Category Archives: Leadership

Getting Buy-In for Change Now That Innovation is Dead

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Innovation is undergoing a metamorphosis, and while it may seem like the current goo-stage is the hard part (it’s certainly not easy!), our greatest challenge is still ahead. Because while we may emerge as beautiful butterflies, we still need to get buy-in for change from a colony of skeptical caterpillars who’ve grown weary of transformation talk.

The Old Playbook Is Dead, Too

Picture this: A butterfly lands, armed with PowerPoint slides about “The Future of Leaf-Eating” and projections showing “10x Nectar Collection Potential.” The caterpillars stare blankly, having seen this show before.

The old approach – big presentations, executive sponsorship, and promises of massive returns within 24 months – isn’t just ineffective. It’s harmful. Each failed transformation makes the next one harder, turning your caterpillars more cynical and more determined to cling to their leaves.

The Secret Most Change Experts Miss

Butterflies don’t convince caterpillars to transform by showing off their wings. They create conditions where transformation feels possible, necessary, and safe. Your job isn’t to sell the end state – it’s to help others see their own potential for change.

Here’s how:

Start With the Hungriest Caterpillars

Find those who feel the limitations of their current state most acutely. They’re not satisfied with their current leaf, and they’re curious about what lies beyond. These early adopters become your first chrysalis cohort.

Make it About Their Problems, Not Your Vision

Instead of talking about transformation, focus on specific pain points. “Wouldn’t it be easier to reach that juicy leaf if you could fly?” is more compelling than “Flying represents a paradigm shift in leaf acquisition strategy.”

Build a Network of Proof

Every successful mini-transformation creates evidence that change is possible. When one caterpillar successfully navigates their chrysalis phase, others pay attention. Let your transformed allies tell their stories.

Set Realistic Expectations

Metamorphosis takes time and isn’t always pretty. Be honest about the goo phase – that messy middle where things fall apart before they come together. This builds trust and prepares people for the real journey, not the sanitized version.

Where to Start

Identify your first chrysalis cohort – the people already feeling the limits of their current state
Focus on solving immediate problems that showcase the benefits of change
Document and share small victories, letting others tell their transformation stories
Create realistic timelines that acknowledge both quick wins and longer-term metamorphosis

What’s your experience? Have you successfully guided a transformation without relying on buzzwords and fancy presentations? Drop your stories in the comments.

After all, we’re all just caterpillars and butterflies helping each other find our wings.

Image credit: misterinnovation.com

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Six Keys to Effective Teamwork

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Six Keys to Effective Teamwork

GUEST POST from David Burkus

Teamwork is the secret that makes common people achieve uncommon results. However, effective teamwork doesn’t just happen; it requires careful planning and implementation. This article provides six keys to effective teamwork that will help you build a high-performing team. These keys are not just theoretical concepts, but practical strategies that have been proven to work in real-world settings. They are designed to address the common challenges that teams face, such as lack of clarity, poor communication, personality clashes, fear of taking risks, lack of diversity, and lack of motivation. By addressing these issues, you can create a team that is not only effective but also enjoyable to be a part of.

1. Set Clear Goals

Setting clear goals is the first step towards effective teamwork. Goals provide direction and purpose, and they help team members understand what they are working towards. It’s important to set goals at both the team and individual levels. Team goals help to align everyone’s efforts, while individual goals help each team member understand their role and contribution to the team.

Setting clear milestones is also crucial. Milestones are like signposts on the road to success. They help you track progress, identify issues, and celebrate achievements. So, don’t just set goals, but also define clear milestones to guide your team’s journey.

2. Communicate Activity

Communication is the lifeblood of any team. Effective teamwork requires regular communication that keeps everyone on the same page and fosters a sense of camaraderie. One way to facilitate communication is through daily huddles or standups. These meetings provide a platform for team members to share their completed tasks, upcoming focus, and potential obstacles.

Regular check-ins also enhance collaboration and teamwork. They allow team members to share their progress, ask for help, and offer support to others. So, make communication a priority in your team, and watch as it transforms your team’s dynamics and performance.

3. Understand Differences

Every team is a melting pot of different personalities, strengths, weaknesses, and behaviors. Understanding these differences is key to effective teamwork. By recognizing and utilizing individual strengths and weaknesses, you can create a team that is greater than the sum of its parts.

A “manual of me” can be a useful tool in this regard. This is a document where each team member shares their preferences, strengths, weaknesses, and support needs. It helps team members understand each other better and work together more effectively.

4. Create Psychological Safety

Psychological safety is a state where team members feel comfortable taking risks, speaking up, and sharing failures. It’s a culture where people feel safe to be themselves and express their thoughts and ideas. Creating such a culture requires encouraging a safe environment for interpersonal risks and disagreements, embracing failures as learning opportunities, and modeling vulnerability and trust as a leader.

Remember, a team that fears making mistakes will never innovate. So, foster a culture of psychological safety, and watch as your team becomes a hotbed of creativity and innovation.

5. Disagree Respectfully

Disagreements are inevitable in any team. However, it’s how you handle these disagreements that determines the success of your team. Encourage your team members to disagree respectfully and value diverse ideas and opinions. This not only prevents conflicts but also leads to better decisions and solutions.

