. Futurists use a scientific approach to create their deliverables, but a methodology and tools like those in FutureHacking™ can empower anyone to engage in futurology themselves.

Image credit: Google Gemini

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Designing Innovation – Accelerating Creativity via Innovation Strategy

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Designing Innovation - Accelerating Creativity via Innovation Strategy

GUEST POST from Douglas Ferguson

To innovate is to survive.

As an overwhelming 80% of founders believe innovation to be the heart of organizational growth, employing an innovation strategy that promotes, facilitates, and feeds innovation is essential.

Developing a solid plan for facilitating innovation in your organization is a necessary step in your company’s growth. In this article, we’ll discuss the best ways to harness innovation as we explore the following topics:

The Source of Innovation
What is an Innovation Strategy?
Strategizing for Innovation
Innovating from Within
A System of Innovation

The Source of Innovation

Innovation often feels like a form of magic: it’s a powerful yet elusive force that drives the best ideas and creates the greatest breakthroughs. While some prefer to wait for inspiration to strike, happenstance is hardly the driving force behind innovation.

The true source of innovation is the organization itself. Leaders must intentionally create systems, processes, and strategies that allow for innovation at every turn.

Innovation is similar to any other corporate function as it requires careful strategizing to make the best ideas come to life. In doing this, leaders can set the stage and make the most innovative ideas and processes a regular practice in their organization. Ultimately, innovation may appear in the initial spark of a great idea, but it takes purposeful, thoughtful, and conscious planning for a great idea to exist beyond that moment of genius.

What is an Innovation Strategy?

Driving organizational innovation starts with creating an innovation strategy. An innovation strategy identifies processes that allow for the most creative and effective solutions.

The ideal innovation strategy allows an organization to zero in on its audience’s expectations by:

Identifying customers’ unmet needs
Targeting these needs for growth

A healthy innovation strategy allows an organization to create the most efficient pathways to resolving these needs and growing its company. Effective strategies for innovation follow a prioritization method to help teams understand which ideas hold the highest return. In creating a solid innovation strategy, leaders must develop a system that can be repeated time and again.

Strategizing for Innovation

From defining your goals to using tech to transform your organization into a hybrid model, the possibilities are endless when it comes to innovation. As you design your innovation strategy, it’s essential to understand the nuances of innovation. Working with an innovation consultant can help you iron out a strategy that’s best for your team. With an expert in innovation, you’ll be able to better determine effective next steps toward the business’s goals.

Consultants are equipped to explain the subtleties in innovative strategizing, such as the various types of innovation:

Routine Innovation.

Routine innovation is a building block that adds to the company’s pre-existing structure, such as its customer base or earlier versions of a product.

Disruptive Innovation.

Disruptive innovation results in a new business model that disrupts or challenges the competition’s business models.

Radical Innovation.

Radical innovation introduces new inventions, software, or technology to completely transform an existing business model. This type of innovation is best used to help organizations achieve a competitive advantage in the market.

Architectural Innovation.

Architectural innovation uses new technology to create new markets. Essentially, architectural innovation changes the entire overall design of a product by redesigning existing components.

In creating the best innovation strategy for your current needs, take into account the following guidelines:

Clarifying your goals and priorities.

The right innovation strategy outlines your organizational goals and efforts to identify the best actionable steps to achieve these goals.

Fostering alignment within your organization.

Alignment should be at the center of any innovation strategy. Everyone must be aligned in pursuing a common goal for an organization to achieve new ideas and an innovative way of working.

Encouraging your team to keep improving.

Complacency kills innovation. Make sure your company is always ready to move on to the next great idea by making continuous growth and development a key part of your innovation strategy.

Reaching long-term success.

Focusing on reaching long-term success is an essential part of any innovation strategy.

Innovating From Within

An innovation strategy becomes the most effective when leaders can ingrain the processes and practices into their culture. Once innovation becomes an integral part of how a team works, they’ll be able to keep innovation top-of-mind.

By innovating from within, you’ll create a sustainable innovation strategy that becomes part of your company culture. Consider these pillars of innovation as you center innovation strategy at the heart of your company:

Models: Innovation strategies fall into two models:

Business model innovation
In this process, an organization completely adapts its business model to add value to its customers.
Leveraging an existing business model
This process allows an organization to use its existing business model while bringing innovation to the business itself.

Intrapreneurship
Intrapreneurship empowers employees to act as entrepreneurs while working within the company. This encourages each person to create and act on their ideas, thus fostering a culture of ongoing company-wide innovation.

