Category Archives: Leadership

Dynamic Thinking

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

If you’re asked to do cost reduction, before doing that work, ask for objective evidence that the work to grow the top line is adequately staffed. You can’t secure your company’s future through cost reduction, so before you spend time and effort to grow the bottom line, make sure the work to grow the top line is more than fully staffed. Without top-line growth, cost reduction is nothing more than a race to the bottom.

If you’re asked to do more of what was done last time, before doing that work, look back and plot how that line of goodness has improved over time. If the goodness over time is flat (it hasn’t increased), the technology is mature, there’s nothing left, and you should improve something else (a new line of goodness). If the goodness continues to increase over time, ask customers if it’s already good enough. Do this by asking if they’d pay more for more goodness. If they won’t pay more, it’s already good enough. Stop work on that tired, old line of goodness and work on a new one. If goodness over time is still increasing and customers will pay more, teach someone else how to improve that line of goodness so you can establish the next line of goodness which will be needed when the old one gets tired.

If you’re asked to make your product do more, before doing that work, figure out if the planet will be better off if your product does more. If the planet will frown if your product does more, make your product do less with far less. In that way, your customers will get a bit less, but they’ll use far fewer resources and the planet will smile. And when the planet smiles, so will the stockholders of the company that provides less with far less.

If you’re asked to improve a specific line of goodness, before doing that work, look to see if competitive technologies are also improving on that same line of goodness. If their improvement slope is steeper than yours, you will be overtaken. Find a new line of goodness to improve, or buy the dominant company in that’s making progress with the competitive technology. Don’t wait, or sooner rather than later, they’ll buy you.

If you’re asked to make your product do more, before doing that work, look at the byproducts that will increase and how that relates to the regulatory standards. If those nasty byproducts are (or will be) regulated, future improvements will be blocked by regulatory limits. You can argue about when those limits will be a problem, but you can’t argue that those regulatory limits will ultimately take you out by the knees. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but it’s time to look to a new technology because your existing one will soon be outlawed.

Everything changes. Nothing is static. Technologies get better, then it’s difficult to make the next improvement. Competitors get better, then it’s difficult to be better than them. Environmental constraints get tighter, then you’re legally blocked from improvements that violate those constraints. Last year’s solutions become obsolete. Last year’s analysis tools become obsolete. Last year’s best materials are no longer best. And last year’s manufacturing best processes are no longer best. That’s just how it works.

Before you allocate precious resources to do what you did last time, spend a little time to analyze the situation in a dynamic sense. What changed since last time? Has the regulatory environment changed? Have competitors made improvements? Have new competitors emerged with new technologies? Has your legacy technology run out of gas or does it still have legs? Have new tools come of age and who is using them?

Everything has a half-life – technologies, products, services, tools, processes, business models, and people. When new things are come to be, the only thing you can guarantee is that time will run out and they will run their course. Even if your business model has been successful, it has a half-life and it will die.

Success causes us to think statically, but the universe behaves dynamically. The trick is to use the resources created by our success to sow the seeds that must grow into the solutions of an uncertain future. The best time to plant a tree was fifteen years ago, and the next best time to plant one is today.

Image credit: Pexels

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Best Team Building Exercise Around

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Best Team Building Exercise Around

GUEST POST from David Burkus

Team building is a crucial element of creating a strong team culture. Understanding each other’s differences and preferences is a vital step in becoming a high-performing team. But many leaders struggle to find and deliver effective team building exercises. There are many too choose from, and many fall short. So many exercises focus solely on getting teammates to understand each other’s differences—often expressed as personality, identity, or experiences.

But for team building exercises to work, teams can’t just understand each other. They need to understand each other’s behavior.

And that’s what makes the “manual of me” activity the single best team building exercise. Instead of assigning different letters or numbers to different team members based on personality. It focuses on having teammates share their different work preferences. This tool allows team members to gain a deeper understanding of each other’s strengths, weaknesses, preferred environments, and working preferences. And over time, teams become be able to coordinate and even predict each other’s behavior.

In this article, we will delve into the concept of a Manual of Me, how to construct one, and the benefits of sharing and collecting these manuals within the team.

The “Manual of Me”

The Manual of Me is a powerful tool that enables team members to gain insights into each other’s behavior and preferences. It consists of a core of four, fill-in-the-blank questions: “I’m at my best when _____,” “I’m at my worst when _____,” “You can count on me to _____,” and “What I need from you is _____.”

By discussing these questions, team members can understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses, preferred environments, and working preferences. This understanding is crucial for creating a harmonious and productive team culture.

Constructing a Manual of Me

Constructing a Manual of Me involves a conversation within the team where each member shares their answers to the four core questions. Before starting the activity, it is important to inform the team about the purpose and provide them with the template and questions ahead of time.

The first question, “I’m at my best when _____,” focuses on identifying individual strengths, preferred activities, and environments for optimal performance. This question allows team members to understand how they can bring their best selves to the team.

The second question, “I’m at my worst when _____,” helps identify tasks and environments where individuals may struggle or under-perform. By understanding these limitations, team members can provide support and create an environment that minimizes challenges.

The third question, “You can count on me to _____,” highlights each person’s contributions and areas where they can provide help to the team. This question promotes collaboration and allows team members to leverage each other’s strengths.

The fourth question, “What I need from you is _____,” identifies areas where individuals need support or assistance from others. This question fosters open communication and helps team members understand how they can best support each other.

Additional questions can be added to the Manual of Me based on the team’s industry and level of familiarity with each other. These questions can delve deeper into specific aspects of work or personal preferences that are relevant to the team’s dynamics.

