Category Archives: Management

Innovation, Leadership and Productive Conflict

Five Questions to Laura Weiss

Innovation, Leadership and Productive Conflict

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

You need friction to create fire. It’s true whether you’re camping or leading change inside an organization. Yet most of us avoid conflict—we ignore it, smooth it over, or sideline the people who spark it.

I’ve been guilty of that too, which is why I was eager to sit down with Laura Weiss, founder of Design Diplomacy, former architect and IDEO partner, university educator, and professional mediator, to explore why conflict isn’t the enemy of innovation, but one of its essential ingredients.

Our conversation wasn’t about frameworks or facilitation tricks. It was about something deeper: how leaders can unlearn their fear of conflict, lean into discomfort, and use it to build trust, fuel learning, and drive meaningful change.

So if conflict feels like a threat to alignment and progress, this conversation will show you why embracing it is the real leadership move.

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Robyn Bolton: What’s the one piece of conventional wisdom about change that organizations need to unlearn?

Laura Weiss: The belief that change is event-driven. It’s not, except for seismic shifts like the Great Recession, the COVID-19 pandemic, 9/11, and October 7. It’s happening all the time! As a result, leading change should be seen as a continuous endeavor that prepares the organization to be agile when unforeseen events occur.

RB: Wow, that is capital-T True! What is driving this misperception?

LW: It’s been said that ‘managers deal with complexity, but leaders deal with change’. So, it all comes down to leadership. However, the prevailing belief is that a “leader” is the person who has risen to the top of the organization and has all the answers.

In many design professions, those who are promoted to leadership roles are exceptional at their craft. But evolving from an ‘individual contributor’ to leading others involves skills that can seem contrary to our beliefs about leadership. One is humility – the capability to say “I don’t know” without feeling exposed as a fraud, especially in professions where being a “subject matter expert” is expected. Being humble presents the leader as human, which leads to another skill: connecting with others as humans before attempting to ‘lead’ them. I particularly like Edgar Schein’s relationship-driven leadership philosophy as opposed to ‘transactional’ leadership, where your role relative to others dictates how you interact.

RB: From your experience, how can we unlearn this and lead differently?

LW: Leaders need to do three things:

Be self-aware. After becoming a certified coach, it became clear to me that all leadership begins with understanding oneself. If you’re unaware of how you operate in the world, you certainly can’t lead others effectively.
Be agile. Machiavelli famously asked: “Is it better to be loved or feared…?” Being a leader requires the ability to do both, operating along the ‘warmth-strength’ continuum, starting with warmth. There are six leadership styles a leader should be familiar with, in the same way that golfers know which golf club to use for a particular situation.
Evolve. This means feedback – being willing to ask for it and receive it. Many senior leaders stop receiving feedback as they progress in their careers. But times change, and ‘what got you here won’t get you there.’ Holding up a mirror to very senior leaders who have rarely, if ever, received feedback, or have received it but didn’t really “get it,” is critical if they are to change with the times and the needs of their organization.

RB: Amen! I’m starting to sense a connection between leadership, innovation, and change, but before I make assumptions, what do you see?

LW: First, I want to acknowledge the thesis of your book that “innovation isn’t an idea problem, it’s a leadership problem” – 1000% agree with that!

One of the reasons I shifted from being an architect to focusing on the broader world of innovation was that I was curious about why some innovation initiatives were successful and some were not. Specifically, I was curious about the role of conflict in the creative problem-solving process because conflict is critical to bringing innovation and change to life. Yet, it’s not something most of us are naturally good at – in fact, our brain is designed to avoid it!

The biggest myth about conflict is that it erodes trust and undermines relationships. The opposite is true – when handled well, productive conflict strengthens relationships and leads to better outcomes for organizations navigating change.

Just as with innovation, the organizations that are most successful with change are the ones that consistently use productive conflict as an enabler of change.