Corporate Accelerator
Corporate accelerators are programs started by larger enterprises, offering aspiring entrepreneurs the opportunity to find mentors, access seed capital, and make important connections.

Innovation Labs
Innovation labs are a starting point for R&D teams and startups to facilitate new ideas.

Open Innovation Program
This model of R&D encourages existing employees to collaborate on new business ideas that add value to the company.

External Accelerators
Though external accelerators don’t meet in-house, they can add incredible value to an organization. Businesses can use external accelerators to advance startups and drive concepts that align with their goals and needs without covering the costs of running an in-house program.

Collaboration
Collaboration is an integral component in shaping a cohesive innovation strategy. Through constant discussion, interaction, and creative collaboration, all members of an organization work together to bring their ideas to life.

Ideation
Managing innovation requires organizations to manage ideation. In doing so, leaders work to identify the best plans for analyzing, gathering, and implementing the right ideas. Ultimately, companies need an effective system that will transform an idea into a process that gets results.

Measurement
Innovation strategies should include a plan to measure success by considering relevant metrics for each goal. For example, KPIs such as email subscribers, website traffic, and social shares are excellent metrics for tracking brand awareness.

A System of Innovation

Developing a comprehensive innovation strategy must go beyond general objectives such as achieving growth, creating value, and beating competitors. To truly create company-wide change through innovation, organizations should clearly articulate specific objectives that will allow for the most sustainable competitive advantage.

A thorough innovation strategy successfully embeds innovation in the very system of an organization. To implement such systemic innovation, design your innovation strategy with the following objectives:

Creating Long-Term Value for Potential Customers

An innovation strategy should always consider the most effective ways to create long-term value for customers. In developing a cohesive strategy, consider the type of value you’re aiming to create through innovation. Value can be created in many ways, including improving customer experience, making a product more affordable, or benefiting society at large.

In your efforts to identify what values to zero in on, consider those that will have the greatest impact in the long term. This way, your innovation strategy will include continuously iterating towards better designs in the future.

Capturing Value Generated From Innovations

Innovations easily attract competitors that can pose a risk to the original product or idea. In your efforts to create a thorough innovation strategy, consider how your company plans to capture the value its innovations create.

For example, a company that creates an exciting new product should be prepared for its competition to create more affordable prototypes. In the worst-case scenario, the competition may capture the value of the innovation.

Consider these risks in your innovation strategy by identifying what complementary services, products, assets, and capabilities may improve customer loyalty. This way, you’ll already have a plan in place to ensure your organization continues to profit from every innovation.

Strategizing for Business Model Innovation

Technology plays an important role in innovation but isn’t the only path to new ideas. In developing a robust innovation strategy, consider the level of technology and your preferred method of innovation to pursue.

Harnessing the magic of innovation takes careful planning. Need help driving innovation in your organization? At Voltage Control, we help leaders develop innovative strategies through change! Contact us today to discuss the best path to innovation.

Image credit: Pexels

Article first published here: voltagecontrol.com

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Why No Organization Innovates Alone Anymore

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The Ecosystem Advantage

Why No Organization Innovates Alone Anymore

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

For centuries, the story of innovation was a story of closed walls and proprietary secrets. Companies poured resources into internal R&D labs, operating under the fiercely competitive belief that only self-reliance could guarantee advantage. This mindset, rooted in the industrial age, is now the single greatest obstacle to sustained change and growth. As a human-centered change and innovation thought leader, I assert that today’s most profound breakthroughs occur not within the isolated organization, but within expansive, fluid innovation ecosystems. The future belongs to the orchestrators, not the hoarders.

The speed and complexity of modern disruption — from advanced digital services to grand societal challenges—render the solo innovation model obsolete. No single company, no matter how large or well-funded, possesses all the necessary capital, talent, data, or technical expertise. The Ecosystem Advantage is the strategic realization that exponential innovation requires the symbiotic sharing of risk, resources, and intellectual property across a network of partners—customers, suppliers, competitors, startups, and academia. Critically, this collaborative model is inherently more human-centered because it forces the integration of diverse perspectives, mitigating internal blind spots and algorithmic bias.

Modern technology
— APIs for seamless data exchange, cloud platforms for shared development, and secure tools like blockchain for transparent IP tracking—makes this complex collaboration technically feasible. The challenge is no longer technological; it is strategic and cultural: managing complexity and balancing competition with collaboration.