Sharing and Collecting Manuals of Me

Once each team member has shared their answers, there should be time for discussion and clarification. This allows team members to gain a deeper understanding of each other’s perspectives and preferences.

The completed Manuals of Me can be in various formats such as PDFs, Word documents, PowerPoints, or videos. It is important to choose a format that is easily accessible and can be stored in a shared folder or platform where the team can easily access them.

The ongoing conversation and understanding fostered by the Manuals of Me can lead to improved collaboration and performance within the team. By referring back to these manuals, team members can ensure that they are effectively supporting each other and leveraging their strengths.

When new team members join, they can be introduced to the Manuals of Me and encouraged to share their own once they feel comfortable. This helps integrate new members into the team and ensures that everyone is on the same page.

The Manual of Me is a powerful team building exercise that promotes understanding and collaboration within a team. By discussing strengths, weaknesses, preferred environments, and working preferences, team members can create a strong team culture and enhance their performance. The ongoing conversation and understanding fostered by the Manuals of Me can lead to improved collaboration and performance within the team.

Image credit: Pexels

Originally published on DavidBurkus.com on October 2, 2023

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Why Annual Employee Experience Audits Are Important

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Why Annual Employee Experience Audits Are Important

by Braden Kelley and Art Inteligencia

In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, organizations are recognizing the importance of not just their customers’ experience, but also their employees’. The concept of employee experience encompasses every touchpoint a worker encounters from recruitment to retirement. However, what often remains underappreciated is the systematic examination of this experience through regular audits. Today, we’ll explore why annual employee experience audits are critical for any forward-thinking organization.

Understanding Employee Experience

The employee experience can be defined as the sum total of all interactions an employee has with their employer. This includes the culture, the physical workspace, tools and technology provided, leadership behavior, and organizational practices. Together, these elements shape how employees perceive their organization and directly influence engagement, productivity, and retention.

The Need for Regular Audits

Conducting regular audits of the employee experience is crucial for several reasons:

Identifying Pain Points: Just as businesses conduct customer journey mapping to understand customer pain points, employee experience audits help uncover hidden obstacles impacting employee satisfaction and performance.
Measuring Impact of Changes: Organizations implement initiatives to improve the work environment regularly. Audits provide a structured approach to assess the impact of these initiatives, offering insights into what’s working and what isn’t.
Aligning with Strategic Goals: As companies evolve, ensuring that the employee experience aligns with the organization’s strategic goals becomes imperative. Audits help in recalibrating experiences to support these objectives.

The Benefits of Annual Audits

Moving from sporadic reviews to a structured annual audit brings several benefits:

Enhanced Engagement: Regular audits demonstrate a commitment to employee well-being, fostering a culture of trust and transparency which enhances overall engagement.
Improved Retention: By identifying factors that contribute to dissatisfaction or turnover, organizations can proactively address issues, making it easier to retain top talent.
Informed Decision Making: Comprehensive data from audits enable leaders to make informed decisions about policies, benefits, and strategic initiatives that can enhance the employee experience.

What a Complete Employee Experience Audit Looks Like

A thorough employee experience audit should include several key components:

Comprehensive Surveys: Distribute surveys that cover a wide range of topics including workplace culture, management effectiveness, communication, work-life balance, career development, and employee satisfaction.
Focus Groups and Interviews: Conduct focus groups and one-on-one interviews that allow employees to provide detailed feedback and personal insights that might not surface through surveys alone.
Observation: Observe working conditions, team dynamics, and workflow interactions to gain an understanding of the daily employee experience.
Data Analysis: Analyze HR data, turnover rates, and performance metrics to identify trends and areas needing improvement.
Technology and Tool Assessment: Evaluate the tools and technologies available to employees for their effectiveness in enhancing productivity and satisfaction.
Leadership and Management Review: Assess leadership styles and their alignment with employee needs and organizational values.
Feedback Loop: Establish a mechanism for continuous feedback and updates to the audit process to ensure it evolves with organizational changes.

What An Employee Experience Audit IS NOT

An employee experience audit is not an employee experience survey. Like a financial audit, it should also typically be conducted by a small group from outside the organization to maintain objectivity and honesty in the observations, devoid of assumptions and rationalizations of design tradeoffs. Employee experience auditors are trying as much as possible to walk in the shoes of employees across channels for key activities and so they must not be isolated from key systems or key employee groups to determine the most important activities and systems to dive the deepest into the experience of.

An employee experience audit is not a solution but research with recommendations. It is worthless without a commitment to act on the findings found. The leadership commitment and plans for how deficiencies will be addressed is EVEN MORE IMPORTANT than how the employee experience audit is conducted.

Implementing Effective Audits

For an audit to be effective, it should be thorough and inclusive. Consider the following steps:

Define Objectives: Clearly outline what you aim to achieve with the audit.
Utilize Surveys and Interviews: Gather quantitative and qualitative data through employee surveys and interviews.
Analyze Data: Use data analytics to identify trends and patterns. Pay attention to anomalies and outliers.
Actionable Recommendations: Transform insights into actionable steps that can be implemented to drive positive change.
Leadership Commitment: Secure commitment from leadership to fund and implement the greatest improvement opportunities identified during the audit.

Conclusion

The workplace is fundamentally changing, and so too must our approach to understanding it. Annual employee experience audits provide a robust framework for consistently enhancing the environments we create for our workforces. In doing so, we not only improve the lives of our employees but also drive innovation, loyalty, and performance that propels our organizations forward. But an employee experience audit is not the same thing as an employee survey. It is instead an outside-in evaluation of the experience employees have while executing key activities across key systems. By embedding an annual employee experience audit practice into our routine, we fortify the human connection at the heart of every successful enterprise.