Active listening and asking questions instead of making statements can be a powerful tool in this regard. It helps to explore the assumptions behind differing ideas and promotes understanding and respect. So, don’t fear disagreements, but use them as an opportunity to learn and grow.

6. Celebrate Small Wins

Finally, don’t forget to celebrate small wins and milestones. Celebrations not only boost morale but also foster a sense of achievement and appreciation. Regularly share and celebrate individual and team wins, recognize contributions, and create a culture of appreciation and motivation.

Remember, a team that feels appreciated will always do more than what is expected. So, make it a habit to celebrate small wins, and watch as your team’s motivation and performance soar.

Effective teamwork is not a destination, but a journey. It requires continuous effort, commitment, and learning. However, with these six tips, you can make this journey smoother and more enjoyable. So, start implementing these tips today, and watch as your team transforms into a high-performing, cohesive unit that is capable of doing their best work ever.

Image credit: Pexels

Originally published on DavidBurkus.com on December 4, 2023

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Turning Bold Ideas into Tangible Results

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Exclusive Interview with Robyn Bolton

Innovation doesn’t happen without the right kind of leadership, it’s not all about the lightbulb moment or the idea that results. Innovation begins with an insight and it is effective leadership that helps pay off my definition of innovation:

“Innovation transforms the useful seeds of invention into widely adopted solutions valued above every existing alternative.” — Braden Kelley

It is no easy task to identify an insight worth investing in or to organize and lead a team to successfully pick the right idea out of a sea of possibilities, to develop it, to understand its potential advantages versus the alternatives it must displace, and to align the organization in the ways necessary to overcome any idea’s fatal flaw and shepherd it to successful launch and possibly even market development if the market for the solution does not already exist.

Innovation of course requires leadership, but do the same leadership principles apply to successfully leading innovation?

Today we will explore this question, along with many others surrounding culture, obstacles, process, strategy, and other aspects of innovation success with our special guest.

Unlocking Innovation for Leaders

I had the opportunity recently to interview Robyn Bolton, who works with senior executives at medium and large companies who are committed to using innovation to confidently and consistently drive revenue growth. She works with companies in various industries, including industrial goods, healthcare, consumer goods, and education under her consulting firm MileZero. She is also a professor at the Massachusetts College of Art & Design in the Master of Design Innovation program. Prior to founding MileZero, Robyn served as a Partner at Innosight, the innovation and growth strategy consulting firm co-founded by Harvard Professor Clayton Christensen, worked as a consultant and project leader for The Boston Consulting Group in both Boston and Copenhagen Denmark, and earned her MBA at Harvard Business School.

Below is the text of my interview with Robyn and a preview of the kinds of insights you’ll find in Unlocking Innovation: A Leader’s Guide for Turning Bold Ideas Into Tangible Results presented in a Q&A format:

1. Why do so many companies struggle to innovate?

Companies struggle because they think innovation is an idea problem. It’s not. It’s a leadership problem. What I mean by that is executives who excel at running the core business are often asked to innovate (create new things) while they operate (run the existing business). Naturally, these executives rely on the very instincts and behaviors that made them successful – making quick decisions based on data and experience, striving to rapidly eliminate risk, and repeatedly and consistently delivering results. The problem is that these behaviors doom innovation efforts. They demand detailed financial forecasts when no data exists, expect quick returns on long-term investments, and try to eliminate risk from an inherently uncertain process. Success requires leaders who recognize that innovation is the opposite of operations and are willing to do the opposite of what made them successful operators.

2. Why is it so hard for innovation labs to last more than a couple of years?

Innovation labs struggle because organizations treat them like startups but expect them to operate and produce results like the core business. Executives launch labs with promises of freedom and flexibility but quickly start demanding predictable results and quick returns. By the start of the second year, executives are anxious for tangible financial results, especially as economic pressures mount, core business results slip, or a new executive arrives questioning innovation investments. Without a plan to demonstrate measurable progress in Year 2, deliver tangible results in Year 3, and a leader willing to advocate for innovation and the organizational clout to stave off skeptics, labs are easy targets for cost-cutting.

3. What does it take to build a solid foundation for innovation?

A solid innovation foundation requires a holistic approach, what I call the ABCs: Architecture, Behavior, and Culture. Architecture includes the strategies, structures, and processes that guide how work gets done. Behavior – specifically leadership behavior – turns words into actions and demonstrates what the organization truly values and believes about innovation. Culture establishes, expands, and sustains an environment where creativity and experimentation can thrive. But behavior is the most critical element because without leaders modeling the right behaviors, the best architectures fail and cultures crumble.

4. What is it that makes innovation almost the opposite of operations?

Operations exist in what Rita McGrath describes as a high-knowledge, low-assumption environment where leaders can predict outcomes based on past experience. Innovation occurs in low-knowledge, high-assumption environments where no one knows what will work, and past experiences are more likely to be misleading than helpful. Operational excellence comes from eliminating variation and risk. Innovation requires embracing uncertainty and learning from failure. The mindsets and behaviors that make someone a great operator – decisiveness, risk elimination, decisions based on quantitative historical data – hinder innovation success.