To achieve this, organizations must shift from a reactive stance to a proactive one and become more “discovery-driven”. This means practicing iterative prototyping and learning their way forward. In my mind, innovation is a form of structured learning that yields something new with value.

RB: What role does communication play in leadership and conflict?

LW: Conflict is an inevitable part of the human experience because it reflects the tension between the status quo and something else that’s trying to emerge. It can appear even in the process of solving daily problems, so the ability to deal productively with conflict, from simple misunderstandings to seemingly intractable differences, is crucial.

The source code for effective conflict engagement is effective conversations.

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The real challenge in leadership isn’t preventing conflict—it’s recognizing that conflict is already happening and choosing to engage with it productively through conversation

This conversation with Laura reminded me that innovation and change don’t just thrive on new ideas. They require leaders who are self-aware enough to listen, humble enough to ask for feedback, and courageous enough to stay in the tension long enough for something better to emerge.

Image credit: Unsplash, Laura Weiss

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Transform Your Innovation Approach with One Word

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Transform Your Innovation Approach with One Word

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Have you heard any of these sentences recently?

“We don’t have time”

“Our people don’t have the skills”

“We don’t have the budget”

“That’s not what we do”

I hear them all the time.

Sometimes they’re said when a company is starting to invest in building their innovation capabilities, sometimes during one-on-one stakeholder interviews when people feel freer to share their honest opinions, and sometimes well after investments are made.

Every single time, they are the beginning of the end for innovation.

But one word that can change that.

“We don’t have time – yet.”

“Our people don’t have the skills – yet.”

“We don’t have the budget – yet.”

“That’s not what we do – yet.”

Yet.

Yet creates space for change. It acknowledges that you’re in the middle of a journey, not the end. It encourages conversation.

“We don’t have time – yet.”

“OK, I know the team is busy and that what they’re working on is important. Let’s look at what people are working on and see if there are things we can delay or stop to create room for this.”

“Our people don’t have the skills – yet.”

“Understand, we’re all building new skills when it comes to innovation. Good news, skills can be learned. Let’s discuss what we need to teach people and the best way to do that.”

“We don’t have the budget – yet.”

“I get it. Things are tight. We know this is a priority so let’s look at the budget and see if there’s a way to free up some cash. If there’s not, then we’ll go back to leadership and ask for guidance.”

“That’s not what we do – yet.”

“I know. Remember, we’re not doing this on a whim, we’re doing this because (fill in reason), and we have a right to do it because of (fill in past success, current strength, or competitive advantage.”

You need to introduce the Yet.

It is very rare for people to add “yet” to their statements. But you can.

When someone utters an innovation-killing statement, respond with “Yet.” Maybe smile mischievously and then repeat their statement with “yet” added to the end.

After all, you’re not disagreeing with them. You’re simply qualifying what they’re saying. Their statement is true now, but that doesn’t mean it will be true forever. By restating their assertion and adding “yet,” you’re inviting them to be part of the change, to take an active role in creating the new future state.

There’s a tremendous amount of research about the massive impact of this little word. It helps underperforming students overachieve and is closely associated with Dr. Carol Dweck’s research into fixed and learning mindsets.

The bottom line is that “yet” works.

Put Yet to work for you, your organization, and your efforts to innovate and grow.

Image credit: Unsplash

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Building Innovation Momentum Without the Struggle

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Five Questions for Tendayi Viki

Building Innovation Momentum Without the Struggle

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Innovation efforts get stuck long before they scale because innovation isn’t an idea problem. It’s a leadership problem. And one of those problems is that leaders are expected to spark transformation, without rocking the boat.

I’ve spent my career in corporate innovation (and wrote a book about it), so I was thrilled to sit down with Tendayi Viki, author of Pirates in the Navy and one of the most thoughtful voices on corporate innovation.

Our conversation didn’t follow the usual playbook about frameworks and metrics. Instead, it surfaced something deeper: how small wins, earned trust, and emotional intelligence quietly power real change.

