Category Archives: Leadership

Markets Don’t Build Themselves, You Must Engineer Them

Exclusive Interview with Bruce Cleveland

In a business landscape increasingly cluttered by “feature wars” and fleeting viral trends, true market leadership isn’t just about who builds the best product — it’s about who defines the problem. In his groundbreaking work, Market Engineering, Bruce Cleveland argues that successful companies don’t just enter markets; they architect them. By blending rigorous systems thinking with the art of category design, Cleveland provides a blueprint for moving beyond commodity status to become a dominant force that sets the rules of the game.

In this insightful Q&A, Cleveland breaks down why “Market Engineering” must be foundational from day one rather than a secondary thought for the marketing department. From the evolution of Chief Storytellers to the strategic distinction between a market and a category, he explores how leaders can steer through the noise — especially in the age of AI — to create a resonant narrative that sticks.

Today we dive deep into the characteristics and necessities of market engineering with our special guest.

Markets Don’t Build Themselves

Bruce Cleveland is a former venture capitalist and engineering and product executive at Apple, C3 AI, Oracle, and Siebel Systems. As founder of Traction Gap Partners, he has helped hundreds of startups, scale-ups, and enterprises to transform innovation into impact. His previous book, Traversing the Traction Gap, is taught in universities and used by investors and founders worldwide. Cleveland’s frameworks blend analytical discipline with creative storytelling — empowering leaders in companies of all sizes and industries to transform technology into traction and markets into movements. He lives in Bend, Oregon.

Below is the text of my interview with Bruce and a preview of the kinds of insights you’ll find in Market Engineering presented in a Q&A format:

1. When does it make sense for a company to engage in Market Engineering?

Market Engineering isn’t something you save for later: it’s foundational from the moment you decide to bring a new product or company to life. The earlier you start intentionally defining or redefining your category, shaping positioning, and setting the narrative, the more leverage you have. If you wait until after a product launch or when you’re trying to scale, you’re forced to play by definitions set by incumbents or competitors, which makes differentiation and leadership much harder.

2. Why is it so important for a company to shape the market reality?

If you don’t shape your market’s reality, someone else will, often in a way that disadvantages you. Shaping market reality means you control how problems are defined, which features or metrics matter, and what the buying criteria look like. Market leadership is rarely awarded to the objectively “best” product; it’s achieved by those who frame the market in terms they can win.

3. Why must all leaders intimately understand the difference between a category and a market?

A market is the overarching territory: the set of buyers, sellers, and needs. A category is a specific frame or context you create and own within that market. If you only compete in the market, you become a commodity; if you define and then dominate a category, you set the standards and leave competitors playing catch-up. Leaders must understand this distinction so they can move from playing the existing game to rewriting the rules.

4. What do you think about the Chief Storyteller roles we see appearing in companies?

It’s a positive development; as long as the role goes beyond polished campaign stories and becomes architect and keeper of the full-market narrative. The best Chief Storytellers aren’t just marketers; they’re narrative engineers who unite product, category vision, customer proof, and internal culture into a coherent, resonant story that attracts and aligns stakeholders. Think Steve Jobs: one of the best storytellers ever.

5. Many see Thought Leadership as a combination of messaging and storytelling, what makes it a standalone tenet?

Thought Leadership stands alone because it’s about setting the agenda (leading the conversation) rather than just communicating your point of view. It requires original insight, provocation, and the courage to propose new models, not just synthesize existing ones. When done well, it changes the direction of the market; others start to echo your terminology and frameworks.

6. Why is it so hard for most new products to get traction?

Most new products fail to get traction not because of weak tech, but because of unclear value, undifferentiated positioning, or market confusion. Teams overfocus on features and under-invest in the story, category, and proof. Without clear market engineering, no one knows why the product matters or how they should think about it compared to everything else.

7. Where do companies go wrong with category design?

The most common mistake is either not designing a category at all (just trying to out-feature incumbents) or making it a “naming exercise” disconnected from authentic customer need and business reality. Category design isn’t branding; it’s systems thinking. it should be rooted in a real problem, codified with relentless clarity, and validated with influential customers and analysts.

8. How does the leadership team recognize they got the positioning wrong and how do they fix it?

You’ll know you have a positioning problem if deals stall in the pipeline, you get slotted into the wrong RFP bucket, or media/analysts lump you with solutions you don’t respect. Fixing it starts with honest investigation: talking directly to customers/prospects, auditing every touchpoint, and rigorously re-testing your Messaging Matrix. It’s usually about clarity, not cleverness.

9. What are the biggest pitfalls of message ownership and management and how can leaders avoid them?

The biggest pitfalls are lack of internal discipline and message drift: where every functional group tells the story a bit differently, or the narrative morphs with each campaign. Leaders must treat the messaging as a living, central artifact (like the Messaging Matrix), ensure frequent training, and make every update explicitly cross-functional. Messaging must be owned at the top.

10. What are some of the keys to great storytelling that every leader should master?

Great storytelling starts with empathy: a deep understanding of customer pain and aspiration. Then, it follows with clarity (no jargon), specificity (real data, real outcomes), and tension (what’s at stake in the market). Too often, stories become “laundry lists”. The key is to focus on a single arc: What’s broken in the world, what new future you’re inviting them into, and social proof that it’s real.

