Category Archives: education

At the Intersection of Innovation Way and Extraordinary Drive

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

No matter what business we’re in, our storefront better be located at the intersection of Extraordinary Drive and Innovation Way.

Of course, I am speaking figuratively. But, I’ve literally taken a photo at this real intersection that exists in the middle of High Point University. I am a fan of the university and its leadership. I’ve attended special programs there on several occasions, and every time I go back I’m reminded of its focus on being extraordinary and its innovative approach to education.

We can all learn from HPU. Higher education is a sector that is facing major disruptions from every direction. (Did you think it was just your industry having to find new ways to compete?)

Consider the looming demographic shifts impacting higher ed. According to a CNBC story, undergraduate enrollment is down 9.4% compared to two years ago. Fewer kids going to college in the next few years means a leaner market for universities to fight over. Then there’s all the chatter about whether college is really worth it. Just go to a trade school, a coding boot camp, etc. The headwinds that higher education is facing are stronger than ever.

Yet, HPU has created a distinctive niche in the higher education industry by becoming the Premier Life Skills University. How much of what a student learns in school can really be called life skills? Of course, students must embrace the liberal arts and explore subjects like literature, math, art, history, science and so on. These make us smarter and provide us with more knowledge, but are they translated into life skills? Shouldn’t education go beyond information and theory, and instead prepare us to implement those lessons in real-world scenarios?

What happens when we’re asked to describe ourselves in a job interview? How do we handle ourselves in client meetings and boardrooms? Are we ready for conflict, constant change and complex problem solving? These skills are not typically taught in school, but it’s exactly those abilities in which HPU excels, differentiating it from other colleges and universities.

So, let’s take a lesson from HPU and discover how it has created value for its students (and their parents) and how we can do the same in our businesses and organizations. In short, they’ve done it by living at the intersection of Extraordinary Drive and Innovation Way. Here are a few examples:

When critics of higher education suggest that college isn’t worth it, HPU decides to create extra value by providing every freshman with a professional success coach, equipping its Career Office to deliver an impressive 99% placement rate for recent graduates. It even offers a tuition-free Master’s Degree in Communication and Business Leadership. How are you adding additional value for your clients and customers?

When critics of higher education suggest young people should just learn a trade, HPU’s answer is weaving the “trade” of leadership and life skills into every major. It even has an “In Residence Program” that puts industry leaders in the classroom. Imagine being mentored by founders of companies such as Apple Computer or Netflix. Imagine being coached by the CEO of the Dallas Mavericks or Domino’s Pizza. They, along with dozens of other accomplished executives and leaders, all work with HPU students. So, beyond the fully accredited classroom experience that HPU offers (like every other accredited college in the nation), it has added real-world mentorship to the value equation. What is the lesson for you and me? We better be sure we deliver extraordinary and relevant benefits that add value to our customers’ and clients’ experience.

When critics of higher education suggest just going to a coder boot camp instead of college, HPU reminds families that technical skills aren’t enough when it comes to building a sustainable career. HPU has studied and surveyed employers and proven through its data that life skills are the unshakable foundation for earning and sustaining success no matter our occupation or our age. So, how are you interpreting your value to your clients? Because if you don’t, you are leaving it up to someone else. And that someone else may be your competition!

And beyond the critics who question the value of a college education, there are others who specifically criticize HPU. Success is sweet, but it also comes with competitors and critics putting a target on your back. One of the often-mentioned criticisms is the look of its campus. Really? HPU is proud that almost everyone who sees the campus for the first time says, “Wow!” It’s hard not to be impressed with the manicured campus, the beautiful buildings and the engaging, positive environment that students enjoy. But there’s far more to this university than its good looks. Look beyond the surface and you’ll find some of the most extraordinary and innovative classrooms and programs, such as the $500 million Innovation Corridor filled with cutting-edge labs where research funded by NASA and the National Institutes of Health takes place.

While higher education is in the midst of disruption like most industries, HPU has transformed what a college can do and be, and that by nature draws criticism. But here’s the lesson we can all learn: When your business or organization creates transformational change, it will surely attract criticism. As long as you are rendering value for your clients, then you know you’re doing something right.

We all have critics of our business or industry. And we all have challenges we must overcome. How we succeed or fail is directly related to how we respond to criticism and how we deliver on behalf of our customers. When we make the decision to live at the intersection of Extraordinary Drive and Innovation Way, we have no choice but to keep up our neighborhood and deliver value.

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com

Image Credit: Pexels

Sign up here to join 17,000+ leaders getting Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to their inbox every week.

Take Charge of Your Mind to Reclaim Your Potential

2 Replies

Take Charge of Your Mind to Reclaim Your Potential

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

In our recent blog, we explored how our focus and attention have been stolen, and how our ability to pay attention is collapsing and described why we need to be intentional in reclaiming it. Yet, many of us are constantly challenged by very short attention spans, where we can often be found sitting at our desks, dealing with a range of very urgent deadlines with a distracted, and unfocussed mind. Despite being intrinsically motivated to meet our deadlines, and being self-aware of needing to focus on completing the tasks in front of us, many of us often still struggle to disrupt and stop our thoughts from wandering randomly and haphazardly. Because, we are no longer being in charge of our minds, our time, or of our cognitive capacities and abilities that help us self-regulate, concentrate and focus our attention, kickstart change, innovate and become resilient.

A recent article in Psychology Today “The War For Your Attention” reinforces this problem by stating:

“We live in a time when attention has become our most valuable asset, one for which multiple stakeholders are competing. Political parties, media outlets, companies, and individuals want a share of it, and if they can have it, they want it all. As a result, remaining in charge of our minds has become a daily challenge. Our attention defines our experience, which sets the mindset of our minds”.

Become Resilient

Because we don’t know if companies will ever return to their pre-pandemic-like worlds, and what new technologies will emerge, we need to become resilient to be future-fit, in this new world of unknowns.

This requires people to unlearn some of their less resourceful “bad pre and post-pandemic habits” and be:

Open towards relearning and reskilling in how to focus, concentrate and observe, and how to manage, direct and expand our attention spans.
Intentional, outcome-focused, and therefore, effective, agile, adaptive, and resilient in an uncertain world full of disruption and crises.

This is reinforced by a recent article “Seizing the momentum to build resilience for a future of sustainable inclusive growth” by McKinsey & Co:

“In the past year, leaders have been confronted with a lifetime’s worth of disruption and crises: global conflict, energy uncertainty, food shortages, accelerating inflation, and severe climate events. Natural and human-made disruptions will only persist. To enable long-term, sustainable, and inclusive growth, today’s business leaders and policymakers must strengthen resilience beyond a survival capacity.”

From surviving to thriving

The nature and speed of change are not going to slow down, at the same time, our uncertain world full of disruption and crises is having a harsh psychological toll on everyone, impacting negatively on people’s states of emotional and physical health.

If we want people to thrive, we have to start helping people to live better than we ever have.

Taking the first baby steps requires people to confidently and courageously be, think and act differently.

Starting with empowering and enabling people to take charge of their hearts and minds, and commit to focusing their attention on building their resilience.

The Switch-Cost Effect

In his best-selling book Johann Hari – Stolen Focus, describes how Professor Earl Miller, a specialist in neuroscience, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, states that “our brains can only produce one or two thoughts” in our conscious minds at once.

Because “we are very, very single-minded” and have “very limited cognitive capacity.”