If you’re tasked with driving innovation inside a large organization—or supporting the people who are—this conversation will challenge what you think it takes to succeed.

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Robyn Bolton (RB): You work with a lot of corporate leaders. What’s one piece of conventional wisdom they need to unlearn about innovation?

Tendayi Viki (TV): That you need to start with a big bang. That transformation only works if it launches with maximum support and visibility from day one.

But we don’t think that way about launching new products. We talk about starting with early adopters. Steve Blank even outlines five traits of early evangelists: they know they have the problem, they care about solving it, they’re actively searching for a solution, they’ve tried to fix it themselves, and they have budget. That’s where momentum comes from.

But in corporate settings, I see leaders trying to roll out transformation as if it is a company-wide software update. I once worked with someone in South Africa who was introduced as the new head of innovation at a big all-hands event. He told me later, “I wish I hadn’t started with such a big bang. It created resentment—I hadn’t even built a track record yet.”

Instead of struggling and pushing change on people, I try to help leaders build momentum. Think of it like a flywheel. You start slow, with the right people, at the right points of leverage. You work with early adopter leaders, tell stories about their wins, invite others to join. Soon, you’re not persuading anyone—you’ve got movement.

RB: Have you seen that kind of momentum work in practice?

TV: A few great examples stand out.

Claudia Kotchka at P&G didn’t go around talking about design thinking when she started. She picked a struggling brand and applied the tools there. Once that project succeeded, people paid attention. More leaders asked for help. That success did the selling.

And there’s a story from Samsung that stuck with me. A transformation team was tasked with leading “big innovation,” but they didn’t start by preaching theory. They said, “Let’s help senior leaders solve the problems they’re dealing with right now.” Not future-state stuff—just practical challenges. They built credibility by delivering value, not running roadshows.

If you can’t find early adopters, then take one step back. Solve someone’s actual problem. People are always fans of solving their own problems.

RB: When you think about leaders who are good at building momentum, what qualities or mindsets do they tend to have?

TV: Patience is huge. This stuff takes time. And you have to set expectations with the people who gave you the mandate: “It’s not going to look like much at first—but it’s working.”

And I think you can measure momentum. Not just adoption metrics, but something simpler: how many people are coming to you without you pushing them? That’s real traction. You don’t have to chase them. They’re curious. They’ve seen the early wins.

Another big one is humility. You’ve got to respect the people who resist you. That doesn’t mean agreeing with them, but it means understanding. Maybe they need to see social proof. Maybe they’re waiting for cover from another leader. Maybe they’re not comfortable standing out.

None of that means they’re wrong. It just means they’re human. So work with the confident few first and bring in the rest when they’re ready.

RB: Have you always approached resistance that way?

TV: Oh no—I learned that one the hard way.

Early in my career, I was running a workshop at Pearson. I was beating up on this publishing group about how they’re going to get killed by digital, and they were arguing. It was a really difficult conversation, and I was convinced I was right and they were wrong.

Afterward, one of the leaders pulled me aside and said, “I don’t disagree with what you said. I think you’re right. But I didn’t like how you made us feel.”

And that was the moment. They weren’t resisting because of the content. They were reacting to how I delivered it. I made them feel stupid, even if I didn’t mean to. And their only move was to push back.

It took me years to absorb that lesson. But now I never forget: if people are resisting, check the emotional tone before you check the content.

RB: Last question. What is one thing you’d like to say to corporate leaders trying to drive innovation?

TV: Just chill!

Seriously. There’s so much *efforting* in corporate transformation. All the chasing, tracking, nudging, following up. “Have they responded to the email? Did you call them?” All that pressure to push, to prove.

But it reminds me of this Malcolm Gladwell podcast, Relax and Win, about San Jose State sprinters. Their coach taught them that to run their fastest, they had to stay relaxed. When you tense up, you actually slow down.

Innovation works the same way. Don’t force it. Build momentum. Let it grow. And trust it once it’s moving.

