Live from the Innovation Studio comes EPISODE FOUR of a new ‘Ask the Consultant’ series of short form videos. EPISODE FOUR tackles a question I’m asked so frequently that I wrote a book to answer it:
“What is the best way to create successful change?”
Hint: It starts with getting a copy of Charting Change because I introduce in the book several key frameworks that lay the groundwork for successful change that are built upon in the Change Planning Toolkit™.
The pace of change is accelerating and organizations need to become more agile and more capable of continuous change. This presents a huge challenge for most organizations.
Together in this episode we’ll explore some of the core building blocks to creating successful change in your organization, and a discuss what else is in Charting Change and the Change Planning Toolkit™, and how this particular book can make a great course book for change management courses at universities, executive education, and corporate training programs.
Many of the tools in the optional Change Planning Toolkit™ will look familiar to change management professionals because they have been informed by the ACMP’s Standard for Change Management and the PMI’s PMBOK.
“Does the change you’re proposing inspire fear or curiosity? Fear steals energy from change; curiosity fuels it.”— Braden Kelley
Grab your copy of Charting Change on Amazon while they last!
What question should I tackle in the next video episode of “Ask the Consultant” live from my innovation studio?
Despite already investing more than one million dollars in the new intellectual property included in the Change Planning Toolkit™, I will continue to take your feedback and invest in creating new tools that make the toolkit even more valuable for everyone.
Today I’m excited to announce the Change Planning Toolkit™ v10 which includes a new tool for:
Leveraging the Eight Change Mindsets in your Communications Strategy Planning (including messaging, symbols, and artifacts)
The Change Planning Canvas™ and the more than 60 tools in the toolkit will help make your change planning efforts more visual and collaborative, and enable you to get everyone literally all on the same page for change. The toolkit has been created to help organizations:
Beat the 70% failure rate for change programs
Quickly visualize, plan and execute change efforts
Deliver projects and change efforts on time
Accelerate implementation and adoption
Get valuable tools for a low investment
The tools easily integrate with other change methodologies like ProSci’s ADKAR, the Association of Change Management Professionals’ (ACMP) Standard, and the PMBOK used by Project Management Professionals (PMP).
If you purchased a Change Planning Toolkit™ license over a year ago, you will want to renew your license so you can:
Download the latest version
Help shape future updates to the toolkit by contacting us to request new tools
Get access to any further updates over the next year
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IMPORTANT: If you already purchased the book and are looking to access the supporting material, please contact me with your proof of purchase and I’ll send you the file.
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Learning how to use the Change Planning Toolkit™ will create great opportunities for:
Organizations to build a continuous change capability
Consulting companies to increase revenue while achieving better client outcomes
Education companies to build new organizational change course offerings
So, what are you waiting for?
Don’t endure even one more change or project failure.
Does the quickening pace of change or the accelerating pace of complexity pose a greater threat for humans and organizations?
Change can be incredibly disruptive to both humans and organizations.
So much so that I decided to create a more modern, visual, collaborative and effective set of methods and tools to help organizations beat the 70% change failure rate and better keep pace with the accelerating pace of change – the Change Planning Toolkit™ – introduced in my latest book Charting Change.
In the book I highlight that the pace of change is accelerating, and use the increasing rate of change in the S&P 500’s membership as a proof point:
Another proof point is the fact that all of our high technology has been developed in roughly the last 100 years.
There can be no doubt that the pace of change and disruption is quickening.
But how much of the accelerating disruption that we see can be attributed to what I see as an increasing pace of complexity?
If anyone doubts that we live in a time of accelerating complexity, I encourage you to check out the book The Toaster Project by Thomas Thwaites, or this TED talk given by Thomas:
I find this video quite frightening because it highlights how fragile our high-technology society is, and how much we need each other.
If a single person can’t make the simplest of electrical appliances by themselves, even over the course of a year, then imagine the complexity that organizations must manage to make even more complicated products.
Imagine the challenge of making changes to our organizations after we’ve optimized things to successfully manage this complexity.
If both complexity and change are accelerating, how can we cope?