If you would like to team up to conduct an Employee Experience Audit at your company, please contact me and we can get you on the calendar to meet with our team.

Image credits: Pixabay

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Content Authenticity Statement: The core premise and structure for this article was created by Braden Kelley. The OpenAI Playground, taking on the role of human-centered change and innovation thought leader Braden Kelley has helped to flesh out the content of the article with supplementary content added by Braden Kelley, including the section on What An Employee Experience Audit IS NOT.

You Are Doing Strategic Planning Wrong

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(According to Seth Godin)

You Are Doing Strategic Planning Wrong

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

It’s that time of year again – the annual ritual of strategic planning. But as Seth Godin points out in “How to Avoid Strategy Myopia,” we often mistake annual budgets and operational efficiency plans for true strategy. Strategies are not plans or guarantees; they’re informed choices to pursue possibilities that may or may not work.

Godin’s insights, while often associated with innovation, are fundamentally about strategy in its purest form. They challenge us to look beyond next quarter’s earnings and focus on transformative potential just beyond our current vision.

The Myth of “Strategic Planning”

Consider for a moment the last strategic planning session you attended. Was it dominated by discussions of cost-cutting measures, market share percentages, and incremental improvements? If so, you’re not alone. Many organizations focus on optimizing their current operations, behavior that is reinforced by the processes, templates, and forms required to secure next year’s funding.

However, as Godin warns, “When the boss demands a strategy that comes with certainty and proof, we’re likely to settle for a collection of chores, tasks, and tactics, which is not the same as an elegant, resilient strategy. To do strategy right, we need to lean into possibility.”

The Realities We Must Confront

Godin challenges us to confront several uncomfortable truths:

Today’s data doesn’t predict tomorrow: Executives rely heavily on easily measurable metrics based on false proxies when they make decisions. While these metrics provide a sense of control and comfort, they close our eyes to emerging opportunities and threats. When AT&T’s executives considered exiting the cell phone market in the 1980s, they turned to McKinsey to find data to inform their decision. Estimating that the total worldwide market for cell phones was 900,000, AT&T executives were comfortable exiting. It’s unknown if that comfort was worth the $11.5 billion AT&T spent to acquire McCaw Cellular in 1995.

Serving everyone serves no one: “Strategy myopia occurs when we fail to identify who we seek to serve and focus on what we seek to produce instead.” AMEN! True strategy begins with a deep understanding of our customers’ evolving needs, not just their current preferences. This requires empathy, foresight, and a willingness to challenge our assumptions. It also requires us to listen and act on what we hear from customers and not just from our bosses.

“All of the Above” is not an option: Strategy requires that we make choices and is as much about what we choose not to do as what we commit to doing. It requires the courage to say no to good opportunities in service of great ones. It requires facing your FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), loss aversion bias, and finding the courage to keep going.

5 Practical Steps You Can Take

If any of these sound familiar, it’s because they’re also innovation best practices.

Dedicate One Day per Month for Strategic Thinking: Set aside one full day each month for long-term strategic questions, free from the “Tyranny of Now.”
Cultivate Diverse Perspectives: Invite and listen to voices from different backgrounds, disciplines, and levels within the organization.
Embrace Small-Scale Experimentation: Run a series of small, low-cost, low-profile experiments instead of betting everything on a single initiative.
Redefine Success Metrics: Move beyond traditional financial metrics to include indicators of future potential, such as customer lifetime value and adaptability to change.
Foster a Culture of Questioning: Channel your inner two-year-old and ask “why” with genuine curiosity. Encourage your team to challenge assumptions because the most transformative strategies often emerge from questioning the status quo.

As we continue through this season of strategic planning, let’s challenge ourselves to think beyond the annual budget. Let’s envision the future we want to create and chart a course to get there. After all, in the words of Godin himself, “It doesn’t matter how fast you’re going if you’re headed in the wrong direction.”

Image credit: Pexels

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Top Six Trends for Innovation Management in 2025

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Top Six Trends for Innovation Management in 2025

GUEST POST from Jesse Nieminen

Looking back at the beginning of this decade now that we’re closing in on the halfway point, it’s clearly been a wild ride!

We’ve had a global pandemic, groundbreaking technological breakthroughs, geopolitical shocks, supply chain disruptions, and so much more.

These challenges have revealed a critical truth: organizations need to adapt and innovate faster than ever before.

Add to this the tough economic climate, shrinking capital availability, the disillusionment many business leaders feel toward their innovation teams (sometimes justified, sometimes less so), and we’re looking at a highly turbulent environment for corporate innovation.

The mandate has never been so clear: deliver more results, faster, and with fewer resources. For seasoned innovators, that’s just business as usual. However, structural shifts are poised to reshape the innovation management landscape.

With that background, here’s our take on the top trends to watch in 2025.

1. Innovation as a Distributed Core Capability

With tighter budgets, the rise of AI and other transformative technologies, the pressing need for organizations to reinvent themselves, and you can see why innovation is increasingly owned by individual business units.

This shift can arise from necessity—businesses needing to transform—or simply from a desire for better strategic alignment and more measurable outcomes.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s still a need for innovation expertise, but the role of corporate innovators is undoubtedly evolving. Instead of driving innovation directly, they are now enablers and educators, equipping the broader organization to innovate effectively. Embodying this phenomenon is TD Bank, for example:

“The program is truly driven by each line of business—we’re here as a tool to empower their innovation, not to direct it.”

– Josh Death, VP of Intellectual Property and Ideation at TD Bank.

