Category Archives: Management

From Dinosaur to Disruptor in Three Quotes

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From Dinosaur to Disruptor in Three Quotes

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

If you’re leading a legacy business through uncertainty, pay attention. When The Cut asked, “Can Simon & Schuster Become the A24 of Books?” I expected puff-piece PR. What I read was a quiet masterclass in business transformation—delivered in three deceptively casual quotes from Sean Manning, Simon & Schuster’s new CEO. He’s trying to transform a dinosaur into a disruptor and lays out a leadership playbook worth stealing.

Seventy-four percent of corporate transformations fail, according to BCG. So why should we believe this one might be different? Because every now and then, someone in a legacy industry goes beyond memorable soundbites and actually makes moves. Manning’s early actions—and the thinking behind them—hint that this is a transformation worth paying attention to.

“A lot of what the publishing industry does is just speaking to the converted.”

When Manning says this, he’s not just throwing shade—he’s naming a common and systemic failure. While publishing execs bemoan declining readership, they keep targeting the same demographic that’s been buying hardcovers for decades.

Sound familiar?

Every legacy industry does this. It’s easier—and more immediately profitable—to sell to those who already believe. The ROI is better. The risk is lower. And that’s precisely how disruption takes root.

As Clayton Christensen warned in The Innovator’s Dilemma, established players obsess over their best customers and ignore emerging ones—until it’s too late. They fear that reaching the unconverted dilutes focus or stretches resources. But that thinking is wrong. Even in a world of finite resources, you can’t afford to pick one or the other. Transformation, heck, even survival, requires both.

“We’re essentially an entertainment company with books at the center.”

Be still my heart. A CEO who defines his company by the Job(to be Done) it performs in people’s lives? Swoon.

This is another key to avoiding disruption – don’t define yourself by your product or industry. Define yourself by the value you create for customers.

Executives love repeating that “railroads went out of business because they thought their business was railroads.” But ask those same executives what business they’re in, and they’ll immediately box themselves into a list of products or industry classifications or some vague platitude about being in the “people business” that gets conveniently shelved when business gets bumpy.

When you define yourself by the Job you do for your customers, you quickly discover more growth opportunities you could pursue. New channels. New products. New partnerships. You’re out of the box —and ready to grow.

“The worry is that we can’t afford to fail. But if we don’t try to do something, we’re really screwed.”

It’s easy to calculate the cost of trying and failing. You have the literal receipts. It’s nearly impossible to calculate the cost of not trying. That’s why large organizations sit on the sidelines and let startups take the risks.

But there IS a cost to waiting. You see it in the market share lost to new entrants and the skyrocketing valuations of successful startups. The problem? That information comes too late to do anything about it.

Transformation isn’t just about ideas. It’s about choosing action over analysis. Or, as Manning put it, “Let’s try this and see what happens.”

Walking the Talk

Quotable leadership is cute. Transformation leadership is concrete. Manning’s doing more than talking—he’s breaking industry norms.

Less than six months into his tenure as CEO, he announced that Simon & Schuster would no longer require blurbs—those back-of-jacket endorsements that favor the well-connected. He greenlit a web series, Bookstore Blitz, and showed up at tapings. And he’s reframing what publishing can be, not just what it’s always been.

The journey from dinosaur to disruptor is long, messy, and uncertain. But less than a year into the job, Manning is walking in the right direction.

Are you?

Image credit: Pexels

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How Innovation Tools Help You Stay Safe

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Risk Management in Uncertain Times

How Innovation Tools Help You Stay Safe

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Risk management is critical in uncertain times. But traditional approaches don’t always help when volatility, ambiguity, and complexity are off the charts.

What many leaders overlook in their rush to safety is that many of the most effective tools for managing risk come from an unexpected place: innovation.

The Counterintuitive Truth About Risk Management

Risk Management’s purpose isn’t to eliminate risks. It’s to proactively identify, plan for, and minimize risk.  Innovation is inherently uncertain, so its tools are purpose-built to proactively identify, plan for, and minimize risk.  They also help you gain clarity and act decisively—even in the most chaotic environments.

Here are just three of the many tools that successful companies use to find clarity in chaos.

Find the Root Cause

When performance dips, most leaders jump to fix symptoms. True risk management means digging deeper. Root cause analysis—particularly the “5 Whys”—helps uncover what’s really going on.