5. What would your advice be to an innovation professional on how to prevent innovation zombie projects from emerging?

Zombies exist because managers are reluctant to kill projects because that may mean that they were wrong. Instead, they put the projects on pause or delay work until the next round of funding. The key to preventing zombie projects is recognizing and communicating that the decision to start wasn’t wrong. It was based on the information available at the time. New information is now available, resulting in a different understanding of the situation and, therefore, a different decision. This learning process becomes infinitely easier when you have a (relatively) objective and (completely) transparent decision-making tool outlining clear criteria for what makes an innovation attractive and worth pursuing – what I call an “innovation playground.” This framework defines what’s “in play” (attractive), “in bounds” (worth discussing), and “out of bounds” (not worth pursuing) across multiple dimensions like strategic fit, customer benefit, and required capabilities. Of course, this tool is only as useful as the people who use it, so leaders need the courage to make and stick to hard decisions about stopping projects that don’t meet the criteria.

6. Which is more important for innovation success? Leadership, strategy or culture?

Leadership behavior is the foundation for everything else. I’ve worked with companies that have brilliant strategies or are famous for their innovation cultures but are unable to get results from their innovation investments because their leaders don’t demonstrate the right behaviors – embracing uncertainty, making decisions with incomplete information, treating failure as learning. That’s why the “B” in the ABCs of Innovation (Behavior) comes first. Executives must recognize that their instincts and behaviors need to change before they can become successful innovation leaders.

7. Is there any such thing as a perfect innovation process? If not, what are the key components for any innovation process?

There is no perfect process. Innovation isn’t baking, where following a precise recipe guarantees success. However, there are essential components that every innovation process needs: diagnosing the real problem to solve, designing multiple potential solutions, developing and testing assumptions, de-risking through experimentation, and delivering value. The order of these steps matters, but everything else – the specific activities, tools, metrics, and timelines – can and should be adapted to your organization’s needs and culture.

8. What makes one innovation culture more successful than another?

Successful innovation cultures share three characteristics: First, they’re authentic to the organization rather than copied from another company. Second, they recognize that operators and innovators are equally important and valuable to the organization and work hard to strike the right balance between protecting innovation teams and connecting them to the core business. Third, and most importantly, they’re actively demonstrated through leadership behaviors, not just written on posters or mentioned in town halls.

9. Innovation labs/teams/groups often have a different culture from the rest of the organization. Is it possible to spread the culture out of the lab and infect the rest of the organization? How?

Yes, but it requires patience and intentionality. Start by sharing stories that make innovation relatable and relevant to everyone. If you can’t answer “What’s In It for Me” for each person in the organization, you can’t expect them to change their focus or behavior. When people express interest, invite them into your team’s traditions and events. Don’t force participation – remember that not everyone wants to or needs to be an innovator. Most importantly, teach and support those who are interested in innovation while celebrating the operators who keep the core business running. Culture spreads through pull, not push.

10. One of the most dangerous moments for any promising innovation project is the transfer of out of the lab and into an operational unit of the main organization to scale it. How can organizations do better at scaling up innovation experiments into equal members of the organization’s solution catalog?

The valley of death is real! The key to crossing it is to view it as a relay rather than just chucking something across the chasm. Historically, executives have been afraid of distracting core business teams with uncertain projects so they wait until launch to involve the people who will ultimately own the innovation. While this still occurs, I’m starting to see companies over-correct and bring operators into the process at the very start, including them in activities and decisions when the team is still operating in a highly ambiguous and uncertain space. Success requires meeting in the middle. When innovation teams know more than they don’t know, that’s when collaboration between innovation and operational teams starts. From that point through launch, innovators and operators should work hand-in-hand to understand and navigate uncertainty while adapting their plans, processes and metrics to ensure market success without losing the critical insights that sparked the innovation. Most importantly, Senior leaders must stay engaged, understanding and supporting the additional time and resources needed during the transition period.

11. Anything you wish I’d asked?

I wish you’d asked, “What does innovation leadership success really look like?” Because while revenue and survival rates are measures of success, I believe that the real measure is the lives you change. Given that only 0.002% of incubated ideas generate meaningful revenue, and 90% of innovation labs shut down within three years, there’s no guarantee that your work will become a wild, world-changing success. That doesn’t mean that you failed. For me and so many of the successful leaders with whom I’ve worked, success is also giving someone the courage to challenge the status quo because they see you doing it. It’s inspiring someone to take risks when you break the rules thoughtfully and responsibly. If you’ve helped even one person discover their potential as an innovator or creative problem-solver, you’ve succeeded.

Conclusion

Thank you for the great conversation Robyn!

I hope everyone has enjoyed this peek into the mind of the woman behind the insightful new title Unlocking Innovation: A Leader’s Guide for Turning Bold Ideas Into Tangible Results!

Image credits: MileZero (Robyn Bolton)

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Leading Through Complexity and Uncertainty

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Leading Through Complexity and Uncertainty

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

Leaders need to make decisions and we rarely get to choose the context. Most often, we need to take action without all the facts, in a rapidly changing environment and a compressed time frame. We need to do so with the knowledge that if we get it wrong, we will bear the blame and no one else. It will be our mess to clean up.