11. What are the keys to creating effective thought leadership?

You must have a strong point of view and the willingness to challenge conventional wisdom. Effective thought leadership is not just more content; it’s original, actionable ideas presented consistently across channels and validated with real-world outcomes, not just theory. Authenticity and a learning mindset are critical: the market rewards those who teach, not just those who promote.

12. Does AI make Market Engineering easier or more difficult and why?

AI makes Market Engineering both easier and much harder. Easier, because it democratizes access to research, market signals, and rapid content generation. Harder, because it amplifies noise and makes it much more difficult to stand out unless your positioning, messaging, and insight are precise and differentiated. The bar for clarity and originality rises: those who do Market Engineering well will thrive; those who don’t will be commoditized instantly.

13. Is there anything you wish I had asked so that you could speak to it?

I wish more people asked, “How do you maintain momentum and discipline in Market Engineering after the initial category launch?” Winning the first lap is one thing; evolving category leadership into true market leadership and dominance over the years is another. It’s not a one-time event: it’s ongoing narrative, data, partner ecosystem, and customer proof work. The companies that endure are those that outlearn, outevolve, and outlast, not just outlaunch their competition.

Conclusion

Thank you for the great conversation Bruce!

I hope everyone has enjoyed this peek into the mind of the man behind the insightful new title Market Engineering!

Image credits: Bruce Cleveland, Google Gemini

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

We Need More Innovators and Scientists in Leadership Roles

2 Replies

We Need More Innovators and Scientists in Leadership Roles

GUEST POST from Pete Foley

Our world is changing at an unprecedented rate. We are in an innovation driven economy. AI, genetic manipulation, energy innovation, climate, and virtually anything driving change are all highly technical and complex. And all come with high stakes pros and cons.

Scientists and innovators navigating this requires strategic leadership that understands technical complexity, uncertainty and that collectively has some knowledge of basic science and engineering.

Politics Lacks Scientists: Today, while more than half of US Senators have a law background, only one has a science PhD. I believe this creates a serious gap in fundamental knowledge between our strategic leaders and the innovators that are driving change.

Experts or Oracles? Of course, our leaders have access to ‘experts’ to help them with complex topics. But when the fundamental knowledge gap between leaders and experts becomes too big, experts become oracles. They pronounce rather than persuade. When this happens we risk the determining factor in strategy becoming superior communication skills, instead of knowledge or superior ideas. The ideas (and regulations) that win are not the necessarily best ones, but the ones championed by good communicators, salesmen scientists or smooth talking lobbyists. It’s dangerous to follow the science blindly, and even riskier to regulate what we don’t understand. That invites dangerous unintended consequences. But increasingly, that is the path we are on.

Why We Need More Innovators and Scientists in Leadership Roles

Of course, our leaders don’t need to all be 160 IQ polymaths with PhD’s in quantum mechanics. But to make good decisions they do need to at least be able to understand and apply critical thinking to the inevitably conflicting opinions of experts.

Communicating Science and Technology: Now of course, much of the onus for promoting understanding of complex technology lies with us in the broader innovation and science community. If we cannot communicate knowledge to people who own resources and executive power, then we risk that knowledge becoming redundant.

But communication is always a two way street. Bridging between leaders and experts requires some common ground. It’s really hard to have a useful discussion with someone who does even have a basic vocabulary for a topic. As technology and innovation become increasingly important, without more technically savvy leaders we risk a disconnect between strategy, regulation and knowledge. As our leaders get older, and more disconnected from the science driving change they rely less on quality of ideas, and more on appealing framing of ideas, or perhaps familiarity with equally disconnected experts. That is a dangerous path.

Non Scientific Mindsets Facing Technical Challenges. One key danger is the tendency to view choices as binary, another is sunk cost. Binary choices are superficially easy, but in the real world most innovation is not black and white, but instead involves some form of trade off. Whether it is AI, energy strategy, pharmaceutical development or one of the other ever growing list of emerging technologies, there are benefits, but also costs. With AI for example, the benefits of gaining and holding global leadership of the technology are likely as economically huge as the opportunity cost of not doing so. But with big opportunity also comes big risks, including the environmental costs of data centers, risks to societal structure, and even existential risk to humanity itself. The stakes don’t get much higher.

The Uncertainty Principle: And this is multiplied by the sunk cost fallacy. Over commitment to an incorrect binary choice can be really risky. While we know there are going to be pros and cons to any new technology, we rarely understand them very well in advance. Innovation is by definition a dive into the unknown, and that makes accurately predicting both upsides and downsides really difficult. This requires flexible, agile thinking, openness to new data, and a willingness to adjust mid-flight, skills inherent to science and technology .

But as a society, if anything we seem to be moving away from flexible thinking, and towards more rigid viewpoints that are often heavily pre-primed by affiliations, preconceptions and bizarrely, politics. People are often passionately for or against AI, but all too often without really knowing why. ‘Green’ energy is polarizing, climate change is divisive. But while passion and ownership have their place, often the best answer is not cheerleading for a team. Instead it’s beneficial to find a flexible balance that acknowledges the pros and cons, and that ideally identifies non zero sum answers for those contradictions. But that again typically requires nuance, and some level of technical understanding.