Toyota made this famous. In one case, a machine stopped working. The first “why” pointed to a blown fuse. The fifth “why” revealed a lack of maintenance systems. Solving that root issue prevented future breakdowns.

IBM reportedly used a similar approach to reduce customer churn. Pricing and product quality weren’t the problem—friction during onboarding was. After redesigning that experience, retention rose by 20%.

Focus on What You Can Actually Control

Trying to manage everything is a recipe for burnout. Better risk management starts by separating what you can control, what you can influence, and what you can only monitor. Then, allocate resources accordingly.

After 9/11, most airlines focused on uncontrollable external threats. Southwest Airlines doubled down on what they could control: operational efficiency, customer loyalty, and employee morale. They avoided layoffs and emerged stronger.

Unilever used a similar approach during the global supply chain crisis. Instead of obsessing over global shipping delays, they diversified suppliers and localized sourcing—reducing risk without driving up costs.

Attack Your “Deal Killer” Assumptions

Every plan is based on assumptions. Great risk management means identifying the ones that could sink your strategy—and testing them before you invest too much time or money.

Dropbox did this early on. Instead of building a full product, they made a simple video to test whether people wanted file-syncing software. They validated demand, secured funding, and avoided wasted development.

GE applied this logic in its FastWorks program. One product team tested their idea with a quick prototype. Customer feedback revealed a completely different need—saving the company millions in misdirected R&D.

Risk Management Needs Innovation’s Tools for a VUCA World

The best risk managers don’t just react to uncertainty—they prepare for it. These tools aren’t just for innovation—they’re practical, proven ways to reduce risk, respond faster, and make smarter decisions when the future feels murky.

What tools or strategies have helped you manage risk during uncertain times? I’d love to hear in the comments.

Image credit: Pexels

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Good Management is Not Good Strategy

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Good Management is Not Good Strategy

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

One of the most annoying things I hear from leaders is that “we had a great strategy, but just couldn’t execute it.” That’s simply not possible. If you can’t execute it, it’s not a great strategy. Most likely, it was a fantasy cooked up by some combination of consultants and investment bankers which was enshrined in PowerPoint.

As Richard Rumelt points out in his book, The Crux, planning is not strategy. Yet that’s what managers are good at, so when they set out to create a strategy they build a plan, starting with objectives and working back to resources and operational directives, rejiggering assumptions along the way to make everything fit.

Good strategy doesn’t rely on assumptions. It changes them. When you look at visionary leaders, like Ray Kroc and McDonalds, Charles Lazarus at Toys “R” Us or Thomas Watson Jr. and the IBM 360, they all focused on solving an emerging problem. The truth is that the next big thing always starts out looking like nothing at all. Good strategy creates something new.

Defining A Problem And It’s Crux

Managers lead through objectives, or what they call in the military commander’s intent, to achieve a desired end-state. To achieve these objectives, good managers make plans, allocate resources and delegate authority to direct action. They monitor progress, give advice and guidance, and maintain an atmosphere of accountability and good morale.

But how are objectives determined? Is the prescribed end-state really desirable? Is it achievable and meaningful? As Rumelt points out, without a true strategic process in place, objectives tend to be tied to financial goals that are easily measured, such as “We want to achieve 15% revenue growth, while improving profit margins and increasing market share.”

Good strategy starts with defining a problem that addresses a particular market reality. Kroc designed McDonalds to fit with an emerging suburban lifestyle. Lazarus came up with the “everyday low price” at Toys “R” Us to solve for the huge inventory swings that sale events caused. Watson bet the company on the IBM 360 because the lack of compatibility among IBM’s machines was slowly killing the company.

Rumelt calls these “gnarly challenges” because none of them had obvious solutions, or even clear alternatives to choose from. Fast food franchises didn’t exist when Kroc got into the business. Most toys stores continued with sales even after Toys R Us came to dominate the industry. None of IBM’s competitors made a similar investment in compatibility.

What most people miss about strategy is that it’s not simply about making choices among defined alternatives. Innovation is never a single event, but a process of exploration, engineering and transformation.

What Do We Know?

Because good managers are so operationally oriented, their minds tend to focus on what they see every day. So in a typical leadership team, the CFO worries about financial and economic data, the CMO follows consumer trends, the CIO is concerned about shifts in technology, the CHRO takes note of changes in the workforce and so on.

When we first start working with a team we do something called a PDO analysis (Problems, Disruptions & Opportunities) to begin to uncover relevant challenges. What I always find interesting is how often some team members are completely unaware of issues that others consider dire threats or important opportunities.