Multi-tasking is an illusion

The delusion that we can multitask, or juggle a number of thoughts and activities at the same time, is revealed, through robust research, as actually “switching, back and forth.”

He states that we don’t notice the switching because:

“Our brain sort of papers it over to give a seamless experience of consciousness, but what they’re actually doing is switching and reconfiguring their brain moment-to-moment, task-to-task – which comes with a cost.”

Losing time to refocus

This is described as the “switch-cost effect” and means that every time we switch tasks while trying to work, we are actually losing a huge amount of time required to concentrate and manage our attention spans to refocus afterward.

“For example, one study at Carnegie Mellon University’s human-computer interaction lab took 136 students and got them to sit a test. Some of them had to have their phones switched off, and others had their phones on and received intermittent text messages. The students who received messages performed, on average, 20% worse. It seems to me that almost all of us are currently losing that 20% of our brainpower, almost all the time. Miller told me that as a result we now live in “a perfect storm of cognitive degradation”.

Reducing Cognitive Degradation

There are a number of simple and obvious ways to reduce our cognitive degradation and heal our unconscious “attention deficit syndromes”, and cognitively reappraise to be in charge of our minds, concentrate and effectively manage our attention spans.

It is also the first step we need to take to empower and enable ourselves and others, in taking charge of our hearts and minds and demonstrating our commitment to focusing our attention and becoming initially resilient.

These simple actions require us to be self-disciplined, methodical, and rigorous and open to re-learning how to concentrate and self-regulated our attention spans by habitually:

Stripping out distractions,
Ceasing to multi-task,
Getting more quality sleep,
Taking regular short breaks,
Doing brain exercises,
Doing physical exercises,
Listening to music,
Setting priorities,
Using a timer.

How to be in charge of our own minds

Intention transforms

If we want to cultivate a calmer, coherent, and resourceful psychological state, to achieve the outcomes we want to have in our lives, then focus and place our attention on both what we want to manifest (our intention), and on what we want your attention to move away from, to cease.

Attention activates

When choosing to consciously slow down, hit our pause buttons, and retreat into stillness and silence, opens the sacred space, that allows us to reflect, focus and pay deeper attention to the impact of our emotions and beliefs on our thoughts.

We can then also attend to, and break down any unresourceful beliefs, emotions, and cognitive distortions about what we can really and truly influence and control to:

Create a more normalised state of equilibrium and calm, get grounded and fully present and manage our attention spans to concentrate on what really matters to us, in ways that are self-compassionate and optimistic about the future.
Support ourselves by believing that we can succeed in handling our situations, responsibly, creatively, and effectively.
Become resilient by knowing how to respond to events in real-time, anticipate events and problems that may occur in the future, and bounce from adversity whilst processing the insights and learnings gained by conquering key challenges.

Developing Resilience

We can then be in charge of our minds, become resilient, and create a safe space and generosity for others to fully show up and connect with us. We can open our eyes, minds, and hearts to all options, unleash possibilities and opportunities, make smart change choices, and innovate, rather than panicking and retreating from the risks emerging in an uncertain world full of disruption and crises.

Find out about our collective, learning products and tools, including The Coach for Innovators, Leaders, and Teams Certified Program, presented by Janet Sernack, is a collaborative, intimate, and deeply personalized innovation coaching and learning program, supported by a global group of peers over 9-weeks, starting Friday, May 12, 2023.

Image Credit: Pixabay, Pexels

Sign up here to join 17,000+ leaders getting Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to their inbox every week.

The Impact of AI on Human Civilization

Leave a reply

A New Era of Possibility

The Impact of AI on Human Civilization: A New Era of Possibility

GUEST POST from Douglas Ferguson

OpenAI released ChatGPT on Nov 30th, 2022, which has captivated the public due to its applicability to various needs and asks and near-human accuracy at astounding efficiency. AI has traditionally elicited mixed reactions, ranging from excitement and anticipation to fear and hesitation. With the introduction of this revolutionary technology, questions about its implications are beginning to arise. How will this affect knowledge workers? Which career paths are likely to become obsolete? What new knowledge do marketers, creators, programmers, etc. need to acquire to make the most of this changing landscape?

These are valid and important questions to consider, and it is essential that we have open and honest conversations about the potential impacts of AI on the workforce and how its emergence is making us and our co-workers feel. As the workplace continues to evolve and adopt more of these tools, It is critical to explore some common fears people have about AI and discuss ways that individuals and organizations can adapt, maintain the best parts of our humanity, and thrive alongside these technological advancements.

The tools now available to the public are incredibly powerful and are ushering in a momentous time of discovery. The availability of such powerful AI tools has opened up new avenues for discovery and innovation in various fields. GPT-3, Claude, Sparrow, and the technology they will inspire all have the potential to revolutionize the way we communicate, learn, and interact with information. If we approach this game-changing tech with humanity, curiosity, and excitement, we can easily step into a world where AI is not only a tool but also a collaborator.

A common reaction to experiencing the power of AI is a feeling of cheating or that we are replaceable, this leads to discussion and debate about whether people will lose their jobs. It’s important to remind ourselves that this feeling is not new or unique to AI. Consider innovations like the printing press or the internet. While initially seen as disruptive, more opportunity has always been generated than lost. New roles and markets emerge in times of massive change.

One unique thing about AI technologies, in particular, is that there are advancing and improving at an astonishing rate. This means that it’s an exciting time to play and watch and learn what can be done with these tool and how they might shape our work in the future. As we learn more and gain clarity and confidence, we are better suited to experiment with new approaches to our work. From there, we can consider how our jobs might shift and take on new requirements and meanings. If the AI can now automate 80% of your work, what can you do with that 80% that is now gifted back to you? Are you able to spend focus on the 20% that really provided the most value? The part that speak to your humanness?

While many people will shift habits and behaviors, some will shift into complete new roles with new titles that never existed before. We’ve already seen this happen in the AI ecosystem. A role that has specifically caught my attention is the “Prompt Engineer” I fondly like to refer to them as AI Facilitators. If you’ve spent any time with ChatGPT, you’ve learned that getting great results from Chat GPT is similar to getting great results from a room of people you are facilitating. You have to ask GREAT QUESTIONS.

Software companies seeking to add GPT capabilities into their products are hiring Prompt Engineers to create the best prompts for GTP to tailor the responses for their product use cases. Think of it like constructing the perfect MadLib. Consumers of a product will interact with the product and maybe fill in some data or make some requests in the app. The app will then submit that request and data to GTP by inserting the pieces into this perfectly crafted MadLib that will generate the ideal result for the end user. Prompt Engineers design these prompts and Madlib-like structures to get desired outcomes from the AI model.

It’s fun to watch the job boards and careers pages for AI consultancies and AI-forward tech companies to see what trends are emerging around new job titles. Reflecting on these observations and considering what that means for overall trends and how those might emerge in your work can lead to valuable insights. Take a look. What ideas surface for you when you consider potential new roles in this emerging landscape?

If nothing else, remember to be curious! It’s totally normal to feel overwhelmed, confused, scared, frustrated, dubious, and generally concerned. Take time to move past those reactions and cultivate the generative curiosity needed to learn and understand the technology. When we are curious, we see connections that are non-obvious, and when these pathways are illuminated are able to design our future more effortlessly.