Finding Non Zero Sum Answers: The good news is that once we step away from polarized and binary thinking, non zero sum solutions are sometimes not as hard to find as we think. Just as an example, with AI, there is potential to have our cake and eat it. If we cut out digital slop, it’s conceivable that could we achieve and maintain technology leadership, but with much lower environmental cost. For example, using AI to solve complex medical problems may be a net benefit that is worth some damage to our wilderness, or use of our scarce resources. But action figures, generic illustrations, mediocre music and often pointless copies of master artists not so much! I’m sure all of the latter help advance our knowledge to some degree, and help to justify AI investment, but by being more selective, could we achieve the same or similar ends with a superior benefit/cost ratio?

The Human Advantage: But making smart trade-off decisions like this requires flexible and creative thinking. Ironically that is one of the things humans still do better than AI. We just need to embrace our human strengths, but also make sure our leaders also reflect those strengths.

Innovators in Leadership Roles: This means we need a more balanced and scientific approach to leadership if we are navigate the increasingly technology driven future. Having lawyers making laws is not bad per se, but I passionately believe we need a more diverse set of skills at our upper leadership levels if we are to effectively navigate the coming years. That means the innovation and scientific community needs to step up. We also need to get much better, and mea culpa, at communicating complex issues. It’s critical to be clear and simple but not simplistic.

The Tyranny of Simplicity: Simplistic answers, memes, and binary choices have a great deal of superficial appeal. And politicians and the media exploit this very effectively. In our information overloaded, time constrained world, everybody’s cognitive bandwidth is stretched. We often seek answers rather than understanding because that’s all we have time for. But from a leadership perspective, we need to understand that limited cognitive bandwidth is not the same as limited intelligence. People may grasp for simplistic answers, but because they have no commitment to them based on their own knowledge or critical thinking, that grasp is tenuous. This means that being simplistic can be self defeating in the long run. For example, take the much quoted, ‘globally agreed’ climate target; to not exceed a 1.5 degrees Celsius increase since pre-industrial times. For sure, some people will accept this without question. But other enquiring minds will ask if 1.49C OK? Is this a tipping point? Do we fall of a cliff at 1.51C. Conversely, what happens if we exceed that limit and nothing dramatic happens? Do we discard that boundary, or move it? Then there are obvious questions around how we address that boundary. What will it take to prevent crossing it? What are the trade offs? Who has the sphere of influence to actually make a difference? It’s OK to have a simplistic position, but it needs to be supported by layered reasoning.

Cry Wolf: I’m not suggesting that climate scientists who promote 1.5C don’t grasp this complexity. But somewhere in the path from science to politicians and media the real world complexity it often gets lost in translation. And thats not trivial, as it creates the risk of ‘cry wolf’ effects, and of leaders being perceived as manipulative. If we overstate the importance of 1.5 C, and it proves to be wrong, or at least a softer limit than previously advertised, we risk people perceiving that they have been mislead or manipulated. That then feeds skepticism, and even gives support to some of the wilder ‘conspiracy theories’. Once a source has become discredited on one vector, it is typically discredited on everything.

No easy answers to this. But I believe innovators and scientists really need to take a bigger leadership role in a world where innovation is increasingly the driving force. Politicians generally don’t get elected because they deeply understand complex issues, but because they understand how to motivate, communicate, simplify and manipulate. They often rely on peoples limited cognitive bandwidth, as this helps them to craft simple slogans, concepts, and sometimes trigger fear and division. Remember that we dislike losing something about twice as much as we like gaining it, which makes fear a very powerful manipulative tool. That brings power, but not necessarily wisdom. But limited cognitive bandwidth is not the same as limited intelligence. And simplistic concepts are vulnerable to challenge, or evolving data.

Of course, we don’t want to make every issue a PhD thesis. But we do need to acknowledge increasing complexity and uncertainty, and at the very least develop authentic, layered narratives that acknowledge complexity and the inevitable uncertainty of an innovation driven world. Without that, our strategies become extremely fragile, and easily shattered the first time we are proved wrong. Even if we may start from a position of intense conviction, we must also change paths in the face of compelling evidence. Scientists and innovators tend to be good at this. It’s a skill that maybe needs to be used more broadly

Image credits: Google Gemini

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

You Have to Be Right in the Right Way

Leave a reply

You Have to Be Right in the Right Way

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

When something doesn’t feel right, respect your intuition. Even when you don’t know why it doesn’t feel right, respect your gut. When something doesn’t make sense, don’t judge yourself negatively. Rather, make the commitment to dig deeply until you hit the fundamentals. When a proposed approach violates something inside, don’t be afraid to say what you think is right. Or, be afraid and say it anyway. But right doesn’t mean your predictions will come true. Right means you thought about it, you understand things differently and you have a coherent rationale for thinking as you do. And right also means you don’t understand, but you want to. And right means something does not sit well with you and you don’t know why. And it means the right view is important to you.

Right doesn’t mean correct. And right doesn’t mean something else is wrong. When you have right view, it doesn’t mean you see things exactly right. It means you’re going about things in a way that’s right for the situation. It means your approach feels right to the people involved. It means you’re going about things with the right intention.

Now, like with any new idea, you’re obligated to formalize what you think is right and explain it to your peers. But, to be clear, you’re not looking for permission, you’re writing it down to help you understand what you think. When you try to present your thoughts, you’ll learn what you know and what you don’t. You’ll learn which words work and which don’t. You’ll learn right speech.