With some further discussion and analysis, we can begin to pare down the list and prioritize a limited number of challenges. We discuss what makes them important and difficult to solve. We ask questions like, “What’s the potential impact these could have on the business?” and “How much do we actually know about them?” “Where we can find out more?”

During this exploration phase, it is important to stay disciplined and curb action-oriented managers’ tendency to want to jump immediately to a solution. At this stage, we mainly want to better understand what the desired end state might look like. Only then can we start to build a strategy to tackle the problem.

What Can Be Done?

The most salient aspect of any journey is that you don’t end up where you started. As you explore the challenges your organization faces, you will encounter insights that lead definable alternatives. You will need to make choices about, as A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin have put it, where to play and how to win.

Yet as I’ve pointed out, strategy is not a game of chess, in which we patiently move inert pieces around a well defined board of play. We need to learn to leverage ecosystems of talent, technology and information from a variety of sources, including partners, suppliers, customers and open resources as well, as from within our organization itself.

That’s why strategy isn’t made in a conference room and doesn’t live on a PowerPoint deck. It reveals itself over time. What we can do is choose a path forward, which means that we leave some attractive alternatives behind. Great businesses like McDonalds, Toys R Us and the IBM 360 didn’t arise from a flash of insight, but emerged as successful initiatives were built upon and failures discarded.

Yet it takes discipline to be able to continue on a chosen path while at the same time retaining the flexibility to adapt as the marketplace evolves. My friend Ed Morrison, whose Strategic Doing framework helps build strategies for collaborative problem solving, recommends holding monthly 30/30 meetings, which review the last 30 days and plan for the next 30.

Good Strategy Isn’t “Right,” But Becomes Less Wrong Over Time

As Mike Tyson has pointed out, “everybody has a plan until they get hit,” which is why we need to take a more Bayesian approach to strategy, in which we don’t pretend that we have the “right” strategy, but endeavor to make it less wrong over time. Good strategy isn’t a plan, but a set of choices made about how to address meaningful challenges.

Ray Kroc didn’t invent the Egg McMuffin at McDonald’s, but his strategy of allowing franchisees to experiment gave birth to it and many other things as well. Charles Lazarus started with a baby furniture store, but his quest to find repeat customers led him to create Toys “R” Us and pioneer the category killer. Thomas Watson Jr. bet the company on the IBM 360, but it was the decision to move to an 8-bit byte that would revolutionize the computer industry. None of these were planned for.

Today, we need to shift our mindset to compete in an ecosystem-driven world in which our ability to compete is no longer determined by what we can command and control, but what we can access. That’s why we need to abandon the fantasy that making a strategy successful is just a matter of executing a series of predetermined moves.

Good strategy is not a function of good management, but a process of discovery. Managing by metrics will always be limited to what came before and cannot see what lies ahead. We need to learn how to identify grand challenges that shift the competitive environment and change perceptions of what is possible.

The essence of a good strategy, as Richard Rumelt noted in Good Strategy/Bad Strategy, is that it brings relative strength to bear against relative weakness in the service of solving a meaningful problem.

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

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Should My Brand Take a Political Stand?

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Should My Brand Take a Political Stand?

GUEST POST from Pete Foley

Many of you may have noticed that we are in a period of unparalleled social and political polarization in the US. For better or for worse, the public is probably more engaged and more passionate about politics and related social issues than it’s ever been.

So how should we, and the organizations we are a part of respond to this?  When we feel passionate about something, there is always motivation to take action. And for many of us, the place where we have the most influence, resources and leverage is via work.    

Does Politics Belong at Work? So should we blur the boundary between our personal beliefs and our work? Should our marketing and communication reflect the social or political passions of ourselves, and our colleagues? It’s a question I’ve been asked a lot over the last few years, and even more over the last few months. And not surprisingly, it’s often fueled by a working group who share passionate common values. 

Job Satisfaction: Acting on these shared passions certainly has potential to benefits job satisfaction, team building and even perception of work life balance. Despite this, I nearly always advise to avoid politicizing a brand, and to even be very cautious about social engagement. That’s often an unpopular opinion, especially if team members care deeply about a cause.  But aligning a brand with politics opens a door that is extremely difficult to close.  