Putting It Into Action

As I mentioned previously, questions have always been paramount in facilitation, which is still true for ChatGTP and other language modules. While these tools are amazing, you won’t get far if you don’t know how to ask good questions or know what questions you should be asking. Questions are uniquely human. No other being discovered has this ability. And, when we engage in self-reflection, introspection, and empathy towards others, we connect more deeply with our humanity—leading to a better understanding of our thoughts, emotions, and values as well as how we are connected to those around us. Thoughtful inquiry cultivates a greater sense of awareness, compassion, and connection within our teams, organizations, and, eventually the AIs alongside us.

Master facilitators have spent years honing their skills and developing their ability to attune to and guide the flow of energy, attention, and conflict in a room. Successful facilitation in the future will also require mastering the art of collaborating with machines. Adapting and extending existing practices to maximize new potential with AI will be the norm. In preparation for this new age of collaboration, we’ve started experimenting by employing proven facilitation techniques while interacting with ChatGPT and other tools. The familiarity of the tools provides some comfort and confidence as we experiment with the unknown.

Start with classic facilitative questions to help guide ChatGPT toward your outcomes:

How might we clarify and align the goals and objectives?
How might we identify the tone and perspective?
How might we recognize empathetic requirements that are considerate to our audience?
How might we brainstorm and generate ideas for prompts and test them?
How might we evaluate and prioritize prompts with core values in mind?

If you are a leader, facilitation is key to your work, or you are curious to grow into these areas, start by familiarizing yourself with the capabilities and nuances of the tools. You’ll want to start with any tool-specific tutorials to familiarize yourself with the UI and functions of the tool. Once you are on the tool and ready to start experimenting, take a moment to explore and learn how to craft questions that yield the best outcomes. As with any good question, think about the context of your audience, what do they know, the purpose of your question, what’s the format of a really good response, and even the types of answers you’d like to avoid. Remember that we have spent our entire lives asking, communicating, and presenting questions to other humans, and it will take some time and experimentation to master questions for machines.

I have been experimenting with ChatGPT and have made some progress on how to get the most interesting results.

Always make sure to start with your purpose, and think clearly about why this is important. Find ways to incorporate your why into the questions and prompts you construct for ChatGPT.

Consider the personality of, or style of, the response that might be most valuable to you. Would you like to have your meeting summarized from the perspective of an investigative journalist, Charles Dickens, or Gandhi Think about the tone, attitude, and mindsets you seek to convey.

Remember that ChatGPT is there to perform tasks for you. What is the thing you want it to generate? An essay, a poem, a love letter, a summary, a report, or computer code.

One noteworthy feature of ChatGPT is that it can reference up to approximately 3000 previous words from the conversation. Take advantage of this is beneficial for requesting revisions and getting the tool to generate variations and adaptations until you get results you are happy with. Give it specific instructions on how to improve.

Include specific qualities or requirements you have for defining a good response. This may not be immediately apparent when you first start, and you’ll need to rely on iterating and refining to get the answer you want. Over time you’ll get a handle on the criteria and instructions that are important to you. Save these for the next time you use ChatGPT.

We have created a template laying out these steps in further detail so you can play with ideas and help streamline this process.

ChatGPT has lots of potential but how do we get the most out of it? It’s all about the prompt. Writing and tweaking prompts specific to your needs is key to unlocking the best results. Use this tool template to think through what you’d like to achieve and how to construct the ideal prompt for ChatGPT to get you there.

Collaborating With AI

Practice, practice, practice! Learn to ask the right questions and become more comfortable collaborating with AI. This is key because, eventually, AI will work with us on our teams. We need to become accustomed to how they operate and how they “think”, as it will be different than collaborating with humans. We have generations of experience collaborating with humans, and now is the time to start building that same experience with machines.

Imagine you are on a team of five, four humans and one AI.

What does collaboration with AI look like, and how does it feel?
What questions will the team ask the AI?
How will we learn to work and collaborate in new ways?
What does it mean to invite AI in as a team member?
How might we notice and encourage it to have more ethical and inclusive answers?

Inviting the AI in as a team member means giving it context and teaching it how to work best with us. We can help it learn our culture and values to better align with our mission, vision, and purpose. Building a strategy to incorporate AI as a team member is not unlike working with people in an organization. When a company’s strategy is aligned with its values and purpose, it can create a more meaningful and fulfilling work experience for employees. AI can be an extension of this, reinforcing desired norms and behaviors. Creating a safe environment allowing people to bring their whole selves to work and tap into their innate sense of purpose and connection with others. This can, in turn, help employees lean deeper into their humanity and contribute to a more positive, ethical, and sustainable organizational culture.

Transcending The AI

There are many examples of how technology has allowed us to put aside trivial matters and elevate as humans. AI is currently simplifying tasks of all kinds by efficiently performing mundane tasks on demand. For example, AI design tools are able to nearly eliminate the creation of UI design, allowing designers to spend their time considering the strategy, conceptual design, how to elevate user experience, and how to address accessibility or other concerns. While the simple example is handy for examples sakes, the potential is much greater than just moving from tactical work to strategic work. As these tools advance and provide deeper functionality for us, we will shift into a higher state of work, finding deeper connections and relating at levels never before experienced in the workplace.

Humans are exceptionally adaptable organisms, and the AI revolution is a time that calls for us to lean into that ability. As with any change, we must also be considerate of long-term systemic implications and sustainability of our actions and work. As you embark on your journey, consider the ethics of what you or your organization are asking of the AI. Think about the second and third-order effects of what you are asking. If the AI excels at doing this task, what might result from that and so on and so forth? What are the long-term consequences of that? Finally, consider if we might want to pick a different starting point or provide more conditions to properly guide or constrain the AI.

I’m excited about what the future holds for us. As we explore these times together, join me as I focus on appreciating and respecting the diversity of experiences and perspectives that make us all unique. As we begin to create our first relationships with AI, remember to reach firmly into the deepest depths of our humanity.

Article first published at VoltageControl.com

Image credit: Pixabay

Sign up here to join 17,000+ leaders getting Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to their inbox every week.

Trends in Medical School Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education

Leave a reply

Trends in Medical School Innovation and Entrepreneurship Education

GUEST POST from Arlen Meyers, M.D.

Biomedical and health entrepreneurship continues to expand around the world. Driven by global pressures to optimize the allocation of scarce resources, life science bioentrepreneurs are creating innovative products, platforms, service and systems that deliver more value. As a result, the demand for biomedical and health professional entrepreneurial talent has increased and biomedical and health innovation and entrepreneurship education and training (BEET) programs are growing to fill the gap.

Authors of a 2019 analysis of 171 allopathic medical schools conducted an exhaustive search of the published literature and websites of existing medical school innovation and entrepreneurship (MS I&E) programs, with an emphasis on answering the following three questions:

1. How are I&E programs organized and integrated with the medical school curriculum?
2. What are the core competencies of the I&E program?
3. How are the core competencies measured/evaluated?

Twenty-eight I&E-oriented medical education programs were identified from 26 schools; all of the programs integrated faculty leadership with backgrounds in medicine, engineering, and/or business/entrepreneurship. Of the programs, 57% (16/28) had been launched within the past four years and 75% (21/28) based program enrollment on a selective application process. Nearly all (27/28) incorporated lecture series and/or hands-on modules as a teaching technique. The most prevalent metric was completion of a capstone project (22/28; 79%). At least 15.2% (26/171) of American and Canadian allopathic medical schools include the option for students to participate in an I&E curriculum-based program.