To pull that off, every organization needs to have 3 key elements in place:

Innovation is now at a similar transition point as IT was during the digital transformation era a couple of decades ago: the exact method and approach can be debated, but one thing is clear: every organization must embed innovation as a core capability. Just as some organizations are “digital natives,” the situation is the same for “innovation natives.”

Frameworks, toolkits, and best practices: Innovation isn’t (always) rocket science, but you still need to know what you’re doing. To pull this off, the organization needs to provide its employees with practical tools, frameworks and practices, preferably in the format of a well-designed Innovation System or Program. The recently published ISO 56000 series of standards is now a great starting point, but they need to be complemented with tools that innovators across the organization can use.
Education, coaching, and enablement: A good framework serves as an efficient and effective launching pad, but without proper education, most employees won’t benefit from it. This is where corporate innovation leaders play a key role. They need to organize education and enablement for innovators across the organization, and coach people on how to get past common obstacles. However, doing that at the scale of a large organization is complex—that’s where programs such as The Innovation System, which is included for all HYPE software customers, can be highly effective.
Scalable and adaptive system support: To get measurable outcomes from innovation, you need to operationalize your program. Even the best designed programs with highly effective leaders and coaches can struggle to scale their work and get the outcomes they want without proper system support.
That’s where a holistic innovation platform, such as the HYPE Suite, can play a key supporting role.

AI as an Accelerator

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming an essential tool for corporate innovators, and it’s safe to say that it plays a huge role in the future of innovation management.

Generative AI has been the focus of most of the hype around AI lately, and for good reason, but there’s more to AI than that. When you combine the latest generative AI models with proven innovation best practices, more traditional machine learning algorithms, and data from your innovation ecosystem, you have a powerful toolkit that enables a variety of different use cases.

AI can:

Analyze and structure large datasets.
Provide actionable recommendations.
Help users locate relevant information more efficiently.
Detect market signals earlier.
Generate novel ideas.
Coach innovators to enhance their work.

The common denominator for all of them is that AI can help streamline, automate, and accelerate work, and provide easier access to information and skills that used to be the domain of only a few experts within the organization.

However, scaling AI’s benefits isn’t without challenges. Most employees aren’t going to be expert prompters or data analysts that know all the right innovation best practices. So, to unlock the real benefits of using AI, you’re going to need a capable system that is specifically designed for corporate innovation and deeply integrated with AI across the board. When deployed right, AI can help democratize, scale and accelerate innovation like never before.

3. Democratization of Innovation

The third trend builds on the first two. As innovation becomes a core capability better supported by tools, processes, and technology, it will also become more democratized.

Here are the three key shifts are driving this transformation:

Innovation tools, frameworks, and best practices are becoming more widely available, understood, and easier to use: This makes it easier for anyone that wants to be an innovator to get started on the right path and avoid many of the common beginner mistakes.
Technology reduces barriers to entry: Thanks to technologies such as 3D printing, low or no-code software, and Gen AI, it’s never been easier, faster, and cheaper to prototype innovations, whether focused on digital solutions, physical products, or process improvements.
Organizations are looking for more bottom up, employee and team-led innovation and intrapreneurship: Corporate innovation is no longer solely driven by top management. While management needs to set the strategy and targets, more and more organizations are looking towards empowering their employees to help them get where they want to go. It all starts from ideas, but self-organized teams, business units, and intrapreneurship programs are all on the rise. Companies increasingly want to encourage employees to think and act more like entrepreneurs.

When you put all three together, they create a powerful combination that can propel organizations to new heights of innovation and growth.

4. Partner Innovation and the Venture Client Model

No organization, no matter how large or powerful, can house all the best talent on every topic. That’s why the “Not Invented Here” syndrome can be particularly dangerous.

When you need to move fast, and do so with a lower budget, your best bet is to leverage talent from outside your organization.

The trick? Partnering with leaders and early movers in your area of interest to accelerate time to market and gain valuable insights. These partners can include research institutes, universities, or, increasingly, startups.

Historically, large organizations have relied on accelerators or Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) investments to engage with startups. However, both approaches have limitations:

Learning is indirect and secondhand.
They often fail to directly contribute to strategic business goals.
CVC investments require significant capital that could be allocated elsewhere.

The better approach? The Venture Client Model. This approach allows organizations to act as customers and development partners to startups that align with their strategic goals, resulting in:

Lower costs and faster time to market.
Accelerated learning through direct engagement.
Quick ROI by leveraging the organization’s existing scale.

To succeed with this model, you need a systematic approach, the right tools—like HYPE Partnering—and a clear focus on addressing real business problems, not just nice to haves.

The Venture Client Model, featured in Gartner’s latest Hype Cycle for Innovation Practices, brings all these elements together, making it a proven and effective strategy for driving innovation.

5. Cross-industry Collaboration

Building on the trend of partnering, companies are increasingly looking beyond their industries to find innovation opportunities.

Experienced innovators know that there’s no such thing as a new idea. Every idea is simply a combination of previous concepts and ideas applied to solve a specific problem. By partnering with organizations in different industries, companies can leverage highly advanced, specialized capabilities to uncover surprising opportunities and tackle the often-difficult execution phase of innovation.

As such, we’re seeing more and more strategic partnerships between companies from different industries, such as automotive or life science firms partnering with tech companies, to not just learn from one another, but to cocreate hybrid solutionsand products that unlock new value for customers and enable breakthroughs that neither industry could achieve alone.

6. Sustainability and ESG-driven Innovation

Last decade, ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) was all the rage. In the last couple of years, many of these initiatives took a backseat due to economic pressures and growing disillusionment with some of the failures associated with many of these programs.