Bud-Light: The news story below is a good example. Anheuser-Busch is currently facing negative social media for pulling it’s support for a Pride Festival.

https://www.fox5vegas.com/2025/03/26/anheuser-busch-pulls-out-pride-festival-after-30-year-partnership/?fbclid=IwY2xjawJRIflleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHdeKDxDCkmbH0QkJNegb-TZxi1TiwDpqs35z4gcx7AwYH3nCOVH01VEscg_aem_w6v3QjCD_cWvEnFdcP2NIA

It’s not the first time Bud-Light has found itself in the news for a politically related topic. I’m sure we all remember the Bud Light controversy over it’s association with Dylan Mulvaney. That resulted in massive backlash from the ‘right’ and loss of its position as the #1 beer in the US.  Now it’s facing backlash from the ‘left’ over Pride. Basically they now cannot win, and that is the core issue. Once you’ve taken a position in a controversial space, even somewhat unintentionally as Bud Lite did, it becomes a part of your brand, and that lens is applied to virtually everything you do. It is then extremely difficult to recapture a neutral position.

No-Win Scenario? It really doesn’t matter which side of the political fence a brand chooses.  Once that door is open, the repercussions’ can last for years, and any course correction almost inevitably upsets one side or the other.  Budweiser, Chick-Fil-A, even Pepsi have all dipped their toes in to political and social arenas, and had to manage fall-out that is typically disproportional to the original content.   

All of that said, a brand following a purpose can have positive impact on internal job satisfaction, at least in the short term. At of course, it can and often does resonate positively with a subset of its customers.   But unless that purpose is unambiguously and universally supported by all existing and potential customers, and frankly very little is these days, the risks almost inevitably outweigh the benefits.  Even apparently successful campaigns like Nike’s featuring Colin Kaepernick, which had strong appeal for their core, younger demographic, are high risk-high reward, and come with long-term risks which are hard to quantify.  Negative emotions tend to drive strong, and more resilient behavioral changes than positive ones. So even if initially polarized markets sees offsets between positive and negative consumer response, the positive tends to fade faster. Humans have evolved to more heavily weight negative experiences for good survival based reasons.

Universal Appeal and Availability: At the heart of this challenge is that growing and maintaining a brand requires reaching and appealing to as many customers as possible.   Whether we view markets through the eye of Ehrenberg-Bass models, or follow more traditional volume forecasting models, the single biggest variable that enables a brand to grow is reach. And that reach needs to operate on both a mental and physical vector. Physical availability is generally achieved via wide distribution or ubiquitous access. Quite simply, if potential customers cannot find you, then most will not buy you. But mental availability is equally important. If and when shoppers do find you, they need to both desire and understand you. This is a bit more complex, and achieved by great marketing, branding, media, packaging and messaging.

But if a brand aligns with a controversial cause, it risks losing positive mental availability, and being either consciously or implicitly rejected. The reality is that pretty much any political or social cause these days carries a real risk of upsetting half of your customers.  Positive Brand loyalty is often at best fickle, but once someone has decided they dislike a brand for whatever reason, that de-selection can be quite resilient.   

Treat Marketing like Thanksgiving: And it can become even harder when brands try to course correct.  Reversals tend to look inauthentic and manipulative, while attempts to ‘read the room’, and go with current trends risks being distrusted by both sides!!  In a vast majority of cases, by far the best strategy is to treat marketing like Thanksgiving dinner, and keep out of politics and religion

Keeping Purpose Alive: So should brands abandon any form of purpose or altruism. I’d hope not. Altruism is good for community, good for employee satisfaction, good for long-term equity and more. So what should we do?

I think there are at least three important guidelines.

  1. One is stay in your lane.  Most people struggle with a drink, food or soap powder having a political or social opinion.  
  2. The second is to find ways to contribute that are at least largely universally supported, and avoid the flavor of the month’.  Even in today’s polarized society, helping cancer research, disaster victims, helping kids, animal shelters, and ma minimum controversy.   
  3. The third is to ask ‘why am I doing this? Is this the best use of company money, and am doing this for the brand, the business, or is it more in support of my own values?”  If it’s the latter, maybe find ways to achieve that without opening your brand to future risk  
    Bottom line, basically anything that politicians talk a lot about, and certainly argue about, is best avoided. And even be careful how you frame what you do to avoid affiliation with groups perceived as political. Channeling money through a non-profit can be very effective, both in endorsements and validating claims.  But many non-profits have become increasingly politicized. I’m not here to make judgment on that, except that from a marketing perspective, we risk becoming aligned with that bias.