In a few short years, educational offerings in MS I&E have accelerated, in part due to the impact of the COVID pandemic. Trends include:

Sharing lessons learned teaching medical students innovation and entrepreneurship
Experimenting with various program business models
Creating medical student entrepreneurs
Rethinking MS I&E
Designing a curriculum map and defining learning objectives, entrustable professional activities and knowledge,skills, abilities and competencies
Mentoring and guiding medical students
Offering non-clinical-career options
Providing exit ramps
Rethinking how we select medical students
Resetting the future of academic medical center work
Using principles of medical education reform and what we should be teaching in MedEd 2030
Training MS I&E faculty
Encouraging interprofessional and transdisciplinary entrepreneurship programs
Integrating premed, medical student and postgraduate programs
Encouraging life-long learning

We should teach innovation, entrepreneurship and the business of medicine in medical schools, not MD/MBA programs. MBE programs are a better option for those interested in getting an idea to a patient.

Here are the many reasons why physician entrepreneurship is important and why we are likely to see more of the international design, development and deployment of MS I&E programs in both allopathic and osteopathic schools as well as other health professional schools, including nursing, pharmacy and public health schools. Ultimately, as a result, patients and sickcare systems will be the beneficiaries and doctors will be better and happier.

Image credit: Pixabay

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Prototyping the Future

Leave a reply

Experimenting with Emerging Possibilities

Prototyping the Future

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

In the high-stakes game of organizational change, inertia is the silent killer. Leaders often talk about innovation, but they are terrified of the risk associated with committing millions to an unproven concept. This fear traps organizations in a cycle of incrementalism. As a human-centered change and innovation thought leader, I argue that the most powerful antidote to this paralysis is prototyping. Prototyping is not merely a step in a design process; it is a mindset — a strategic, disciplined commitment to experimenting with the future in the present. It is the art of making the unknown tangible, allowing us to fail safely, learn quickly, and dramatically increase our Return on Learning (ROL).

We must shift from an obsession with traditional ROI (Return on Investment), which punishes failure, to prioritizing ROL (Return on Learning), which rewards clarity and speed. Prototyping the future requires moving from a culture obsessed with detailed planning to one that values informed iteration. It means creating low-fidelity, high-impact simulations of emerging possibilities — be it a new product, a process, or an entirely new business model. This commitment to creating fast, disposable versions of the future dramatically lowers the psychological cost of failure, fostering the psychological safety necessary for true breakthrough innovation. Whether it’s a cardboard model, a basic wireframe, or an immersive Virtual Reality (VR) simulation, the goal is to maximize the learning extracted per dollar spent.

The Three Imperatives of Strategic Prototyping

To successfully prototype the future, organizations must focus on three core strategic imperatives that accelerate learning and reduce risk:

1. De-Risking the Unknown with Speed: The primary function of a prototype is to identify and test the riskiest assumption in an emerging idea. It must be fast, cheap, and disposable. We aim to fail quickly and often at the conceptual stage, saving significant time and capital that would otherwise be wasted on building a perfect solution for the wrong problem.
2. Generating Empathy Through Tangibility: Abstract ideas are difficult for stakeholders and customers to critique meaningfully. A prototype — whether physical or digital (e.g., an Augmented Reality model) —forces interaction. This human interaction generates deep empathy and reveals hidden needs, emotional reactions, and critical user friction points that no spreadsheet or survey can capture.
3. Creating a Shared Vision: The future is difficult to discuss because everyone imagines it differently. A prototype serves as a Shared Artifact — a concrete, singular point of reference around which a team, and the entire organization, can align their vision, critique constructively, and unify their efforts. This speeds up decision-making and aligns cross-functional silos.

“Don’t fall in love with your first idea. Fall in love with the clarity your first prototype creates.” — Braden Kelley

Case Study 1: The IDEO Shopping Cart – Prototyping the Experience

The Challenge:

The design firm IDEO was challenged by a major grocery chain to redesign the common supermarket shopping cart. The initial, narrow focus was on engineering and durability, which would have resulted in only incremental changes.

The Prototyping Solution:

IDEO’s human-centered approach started not with engineering, but with experiential prototypes. The team quickly built several low-fidelity models using rudimentary materials (duct tape, bins, children’s seats) to test radically different concepts — like a cart with a built-in calculator or one with better maneuverability. They took these rough models into the grocery store for real-time testing, observing customer and employee interaction and failure points.

The Innovation Impact:

By prototyping the user experience rather than the final product, IDEO discovered critical, unarticulated needs—like improved maneuverability and safer child seating—that led to fundamental design shifts. The process proved that fast, visual, and highly interactive prototyping is the most efficient way to unlock breakthrough innovation by placing the human at the center of the learning loop.

Case Study 2: Amazon’s “Working Backwards” – Prototyping the Document

The Challenge:

Amazon, known for its high-velocity innovation, needed a mechanism to ensure that product teams were building things customers actually wanted and that ideas were vetted quickly without expensive software development.

The Prototyping Solution:

Amazon formalized a process called “Working Backwards,” which uses a document-based prototype. Before a single line of code is written, a team must write a Press Release (PR) announcing the finished product to the world. The PR is a one-page, customer-centric narrative explaining the product’s benefit, the problem it solves, and its release date. Accompanying the PR is a detailed FAQ and mock Customer Reviews.

The Innovation Impact:

This simple, text-based prototype forces immediate clarity and user focus. Writing the press release first ensures the team can articulate the customer value proposition before spending any engineering time. If the PR isn’t compelling, the idea is instantly shelved or iterated upon. This low-fidelity, high-discipline prototyping method de-risks multi-million-dollar projects by ensuring the idea is sound and clearly focused on the human need before the execution even begins. It is the ultimate example of prototyping the communication and the value proposition.

Conclusion: Leading with Iteration and ROL

Prototyping the future is the most responsible way to lead change. It replaces the paralyzing certainty of the five-year plan with the agile confidence of constant, low-cost learning. Leaders must create the cultural conditions for this to thrive: namely, by celebrating fast learning and treating failed prototypes as valuable data points, thereby building an organization defined by high Psychological Safety and high ROL.

The innovation landscape moves too fast for slow, secretive, and large-scale commitments. By adopting the three imperatives—speed, empathy generation, and shared vision creation—through prototyping, you ensure that your organization remains perpetually adaptive.

“Stop trying to predict the future. Start building disposable versions of it.” — Braden Kelley

That is the definitive strategy for unlocking continuous, human-centered innovation.

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: 1 of 950+ FREE quote slides available at http://misterinnovation.com

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Preparing Your Workforce for Collaborative Intelligence

Leave a reply

Upskilling for the AI Era

Preparing Your Workforce for Collaborative Intelligence

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

The rise of Artificial Intelligence is not a distant threat looming on the horizon; it is the fundamental reality of business today. Yet, the conversation is often dominated by fear—the fear of job replacement, of technical obsolescence, and of organizational disruption. As a human-centered change and innovation thought leader, I argue that this narrative misses the most profound opportunity: the chance to redefine the very nature of human work. The true imperative for leaders is not to acquire AI tools, but to upskill their human workforce for a symbiotic partnership with those tools. We must shift our focus from automation to Collaborative Intelligence, where the strength of the machine (speed, data processing) complements the genius of the human (creativity, empathy, judgment).