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The real challenge in corporate innovation isn’t convincing people that change is needed—it’s helping them feel safe enough to join you.

This conversation with Tendayi reminded me that the most effective innovation leaders don’t lead with pressure or pitch decks. They lead with patience, empathy, and small wins that build momentum.

Image credit: Pexels, Tendayi Viki (via LinkedIn)

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Three Real Business Threats (and How to Solve Them)

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“The Call is Coming from Inside the House”

Three Real Business Threats (and How to Solve Them)

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

“The call is coming from inside the house” is one of those classic quotes that crossed over from urban legend and horror movies to become a common pop-culture phrase. While originally a warning to teenage babysitters, recent research indicates that it’s also a warning to corporate execs that murderous business threats are closer than they think.

In the early weeks of 2025, Box of Crayons, a Toronto-based learning and development company, partnered with The Harris Poll to survey over 1500 business leaders and knowledge workers to diagnose and understand the greatest challenges facing organizations.

They found that “while there is a tendency to focus on external pressures like economic uncertainty, technological disruptions, and labor market issues, our research shows the most critical challenges are unfolding within the workplace itself.”

The threat is coming from inside your house.

Here’s what they found and what you can do about it

Nearly one (1) day each workweek “is lost to the fear of making mistakes.”

Fear is at the core of all the issues making headlines – burnout, disengagement, lost productivity. It “breeds doubt, prompting individuals to question themselves and others, instigating anxiety, hindering productivity, and promoting blame instead of teamwork.”

Fear is also a virus, spreading rapidly from one person to their team members and on and on until it infects the entire organization, embedding itself in the culture.

Executives and managers are key to breaking the cycle of fear that kills innovation, initiative, and growth. By reframing mistakes and learnings, rewarding smart risks even if they result in unexpected outcomes, and role-modeling behaviors that encourage trust and psychological safety, their daily and consistent actions can encourage bravery and remaking the culture.

70% of people don’t see value in listening to people they disagree with.

Unless you’re employed by Lumon Industries, it’s impossible to be a completely different person at work compared to who you are outside of work. So, it should come as no surprise that most people no longer listen to opinions, perspectives, or evidence with which they disagree.

The problem is that different perspectives and experiences are essential to elements of the problem-solving process. Without them, we cannot learn, develop new solutions, and innovate.

Again, executives and managers play a critical role in helping to surface diverse points of view and helping employees to engage in “productive conflict.” Rather than rushing to “consensus” or rapidly making a decision, by expressing curiosity and asking questions, people-leaders create space for new points of view and role model how to encourage and use it.

87% of leaders lack the skills needed to adapt. 64% say funding to build those skills has been cut.

Business leaders are fully aware of the changes happening within their teams, organizations, and the broader world. They recognize the need to constantly adapt, learn, and develop the skills required to respond to these changes. They can even articulate what they need help with, why, and how it will benefit the team or organization.

But leadership training is often one of the first items to be cut, leaving new and experienced people-leaders “ill-equipped to manage the increasing complexity of today’s workplace, stifling their ability to inspire, guide, and support their teams effectively.”

The solution is simple – invest in people. Given the acute need for support and training, forget big programs, multi-day offsites, and centralized learning agendas. Talk to the people asking for help to understand what they want and need and how they learn best. Share what you can do right now with the resources you have and engage them in creating a plan that helps them within the constraints of the current context.

Answer the phone

Just like that terrifying movie moment, the call threatening your business isn’t coming from mysterious outside forces—it’s echoing through your own hallways. The good news? Unlike those helpless babysitters in horror films, you can change the ending by confronting these internal threats head-on.

What internal “call” is your organization ignoring that deserves immediate attention?

Image credit: Unsplash

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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.

One is stay in your lane. Most people struggle with a drink, food or soap powder having a political or social opinion.
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.
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:

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.
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).
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.
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.
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:

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.
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.
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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