The problem was that many organizations implemented ESG at a superficial level—promises and policies with little real-world impact—leading to skepticism about the value behind the topic at large.

However, the fundamental need for transformation remains critical. From addressing government deficits to combating climate change, the urgency for sustainable innovation is greater than ever.

What’s different now? The drivers and enablers are firmly in place:

Regulatory Pressure: Many governments across the globe are introducing stricter mandates for sustainable practices.
Technological Advancements: Breakthroughs in renewable energy, electrification, AI, and circular solutions provide tools for real change.
Consumer Preferences: Shifts toward sustainability are influencing demand and shaping circular economic models.

For innovators, this is a perfect storm—a unique opportunity to create breakthroughs that move the needle for both their organizations and the planet. Sustainability has been through the Hype Cycle, and is now nearing the plateau of productivity. For many, it’s no longer a “nice-to-have” but a strategic imperative, making ESG-driven innovation one of the most significant trends shaping the future of corporate innovation and strategy.

Conclusion

 These trends highlight a clear shift toward more agile, sustainable, and externally focused innovation practices. For many organizations, they’re not just a nice addition, but a must to stay competitive in increasingly complex and fast-moving global markets. What hasn’t changed, is that those organizations that master innovation, unlock new opportunities to create value, drive impact. They will be able to future-proof themselves and leave the competition in the dust.

This article was originally published in HYPE’s blog.
Images from Unsplash and Pixabay.

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Success is a Hardship Too

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Success is a Hardship Too

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

Everything has a half-life, but we don’t behave that way. Especially when it comes to success. The thinking goes – if it was successful last time, it will be successful next time. So, do it again. And again. It is an efficient strategy – the heavy resources to bring it to life have already been spent. And it is predictable – the same customers, the same value proposition, the same supply base, the same distribution channel, and the same technology. And it is dangerous.

Success is successful right up until it isn’t. It will go away. But it will take time. A successful product line will not fall off the face of the earth overnight. It will deliver profits year-over-year and your company will come to expect them. And your company will get hooked on the lifestyle enabled by those profits. And because of the addiction, when they start to drop off the company will do whatever it takes to convince itself all is well. No need to change. If anything, it is time to double-down on the successful formula.

Here’s a rule: When your successful recipe no longer brings success, it’s not time to double-down.

Success’ decline will be slow, so you have time. But creating a new recipe takes a long time, so it is time to declare that the decline has already started. And it is time to learn how to start work on the new recipe.

Hardship 1 – Allocate resources differently. The whole company wants to spend resources on the same old recipes, even when told not to. It is time to create a funding stream that is independent of the normal yearly planning cycle. Simply put, the people at the top have to reallocate a part of the operating budget to projects that will create the next successful platform.

Hardship 2 – Work differently. The company is used to polishing the old products and they don’t know how to create new ones. You need to hire someone who can partner with outside companies (likely startups), build internal teams with a healthy disrespect for previous success, create mechanisms to support those teams and teach them how to work in domains of high uncertainty.

Hardship 3 – See value differently. How do you provide value today? How will you provide value when you cannot do it that way? What is your business model? Are you sure that’s your business model? Which elements of your business model are immature? Are you sure? What is the next logical evolution of how you go about your business? Hire someone to help you answer those questions and create projects to bring the solutions to life.

Hardship 4 – Measure differently. When there is no customer, no technology and no product, there is no revenue. You must learn how to measure the value of the work (and the progress) with something other than revenue. Good luck with that.

Hardship 5 – Compensate differently. People that create something from nothing want different compensation than people that do continuous improvement. And you want to move quickly, violate the status quo, push through constraints and create whole new markets. Figure out the compensation schemes that give them what they want and helps them deliver what you want.

This work is hard, but it’s not impossible. But your company doesn’t have all the pieces to make it happen. Don’t be afraid to look outside your company for help and partnership.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Why Reason Matters

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Why Reason Matters

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

How many times a day do you ask someone to do something? If you total all the requests you make of coworkers, family members, friends, people at restaurants and shops, and even strangers, the total is somewhere between 100 and 1 bazillion. Now, what if I told you that by including just one word in your request, the odds of receiving a positive response increase by 50%?

And no, that word is not “please.”

The real magic word

Harvard 1978. Decades before everyone had access to computer labs, home computers, and personal printers, students had to line up at the copy machine to make copies. You could easily spend hours in line, even if you only had a few copies to make. It was an inefficient and infuriating problem for students.

It was also a perfect research opportunity for Ellen Langer, a professor in Harvard’s Psychology Department.

Prof. Langer and her colleagues asked students to break into the line using one of three phrases:

“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the xerox machine?”
“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the xerox machine, because I have to make copies?”
“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?”

The results were definitive and surprising. Students who used the first phrase were successful 60% of the time, but those who used the phrases with “because” were successful 93% and 94% of the time.

“Because” matters. The reason does not.

Note that in phrases two and three, the reason the student is asking to cut in line isn’t very good. You can practically hear the snarky responses, “Of course, you have to make copies; why else would you be at the copy machine?” or “We’re all in a rush,” and the request is denied.

But that didn’t happen.

Instead, the research (and hundreds of subsequent studies) showed that when the ask is simple or familiar, people tend to follow instructions or respond positively to requests without paying attention to what’s said, even if the instructions don’t make sense or the request disadvantages them in some way. Essentially, people hear “because,” assume it’s followed by a good reason and comply.

“Because” matters. How you use it matters more.

The power of “because” isn’t about manipulation or coercion. It’s about fostering a culture of transparency, critical thinking, and effective communication.