The AI Era demands a strategic pivot in talent development. We need to move past reactive technical training and invest in the skills that are uniquely human, those that machines can augment but never truly replicate. The future of competitive advantage lies not in owning the best algorithms, but in cultivating the workforce most skilled at collaborating with algorithms. This requires a shift in mindset, skills, and organizational design, ensuring that every employee — from the frontline associate to the senior executive — understands their new role as an AI partner, strategist, and ethical steward.

The Three Pillars of Collaborative Intelligence

Preparing your workforce for the AI era means focusing on three critical, human-centric skill areas that machines will struggle to master:

1. Strategic Judgment and Empathy: AI excels at calculation, but it lacks contextual awareness, cultural nuance, and empathy. The human role shifts to interpreting the AI’s output, exercising ethical judgment, and translating data into emotionally resonant actions for customers and colleagues. This requires deep training in human-centered design principles and ethical decision-making.
2. Creative Problem-Solving and Experimentation: The most valuable new skill is not coding, but prompt engineering and defining the right questions. Humans must conceptualize new use cases, challenge the AI’s assumptions, and rapidly prototype new solutions. This demands a culture of psychological safety where continuous experimentation and failure are encouraged as essential steps toward innovation.
3. Data Literacy and AI Stewardship: Every employee must become literate in data and AI concepts. They don’t need to write code, but they must understand how the AI makes decisions, where its data comes from, and why a result might be biased or flawed. The human is the ethical backstop and the responsible steward of the algorithm’s power.

“The AI won’t take your job; a person skilled in AI will. The upskilling challenge is not about the technology; it’s about the partnership.” — Braden Kelley

Case Study 1: The Global Consulting Firm – From Analyst to Interpreter

The Challenge:

A major global consulting firm faced the threat of AI automation taking over their junior analysts’ core tasks: data aggregation, slide creation, and basic research. They realized that their competitive edge was not in performing these routine tasks, but in their consultants’ ability to synthesize, communicate, and build client trust—all uniquely human skills.

The Collaborative Intelligence Solution:

The firm launched a massive internal upskilling initiative focused on transforming the junior analyst role from “data processor” to “AI interpreter and client strategist.” The training focused heavily on non-technical skills: narrative storytelling (using AI-generated data to craft compelling client stories), ethical deliberation (identifying bias in AI-generated recommendations), and active listening (improving client empathy). AI was positioned not as a replacement, but as an instant, tireless research assistant that handled 80% of the routine work.

The Human-Centered Result:

By investing in human judgment and communication, the firm increased the value of its junior workforce. Consultants spent less time creating slides and more time on high-impact client interactions, leading to stronger relationships and more innovative solutions. This shift proved that the ultimate value-add in a service industry is the human capacity for strategic synthesis and trustworthy communication — skills that thrive when augmented by AI.

Case Study 2: Leading Retail Bank – Embedding AI into Customer Service

The Challenge:

A large retail bank implemented AI chatbots and automated routing systems to handle routine customer inquiries, intending to reduce call center costs. However, customer satisfaction plummeted because complex or emotionally charged issues were being mishandled by the automation. The human agents felt demoralized, fearing redundancy.

The Collaborative Intelligence Solution:

The bank pivoted its strategy, creating a new role: the Augmented Human Agent. The human agents were upskilled in two key areas. First, they received intensive training in emotional regulation and conflict resolution to handle the high-stress, complex calls that the AI flagged and escalated. Second, they were trained in “AI tuning” — learning to review the chatbot’s transcripts, identify common failure points, and provide direct feedback to the AI development team. This turned the agents from passive recipients of technology into active partners in its improvement.

The Human-Centered Result:

This approach restored customer trust. Customers felt valued because their most difficult problems were routed quickly to a highly skilled, emotionally intelligent human. Employee engagement improved because agents felt empowered and recognized as essential collaborators in the bank’s digital transformation. The result was a successful blend: AI handled the volume and efficiency, while highly skilled humans handled the emotion and complexity, achieving both cost savings and higher customer satisfaction.

Conclusion: The Future of Work is Partnership

The AI Era is not about a technological race; it is about a human race to redefine skills, value, and purpose. The most forward-thinking leaders will treat AI deployment as a catalyst for human capital development. This means shifting budget from outdated legacy training programs to investments in judgment, ethics, creativity, and empathy. The future of work is not about the “Man vs. Machine” conflict, but the Man with Machine partnership.

Your competitive advantage tomorrow will be determined by how effectively your people can collaborate with the intelligent systems at their disposal. By focusing your upskilling efforts on the three pillars of Collaborative Intelligence, you ensure that your workforce is not just surviving the AI revolution, but actively leading it—creating a future that is not just efficient, but fundamentally human-centered and more innovative.

Image credit: Pixabay

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Lifelong Learning as a Business Imperative

Leave a reply

Investing in Your People’s Future

Lifelong Learning as a Business Imperative

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

In an era of unprecedented technological advancement and market disruption, the skills that made a company successful yesterday are not enough to guarantee its survival tomorrow. The traditional model of a single, intensive education followed by a career of static application is obsolete. The most forward-thinking, resilient organizations understand that lifelong learning is no longer a personal preference—it’s a critical business imperative. As a human-centered change and innovation thought leader, I argue that investing in your people’s continuous growth is the most powerful strategy for building a future-proof, adaptable, and innovative enterprise. It’s a shift from viewing training as a cost center to seeing learning as a core driver of business value.

The pace of change, from the rise of AI to the evolution of global supply chains, demands a workforce that is not just skilled, but learnable. This means cultivating a culture where curiosity is celebrated, experimentation is encouraged, and continuous skill development is woven into the very fabric of daily work. By empowering employees to become perpetual learners, organizations gain a profound competitive advantage. They build a well of internal expertise, boost employee engagement and retention, and, most importantly, create the intellectual flexibility necessary to pivot and innovate in the face of uncertainty.

Why Continuous Learning is Your Best Strategic Investment

Viewing lifelong learning as a strategic business function unlocks several key benefits:

Enhanced Adaptability and Agility: A workforce that is constantly learning is inherently more adaptable. They can quickly acquire new skills, embrace new technologies, and pivot their roles as market demands shift, making the entire organization more agile.
Innovation from Within: When employees are empowered to learn and experiment, they are more likely to generate innovative ideas and solutions from the ground up. New knowledge fuels new perspectives, leading to breakthrough products, services, and processes.
Improved Employee Retention & Engagement: Investing in your people’s growth sends a powerful message: “We value you, and we are committed to your future here.” This recognition is a primary driver of employee loyalty, reducing turnover and making the company a magnet for top talent.
Building a Knowledge Repository: As employees acquire new skills and share their knowledge, the organization’s collective intelligence grows. This creates a valuable internal resource that reduces reliance on expensive external consultants and provides a source of competitive advantage.
Closing the Skills Gap: Instead of struggling to hire for specialized roles in a tight labor market, organizations can proactively upskill their existing workforce, building the capabilities they need from the inside out.

“The greatest investment a company can make is not in technology, but in the human capacity to understand, use, and create with that technology.”