But if we are thoughtful, we can combine purpose and innovation and marketing. I think Tide’s ‘Loads of Hope’ is a great positive example. It’s about cleaning laundry, which is perfectly in lane for the brand, & it helps disaster victims, which at least for now is political neutral, and more importantly, largely future proofed.

Image credits: Wikimedia Commons

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What Playing the Flute Taught Me About Business Growth

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What Playing the Flute Taught Me About Business Growth

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Ideas and insights can emerge from the most unexpected places. My mom was a preschool teacher, and I often say that I learned everything I needed to know about managing people by watching her wrangle four-year-olds. But it only recently occurred to me that the most valuable business growth lessons came from my thoroughly unremarkable years playing the flute in middle school.

6th Grade: Following the Manual and Falling Flat

Sixth grade was momentous for many reasons, one being that that was when students could choose an instrument and join the school band. I chose the flute because my friends did, and there was a rumor that clarinets gave you buck teeth—I had enough orthodontic issues already.

Each week, our “jill of all trades” teacher gathered the flutists together and guided us through the instructional book until we could play a passable version of Yankee Doodle. I practiced daily, following the book and playing the notes, but the music was lifeless, and I was bored.

7th Grade: Finding Context and Direction

In seventh grade, we moved to full band rehearsals with a new teacher trained to lead an entire band (he was also deaf in one ear, which was, I think, a better qualification for the job than his degree).  Hearing all the instruments together made the music more interesting and I was more motivated to practice because I understood how my part played in the whole.  But I was still a very average flutist.

To help me improve, my parents got me a private flute teacher. Once a week, Mom drove me to my flute teacher’s house for one-on-one tutoring.  She corrected mistakes when I made them, showed me tips and tricks to play faster and breathe deeper, and selected music I enjoyed playing.  With her help, I became an above-average flutist.

Post-Grad: Five Business Truths from Band Class

I stopped playing in the 12th grade. Despite everyone’s efforts, I was never exceptional—I didn’t care enough to do the work required.

Looking back, I realized that my mediocrity taught me five crucial lessons that had nothing to do with music:

  1. Don’t do something just because everyone else is. I chose the flute because my friends did. I didn’t choose my path but followed others—that’s why the music was lifeless.
  2. Following the instruction manual is worse than doing nothing. You can’t learn an instrument from a book. Are you sharp or flat? Too fast or slow? You don’t know, but others do (but don’t say anything).
  3. Part of a person is better than all of a book. Though spread thin, the time my teachers spent with each instrumental section was the difference between technically correct noise and tolerable music.
  4. A dedicated teacher beats a distracted one. Having someone beside me meant no mistake went uncorrected and no triumph unrecognized. She knew my abilities and found music that stretched me without causing frustration.
  5. If you don’t want to do what’s required, be honest about it. I stopped wanting to play the flute in 10th grade but kept going because it was easier to maintain the status quo. In hindsight, a lot of time, money, and effort would have been saved if I stopped playing when I stopped caring.

The Executive Orchestra: What Grade Are You In?

How many executives remain in sixth grade—following management fads because of FOMO, buying books, handing them out, and expecting magic? And, when that fails, hiring someone to do the work for them and wondering why the music stops when the contract ends?

How many progress to seventh grade, finding someone who can teach, correct, and celebrate their teams as they build new capabilities?

How do what I should have done in 10th grade and be honest about what they are and aren’t willing to do, spending time and resources on priorities rather than maintaining an image?

More importantly, what grade are you in?

Image credit: Unsplash

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Job Design as Innovation Strategy

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How Complex Problem-Solving Creates Automation Champions

Job Design as Innovation Strategy

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Imagine a manufacturing company.  On the factory floor, machines whirl and grind, torches flare up as welding helmets click closed, and parts and products fall off the line and into waiting hands or boxes, ready to be shipped to customers.  Elsewhere, through several doors and a long hallway, you leave the cacophony of the shop floor for the quiet hum of the office.  Computers ping with new emails while fingers clickety-clack across the keyboard.  Occasionally, a printer whirs to life while forcing someone to raise their voice as they talk to a customer on the other end of the phone.

Now, imagine that you ask each person whether AI and automation will positively or negatively affect their jobs.  Who will champion new technology and who will resist it?

Most people expect automation acceptance to be separated by the long hallway, with the office workers welcoming while the factory workers resist.

Most people are wrong.

The Business Case for Problem-Solving Job Design

Last week, I wrote about findings from an MIT study that indicated that trust, not technology, is the leading indicator of whether workers will adopt new AI and automation tools.