That’s a hard bridge to cross and many, if not most, are never quite able to get there. I think that’s why we admire great leaders so much, because they have the courage to take responsibility on their backs and be accountable, to inspire confidence even in an atmosphere of confusion and to point the way forward, even if they aren’t sure it’s the right direction.

The truth is that you can never really be certain until you take that step forward. The simple and inescapable truth is that to accomplish anything significant you need to travel on an uncertain journey. It is tautologically true that the well-trod path will take us nowhere new. We can never fully control uncertainty, but we can learn to lead through it.

How Things Get So Complicated And Uncertain

Generally, we prefer to operate with some degree of predictability, which is why we build structure into daily life. On a personal level, we create habits and routines to give us a sense of grounding. On a societal level, we create laws and norms, so that we know what to expect from our interactions with each other.

Yet in Overcomplicated, mathematician Sam Arbesman gives two reasons why uncertainty is, to a great extent, unavoidable. The first is accretion. We build systems, like the Internet or the laws set down in the US Constitution, to perform a limited number of tasks. Yet to scale those systems, we need to build on top of them to expand their initial capabilities. As systems become larger, they get more complex and uncertain.

The second force is interaction. We may love the simplicity of an iPhone, but don’t want to be restricted to its capabilities alone. So we increase its functionality by connecting it to millions of apps. Those apps, in turn, connect to each other as well as to other systems. Every connection increases complexity and makes things harder to predict.

These two forces lead to what Benoit Mandelbrot called Noah effects and Joseph effects. Joseph effects, as in the biblical story, support long periods of continuity. Noah effects, on the other hand, are like a big storm creating a massive flood of discontinuity, washing away the previous order. Uncertainty, for better or worse, will always be somewhat unavoidable.

The Problem With Simplicity

The most straightforward solution to complexity and uncertainty is to boil things down and make them more simple. Politicians are fond of highlighting the thousands of pages pieces of legislation contain, because complexity is widely seen as a fatal flaw. “If it was thought through clearly, why couldn’t it have been devised more simply?” is the implication.

Yet while we yearn for simple rules, those rules often lead us astray. As Ludwig Wittgenstein explained in his rule following paradox, “no course of action could be determined by a rule because every course of action can be made out to accord with the rule.” Simple rules tend to be necessarily vague, which limits their usefulness.

Something similar happens when we try to tame complexity by summarizing it through identifying patterns. Random points of data, if there are enough of them, will always generate patterns as well, so we can never be quite sure if we are revealing an underlying truth or just creating a convincing illusion. To discern between the two is, unfortunately, complex.

In Why Information Grows, MIT’s Cesar Hidalgo explains that it is through emergent complexity that we create value. To understand what he means, let’s take another look at an iPhone. Its simple design belies incredible complexity, not only in the technology it contains, but in what it connects to, a complex ecosystem of apps, servers and data.

Steve Jobs didn’t intend to create an App Store, because he wanted to keep the iPhone simple. However, eventually he was convinced that by limiting complexity he was curtailing the potential value of his creation and, ultimately, he relented. It is through managing complexity, not avoiding it, that we can most effectively impact the world.

Narrowing Scope And Limiting Variables

The Franciscan friar William of Occam is best remembered for Occam’s razor, which he didn’t exactly invent, but did much to popularize. The technique, which is often mischaracterized as “the simplest solution is often the best,” actually had a lot more to do with variables and assumptions, which he advises to keep to a minimum.

It’s an interesting distinction that makes a big difference. William wasn’t advising us to ignore complexity, but to avoid increasing it by injecting things that don’t need to be there. We can acknowledge the messiness of the world and still tidy up our little corner of it, by narrowing our scope and limiting the variables we deal with.

Steve Blank advises startups to develop minimum viable products to test assumptions, rather than investing resources into a full-featured prototype. The idea is by narrowing scope you can get a better idea of the marketplace and then increase complexity from there. In our work helping organizations drive transformation, we advise our clients to start out with a keystone change, rather than rolling out everything all at once.

Whatever strategy you use, the key, as William of Occam pointed out long ago, is to limit variables where you can, while still recognizing that the universe is far more complex than our scaled down model of it. Or, as the statistician George Box put it, “all models are wrong, but some are useful.”

Innovation Is Exploration

The truth is that uncertainty is only a problem if you try to control it. The framers of the US Constitution designed it to be a guide, not a blueprint. That’s been the key to its success. They recognized it would have to evolve and grow over time and designed a system of checks and balances to curb the human potential for malice.

We need to start thinking less like engineers, designing just the right combination of levers and pulleys to account for every eventuality, and more like gardeners, seeding and nurturing ecosystems, pruning as we go. Gardeners don’t need to know the exact outcome of everything they plant, but can seek to improve the harvest each season.

In a world driven by networks and ecosystems, we can no longer treat strategy as if it were a game of chess, planning out each move with near perfect precision and foresight. The world moves far too fast for that. By the time we’ve put the final touches on the master plan, the assumptions upon which it was made are often no longer true.

Rather, we must constantly explore, widening and deepening connections to ecosystems of talent, technology and information. That’s how we uncover new paths that are often unseen from our usual perch and leverage complexity to our advantage. Breakthrough innovations arise out of unexpected encounters.