Practical Steps to Cultivate a Learning Culture

Creating a culture of lifelong learning requires more than just offering a training budget. It demands a systemic approach from leadership:

Lead by Example: Leaders must visibly engage in their own learning journeys, sharing what they’ve learned and modeling a growth mindset.
Allocate Dedicated Time: Make learning a formal part of the workday. Allow employees a set number of hours per week or month to dedicate to self-directed learning, online courses, or workshops.
Create a Learning Ecosystem: Provide access to a diverse range of learning resources, including online platforms (Coursera, LinkedIn Learning), mentorship programs, and internal knowledge-sharing sessions.
Measure & Reward Learning: Track and celebrate the acquisition of new skills. Tie learning milestones to career progression and performance reviews, showing that continuous growth is a valued part of the job.
Encourage Experimentation: Create psychologically safe spaces for employees to apply new knowledge to real-world projects, even if they fail. This hands-on application solidifies learning.

Case Study 1: AT&T’s Workforce 2020 Program – Proactive Reskilling

The Challenge:

In the mid-2010s, AT&T’s core business was shifting dramatically from a legacy phone company to a software-driven, digital services provider. The company’s vast workforce, many with expertise in traditional telecom infrastructure, lacked the skills needed for this new era of 5G, AI, and cloud computing. The alternative—mass layoffs and a massive new hiring effort—was both costly and demoralizing.

The Learning-Driven Solution:

Instead of a reactive approach, AT&T launched a massive, proactive reskilling initiative called “Workforce 2020.” The program was designed to preemptively train employees in the skills the company would need in the future. They partnered with universities and online learning platforms to create a learning ecosystem that allowed employees to self-direct their education.

Investment in People: AT&T committed over $250 million a year to the program, signaling a profound investment in its existing workforce.
Data-Driven Approach: They used data analytics to forecast future skill needs, allowing employees to choose from courses and certifications that were directly relevant to the company’s strategic direction.
Cultivating a New Mindset: The program was more than just training; it was about fostering a culture of continuous learning and growth, making employees the drivers of their own professional development.

The Result:

AT&T successfully reskilled tens of thousands of employees, transforming its workforce from one with legacy skills to one fluent in the language of the digital age. This initiative not only saved the company millions in recruitment and onboarding costs but also dramatically improved employee morale and retention. It proved that a large, established enterprise could successfully navigate a monumental shift by making a strategic bet on its people’s capacity for lifelong learning.

Case Study 2: General Motors and the Future of Automotive – From Manufacturing to Mobility

The Challenge:

General Motors (GM) is at the epicenter of a major disruption: the shift from internal combustion engines to electric and autonomous vehicles. This requires a completely new set of skills in software engineering, battery technology, data science, and AI—skills that are not traditionally core to a legacy automaker’s workforce. The challenge was to bridge this massive skills gap to become a leader in the new mobility landscape.

The Learning-Driven Solution:

GM recognized that it couldn’t simply hire its way out of this problem. They embarked on a comprehensive upskilling and reskilling journey for their global workforce. They partnered with leading tech companies and academic institutions to provide training in critical areas. Key elements included:

Internal Knowledge Transfer: Creating programs for knowledge sharing between seasoned engineers and new software experts, blending deep domain expertise with cutting-edge tech skills.
Role Reinvention: Encouraging employees to envision new roles for themselves within the company, providing them with the educational resources to make that transition.
Strategic Partnerships: Collaborating with platforms like Udacity to launch nanodegree programs in areas like self-driving car engineering, directly targeting the skills needed for GM’s future.

The Result:

By investing in its people’s lifelong learning, GM has been able to accelerate its transition from a car manufacturer to a mobility company. The company has retained valuable institutional knowledge while acquiring new, critical skills from within. This has not only reduced the skills gap but also built a culture of innovation and adaptability that is essential for competing with agile tech companies entering the automotive space. GM’s success in this transition is a powerful testament to the idea that the workforce you have today can become the workforce you need tomorrow, with the right investment in learning.

Conclusion: The Ultimate Competitive Advantage

In a world where technology and markets are in a state of perpetual flux, the most resilient organizations will be those that prioritize continuous learning. Lifelong learning is not a perk; it is a fundamental business imperative and the ultimate competitive advantage. It’s an investment that pays dividends in adaptability, innovation, and long-term viability.

As leaders, our most critical role is to stop seeing our workforce as a fixed asset and start treating them as an infinite source of potential. By creating a culture that celebrates and enables continuous growth, we not only future-proof our organizations but also empower our people to thrive in a world that is constantly changing. It’s a win-win: we build a more resilient business, and our employees build a more relevant and fulfilling career. It’s time to make learning a cornerstone of our strategy, not an afterthought.

Image credit: Pexels

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Should a Bad Grade in Organic Chemistry be a Doctor Killer?

1 Reply

NYU Professor Fired for Giving Students Bad Grades

Should a Bad Grade in Organic Chemistry be a Doctor Killer?

GUEST POST from Arlen Meyers, M.D.

A recent article described the termination of an NYU organic chemistry professor in response to a student petition. When the professor pushed students’ grades down, noting the egregious misconduct, he said they protested that “they were not given grades that would allow them to get into medical school.” The reporter noted that, in short, this one unhappy chemistry class could be a case study of the pressures on higher education as it tries to handle its Gen-Z student body. Should universities ease pressure on students, many of whom are still coping with the pandemic’s effects on their mental health and schooling? How should universities respond to the increasing number of complaints by students against professors? Do students have too much power over contract faculty members, who do not have the protections of tenure?

And how hard should organic chemistry be anyway? One faculty member said, “Unless you appreciate these transformations at the molecular level, I don’t think you can be a good physician, and I don’t want you treating patients.”

I know the feeling. While organic chemistry is termed a “doctor killer” by premedical students, getting any grade less than an “A”, typically in science, technology, engineering, or math subjects, can doom your application. When I saw that B I got in physics in my junior year of college, I started thinking about Plan B. Then I really learned the gravity of the situation.

Despite the noise and groaning, medical school applications continue to rise, driven by many factors. However, the medical school education model dates back to the Flexner report issued in 1910. Many are trying to address the challenges of how to train the biomedical research and practice workforce to win the 4th industrial revolution, but progress has been slow. Here were the challenges facing medical schools in 2015. Things have not radically changed. Medical educators, particularly those in public medical schools, will continue to face several basic problems in the coming years. The “invisible enemy” has exacerbated many.

We should rethink how we recruit and accept medical students.

Here are some questions that should inform that transition:

1. Do doctors really need to be that “smart”? GPAs can vary significantly across different medical schools, so it pays to do your research before applying. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) reported an average GPA for medical school of 3.60 across all applicants for the 2021-2022 application cycle. For the same year, applicants had an average science GPA of 3.49 and an average non-science GPA of 3.74.

2. What kind of intelligence do doctors need to meet the needs of their stakeholders and communities?

Types of Intelligence by Mark Vital

3. Do patients really care what grade their doctor got in organic chemistry, or, for that matter, whether they graduated last in their class from medical school?

4. How has the pandemic and the persona of Gen Z changed medical education?

5. What do doctors and patients need to know to win the 4th industrial revolution? Organic chemistry?

6. How does the present system and its reliance on undergraduate STEM academic performance impact inequitable socioeconomic and demographic acceptance rates?

7. How should we transform premedical, medical, and post-graduate pedagogy? Examples are project-based learning and peer reviewed feedback.

8. Why do we insist that undergraduates declare a major?

9. Is the purpose of a medical school education solely to graduate students who have the knowledge, skills, abilities, and competencies to take care of patients, or should we provide them with exit ramps too?