The Three Strategic Imperatives of Ecosystem Innovation

To transition from isolated R&D to ecosystem orchestration, leaders must embrace three core strategic shifts:

1. Shift from Ownership to Access: Abandon the idea that you must own every asset, technology, or line of code. The strategic imperative is to gain timely access to specialized capabilities, whether through open-source collaboration, strategic partnerships, or co-development agreements. This drastically reduces sunk costs and accelerates time-to-market.
2. Curate the Edges for Diversity: Innovation often arises from the periphery—from startups, adjacent industries, or unexpected voices. Ecosystem leaders must proactively curate relationships at the “edges” of their industry, using ventures, accelerators, and challenge platforms to source disruptive ideas and integrate them rapidly. This diversity of thought is the engine of human-centered innovation.
3. Govern for Trust, Not Control: Traditional contracts focused on control and IP protection can stifle the necessary fluid exchange of an ecosystem. Effective orchestration requires governance frameworks that prioritize trust, transparency, and a clearly defined mutual value proposition. The reward must be distributed fairly and clearly articulated to incentivize continuous participation and manage the inherent complexity.

“If you try to innovate alone, your speed is limited to your weakest internal link. If you innovate in an ecosystem, your speed is limited only by the velocity and diversity of your network.”

Case Study 1: Apple’s App Store – Ecosystem as a Business Model

The Challenge:

When the iPhone launched in 2007, its initial functionality was limited. The challenge was rapidly expanding the utility and perceived value of the platform beyond Apple’s internal capacity to develop software, making it indispensable to billions of users globally.

The Ecosystem Solution:

Apple did not try to develop all the necessary applications internally. Instead, it built the App Store — a highly curated platform that served as a controlled gateway for third-party developers. This move fundamentally shifted Apple’s role from a monolithic software provider to an ecosystem orchestrator. Apple provided the core technology (iOS, hardware APIs, payment processing) and governance rules, while external developers contributed the innovation, content, and diverse features.

The Innovation Impact:

The App Store unlocked an unprecedented flywheel effect. External developers created billions of dollars in new services, simultaneously making the iPhone platform exponentially more valuable and cementing Apple’s dominance. This model proved that by prioritizing access to external intellectual capital and accepting the risk of external development, the orchestrator gains massive leverage, speed, and market penetration.

Case Study 2: The Partnership for AI (PAI) – Ecosystem for Ethical Governance

The Challenge:

The development of advanced Artificial Intelligence poses complex, societal-level challenges related to ethics, fairness, and safety—issues that cannot be solved by any one company, given the competitive pressures in the sector.

The Ecosystem Solution:

The Partnership on AI (PAI) was established by major tech competitors (including Google, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and others), alongside civil society, academic, and journalistic organizations. PAI functions as a non-competitive ecosystem designed for pre-competitive alignment on ethical and human-centered AI standards. Instead of hoarding proprietary research, members collaborate openly on principles, best practices, and research that aims to ensure AI benefits society while mitigating risks like bias and misuse.

The Innovation Impact:

PAI demonstrates that ecosystems are not just for product innovation; they are essential for governance innovation. By establishing a shared, multi-stakeholder framework, the partnership reduces regulatory risk for all participants and ensures that the human element (represented by civil society and academics) is integrated into the design of core AI principles. This collaboration creates a foundational layer of ethical trust and shared responsibility, which is a prerequisite for the public adoption of exponential technologies.

The New Leadership Imperative: Be the Nexus

The Ecosystem Advantage is a human-centered mandate. It recognizes that the best ideas are often housed outside your walls and that true change requires collective action. For leaders, this means shedding the scarcity mindset and adopting a role as a Nexus — a strategic connector who enables value to flow freely and safely across boundaries.

Success is no longer measured by the size of your internal R&D budget, but by the health, diversity, and velocity of your external network. To thrive in the era of exponential change, you must master the three imperatives: prioritizing access over ownership, proactively curating the edges of your industry, and establishing governance models built on trust. Stop trying to win the race alone. Start building the highway for everyone; that is the new competitive advantage.

Extra Extra: Because innovation is all about change, Braden Kelley’s human-centered change methodology and tools are the best way to plan and execute the changes necessary to support your innovation and transformation efforts — all while literally getting everyone all on the same page for change. Find out more about the methodology and tools, including the book Charting Change by following the link. Be sure and download the TEN FREE TOOLS while you’re here.

Image credit: Pixabay

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