And you’ll find the potholes. And that’s why you present to your peers. They’ll be critical of the idea and respectful of you. They’ll tell you the truth because they know it’s better to iron out the details early and often. As a group, you’ll support each other. As a group, you’ll take the right action.

When ideas are introduced that are different, the organization will feel stress. Everyone wants to do a good job, yet there’s no agreement on the right way. Even though there’s stress, no one wants to create harm and everyone wants to behave ethically. It’s important to demonstrate compassion to yourself and others. The stress is natural, but it’s also natural to go about your livelihood in the right way.

But when the stakes are high and there’s no consensus on how to move forward, it’s not easy to hold onto the right mental state. The stress can cause us to delude ourselves into thinking things aren’t going well. But, letting the disagreement go unaddressed is unskillful, as it will only fester. It’s far more skillful to respectfully debate and discuss the disagreement. In that way, everyone makes the right effort to work things out.

Over time, the pattern of behavior can transition to a natural openness where ideas are shared freely. This becomes easier when we drop the mental habit of categorizing things into buckets we like and buckets we don’t. And it helps to maintain awareness of how things really are so we can strip away our subjective options. In this case, mindfulness is the right way to go.

None of this is easy. Our minds are constantly distracted by competing demands, growing to-do lists and organizational complexities of the work. Without dedicated practice, our minds can get lost in a flurry of thoughts of our own creation. To make it work, we’ve got to maintain a heightened alertness to our mental state and that takes the right concentration.

There’s nothing new here, but this well-worn path has merit.

Image credit: Unsplash

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

Leadership Nightmares That Drive Employees Away

Leave a reply

Bosses Emailing at Midnight and Other Tales of Woe

Leadership Nightmares That Drive Employees Away

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

“People don’t leave jobs. They leave bad bosses.”

There is truth to this unattributable quote. (I searched Google and ChatGPT, and neither could give me the definitive origin of this quote.) Validation comes from numerous articles and studies that claim a large percentage of employees quit their jobs because of bad managers.

A Harvard Business Review article, Quiet Quitting Is About Bad Bosses, Not Bad Employees by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folman, explains that employees don’t have to outright leave their jobs to “quietly quit,” or do only the bare minimum needed to keep their jobs. According to Gallup’s 2024 State of Global Workplace Report, only 23% of employees are engaged, 62% are “not engaged” and 15% are “actively disengaged.” And 70% of the variance in team engagement is due to the manager.

When you look at the best companies to buy from, you often find they are also listed on Glassdoor.com as the best companies to work for. That direct correlation isn’t a coincidence. In my customer service and customer experience (CX) work, I recognized decades ago that what’s happening on the inside of an organization is felt by customers on the outside. The employee experience is as important, if not more so, than the customer experience, and the boss can “make or break” that experience.

Meet Mita Mallick, who once had a boss who would only communicate with her via email between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. That seemed to be the only time the boss was available. Trying to meet with her boss during normal business hours was an exercise in futility. The message was clear: “I don’t have time for you.” And as a junior employee, Mallick thought she had to respond in real time to keep her job.

That experience, along with others, is why Mallick, who is now an author and speaker on a mission to “fix what’s broken in the workplace,” wrote the book, The Devil Emails at Midnight: What Good Leaders Can Learn from Bad Bosses. This book shares the details of 13 bosses, herself included, who demonstrate what not to do.

I interviewed Mallick for an episode of Amazing Business Radio to learn about some of these bad bosses, in hopes that anyone who falls into that category of leadership might learn a lesson and make their employees’ experience better. Here are descriptions of just a few of the bad bosses Mallick talked about in our interview, along with some of my commentary:

The Boss Who Never Had Time for Employees—Except at Midnight

As mentioned, this is where the book begins, with a boss who didn’t respect employees’ time or explain that just because she worked at midnight, she didn’t expect her employees to do the same. A simple explanation that immediate responses to her late-night emails weren’t necessary would have been easy, but unfortunately for Mallick, that was not the case. Everything seemed urgent, and Mallick emphasized this by saying, “When we treat everything as urgent, nothing is urgent.”

The Lesson: Leadership means making time for your team. Respect employees’ time and boundaries.

The Boss Who Wouldn’t Call an Employee by Name

Mallick shared that a boss didn’t want to call her by her full first name, Madhumita. Because he struggled to pronounce her full name, he renamed her Mohammed. One day, she worked up the courage to say, “You can call me Mita,” but the insensitive boss smiled and said, “Oh, Mohammed is funny. Everyone loves it. Don’t be so sensitive!” No doubt an HR issue by today’s standards, this boss showed a lack of respect for a good employee.

The Lesson: Calling people by their correct names is a basic courtesy and sign of respect. But there’s more to this. It’s not just about a name. Recognizing something sensitive and/or important to an employee should be acknowledged and accepted. Teasing about it will, at a minimum, put distance between the boss and employee.

The Boss Who Was Filled with Toxic Positivity

An upbeat and energetic boss is great, but ignoring real problems and acting like everything is fine is known as toxic positivity. If the facts indicate that something isn’t possible, then pretending it is can set a team up for failure and disappointment. Cheerleading only helps so much. If the boss hypes everyone up to believe something impossible can be done, and then the team fails, it can be demoralizing to the team.

The Lesson: Leaders should inspire, but not at the cost of reality.