But there’s more to the story than that.  Researchers found that the type of work people do has a bigger influence on automation perception than where they do it. Specifically, people who engage in work requiring high levels of complex problem-solving alongside routine work are more likely to see the benefit of automation than any other group.

Or, to put it more simply

Net Impact of Automation & New Technology on Your Work

While it’s not surprising that people who perform mostly routine tasks are more resistant than those who engage in complex tasks, it is surprising that this holds true for both office-based and production-floor employees.

Even more notable, this positive perception is significantly higher for complex problem solvers vs. the average across all workers::

  • Safety: 43% and 41% net positive for office and physical workers, respectively (vs. 32% avg)
  • Pay: 27% and 25% net positive for physical and office workers, respectively (vs. 3.9% avg)
  • Autonomy: 33% net positive for office workers (vs. 18% average)
  • Job security: 25% and 22% net positive for office and physical workers, respectively (vs. 3.5%)

Or, to put it more simply, blend problem-solving into routine-heavy roles, and you’ll transform potential technology resistors into champions.

3 Ways to Build Problem-Solving Into Any Role

The importance of incorporating problem-solving into every job isn’t just a theory – it’s one of the core principles of the Toyota Production System (TPS).  Jidoka, or the union of automation with human intelligence, is best exemplified by the andon cord system, where employees can stop manufacturing if they perceive a quality issue.

But you don’t need to be a Six-Sigma black belt to build human intelligence into each role:

  1. Create troubleshooting teams with decision authority
    Workers who actively diagnose and fix process issues develop a nuanced understanding of where technology helps versus hinders. Cross-functional troubleshooting creates the perfect conditions for technology champions to emerge.
  2. Design financial incentives around problem resolution
    The MIT study’s embedded experiment showed that financial incentives significantly improved workers’ perception of new technologies while opportunities for input alone did not. When workers see personal benefit in solving problems with technology, adoption accelerates.
  3. Establish learning pathways connected to problem complexity
    Workers motivated by career growth (+33.9% positive view on automation’s impact on upward mobility) actively seek out technologies that help them tackle increasingly complex problems. Create visible advancement paths tied to problem-solving mastery.

Innovation’s Human Catalyst

The most powerful lever for technology adoption isn’t better technology—it’s better job design. By restructuring roles to include meaningful problem-solving, you transform the innovation equation.

So here’s the million-dollar question every executive should be asking: Are you designing jobs that create automation champions, or are you merely automating jobs as they currently exist?

Image credits: Robyn Bolton and misterinnovation.com (1 of 850+ free quote slides for download)

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Automation Success More About Trust Than Technology

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Automation Success More About Trust Than Technology

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

We’ve all seen the apocalyptic headlines about robots coming for our jobs. The AI revolution has companies throwing money at shiny new tech while workers polish their résumés, bracing for the inevitable pink slip. But what if we have it completely, totally, and utterly backward?  What if the real drivers of automation success have nothing to do with the technology itself?

That’s precisely what an MIT study of 9,000+ workers across nine countries asserts.  While the doomsayers have predicted the end of human workers since the introduction of the assembly line, those very workers are challenging everything we think we know about automation in the workplace.

The Secret Ingredient for Technology ROI

MIT surveyed workers across the manufacturing industry—50% of whom reported frequently performing routine tasks—and found that the majority ultimately welcome automation. But only when one critical condition is present. And it’s one that most executives completely miss while they’re busy signing purchase orders for the latest AI and automation systems.

Trust.

Read that again because while you’re focused on selecting the perfect technology, your actual return depends more on whether your team feels valued and believes you are invested in their safety and professional growth.

Workers Who Trust, Automate

This trust dynamic explains why identical technologies succeed in some organizations and fail in others. According to MIT’s research:

  • Job satisfaction is the second strongest indicator of technology acceptance, with a 10% improvement that researchers identified as consistently significant across all analytical models
  • Feeling valued by their employer shows a highly significant 9% increase in positive attitudes toward automation
  • Trust also consistently predicts automation acceptance, as workers scoring higher on trust measures are significantly more likely to view new technologies positively.

For example, Sam Sayer, an employee at a New Hampshire cutting tool manufacturer, has become an automation champion because his employer helped him experience how factory-floor robots could free him from routine tasks and allow him to focus on more complex problem-solving. “I worked in factories for years before I ever saw a robot. Now I’m teaching my colleagues on the factory floor how to use them.”