Here are four key ways to better manage complexity and change:
Choose carefully which complexity to inflict upon the organization
Learn how to architect the organization for continuous change
Continuously evaluate your organization’s trade-offs between flexibility and fixedness
Leverage the modern, visual, and collaborative tools from the Change Planning Toolkit™ that are easily adapted to our new virtual work environment
Grab the ten free tools from the Change Planning Toolkit™ before purchasing a license so you can keep these three key frameworks front and center as you plan a more modular and conscious approach to managing the growing complexity in your organization:
PCC Change Readiness Framework
Organizational Agility Framework
Architecting the Organization for Continuous Change
Despite already investing more than one million dollars in the new intellectual property included in the Change Planning Toolkit™, I will continue to take your feedback and invest in creating new tools that make the toolkit even more valuable for everyone.
Today I’m excited to announce the Change Planning Toolkit™ v9 which includes new tools for:
Mapping of Stakeholder Teams and Individuals
Stakeholder Engagement Mapping
The Change Planning Canvas™ and the more than 50 tools in the toolkit will help make your change planning efforts more visual and collaborative, and enable you to get everyone literally all on the same page for change. The toolkit has been created to help organizations:
Beat the 70% failure rate for change programs
Quickly visualize, plan and execute change efforts
If you purchased a Change Planning Toolkit™ license over a year ago, you will want to renew your license so you can:
Download the latest version
Help shape future updates to the toolkit by contacting us to request new tools
Get access to any further updates over the next year
—————————————————————————————-
IMPORTANT: If you already purchased the book and are looking to access the supporting material, please contact me with your proof of purchase and I’ll send you the file.
—————————————————————————————-
Learning how to use the Change Planning Toolkit™ will create great opportunities for:
Organizations to build a continuous change capability
Consulting companies to increase revenue while achieving better client outcomes
Education companies to build new organizational change course offerings
So, what are you waiting for?
Don’t endure even one more change or project failure.
Change is inevitable in today’s fast-paced business world, and organizations that can effectively manage and implement change are the ones that thrive. However, managing change can be complex and challenging, as it requires careful planning, communication, and employee involvement. To navigate successfully through change, businesses need to develop a robust change management framework. This article will provide insights into building such a framework using real-world case study examples.
Case Study 1: Procter & Gamble (P&G)
Procter & Gamble, a multinational consumer goods company, embarked on a significant restructuring initiative to streamline its product portfolio. The company aimed to focus on its core brands and divest underperforming units. However, implementing such a transformation required the buy-in and commitment of its employees.
P&G developed a change management framework comprising four key stages. Firstly, they initiated the change by articulating a clear vision and purpose for the restructuring, emphasizing the long-term benefits for the company and its employees. The second stage involved assessing the organization’s readiness for change, identifying potential barriers, and creating a detailed plan to address them.
Next, P&G prioritized communication and involvement throughout the transformation process. They ensured that all employees understood the rationale behind the change, the role they would play, and the benefits they could expect. This transparent and inclusive approach fostered collaboration and reduced resistance.
Finally, P&G focused on sustaining the change by continuously monitoring progress, celebrating milestones, and adapting the strategy as needed. By following this change management framework, P&G successfully navigated its restructuring, improving operational efficiency and strengthening its competitive position.
Case Study 2: Microsoft
Microsoft, the technology giant, witnessed a significant transformation under the leadership of Satya Nadella. One of the key initiatives undertaken was moving from a traditional product-centric approach to a cloud-first and mobile-first strategy. This shift required a cultural change within the organization and a new mindset among its employees.
Microsoft’s change management framework focused on developing a growth mindset by promoting learning, experimentation, and collaboration. They encouraged employees to embrace new technologies and methodologies by providing training, resources, and a supportive environment. This framework fostered innovation and agility, enabling Microsoft to adapt to market changes and launch successful cloud-based services such as Microsoft Azure and Office 365.
Additionally, Microsoft focused on building a sense of purpose and shared values among its employees. They empowered individuals to take ownership of their work and encouraged autonomy, leading to increased engagement and motivation. By implementing this change management framework, Microsoft successfully shifted its business strategy and achieved substantial growth.