Taking the time to think about when and how to communicate the Why behind your requests increases your odds of success and establishes you as a strategic and thoughtful leader. But building your “Because’ habit takes time, so consider starting here:

Conduct a “Because” Audit: For one day, track your use of “because.” How many times do you make a request? How many times to you explain your requests with “because?” How many times do you receive a request, and how many of those include “because?” Simply noticing when “because” is used and whether it works provides incredible insights into the impact it can have in your work.

Connect your “Becauses” As leaders, we often focus on the “what” and “how” of directives, but the “why” is equally crucial. Take your top three strategic priorities for the quarter and craft a compelling “because” statement that clearly articulates the reasoning behind it. For instance, “We’re expanding into the Asian market because it represents a $50 billion opportunity that aligns perfectly with our core competencies.” This approach not only provides clarity but also helps in rallying your team around a common purpose.

Cascade the “Because” Habit: Great leaders don’t just adopt best practices; they institutionalize them. Challenge your direct reports to incorporate “because” into their communications. When they bring you requests, ask them for the “because” if they don’t offer it. Make it a friendly competition and celebrate people who use this technique to drive better outcomes.

Tell me how you’ll start because then you’re more likely to succeed.

(see what I did there?)

Image credit: Pexels

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The Power of Cultural Competence in Leadership

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The Power of Cultural Competence in Leadership

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

When I first moved to Kyiv about 20 years ago, I met my friend Pavlo, who is from Belarus. Eventually our talk turned to that country’s leader, Alexander Lukashenko, and an incident in which he turned off the utilities at the US Ambassador’s residence, as well as those of other diplomats. It seemed totally outlandish and crazy to me.

“But he won,” Pavlo countered. I was incredulous, until he explained. “Lukashenko knows he’s a bastard and that the world will never accept him. In that situation all you can win is your freedom and that’s what he won.” It was a mode of thinking so outrageous and foreign to me that I could scarcely believe it.

Yet it opened my eyes and made me a more effective operator. We tend to think of empathy as an act of generosity, but it’s far more than that. Learning how to internalize diverse viewpoints is a skill we should learn not only because it helps make others more comfortable, but because it empowers us to successfully navigate an often complex and difficult world.

Shared Identity And Dominant Culture

We naturally tend to form groups based on identity. For example, in a study of adults that were randomly assigned to “leopards” and “tigers,” fMRI studies noted hostility to outgroup members. Similar results were found in a study involving five year-old children and even in infants. So to a certain extent, tribalism is unavoidable.

Evolutionary psychologists attribute this tendency to kin selection. Essentially, groups favor those who are most like them are more likely to see their own genes passed on. As Richard Dawkins famously pointed out, what we traditionally consider altruism can also be seen as selfish genes conniving to perpetuate themselves.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that organizational and institutional settings sustain our penchant for tribalism. Managers will tend to hire people who think and act in familiar ways. Those who reflect the preferences of the higher-ups will be more likely to get promoted and, in turn, recruit people like themselves. This all leads to a level of homogeneity that provides comfort and confidence.

We rarely welcome someone who threatens our sense of self. So those outside the dominant culture are encouraged to conform and are often punished when they don’t. They are less often invited to join in routine office socializing and promotions are less likely to come their way. When things go poorly, it’s much easier to blame the odd duck than the trusted insider.

How Success Leads To Failure

In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, author Thomas Kuhn describes how paradigms have a life cycle. They begin as an insight that succeeds in helping to solve a certain class of problems. As their usefulness grows, they rise to dominance and they are rarely questioned or scrutinized anymore. People use them almost reflexively.

Yet over time certain anomalies arise in which the paradigm doesn’t quite fit. For example, in the 1970s and 80s, the minicomputer industry in Boston reigned supreme. Yes, there were some small startup firms out in California, but they were no match for giants like DEC, Data General and Apollo Computer. The California firms were gaining traction, but weren’t considered threats.

Unfortunately for the Boston firms, paradigms were shifting in a way that was extremely disadvantageous to them. They had built strong, dominant cultures that could execute plans efficiently, but weren’t sensitive to outside information. The Silicon Valley firms, which were more diverse and interconnected, were much more able to adapt to changing market realities.

The truth is that the next big thing always starts out looking like nothing at all. That’s why we so often miss it. If it was obvious, everyone would know about it and it wouldn’t surprise us. That’s why it’s so often those odd ducks, the anomalies that don’t quite fit with the dominant culture, that end up disrupting industries.

Acknowledging Difference

Organizations crave efficiency. It’s easy to measure, evaluate and compensate for. That’s why managers tend to favor cohesive cultures. If you hire and promote likeminded people they will tend to be able to achieve consensus quickly without much deliberation or debate, and move quickly to action.

At the same time, inserting diversity stirs things up and makes people uneasy. For example, in a 2003 study involving 242 members of sororities and fraternities at Northwestern University, groups of students were asked to solve a murder mystery. The more homogenous teams felt more comfortable and confident, but were also much more likely to be wrong.

Real world data suggests that these results are the rule, rather than the exception. A McKinsey report that covered 366 public companies in a variety of countries and industries found that groups that were more ethnically and gender diverse performed significantly better than others. Many other studies have shown similar results

What’s crucial to grasp is that diverse teams don’t perform better in spite of discomfort, but because of it. When people expect people to think like them, they look to build an easy consensus. However, when they expect a range of opinions and perspectives, they need to entertain more possibilities and scrutinize information more skeptically.

That’s why it’s so important to acknowledge differences. If we see the world as homogeneous, we are more likely to see dissenting opinions as hostile challenges instead of new possibilities to be explored. It is through acknowledging diverse viewpoints that we can best catalyze the kind of creativity and innovation that helps solve complex and important problems.