Final Words

The worst behaviors in any workplace become part of its culture if they are allowed to continue. Whether it’s disrespect, slacking off or bullying, what leaders let slide becomes the norm. Look at yourself in the mirror and ask, “Am I one of these people causing the problem?” Creating a positive environment means taking action when problems arise, not ignoring them. A healthy workplace looks out for everyone, not just the loudest or most powerful voices.

The Final Lesson: Culture is defined by what is tolerated and demonstrated by the boss.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com.

Image Credit: Unsplash, Shep Hyken

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

Understanding Polarization

Leave a reply

Understanding Polarization

GUEST POST from Geoffrey A. Moore

One might be forgiven for thinking that our world is undergoing an unprecedented crisis of polarization, but to help put things in perspective, here are some lyrics from a song sung by the Kingston Trio in 1959 to a tuneful minuet:

The whole world is festering
With unhappy souls
The French hate the Germans
The Germans hate the Poles

Italians hate Yugoslavs
South Africans hate the Dutch
And I don’t like
Anybody very much.

Polarization has been with us throughout recorded history. What is bringing it to crisis proportions in our era is a digitally connected world population being fed a stream of narratives that are constructed specifically and intentionally to exacerbate the problem. If we are going to navigate our way through this challenge, we need to get a better understanding of how polarization works and what it takes to depolarize.

How Polarization Works

Polarization begins when we embrace an opinion so deeply we incorporate it into our personal identity. It becomes part of the narrative we use to make sense of the world and our lives, and in this way becomes inseparable from our sense of self. An attack on such an opinion strikes at the very foundations of our personhood, something we hold inviolate, something we will defend to the death. This results in a “no-fly zone” of non-negotiability, a ring-fence that we will not allow to be breached.

Clearly, this is dangerous stuff, and we would all do well to avoid it altogether. Indeed, one way to think of spiritual enlightenment is to have grounded one’s identity in a state of being outside the realm of opinions. One still has opinions, but one controls them instead of having them control you. Unfortunately, but for a few saints and enlightened Buddhas, there are precious few of us who can claim that state. Most of us hold (or are held by) positions on one or more issues of contention that we simply refuse to entertain abandoning. That, let us say, is normal. But we need to understand, these are not positions of strength. They are not assets. They are liabilities. They make us vulnerable in all sorts of ways, some of which we might not appreciate or even detect.

Why do we do this? Our identities are anchored in narratives, stories we tell about ourselves and that others tell about us. They tell everyone including ourselves who we are. These narratives are organized around protagonists and antagonists. We seek to emulate the protagonists and defeat the antagonists. Now, the antagonists don’t have to be people. They can be challenges like crime or poverty or sickness or climate change. More often, however, they do end up being people, people we don’t know in all likelihood but who stand for the very things that we are so clearly against. The weird part about this is that they feel exactly the same way about us! But, how can that be? We are in the right, they are in the wrong, why don’t they see that? Instead, bizarrely, they are saying the same thing.

OK, this is pretty obviously a trap of our own making, and as adults, it is incumbent upon us to resist its effects as best we can. It is also clear that we come up short more often than one would like. So, for the time being, let us assume that some amount of polarization is a fact of life, and in that context, take stock of what that entails.

On a personal level, polarized beliefs make us susceptible to righteousness. We are deeply certain we are right and, when put under sufficient pressure, entitled to take whatever action we feel is necessary, even when that involves breaking the law. We have no interest in understanding our opponents or negotiating with them. We are in our very own “no-fly zone,” and we carry it with us wherever we go. This takes a toll on us but perhaps more importantly on our friends and family as well. They either have to capitulate and participate in our vision, or they have to skirt the issue altogether. Direct honest communication would require a level of vulnerability we are unwilling to entertain.

As citizens, polarized beliefs make us susceptible to political manipulation. Demagogues can engage our psyches by demonizing our antagonists, inflaming our righteousness with calls to action that speak to our very souls. We will bond with these leaders regardless of their histories because we are not interested in evidence, only validation. We unite with them around what is wrong and then allow them to define what is right as the destruction of what is wrong. It is a playbook that has been used throughout history, sad to say, because it is very, very effective. We see this in other people all the time. We need to see it in ourselves as well.

Next up: On Depolarization

That’s what I think. What do you think?

Image Credit: Pixabay

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

Have You Ever Encountered the Slow No?

Leave a reply

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

When there’s too much to do and too few to do it, the natural state of the system is fuller than full. And in today’s world we run all our systems this way, including our people systems.

A funny thing happens when people’s plates are full – when a new task is added an existing one hits the floor. This isn’t negligence, it’s not the result of a bad attitude and it’s not about being a team player. This is an inherent property of full plates – they cannot support a new task without another sliding off. And drinking glasses have this same interesting property – when full, adding more water just gets the floor wet.

But for some reason we think people are different. We think we can add tasks without asking about free capacity and still expect the tasks to get done. What’s even more strange – when our people tell us they cannot get the work done because they already have too much, we don’t behave like we believe them. We say things like “Can you do more things in parallel?” and “Projects have natural slow phases, maybe you can do this new project during the slow times.” Let’s be clear with each other – we’re all overloaded, there are no slow times.

For a long time now, we’ve told people we don’t want to hear no. And now, they no longer tell us. They still know they can’t get the work done, but they know not to use the word “no.” And that’s why the Slow No was invented.