The next big thing always starts out looking like nothing at all. Today, competitive advantage is no longer the sum of all efficiencies, but the sum of all connections.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credits: Pexels

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Empathy is a Vital Tool for Stronger Teams

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Empathy is a Vital Tool for Stronger Teams

GUEST POST from Stefan Lindegaard

In the fast pace of today’s organizations, it’s easy for teams to focus solely on tasks, deadlines, and results. However, truly high-performance teams – and their leaders – understand that their strength lies not just in productivity but in the relationships they build.

Empathy plays a crucial role in this process, enabling teams to build trust, foster open communication, and maintain resilience, even in challenging times.

This is why empathy is not just a “soft skill” – it’s a powerful leadership tool that can elevate team dynamics to new levels. Whether you’re navigating tough decisions, managing conflicts, or trying to boost morale, applying empathy can enhance collaboration and performance.

This card is designed to guide you in bringing more empathy into your team’s dynamics.

As part of our Team Dynamics Cards, it belongs to a comprehensive suite of leadership growth and team dynamics tools aiming to boost team collaboration, performance, and communication. We develop such tools and approaches to ignite team discussions, inspire self-reflection and guide actionable steps.

Check it out below and get in touch if you would like some guidance on how to work with this for your team(s).

Today’s Card: Empathy in Team Dynamics

Stefan Lindegaard Empathy Quote Category: Culture & Mindset

We delve into the significant role of empathy in fostering positive team dynamics. Empathy, the ability to understand and share others’ feelings, can foster a team environment characterized by collaboration, understanding, and productivity. It’s a crucial ingredient for managing individual roles, decision-making, performance under pressure, and the creation of shared values and goals.

Principles:

Promoting Understanding and Respect: Foster an environment where team members understand and respect each other’s perspectives and recognize each member’s unique contributions.
Empathy in Conflict Resolution: Use empathy to address and resolve conflicts, helping teams navigate disagreements in a respectful, satisfactory manner.
Fostering Psychological Safety through Empathy: Build a psychologically safe space where individuals comfortably express thoughts and emotions, assured of empathetic understanding.

Reflection Questions (10 mins):

Reflect on a situation where empathy within your team led to a significant positive outcome. What was the situation, and how did empathy play a role?
How would you rate the level of empathy within your current team? What impact does it have on your team’s dynamics?

Action Questions (30 mins):

Identify specific ways your team can foster understanding, respect, and empathy in day-to-day interactions. How can these actions lead to improved team dynamics?
Consider a recent or upcoming challenge your team is facing. How can empathy play a role in the decision-making process, conflict resolution, and maintaining morale under pressure?

Get in touch if you and your team would like to know more about our Team Dynamics Cards and how we can tailor this to your needs and interests. You can read more about our learning hub and community on https://www.stefanlindegaard.com

Image Credits: Pexels

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It is Okay to Feel Stuck

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It is Okay to Feel Stuck

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

When you’re stuck, it’s not because you don’t have good ideas. And it’s not because you’re not smart. You’re stuck because you’re trying to do something difficult. You’re stuck because you’re trying to triangulate on something that’s not quite fully formed. Simply put, you’re stuck because it’s not yet time to be unstuck.

Anyone can avoid being stuck by doing what was done last time. But that’s not unsticking yourself, that’s copping out. That’s giving in to something lesser. That’s dumbing yourself down. That’s letting yourself off the hook. That’s not believing in yourself. That’s not doing what you were born to do. That’s not unsticking, that’s avoiding the discomfort of being stuck.

Being stuck – not knowing what to do or what to write – is not a bad thing. Sure, it feels bad, but it’s a sign you’re trekking in uncharted territory. It may be a new design space or it may be new behavioral space, but make no mistake – you’re swimming in a new soup. If you’ve already mastered tomato soup, you won’t feel stuck until you jump into a pool filled with chicken noodle. And when you do, don’t beat yourself up because your lungs are half-filled with noodles. Instead, simply recognize that chicken soup is different than tomato. Pat yourself on the back for jumping in without a life preserver. And even as you tread water, congratulate yourself for not drowning.

Unsticking takes time and you can’t rush it. But that’s where most fail – they climb out of the soup too soon. The soup doesn’t feel good because it’s too hot, too salty, or too noodly, so they get out. They can’t stand the discomfort so they get out before the bodies can acclimate and figure out how to swim in a new way. The best way to avoid getting stuck is to stay out of the soup and the next best way is to get out too early. But it’s not best to avoid being stuck.

Life’s too short to avoid being stuck. Sure, you may prevent some discomfort, but you also prevent growth and learning. Do you want to get to your deathbed and realize you limited your personal growth because you were afraid to feel the discomfort of being stuck? Imagine getting to the end of your life and all you can think of is the see of things you didn’t experience because you were unwilling to feel stuck.

Stuck is not bad, it just feels bad. Instead of seeing the discomfort as discomfort, can you learn to see it as the precursor to growth? Can you learn to see the discomfort as an indicator of immanent learning? Can you learn to see it as the tell-tale sign of your quest for knowledge and understanding?