This contrasts with an aerospace manufacturer in Ohio that hired a third party to integrate a robot into its warehouse processes. Despite the company’s efforts to position the robot as a teammate, even giving it a name, workers resisted the technology because they didn’t trust the implementation process or see clear personal benefits.

These patterns hold across industries and countries: When workers perceive their employer as invested in their development and well-being, automation initiatives succeed. When that foundation is missing, even the most sophisticated technologies falter.

Four Steps to Convert Resistors to Champions

Whether it’s for the factory floor or the office laptop, if you want ROI and revenue growth from your automation investments, start with your people:

  1. Design roles that connect workers to outcomes: When people see how their input shapes results, they become natural technology allies.
  2. Create visible growth pathways. Workers motivated by career advancement are significantly more likely to embrace new technologies.
  3. Align financial incentives with implementation goals. When workers see the personal benefits of adoption, resistance evaporates faster than free donuts in the break room.
  4. Make safety improvements the leading edge of your technology story. It’s the most universally appreciated benefit of automation.

A Provocative Challenge

Ask yourself this (potentially) uncomfortable question: Are you investing as much in trust as you are in technology?

Because if not, you might as well set fire to a portion of your automation budget right now. At least you’d get some heat from it.

The choice isn’t between technology and workers—it’s between implementations that honor human relationships and those that don’t. The former generates returns; the latter generates résumé updates.

What are you choosing?

Image credit: misterinnovation.com (1 of 850+ free quote slides for download)

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Your Innovation Team Doesn’t Have to be Dead

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Your Innovation Team Doesn't Have to be Dead

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

When times get tough, the first things most companies cut are the “luxuries.”  That includes their innovation teams.  But as companies dismantle their labs, teams, and other structures, a crucial question emerges: Who’s working on growth?

Cutting innovation teams doesn’t just cut a branch off the org chart, it eliminates capabilities that are fundamental to sustaining and growing a business and culture.

So why throw the baby out with the bathwater? Here’s a scenario that might sound familiar: Your innovation team created something brilliant. The prototype works, early users love it, and the business case is solid. But six months later, its gathering dust because no one in the core business knew how to – or wanted to – take it forward.

This isn’t a failure of innovation. It’s a failure of integration.

Wait, I thought integrating innovation with the core business was bad

The traditional innovation team structure – a separate unit with its own space, processes, and culture – solved one problem but created another.

As innovation teams were given the freedom to think differently, they were also given shiny, new, fun, and amenity filled spaces cordoned off from everyone else.  Meanwhile, “everyone else” was stuck in their usual offices and doing the usual things that keep the business running and, apparently, fund the innovation team’s luxe life.

The resulting Us vs. Them mentality fueled resentment that made it easy for “everyone else” to stonewall the innovation team’s efforts by pointing out flaws, uncertainties, and risks.

To be fair, they weren’t doing this to be mean – they were protecting the business.  The innovators, meanwhile, grew frustrated, sought help from higher-ups who were happy to help until times got tough and cuts had to be made.

So, one team should work on both innovation and the core business?

Just like we need multiple words to describe the what and why of innovation, we need different operating models that embed innovation capabilities across the organization while protecting the space for them to flourish.

Here’s what it looks like:

  • For Core Improvements: Let your operational teams lead. They know the problems best, but give them innovation tools and methods. Think of it as equipping your existing workforce with new superpowers, not replacing them with superheroes.
  • For Adjacent Expansions: Create hybrid teams that mix operational experience with innovation expertise. When expanding into new markets or launching new products, you need both the innovative mindset and the operational know-how. Neither alone is sufficient.
  • For Radical Reinvention: You still need dedicated teams – but not isolated ones. Their job is to create offerings that reinvent the company and the culture that enables everyone to be part of the reinvention. Establish bridges that connect them with business units and enforce quarterly meetings to share progress, insights, and tools.

This isn’t theory.

Companies like Amazon have been doing this for years with their “working backwards” innovation process that’s used by all teams, not just a special innovation unit. When I worked at P&G, the brand teams worked on core improvements, the New Business Development teams (where I worked) physically sat next to the brand teams and worked on Adjacent expansion, and the radical reinvention teams were co-located with R&D at the technical centers.