The Slow No is when we put a new project on the three year road map knowing full-well we’ll never get to it. It’s not a no right now, it’s a no three years from now. It’s elegant in its simplicity. We’ll put it on the list; we’ll put it in the queue; we’ll put it on the road map. The trick is to follow normal practices to avoid raising concerns or drawing attention. The key to the Slow No is to use our existing planning mechanisms in perfectly acceptable ways.

There’s a big downside to the Slow No – it helps us think we’ve got things under control when we don’t. We see a full hopper of ideas and think our future products will have sizzle. We see a full road map and think we’re going to have a huge competitive advantage over our competitors. In both situations, we feel good and in both situations, we shouldn’t. And that’s the problem. The Slow No helps us see things as we want them and blocks us from seeing them as they are.

The Slow No is bad for business, and we should do everything we can to get rid of it. But, it’s engrained behavior and will be with us for the near future. We need some tools to battle the dark art of the Slow No.

The Slow No gives too much value to projects that are on the list but inactive. We’ve got to elevate the importance of active, fully-staffed projects and devalue all inactive projects. Think – no partial credit. If a project is active and fully-staffed, it gets full credit. If it’s inactive (on a list, in the queue, or on the road map) it gets zero credit. None. As a project, it does not exist.

To see things as they are, make a list of the active, fully-staffed projects. Look at the list and feel what you feel, but these are the only projects that matter. And for the road map, don’t bother with it. Instead, think about how to finish the projects you have. And when you finish one, start a new one.

The most difficult element of the approach is the valuation of active but partially-staffed projects. To break the vice grip of the Slow No, think no partial credit. The project is either fully-staffed or it isn’t And if it’s not fully-staffed, give the project zero value. None. I know this sounds outlandish, but the partially-staffed project is the slippery slope that gives the Slow No its power.

For every fully-staffed project on your list, define the next project you’ll start once the current one is finished. Three active projects, three next projects. That’s it. If you feel the need to create a road map, go for it. Then, for each active project, use the road map to choose the next projects. Again, three active projects, three next projects. And, once the next projects are selected, there’s no need to look at the road map until the next projects are almost complete.

The only projects that truly matter are the ones you are working on.

Image credit: Pexels

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

Customers Don’t Care About Your Profit

Leave a reply

They Care About Your Service

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Recently, I heard from one of our subscribers, a sales and finance consultant at a luxury automobile dealership. He shared a story about how a customer was almost mistreated.

In the world of auto sales, some salespeople are 100% commission-based, and when they sell a vehicle at a discounted price, there is little to no profit, resulting in a very small commission. This is important, as sometimes these low-commission sales cause employees to treat customers differently than they would for a high-commission sale.

Customers expect to be treated the same regardless of how much or little they pay for their vehicle. Furthermore, they don’t realize, nor do they care, how much of a sales commission is paid to the employee.

Shep Hyken Customer Service vs Profit Cartoon

That brings us to the customer who bought a two-year-old luxury sports car. The first time it rained, she realized the windshield wipers needed to be replaced. The customer called her salesperson, who explained that he was happy to replace the blades. He went to his sales manager to ask how to handle the replacement and was told to charge her the cost of the blades or to tell her to buy them at Walmart for less than the dealership’s cost and bring them in to have them replaced.

The salesperson was shocked and reminded his sales manager that they were selling a premium brand. Eventually, the manager agreed, but the experience reminded him that profit, or the lack thereof, dictated the level of service the dealership would offer.

Three Customer-First Lessons

With that in mind, let’s use the story as a learning experience for all businesses. Here are three lessons from the story:

The Customer Doesn’t Care about Your Profit: Every customer deserves respect and a consistent experience, whether it’s $20 transaction or a $200,000 one. Profit per interaction shouldn’t determine the level of care.
Know the Lifetime Value of the Customer: The wiper blades may have been a $20 problem, but how the customer was treated for the problem could determine the future sale of a high-end luxury automobile worth thousands of times more. Knowing the average value of a customer will help employees make more informed, customer-focused decisions. Small gestures today can protect long-term loyalty and repeat business.
Consistency Builds Trust: Luxury brands thrive on consistent treatment, but the principle applies to all types of businesses. Today’s customers demand a good customer experience. Train and empower employees to deliver a consistent standard of service, every time, for every customer.

In the end, customers remember the experience, not your profit margins. Get the small things right, and the money follows as you earn their trust, confidence, and loyalty.

Image Credit: Unsplash, Shep Hyken

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

Direction of Fit

Leave a reply

A litmus test for news reporting, directed research, and conspiracy theories

GUEST POST from Geoffrey A. Moore

The philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe is credited with a wonderful thought experiment that illustrates the concept of direction of fit. Imagine a shopper is doing her errands, working off a list of things to buy. She is being followed by a detective who is making a list of everything she does buy. If both are successful, at the end of the day their two lists should be identical. But each list represents a different direction of fit. The shopper’s list works from mind to world: it seeks to fit the world to what the mind intends. The detective’s list works from world to mind: it seeks to fit the list to what the world in fact manifested. Mind-to-world and world-to-mind are thus two distinct directions of fit. Hold that thought as we apply it to three different kinds of discourse.

News reporting is committed to maintaining a world-to-mind direction of fit. The integrity of the news is based on reporters doing their very best to discover and communicate what actually happened in the world. As part of their communication, they are responsible for providing evidence for their claims, citing whatever documents, sources, or other materials that warrant believing these claims to be true. The goal is to inform the reader as objectively as possible, a key plank in any platform that supports liberal democracy.