Building Shared Identity Through Shared Purpose

Living as a foreigner for 15 years forced me to acknowledge viewpoints very different from my own. Many seemed strange to me, some I found morally questionable, but all forced me to grow. Perhaps even more importantly, I made friends like Pavlo, all of whom helped shape me and how I perceive things.

Our identity and sense of self drives a lot of what we see and do, yet we rarely examine these things because we spend most of our time with people who are a lot like us, who live in similar places and experience similar things. That’s why our innate perceptions and beliefs seem normal and those of others strange, because our social networks shape us that way.

The purpose of an education is to help us see beyond our own experience, but that is in no way a passive skill. We need to continually renew it. Diversity only has value if we appreciate difference; are willing to explore and learn from it. It is only then that we can glean new insights and apply them to some useful endeavor

It is at this nexus of identity and purpose that creativity and innovation reside, because when we learn to collaborate with others who possess knowledge, skills and perspectives that we don’t, new possibilities emerge. Make no mistake, however, breakthroughs are never truly serendipitous or random, but the product of a prepared mind.

And you prepare your mind through building cultural competence.

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

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Innovation Mythbusters – Top 5

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Innovation Mythbusters - Top 5

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

Amazingly Fabulous Tools is an award-winning, entrepreneurial market leader in the global machine engineering industry. The ambitious and proactive CEO Charlie Chaps invested in dispatching a Terrific Team of Enthusiastic Engineers to Silicon Valley to research, investigate, and report on how to capture and emulate the critical ingredients of its “secret innovative sauce.” Upon their return, the Terrific Team of Enthusiastic Engineers created and shared a beautiful, illustrated PowerPoint presentation with the board despite secretly knowing and passively avoiding saying that Amazingly Fabulous Tools could not replicate what they had discovered, primarily due to how the top five innovation myths clandestinely operated in the organization.

The Corporate Antibodies

This is due to their overt experience with the organization’s “innovation antibodies,” which cause an organization to resist change and protect the status quo. These antibodies consist of rigid people and inconsistent processes that extinguish a new idea as soon as it begins to course through the organization. In the Amazingly Fabulous Tool company, most people, especially the founders and the board, unconsciously and powerfully neutralized any forces that threatened to destabilize the company’s current state and stunt its growth by shutting down the fresh ideas and unconventional thinking their company badly needed.

Charlie Chaps built a fantastic, largely incomprehensible strategic plan with a BHAG, strategic goals, and sets of individual KPIs. This plan provided concrete evidence that reassured the board that the company was taking action to sustain its leadership position in the market and would take the business to the next level by growing its ROI. It also aimed to leverage the collective genius of its owners, Bob the Brave Builder and Eric the Energetic Entrepreneur, to ensure a legacy was left no matter who was at the helm.

The Innovation Culture Diagnostic Findings

A quantitative and qualitative cultural diagnostic revealed that people lacked permission, safety, and trust to speak up, rock the boat and challenge the status quo. It also showed that the organization lacked rigor in its process disciplines and a focus on developing its people’s capabilities.

It also revealed that Amazingly Fabulous Tools was secretly driven by its founders’ and sales directors’ self-interest and greed due to the highly competitive profit-share sales model. Not by an obligation and commitment to creating, inventing, designing, and delivering disciplined, innovative process improvements, products, and services that their customers purchased and did not appreciate and cherish.

This was a stark contradiction and barrier to the company’s ability to sustain its enviable global reputation. Finally, people believed that Charlie Chaps’ fantastic strategic plan, BHAG, goals, and KPIs were confusing and disconnected from the organization’s current reality and would not produce a collaborative and innovative organization.

So, they did not accept or apply the plan and kept safe by conducting business as usual.

The Top Five Innovation Myths

Because the corporate antibodies revealed that people unanimously believed each of the key myths, including:

Myth # 1: Innovation is a solo activity; people believe that ” only the owners can innovate.”
The Brutal Truth: Innovation is impossible without inclusion and collaboration, which are achieved through practical and disciplined teaming and networking.

Myth #2: Innovation is top-down; people believed they were not responsible or accountable for planning and were forced to be reactive. “The planning is difficult, that is for sure, because we are firefighting all the time, and that goes back to the frustration of not having enough time to do what needs to get done…and resources and …tools.”
The Brutal Truth: When people have the permission and safety to challenge the status quo, make mistakes, and are trusted to learn through experimentation, innovation can emerge anywhere in an organization, or team.

Myth #3: Innovation is about the newest thing; people believed that radical innovation was needed when agility was the problem; “The scary thing is our key competitor is getting more flexible (agile); we’re just getting more reliable (stable). It’s the stupid things that are so annoying. It’s the embarrassing things.”
The Brutal Truth: Innovation is guided by its strategic intent. It can be incremental, continuous, radical, breakthrough, disruptive, or differentiated, as there is no one best way of innovating.

Myth # 4: Innovation can’t be taught; people believed that they did not have to learn to improve or innovate when they encountered quality issues continuously; “A lot of times, it’s not because the customer wants the machine tomorrow but because we want to ship it tomorrow because we want to get it off the floor, we want to meet numbers, we want the cash. We usually drive the time frame and rush it out the door, creating many internal problems. It also creates problems externally with the customer when they think they’re getting a machine fully intact, but half its parts are missing….”
The Brutal Truth: Innovators are not born and are made. Anyone can learn to innovate,

Myth #5: You can’t force innovation; people were dis-empowered and did not take responsibility for influencing their environment to provide order and discipline; “It’s a traffic jam. That’s what we’ve got. It’s a traffic jam. Cars sitting bumper to bumper look like they are gridlocked. It represents the log jam of our activities. Where people are trying to push so many activities through two lanes of traffic when we’ve got six lanes worth of traffic.”
The Brutal Truth: Innovation can emerge when people have a sense of urgency, understand, and are motivated to engage in necessary, high-impact cultural and organizational change.