10. How do we balance a medical culture of conformity with a culture of creativity?

11. What will be the future of medical work?

I’m lucky that I dodged the bullet. But I still have Plan B.

Image Credits: Adioma (Mark Vital), Pixabay

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Kicking the Copier Won’t Fix Your Problem

Leave a reply

Kicking the Copier Won't Fix Your Problem

GUEST POST from John Bessant

Have you ever felt the urge to kick the photocopier? Or worse? That time when you desperately needed to make sixty copies of a workshop handout five minutes before your session begins. Or when you needed a single copy of your passport or driving license, it’s the only way you can prove your identity to the man behind the desk about not to approve your visa application? Remember the awful day when you were struggling to print your boarding passes for the long-overdue holiday; that incident meant you ended up paying way over the odds at the airport?

The copiers may change, the locations and contexts may differ but underneath is one clear unifying thread. The machines are out to get you. Perhaps it’s just a random failure and you are just the unlucky one who keeps getting caught. Or maybe it’s more serious, they’ve started issuing them with an urgency sensor which detects how critical your making a copy is and then adjusts the machine’s behavior to match this by refusing to perform.

Whatever the trigger you can be sure that it won’t be a simple easy to fix error like ‘out of paper’ which you just might be able to do something about. No, the kind of roadblock these fiendish devices are likely to hurl on to your path will be couched in arcane language displayed on the interface as ‘Error code 3b76 — please consult technician’.

Given the number of photocopiers in the world and the fact that we are still far from being a paperless society in spite of our digital aspirations, it’s a little surprising that the law books don’t actually contain a section on xeroxicide — the attempt or execution of terminal damage to the lives of these machines.

Help is at hand. Because whilst we may still have the odd close and not very enjoyable encounter with these devices the reality is that they are getting better all the time. Not only through adding a bewildering range of functionality so that you can do almost anything with them apart from cook your breakfast, but also because they are becoming more reliable. And that is, in large measure, down to something called a community of practice. One of the most valuable resources we have in the innovation management toolkit.

The term was originally coined by Etienne Wenger and colleagues who used it to describe “groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.” Which is where the idea of communities of practice comes in. It’s a simple enough idea, based on the principle that we learn some things better when we act together.

Shared learning helps, not least in those situations where knowledge is not necessarily explicit and easily available for the finding. It’s a little like mining for precious metals; the really valuable stuff is often invisible inside clumps of otherwise useless rock. Tiny flecks on the surface might give us the clue to something valuable being contained therein but it’s going to take quite a lot of processing to extract it in shiny pure form.

Knowledge is the same; it’s often not available in easy reach or plain sight. Instead it’s what Michael Polanyi called tacit as opposed to explicit. We sometimes can’t even speak about it, we just know it because we do it.

Which brings us back to our photocopiers. And to the work of Julian Orr who worked in the 1990s as a field service engineer in a large corporation specializing in office equipment. He was an ethnographer, interested in understanding how communities of people interact, rather as an anthropologist might study lost tribes in the Amazon. Only his research was in California, down the road from Silicon Valley and he was carrying out research on how work was organized.

He worked with the customer service teams, the roving field service engineers who criss-cross the country trying to fix the broken machine which you’ve just encountered with its ‘Error code 3b76 — please consult technician’ message. Assuming you haven’t already disassembled the machine forcibly they are the ones who patiently diagnose and repair it so that it once again behaves in sweetly obedient and obliging fashion.

They do this through deploying their knowledge, some of which is contained in their manuals (or these days on the tablets they carry around). But that’s only the explicit knowledge, the accumulation of what’s known, the FAQs which represent the troubleshooting solutions the designers developed when creating the machines. Behind this is a much less well-defined set of knowledge which comes from encountering new problems in the field and working out solutions to them — innovating. Over time this tacit knowledge becomes explicit and shared and eventually finds its way into an updated service manual or taught on the new version of the training course.

Orr noticed that in the informal interactions of the team, the coming together and sharing of their experiences, a great deal of knowledge was being exchanged. And importantly that these conversations often led to new problems and solutions being shared and solved. These were not formal meetings and would often happen in temporary locations, like a Monday morning meet-up for breakfast before the teams went their separate ways on their service calls.

You can imagine the conversations taking place across the coffee and doughnuts, ranging from catching up on the weekend experience, discussing the sports results, recounting stories about recalcitrant offspring and so on. But woven through would also be a series of exchanges about their work — complaining about a particular problem that had led to one of them getting toner splashed all over their overalls, describing proudly a work-around they had come up with, sharing hacks and improvised solutions.

There’d be a healthy skepticism about the company’s official repair manual and a pride in keeping the machines working in spite of their design. More important the knowledge each of them encountered through these interactions would be elaborated and amplified, shared across the community. And much of it would eventually find its way back to the designers and the engineers responsible for the official manual.

Orr’s work influenced many people including John Seely Brown (who went on to be Chief Scientist at Xerox) and Paul Duguid who explored further this social dimension to knowledge creation and capture. Alongside formal research and development tools the storytelling across communities of practice like these becomes a key input to innovation, particularly the long-haul incremental improvements which lie at the heart of effective performance.

Tacit Explicit Knowledge An important theme which Japanese researchers Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi were aware of and formalised in their seminal book about ‘the knowledge creating company’. They offered a simple model through which tacit knowledge is made explicit, shared and eventually embedded into practice, a process which helped explain the major advantages offered by engaging a workforce in high involvement innovation. Systems which became the ‘lean thinking’ model which is in widespread use today have their roots in this process, with teams of workers acting as communities of practice.

Their model has four key stages in a recurring cycle:

Socialization — in which empathy and shared experiences create tacit knowledge (for example, the storytelling in our field service engineer teams)

Externalization — in which the tacit knowledge becomes explicit, converted into ideas and insights which others can work with

Combination — in which the externalized knowledge is organized and added to the stock of existing explicit knowledge — for example embedding it in a revised version of the manual

Internalization — in which the new knowledge becomes part of ‘the way we do things around here’ and the platform for further journeys around the cycle

CoPs are of enormous value in innovation, something which has been recognized for a long time. Think back to the medieval Guilds; their system was based on sharing practice and building a community around that knowledge exchange process. CoPs are essentially ‘learning networks’. They may take the form of an informal social group meeting up where learning is a by-product of their being together; that’s the model which best describes our photocopier engineers and many other social groups at work. Members of such groups don’t all have to be from the same company; much of the power of industrial clusters lies in the way they achieve not only collective efficiency but also the way they share and accumulate knowledge.

Small firms co-operate to create capabilities far beyond the sum of their parts — and communities of practice form an excellent alternative to having formal R&D labs. John Seely Brown’s later research looked at, for example, the motorcycle cluster around the city of Chongquing in China whose products now dominate the world market. Success here is in no small measure due to the knowledge sharing which takes place within a geographically close community of practice.

CoPs can also be formally ‘engineered’ created for the primary purpose of sharing knowledge and improving practice. This can be done in a variety of ways — for example by organizing sector level opportunities and programs to share experience and move up an innovation trajectory. This model was used very successfully in, for example, the North Sea oil industry first to enable cost-reduction and efficiency improvements over a ten-year period in the CRINE (Cost reduction for a new era) program. It resulted in cumulative savings of over 30% on new project costs and as a result a similar model was deployed to explore new opportunities to deploy the sector’s services elsewhere in the world as the original North Sea work ran down.