Directed research is more complicated. It follows a bi-directional approach to fitting. It begins with a hypothesis which it seeks to either verify or disprove through some form of research or experiment. This represents a mind-to-world direction of fit. Einstein’s theory of relativity is an example. That research or experimentation, however, is conducted with scrupulous objectivity in order to create a body of world-to-mind evidence that is independent of the hypothesis. The Eddington Dyson expeditions to use a solar eclipse to test Einstein’s theory is an example. The final results represent a meeting of the two, often resulting in a version of the hypothesis that has been modified to incorporate learnings from the research findings. In Einstein’s case, this was not necessary. In this manner, science proceeds dialectically between the two directions, building an increasingly reliable model of the world.

Conspiracy theories represent a mind-to-world direction of fit. They consist of hypotheses that cannot be verified due to the nefarious actions of the actors involved. They are presented as truths despite their lack of evidence, and these presentations are protected by the right of free speech. Because there is no mechanism for governing or qualifying conspiracy theories, there is no limit to the outrageousness of their claims. When such claims are converted to headlines, they garner attention, which in turn attracts advertisers, which funds the media that publishes them. This has materially adverse effects on any liberal democracy that relies on news media to inform public decision-making.

As one can see, the ethics of news reporting and conspiracy theories are diametrically opposed. This presents a challenge to news organizations that wish to maintain the integrity of their mission. The fact that people are promoting conspiracy theories is something that is happening in the world. As such, it warrants reporting. When these theories are labeled as such, however, conspiracy theorists claim that is all part of the conspiracy. They also claim that the news outlets in question are biased against them, that they aren’t getting their fair share of the coverage. We have left logic behind and are now firmly in the domain of rhetoric. In the absence not just of evidence, but of any obligation to provide evidence, the most brazen voices win.

This is not OK. It is why our educational system needs to prioritize the teaching of critical thinking. Here both the right and the left need to be taken to task. The right continues to use conspiracy theories to restrict such efforts. The left uses political correctness to the same ends. Neither trusts that students will develop responsible habits through open dialog. The best way to meet this challenge, in my view, is to engage students in directed research projects that use the two-way direction of fit to investigate issues of interest and concern.

That’s what I think. What do you think?

Image Credit: Unsplash

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

Why You Need to Leverage Shared Values in Change Leadership

Leave a reply

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

When Lou Gerstner took over at IBM in 1993, the century-old tech giant was on its knees. Many thought it should be broken up into smaller, more focused companies. Others had different ideas. So at Gerster’s first press conference, people were curious about his strategy and disappointed when he failed to deliver one.

“The last thing IBM needs right now as a vision,” he said. What he meant was that IBM’s culture was broken. “Culture isn’t just one aspect of the game,” he would later write. “It is the game. What does the culture reward and punish – individual achievement or team play, risk taking or consensus building?”

What Gerstner saw was that IBM had lost sight of the values that had made it successful in the first place. He wasn’t “disrupting.” He was making IBM culture safe to innovate again and, by doing that, he achieved one of the most remarkable turnarounds in corporate history. If you want to achieve truly radical change, you need to start with shared values.

Making The Shift From Differentiating Values To Shared Values

IBM wasn’t Gerstner’s first stint leading a company. He’s been President at American Express and CEO at RJR Nabisco, both of which were very different from technological companies. Yet Gerstner didn’t focus on how his experiences were different, but on how they were the same—each of these businesses have to serve the customer.

“Lou refocused us all on customers and listening to what they wanted and he did it by example,” Irving Wladawsky-Berger, one of Gerstner’s chief lieutenants would later tell me. “We started listening to customers more because he listened to customers.” It was upon that simple principle that he changed the course of IBM’s future.

In a similar vein, when Nelson Mandela wanted to create a new future for South Africa, he organized a Congress of the People, a multi-racial gathering which produced a statement of shared values that came to be known as the Freedom Charter, which is still revered even today. He would later say it would have been very different if his organization, the ANC, had written it by themselves, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as powerful

When we’re passionate about an idea, we want to show how it’s different. We want to explain all its beautiful complexity and nuance, so that people can share our passion and fervor. That’s almost always a mistake. The first step to creating truly transformational change is to anchor it in what people already know and feel comfortable with.

Creating Safety Around The Change Conversation

When an enterprise is in crisis, one of the first things that often gets cut is investments in the future. So when Gerstner scheduled his first non-headquarters visit at IBM to the firm’s legendary research facility at Yorktown Heights, everybody there got nervous. Many expected there to be deep cuts and, possibly, that the entire facility would be shut down.

Actually, quite the opposite. “I saw the pain of IBM’s problems on their faces,” Gerstner remembered. “I talked about how proud I was to be at IBM. I underscored the importance of research to IBM’s future.” It was a wise move. Although few knew it at the time, scientists at IBM had just made a major breakthrough that made quantum computing possible and a few years later the company’s Deep Blue supercomputer would beat Garry Kasparov at chess.

Many change management schemes advise to create a “sense of urgency” and creating a “burning platform” atmosphere. Yet Gerstner understood that employees were perfectly aware of how dire the situation was. What they needed wasn’t more fear, but to see a path forward. Terrified people don’t make good decisions. They’re also more likely to head for the exit than to work for the future.