If you’re not yet ready to feel stuck, I get that. But to get yourself ready, keep your eye out for people around you who have dared to get stuck. Learn to recognize what it looks like. And when you do find someone who is stuck, tell them they are doing a brave thing. Tell them that it’s supposed to feel uncomfortable. Tell them that no one has ever died from the discomfort of being stuck. And tell them that staying with the discomfort is the best way to get unstuck. And thank them for demonstrating the right behavior.

Image credits: Unsplash

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MrBeast and the Customer Experience Audit

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MrBeast and the Customer Experience Audit

by Braden Kelley

There is a reason why Walmart is flipping the typical retail salary model on its head to pay managers in stores MORE than some managers at its corporate headquarters. The stores pay for the HQ, not the other way around! AND, the stores is where the best information lives for manufacturers selling to Walmart and other retailers.

Enter MrBeast, who sells most of his Feastables chocolate through Walmart. So, what has he been doing since launching the product – over and over and over again?

Conducting a partial customer experience audit by visiting stores all around the country to see how the displays look, sometimes enlisting third parties (even customers and impromptu GoPro cameras) to help him gather information when he isn’t doing it first-hand.

Here is a snippet of a recent video podcast interview of him talking about it:

Some other retailers, like Starbucks, try, but not very hard, to have corporate managers spend time in the stores (a few hours when they first join, never to return) but I think the last CEO might have done away with it completely. It will be interesting to see if the new CEO encourages corporate HQ staff to get out into the stores more – after he finishes laying off 10% of the headquarters staff.

Does your company require headquarters staff to spend time in the field?

Or, do a high percentage of them voluntarily do it regularly?

Doing so does not replace regular independent customer experience audits, but it helps.

Do you need someone to come conduct an independent experience audit of your customer, employee and/or partner experiences?

Accelerate your change and transformation success

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Ten Reasons Every B2B Company Needs an Evangelist

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by Braden Kelley and Art Inteligencia

The importance of evangelists in organizations around the world is often misunderstood or underestimated, and too few organizations have made the incredibly rewarding investment into one or more of the valuable types of evangelists – who are particularly valuable in B2B organizations for reasons I hope will be obvious by the end. Let’s set the stage.

An evangelist in a B2B company is a passionate advocate for a brand, product, service or innovation. Their role involves spreading the word about the company’s offerings, building relationships, and inspiring others to become customers or supporters. They are often seen as the face of the company, engaging with the community, attending events, and creating content to promote the brand. So, without further delay, let’s look at the top ten reasons every B2B company needs an evangelist:

Increased Brand Awareness: Evangelists help spread the word about the brand, reaching new audiences and increasing visibility.
Improved Reputation: Having passionate advocates can enhance the company’s reputation and build trust with potential customers.
Higher Customer Loyalty: Evangelists are often the most loyal customers, and their enthusiasm can inspire others to stay loyal as well.
Cost-Effective Marketing: Evangelists can provide valuable marketing support without the high costs associated with traditional advertising.
Enhanced Customer Relationships: Evangelists build strong relationships with customers, providing personalized support and fostering a sense of community.
Increased Sales: By promoting the brand and its products, evangelists can drive sales and generate leads.
Valuable Feedback: Evangelists often provide insightful feedback on products and services, helping the company improve and innovate.
Thought Leadership: Evangelists can position the company as a thought leader in the industry, sharing expertise and insights.
Employee Morale: Having a dedicated evangelist can boost employee morale by showcasing the company’s strengths and successes.
Competitive Advantage: A strong evangelist can differentiate the company from competitors, highlighting unique selling points and creating a loyal customer base.

Finding an Evangelist to Hire

If your B2B company doesn’t already have at least one evangelist (see the five types at the bottom), there is no better time than the present to make that first hire, or to hire additional types of evangelists to maximize your success. There is nothing wrong with hiring an evangelist from outside, especially when you don’t want to pull existing employees out of roles they’re already excelling at or when an external hire brings higher levels of skill than the internal resources you think might be best suited to such a role. Here is how to get started with that next hire:

Identify Key Traits: Look for candidates who are passionate, knowledgeable, authentic, influential, and committed. These traits are essential for an effective evangelist.
Leverage Networks: Utilize professional networks like LinkedIn, industry events, and conferences to find potential evangelists. Look for individuals who are already advocating for similar products or services.
Engage with Communities: Participate in online communities, forums, and social media groups related to your industry. Engage with active members who demonstrate a genuine interest in your field.
Job Listings: Post job listings on relevant job boards and websites, clearly outlining the role and its importance. Highlight the impact the evangelist will have on the company’s growth.
Referrals: Encourage your employees and industry contacts to refer potential candidates. Referrals often lead to finding passionate and dedicated individuals.

Cultivating an Evangelist from Within

If you don’t feel comfortable hiring an evangelist from outside, either with or without some level of rotational exposure to all of the different parts of organization, or if you know you have some really skilled and passionate internal resources you think are ready to step into a new role, that’s fine too.

Identify Potential Evangelists: Look for employees who are already passionate about your brand and products. These individuals often go above and beyond in their roles and are enthusiastic about sharing their experiences.
Provide Training and Resources: Offer training programs to help employees develop their evangelism skills. Provide resources such as marketing materials, product information, and access to industry events.
Create a Supportive Environment: Foster a culture of evangelism within your company. Encourage employees to share their ideas and experiences, and recognize their efforts publicly.
Offer Incentives: Provide incentives for employees who actively promote the brand. This could include bonuses, recognition programs, or opportunities for career advancement. (Editor’s Note: Sorry CoPilot I’m not sure I agree with this one)
Engage with Employees: Regularly engage with employees to understand their needs and motivations. Create opportunities for them to share their feedback and ideas.