Put it into practice

Here’s where to start:

  • Map your innovation portfolio to understand what types of innovation you need to hit your goals
  • Match your team structures to your innovation types
  • Start embedding innovation capabilities across the organization
  • Create clear paths for innovations to move from idea to implementation

The transition isn’t easy. It requires rethinking roles and reimagining how innovation happens in your organization. But the alternative – watching your innovation investments evaporate because they can’t cross the bridge back to the core business – is far more painful.

What’s your experience? Drop your stories and strategies in the comments. Let’s figure this out together.

Image credit: Pexels

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When Best Practices Become Old Practices

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When Best Practices Become Old Practices

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

When best practices get old, they turn into ruts of old practice. No, it doesn’t make sense to keep doing it this way, but we’ve done it this way in the past, we’ve been successful, and we’re going to do it like we did last time. You can misuse old practices long after they’ve withered into decrepit practices, but, ultimately, your best practices will turn into old practices and run out of gas. And then what?

It’s unskillful to wait until the wheels fall off before demonstrating a new practice – a new practice is a practice that you’ve not done before – but that’s what we mostly do. There’s immense pressure to do what we did last time because we know how it turned out last time. But when the environment around a process changes, there’s no guarantee that the output of the old process will adequately address the changing environment. What worked last time will work next time, until it doesn’t.

But there’s another reason why we don’t try new practices. We’ve never taught people how to do it. Here are some thoughts on how to try new practices.

  • If you think the work can be done a better way, try a new practice, then decide if it was better. If the new practice was better, do it that way until you come up with an even better practice. Rinse and repeat.
  • Don’t ask, just try the new practice.
  • When you try a new practice, do it in a way that is safe to fail. (Thanks to Dave Snowden for that language.) Like before you use a new cleaning product to remove a stain on your best sweater, test the new practice in a way that won’t ruin your sweater.
  • If someone asks you to use the old practice instead of trying the new practice, ask them to do it the old way and you do it the new way.
  • If that someone is your boss, tell them you’re happy to do WHAT they want but you want to be the one that decides HOW to do it.
  • If your boss still wants you to follow the old practice, do it the old way, do it the new way, and look for a new job because your boss isn’t worth working for.

Just because best practices were best last time, doesn’t mean they’re good practice this time.

Image credits: Pixabay

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Is it Time to ReLearn to Work?

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Is it Time to ReLearn to Work?

GUEST POST from Geoffrey A. Moore

In white-collar industries where remote work is not only viable but often highly productive, we are still struggling to find a post-pandemic formula for integrating office attendance into our weekly routine. Continuing to waffle, however, does no one any good, so we need to get on with things. Part of what has been holding us back is that we have been talking about getting back to the office as an end. It is not. It is a means. The question it begs is, what is the end we have in mind? Why should we get back to the office?

Let’s start by eliminating one reason which gets frequent mention—we can manage better. This is not a good why. Supervision is an artifact of a prior era. Digitally enabled work logs itself, and we can hold each other accountable for all our KPIs, OKRs, and MBOs without having to be collocated. Managers may feel more in control with people in sight, but that is a poor return on the overall commute investment entailed.

A far better reason to return to the office is to reactivate learning. The biggest problem with remote work is that we do not learn. Specifically, we do not:

  • Learn anything new about ourselves, because we need the input of others to do so.
  • Learn new soft skills, because online courses don’t cut it.
  • Learn about our teammates, because video calls lack the needed intimacy.
  • Learn about our customers, because we need to go to their offices to do so (going to our offices would at least let us share the ride)
  • Learn about the current state of our company, because that kind of thing never gets published.

In short, just as our children experienced a learning gap at school, so we inherit the same dynamics with remote work. We consume the skills we have, but we do not develop the ones we need next. We are harvesting, but we are not seeding, and there will be a reckoning if we do not alter our course.

So, there is a good why for returning to the office, but that in turn begs the question of how? Here we need to be clear. We do not know how. We do not know what is the right formula. Unfortunately, waiting won’t help either, so now what?

Let me suggest that the best course of action is to implement a clear policy effective immediately with the following provisos.

  1. We publicly acknowledge that we suspect this policy is wrong.
  2. We are putting it in place for 90 days.
  3. We want everyone to abide by it religiously so that we get the right signals.
  4. We will review the policy publicly and transparently after 90 days and implement a new policy at that time.
  5. We will put that policy in place for 90 days, following the same protocols as before.
  6. We will rinse and repeat until no longer necessary.

The point is, we have to get on with getting on, and running the experiment is the fastest way to get there.

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

Image Credit: Pixabay

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