Don’t get me wrong, you don’t want to sugarcoat things. You need to be frank, honest and paint a clear picture. Gerstner made it plain that day that there would be changes. Yet by rooting his message in shared values, he was able to create a sense of safety around the change conversation. The scientists were able to see that they could, in fact, be heroes in the story of IBM’s future. As it turned out, they would be.

Creating A Dilemma Rather Than A Conflict

Once you start being explicit about your values you will inevitably find that not everyone shares them and that was certainly true at IBM. For example, Wladawsky-Berger told me that “IBM had always valued competitiveness, but we had started to compete with each other internally rather than working together to beat the competition. Lou put a stop to that and even let go of some senior executives who were known for infighting.”

A simple truth is that whenever we set out to make a significant impact, there will always be those who will work to undermine what we are trying to achieve in ways that are dishonest, underhanded and deceptive. Yet when that happens we need to be careful not to get sucked into a conflict, which will likely take us off course and discredit what we’re trying to achieve. Instead, we need to learn to design a dilemma.

Dilemma actions have been used for at least a century—famous examples include Gandhi’s Salt March, King’s Birmingham Campaign and Alice Paul’s Silent Sentinels—but more recently codified by the global activist, Srdja Popović. They are just as effective in an organizational context, using an opponent’s resistance against them.

One of the great things about dilemma actions is that you approach them exactly the same way you approach building allies—by identifying a shared purpose. Once you do that, you can design a constructive act rooted in that shared purpose that advances your agenda. That forces your opponent to make a choice: they can either disrupt the act and violate the shared value or they can let it go forward and allow change to proceed.

For example, I was once running a transformation project that was being impeded by a Sales Director hogging accounts. Although it was agreed that she would distribute her clients, she never got around to it. So I set up a meeting with a key account and one of our salespeople. When she tried to disrupt the meeting, she violated the shared value we had established and was dismissed from her position. Everything fell into place after that.

Forging A Shared Purpose

Change always begins with a grievance—there’s something people don’t like and they want it to change. Yet the status quo always has inertia on its side and never yields its power gracefully. That’s why it’s so important to forge a shared purpose, because people need a common mission they can believe in to see themselves as stakeholders in a shared future.

The reason so many organizations find themselves unable to pursue a purpose isn’t because they don’t want to, but because it is so hard. Purpose doesn’t begin with a single step, but with a diverging path. To honor a value we need to be willing to incur costs and constraints. We must choose one direction at the expense of another, or stay mired and lost, unable to move forward.

That’s why the change conversation needs to focus on what you value. Values are how an enterprise honors its mission. They represent choices of what an organization will and will not do, what it rewards and what it punishes and how it defines success and failure. Perhaps most importantly, values will determine an enterprise’s relationships with other stakeholders, how it collaborates and what it can achieve.

Perhaps most importantly, shared values enable a shared identity, which is what you need for change to last. The goal of a revolution, as Srdja Popović once explained to me, is not a constant state of disruption, but eventually to become mainstream, to be mundane and ordinary. That can only be done if change is built on common ground.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credit: Google Gemini

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

Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of April 2026

Leave a reply

Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of April 2026 Drum roll please…

At the beginning of each month, we will profile the ten articles from the previous month that generated the most traffic to Human-Centered Change & Innovation. Did your favorite make the cut?

But enough delay, here are April’s ten most popular innovation posts:

Why an AI Soft Landing Might Look Like Victorian England — by Braden Kelley
The Four Psychological Disruptions of AI at Work — by Braden Kelley
Liberated to Care – How AI Can Restore Humanity in Healthcare — by Kellee M. Franklin, PhD.
The Consumption Collapse – When the Feedback Loop Bites Back — by Art Inteligencia
Four Steps to the Future – Announcing the Newest FREE Addition to the FutureHacking™ Toolkit — by Braden Kelley
Which of the Nine Innovation Roles do you play? (A Quiz) — by Braden Kelley
How to Consciously Develop More Courage — by Tullio Siragusa
Does Planned Obsolescence Fuel the Fire or Just Burn the House Down? – The Innovation Paradox — by Braden Kelley
Misunderstanding Big Ideas is Very Dangerous — by Greg Satell
Artificial Intelligence Powered Teamwork — by David Burkus

BONUS – Here are five more strong articles published in March that continue to resonate with people:

Why Networks Can Outperform Hierarchies — by Greg Satell
Leading Through Uncertain Times — by David Burkus
Layoffs, AI, and the Future of Innovation – Efficiency Breakthrough or Creative Bankruptcy? — by Braden Kelley
Connecting People in a Time of Isolation and Detachment — by Douglas Ferguson
How Good is Your Situational Awareness? — by Mike Shipulski

If you’re not familiar with Human-Centered Change & Innovation, we publish 4-7 new articles every week built around innovation and transformation insights from our roster of contributing authors and ad hoc submissions from community members. Get the articles right in your Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin feeds too!

Have something to contribute?

Human-Centered Change & Innovation is open to contributions from any and all innovation and transformation professionals out there (practitioners, professors, researchers, consultants, authors, etc.) who have valuable human-centered change and innovation insights to share with everyone for the greater good. If you’d like to contribute, please contact me.

P.S. Here are our Top 40 Innovation Bloggers lists from the last five years:

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