Whether you hire your evangelists internally or externally it is important to think through how to best introduce and integrate them into every part of the organization relevant to the type of evangelism role they are filling. At this point you might be wondering how there might be more than one type of evangelist, so let’s look at briefly and if you follow the link you’ll learn more details about each.

Here are Five Types of Evangelists to Consider Hiring

In my previous article Rise of the Evangelist I defined five different types of evangelists that organizations may already have, or may want to hire, including:

Chief Evangelist
Brand Evangelists
Product Evangelists
Service Evangelists
Innovation Evangelists

This specialization occurs when the evangelism an organization needs become too big for one evangelist to handle. At that point, a Chief Evangelist creates the evangelism strategy and manages the execution across the team of brand, innovation, and other evangelism focus areas.

I dive more into the role and considerations for companies on how An Innovation Evangelist Can Increase Your Reputation and Innovation Velocity.

What Are You Waiting For?

Evangelism isn’t just a marketing activity. Evangelists are incredibly important to enhancing not just the customer experience, but the employee and partner experiences as well. Not everyone may have main character energy but almost everyone still appreciates main character level credit, and this can be incredibly impactful for all three main constituencies – customers, employees and partners. Tell those stories, translate that value and make the investment into an evangelist today!

Content Authenticity Statement: Some of the lists and paragraphs in the article were created with the help of Microsoft CoPilot, but there are also some paragraphs created by me along with content from some of my previous articles.

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Stop Doubling Down on Bad Ideas

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Stop Doubling Down On Bad Ideas

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

Over the course of my career, I’ve had the opportunity to lead a number of organizations and each one involved a series of steep learning curves. Even the most successful operations do some things poorly, so managing an enterprise involves constant improvement. You always want to figure out where you can do things better.

One way to do that is to identify other organizations that do something well and adopt best practices. Copying what others do won’t make you world class, but it will get you started on the right road. Over time, you can learn which practices are a good fit for your organization and which are not. As you progress, you can begin to develop your own capabilities.

What you don’t want to do is to take bad ideas that have failed try and force them through, yet it happens all the time. Business pundits and consultants don’t stop selling zombie ideas just because they don’t work and people don’t stop getting taken in by slick sales jobs. We need to be much more discerning about the ideas we adopt. Here are some to watch out for.

The War On Talent

When some McKinsey consultants came up with the idea of a war for talent in 1998, it made a lot of sense. In a knowledge economy, your people are your greatest resource. Creating a culture of excellence, rewarding top employees and pruning out the laggards just seemed like such an obvious formula for success that few questioned it.

However, even early on some began to see flaws. Just a few years after McKinsey launched the concept, Stanford’s Jeffrey Pfeffer explained how study after study refuted the “War for Talent” hypothesis. He found that firms who followed the “talent war mind set” ended up actually undermining their people and overemphasizing recruiting from outside.

Even worse, McKinsey’s approach often creates a corrosive culture. By valuing individual accomplishment over teamwork, leaders set up a competitive dynamic that discourages collaboration while sabotaging the knowledge transfer that promotes learning new skills and improves performance. In a New Yorker article, Malcolm Gladwell explained how that kind of competitive dynamic contributed to Enron’s downfall.

The truth is that you don’t need the best people, you need the best teams and that requires a very different approach. Fostering collaboration requires an environment of psychological safety, not a series of performance review cage matches. Talent isn’t something you attract and bid for, it is something you build.

The Cult Of Disruption

It’s become fashionable to say that we live in a VUCA world (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous). The term first arose in the aftermath of the Cold War, when a relatively stable conflict between two global superpowers fragmented into a multipolar multiethnic clash of civilizations. Today, however, it has become so firmly entrenched in the business lexicon that nobody even thinks to question it. Change has become gospel.

If you see the world in turmoil, the only sensible strategy is to constantly change and adapt. Perhaps just as importantly, in a corporate setting you need to be seen as changing and adapting. In this environment, managers have significant incentives to launch multiple initiatives aimed at transforming every aspect of the enterprise.

Yet do businesses really face a VUCA environment? The evidence seems to point in the opposite direction. A Brookings report showed that business has become less dynamic, with less churn among industry leaders and fewer new entrants. Research from the National Bureau of Economic Research found decreased competitive environments. A report from the IMF also suggests that these trends have worsened during the pandemic.

Make no mistake, all of the happy talk about change has a real cost. A study undertaken by PwC found that 65% of executives surveyed complained about change fatigue, and only about half felt their organization could deliver change successfully. 44% said that they don’t understand the change they’re being asked to make, and 38% say they don’t agree with it.

Perhaps not surprisingly, it found that most people have come to view new transformation initiatives suspiciously, taking a “wait and see” attitude undermining the momentum and leading to a”boomerang effect” in which early progress is reversed when leadership moves on to focus other priorities. In other words, we’re basically talking change to death.