It can work inside a supply network where the overall performance on key criteria like cost, quality and delivery time depends on fast diffusion of innovation amongst all its members. One of Toyota’s key success factors has been in the way in which it mobilizes learning networks across its supplier base and the model has been widely applied in other sectors, using communities of practice as a core tool.

CoPs have been used to help small firms share and learn around some of the challenges in growth through innovation — for example in the highly successful Profitnet program in the UK. It’s a model which underpins the start-up support culture where expert mentoring can be complemented by teams sharing experiences and trying to help each other in their learning journeys towards successful launch. And it’s being used extensively in the not-for-profit sector where working at the frontier of innovation to deal with some of the world’s biggest humanitarian and development challenges can be strengthened by sharing insights and experiences through formal communities of practice.

At heart the idea of a community of practice is simple though it deals with a complex problem. Innovation is all about knowledge creation and deployment and we’ve learned that this is primarily a social process. So, working with the grain of human interaction, bringing people together to share experiences and build up knowledge collectively, seems an eminently helpful approach.

Which suggests that next time you are thinking of taking a chainsaw to the photocopier you might like to pause — and maybe channel your energies into thinking of ways to innovate out of the situation. A useful first step might be to find others with similar frustrations and mobilize your own community of practice.

You can find a podcast version of this here

If you’d like more songs, stories and other resources on the innovation theme, check out my website here

And if you’d like to learn with me take a look at my online course here

Image credit: FreePik

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Cultivating a Growth Mindset

Leave a reply

Your Personal Toolkit for Continuous Evolution

Cultivating a Growth Mindset

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

In a world defined by constant change, the most valuable skill is not a specific technology or a particular degree—it’s the ability to learn, unlearn, and relearn. This capacity for continuous evolution is the very essence of a growth mindset, and it is the single most powerful tool for navigating an unpredictable future. But a growth mindset is not a personality trait you are born with; it is a muscle you must actively cultivate. This article is your personal toolkit for building that muscle and unlocking your full potential.

The concept, popularized by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, contrasts a fixed mindset with a growth mindset. A fixed mindset is the belief that our abilities and intelligence are static and unchangeable. It leads us to avoid challenges, fear failure, and see effort as a sign of weakness. Conversely, a growth mindset is the belief that our abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work. It sees challenges as opportunities, failure as a crucial learning moment, and effort as the path to mastery. In today’s dynamic landscape, a fixed mindset is a liability, while a growth mindset is the ultimate catalyst for personal and professional growth.

Cultivating a growth mindset is a deeply personal, human-centered journey. It requires a fundamental shift in how we talk to ourselves, how we view challenges, and how we interact with the world around us. Here’s a practical framework for building your personal toolkit:

Practice Self-Awareness: The first step is to recognize the voice of your fixed mindset. When you face a challenge, do you hear a voice that says, “I can’t do this”? Acknowledge that voice, but don’t let it dictate your actions.
Embrace the “Power of Yet”: Instead of saying “I can’t do this,” reframe it to “I can’t do this… yet.” This simple word transforms a statement of finality into a statement of possibility, reframing a weakness as a temporary skill gap.
Reframe Failure as a Learning Opportunity: View setbacks not as a reflection of your worth, but as invaluable data. Ask yourself: “What did I learn from this? How can I do it better next time?”
Seek Out and Embrace Challenges: Step out of your comfort zone intentionally. Take on a new project, learn a new skill, or tackle a problem that seems beyond your current capabilities. This is where real growth happens.
Learn from Others’ Success: Instead of feeling threatened by the success of others, see it as inspiration. Study their journey, understand their process, and learn from their efforts.

Case Study 1: The Reinvention of an IT Professional

The Challenge: Obsolescence in a Rapidly Changing Field

John, a 20-year veteran in the IT department of a large corporation, had built his career on a specific set of legacy technologies. When the company announced a major shift to cloud computing and DevOps, his initial reaction was fear and resistance. He believed that his skills were becoming obsolete and that he was too old to learn a new, complex field. This fixed mindset led him to avoid training sessions and dismiss the new technology as a “fad,” putting his career in jeopardy.

The Growth Mindset Transformation:

After a frank conversation with his manager, John realized he had to change his perspective. He started by reframing his belief. Instead of “I can’t learn this,” he began to say, “I’m going to start learning this today.” He embraced the “power of yet.” He took online courses, sought out a mentor from a younger team, and even volunteered for a small, non-critical cloud project. He viewed every mistake not as a failure, but as a step in his learning journey. His colleagues noticed his renewed enthusiasm and his willingness to ask questions. He transformed his daily mindset from one of survival to one of learning and curiosity.

The Results:

Within two years, John became a certified cloud architect and a respected resource for his team. His willingness to embrace the new technology not only saved his career but also positioned him as a leader in the department’s transformation. His journey became a powerful case study for the entire organization, proving that a growth mindset is more than a buzzword; it’s a practical, actionable strategy for adapting to change and finding new purpose in a career.

Key Insight: A growth mindset is not limited by age or professional history; it is a choice to engage with a new future rather than retreat from it.

Case Study 2: The Startup Founder and The Failure Pivot

The Challenge: The Pain of a Failed Product Launch

Maria, a talented entrepreneur, poured two years of her life into developing a groundbreaking new SaaS product. After a public and highly anticipated launch, the product failed to gain traction. The market feedback was clear: it solved a problem that customers didn’t feel they had. Maria was devastated. Her initial reaction was to take the failure personally, believing it was a reflection of her inability as a founder. This fixed mindset told her that her idea was flawed and her efforts were wasted.

The Growth Mindset Transformation:

After taking time to process the disappointment, Maria shifted her mindset. Instead of viewing the failure as a dead end, she began to see it as a goldmine of data. She reframed the experience as a “failure pivot.” She brought her team together not to mourn the loss, but to conduct an honest, blameless post-mortem. They meticulously analyzed the customer feedback, interviewing users who didn’t adopt the product to understand their true needs and pain points. They discovered a key insight that was hidden in plain sight, which had been overshadowed by their original vision. They learned that the market needed a solution for a different, yet related, problem.

The Results:

Using the data and insights from their “failed” launch, Maria and her team made a strategic pivot. They built a new product that addressed the newly discovered, deeply felt market need. The lessons learned from the first failure allowed them to build a better, more focused product on their second attempt. This time, the product was a resounding success, and the company quickly grew to profitability. Maria’s story became an integral part of her company’s culture, celebrated as a testament to the power of embracing failure as a critical step on the path to success.

Key Insight: The growth mindset turns the emotional pain of failure into the strategic fuel for future innovation and success.

Your Toolkit in Action: The Path to Mastery

A growth mindset is the foundation of human-centered change. It empowers individuals to adapt, to learn, and to thrive in the face of uncertainty. The toolkit I’ve outlined is not a one-time fix but a daily practice. It requires consistent effort and a willingness to be vulnerable. But the rewards are immeasurable. You’ll find yourself approaching challenges with a sense of excitement rather than dread, you’ll see criticism as a gift rather than a judgment, and you’ll find a deep, lasting satisfaction in the process of continuous learning and improvement. The world is changing faster than ever before. Your greatest asset is your ability to change with it. Start building your toolkit today. The journey of continuous evolution is waiting for you.

Image credit: Pexels

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.