People must be prepared for it, change-ready and receptive, and intentionally pulled towards a compelling and desired future within an equalized environment that balances chaos and creativity with rigidity and discipline through rigorous planning.

The real costs to the organization

People believed that “This business makes money despite itself. There is potential to be truly great”. This was the most significant innovation antibody because there was no sense of urgency or even a financial or growth necessity to innovate. The company was quite comfortable with the status quo and had no reason to shift its habitual and unconscious comfort zone in ways that people and organizations must do to innovate because it involves being ready and receptive to mega-changes.

The significant investment in sending the Terrific Team of Enthusiastic Engineers to Silicon Valley sadly remained in the mythical realm of Innovation Dreamland.

So, lacking focus, discipline and rigor, the group of seriously qualified and intelligent engineers knowingly consistently dispatched faulty million-dollar machines to highly valued, global customers.

The cost of rework and brand erosion were considerable.

These machines required considerable analysis, problem-solving, and rework upon their return. Their costs were not recorded as repairs, causing the engineering division to be consistently over budget. Charlie Chaps reacted by restricting its budget and inhibiting its investment in critical research and development, which is needed to create, invent, and innovate to repair and sustain its global reputation as an innovator.

Innovation Dreamland remained a mythical and magical fantasy in Amazingly Fabulous Tools.

Sadly, the organization failed to shift its focus from challenge to opportunity because it could not resolve the corporate antibodies (implicit killers), remove the roadblocks, break down the internal cultural barriers to innovation and develop the agility necessary to become both a people-centric and customer-centric organization.

It lost an opportunity to make innovation a daily habit for everyone by failing to embed it in its organization as a way of life. It needed to empower, enable, and equip its talented, experienced and motivated people with the emotional energy, change, cognitive, and innovation agility to expose, challenge and resolve the underlying corporate antibodies.

It did not prioritize customer satisfaction and keep its promises by creating, inventing, and innovating high-value, quality products and services that improve the quality of their lives that are appreciated and cherished.

Many transformations and change-led innovation initiatives designed as strategic interventions fail due to a lack of alignment between strategy, structure, processes, and human skills, resulting in unproductive actions and poor human behaviors.

This is a short section from Chapter One of our new book, “Conscious Innovation – Empowering People to Be, Think and Act Differently in a Constantly Changing World”, which will be published in 2025.

Find out more about our work at ImagineNation™.

Please find out about our collective learning products and tools, including The Coach for Innovators, Leaders, and Teams Certified Program, presented by Janet Sernack, it is a collaborative, intimate, and profoundly personalized innovation coaching and learning program supported by a global group of peers over 9-weeks, and can be customized as a bespoke corporate learning program.

It is a blended and transformational change and learning program that will give you a deep understanding of the language, principles, and applications of an ecosystem-focused, human-centric approach and emergent structure (Theory U) to innovation. It will also up-skill people and teams and develop their future fitness within your unique innovation context. Please find out more about our products and tools.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

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Not All Customers Are Worth Doing Business With

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Not All Customers Are Worth Doing Business With

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

In some of my customer service speeches, I joke that some customers aren’t worth doing business with. The way I position it in the speech is funny, but in reality, it’s pretty serious. Sometimes, a customer isn’t worth doing business with because they are truly a bad customer. The result could be choosing to say, “Goodbye,” and sending them to the competition.

While there are many reasons you might end your relationship with a customer, I came up with six obvious ones to get you thinking:

Customers who repeatedly return products. This is often the result of a liberal return policy that some customers abuse. Repeated returns cost money – sometimes more than the profit from the sale.
Customers who make unwarranted complaints about service. You’ve heard the recording: “These calls are recorded for quality assurance.” Not only are recorded calls great for training, but they can also become evidence of a customer who has an unwarranted complaint about the company’s customer service – or any other situation.
Customers who demand unreasonable solutions to problems. If the customer’s demands are unreasonable and they won’t accept the solutions or compensation an employee is offering, it may be time to let them go.
Customers who take up too much time. For example, customers who repeatedly send back products, which takes up too much time and costs the company money.
Customers who are argumentative. Some customers will argue, and nothing will make them happy. When they realize you are about to “fire” them as a customer, they sometimes recognize that they are being unreasonable. But, when they don’t, it’s time to consider saying, “Goodbye.”
Customers who are abusive toward employees. This is more than an argumentative customer – it is taking rude and argumentative to another level. The customer curses, insults or threatens the employee. While we always want to be polite to our customers, sometimes it’s okay to politely transfer them to a manager or, if empowered to do so, politely say goodbye and hang up.

Bad Customer Cartoon from Shep Hyken

Keep in mind that it’s our job to take a negative event or abusive customer and turn the situation around. Another way of saying it is to turn rants into raves. Yet, in some cases – hopefully very few – the customer may truly not be worth doing business with … today. That could change in the future. Keep that in mind. Remember one of my favorite sayings:

The customer is not always right, but they are always the customer.

Consider that saying before slamming the door on an abusive customer. If you feel it can’t be worked out – today – close the door quietly, but consider leaving it open, ever-so-slightly, just in case they realize the error of their ways. Maybe they will come back, apologize, and become a great customer – one that is well worth doing business with!

Image Credits: Pexels, Shep Hyken

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