Marching On Washington

The March on Washington remains one of the most iconic moments in American history. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech continues to inspire people around the world. The events of that day surely contributed to the successful passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965 and made the world a better place.

So it’s no wonder that it seems like every time someone has an idea for change they plan a march. Yet the most salient aspect of over 100 years of marches on Washington is that none, except that one in 1963, have really accomplished much. In fact the very first one, in support of women’s suffrage in 1913, was a full blown disaster.

It’s not just social revolutionaries that make this mistake. Corporate change advocates have their own version of marching on Washington. They set up a big kickoff event to “create a sense of urgency” around change and use stark language like “innovate or die” and “burning platform” to make change seem inevitable.

The problem is that if a change is important and has real potential to impact what people believe and what they do, there will always be those who will hate it and they will work to undermine it in ways that are dishonest, underhanded and deceptive. Creating a lot of noise at the beginning of an initiative, before any real progress has been made, just gives your opposition a head start in their efforts to kill it off.

Closing The Knowing-Doing Gap

Business today moves fast. So we like simple statements that speak to larger truths. It always seems that if we can find a simple rule of thumb—or maybe 3 to 5 bullet points for the really big picture stuff—managing a business would be much easier. Whenever a decision needs to be made, we could simply refer to the rule and go on with our day.

Unfortunately, that often leads to cartoonish slogans rather than genuine managerial wisdom. Catchy ideas like “the war for talent,” “a VUCA world” and “creating a sense of urgency around change” end up taking the place of thorough analysis and good sense. When that happens, we’re in big trouble.

The problem is, as Ludwig Wittgenstein pointed out, “no course of action can be determined by a rule, because any course of action can be made out to accord with the rule.” Rules often appear to make sense on the surface, but when we try to apply them in the real world we run into trouble. We live in a complex universe and oversimplifying it leads us astray.

We need to stop worshiping the cult of ideas and start focusing on the problems we need to solve. The truth is that the real world is a confusing place. We have little choice but to walk the earth, pick things up along the way and make the best judgments we can. The decisions we make are highly situational and defy hard and fast rules. There is no algorithm for life. You have to actually live it, see what happens and learn from your mistakes.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credits: Unsplash

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3 Keys to Improving Leadership Skills

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3 Keys to Improving Leadership Skills

GUEST POST from David Burkus

Great leaders aren’t born, they’re made. While it’s tempting to look at stories of great leaders and just assume they’re received some divine or genetic gift that turned them into exemplars, the truth is much more nuanced. Leadership is a skill that can be honed and improved with practice and the right guidance. This article will explore three key habits that can significantly enhance your leadership skills: creating clarity, establishing safety, and speaking purpose. These habits are not just theoretical concepts but are based on well-researched findings on what constitutes an outstanding team culture.

Creating clarity involves setting clear goals, milestones, and expectations for the team. This is crucial in a world where teams often operate in an unclear and volatile environment. Establishing safety, on the other hand, means creating a climate where team members feel comfortable taking interpersonal risks, such as disagreeing or sharing ideas. Finally, speaking purpose involves regularly communicating the importance of the team’s work and how it benefits others. This is not just about performance objectives or bonuses but about connecting the team’s work to a greater good.

Let’s take a deeper look at all three.

1. Creating Clarity

In a world where teams often operate in an unclear and volatile environment, providing clarity is a vital leadership skill. This involves setting clear goals and milestones that the team can work towards. It’s not just about setting a big goal, but also about breaking it down into manageable milestones that the team can achieve.

Moreover, creating clarity also involves ensuring that individual roles and expectations are clear. Each team member should know what is expected of them and how their role contributes to the overall goal. This not only helps in avoiding confusion but also ensures that everyone is on the same page, working towards the same objective.

2. Establishing Safety

Establishing safety in a team is about creating a climate where team members feel comfortable taking interpersonal risks, such as disagreeing or sharing ideas. This leadership skill results in teamwide psychological safety. When team members feel psychologically safe, they are more likely to share their ideas, disagree constructively, and contribute to the team’s success.

Leaders play a crucial role in establishing this safety. They can do this by modeling active listening and asking questions when disagreeing, rather than dismissing ideas outright. Furthermore, leaders should enforce respectful behavior and teach team members how to respect each other. This creates a culture of mutual respect and trust, which is essential for a team’s success.

3. Speaking Purpose

Speaking purpose is about regularly communicating the importance of the team’s work and how it benefits others. This leadership skill goes beyond just focusing on performance objectives or bonuses. Leaders should speak to the individual about the meaningful contribution of their work and how it connects to a larger purpose.

By connecting the team’s work to a greater good or benefit for others, leaders can inspire and motivate their team members. This focus on pro-social purpose can drive engagement and commitment, leading to better performance and a more positive team culture.

Conclusion

None of these skills come from genetics, they’re learned. Leaders can significantly improve their leadership skills by focusing on creating clarity, establishing safety, and speaking purpose. These habits are not just theoretical concepts but are based on well-researched findings on what constitutes an outstanding team culture. By focusing on these three areas, leaders can create an environment where everyone can do their best work ever.

Image credit: Pixabay

Originally published on DavidBurkus.com on November 20, 2023

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