Key Takeaways for Developing a Change Management Framework
These case studies highlight the essential components of a change management framework:
1. Articulate a clear vision and purpose for change: Ensure that all employees understand the rationale behind the change and the benefits it will bring to the organization.
2. Assess readiness and address barriers: Identify potential obstacles, develop a comprehensive plan to mitigate them, and create opportunities for employee feedback and involvement.
3. Foster communication and involvement: Establish open channels for communication, encourage feedback, and involve employees in the change process to reduce resistance and build a sense of ownership.
4. Prioritize sustainability: Continuously monitor progress, celebrate milestones, and adapt the change strategy as needed to sustain transformation.
By developing a robust change management framework and leveraging insights from real-world case studies like P&G and Microsoft, businesses can navigate change successfully, maximize employee engagement, and thrive in an ever-evolving marketplace.
SPECIAL BONUS: Braden Kelley’s Human-Centered Change methodology and its associated Change Planning Toolkit™ goes beyond ProSci’s ADKAR, the Association of Change Management Professionals’ (ACMP) Standard, and the PMBOK used by Project Management Professionals (PMP) but is designed to be consistent with them. You can get ten (10) FREE tools from the 70+ tools and frameworks in the Change Planning Toolkit™ here, along with more information about the Human-Centered Change methodology and Braden’s book Charting Change. Book buyers get access to even more tools, including the Change Planning Canvas™.
Image credit: Pexels
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You can either get the eBook with INSTANT DOWNLOAD or the hardcover with FREE SHIPPING – It’s your choice!
IMPORTANT CAVEAT: According to the email, this deal ends December 3, 2019
Here is a blurb about the book from the web site to give you a sense of the value it will deliver to your organization:
Research shows that up to seventy percent of all change initiatives fail. Let’s face it, change is hard, as is getting an organization on board and working through the process. One thing that has been known to be effective is onboarding teams not only to understand this change, but to see the process and the progress of institutional change. Charting Change will help teams and companies visualize this complicated process. Kelley has developed the Change Planning Canvas™, which enables leadership and project teams to easily discuss the variable that will influence the change effort and organize them in a collaborative and visual way. It will help managers build a cohesive approach that can be more easily embraced by employees who are charged with the actual implementation of change. This book will teach readers how to use this visual toolkit to build a common language and vision for implementing change.
Here are the links for you again to take advantage of this offer ending December 3, 2019:
SPECIAL BONUS: Anyone who buys a copy of the book will get FOR FREE 26 of the 50+ tools in the Change Planning Toolkit™ – INCLUDING a copy of the Change Planning Canvas™
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If $9.99 is still too much of a barrier to break through to accelerate your change capability, then go ahead and grab the 10 free tools, including a visualization of the Association of Change Management Professionals (ACMP) Standard for Change Management® and my popular & powerful collaborative Visual Project Charter™.
What People Are Saying
“There’s no denying it: Change is scary. But it’s also inevitable. In Charting Change, Braden Kelley gives you a toolkit and a blueprint for initiating and managing change in your organization, no matter what form it takes.”
– Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive and To Sell is Human
“Thoughtful, thorough, and practical is the rare blend that Braden has achieved in this Change Management field guide. Much more than a series of tactics, Charting Change will explicitly, sequentially, and visually help users create a diverse set of experiences for stakeholders that will most certainly increase likelihood of success.”
– Eric D. Hieger, Psy.D., Business Transformation and Change Leadership Practice Lead at ADP
“Braden Kelley and his merry band of guest experts have done a nice job of visualizing in Charting Change how to make future change efforts more collaborative. Kelley shows how to draw out the hidden assumptions and land mines early in the change planning process, and presents some great techniques for keeping people aligned as a change effort or project moves forward.”
– Phil McKinney, retired CTO for Hewlett-Packard and author of Beyond the Obvious
“As the pace of change speeds up, the market disruptions and resulting changes can be daunting for all. We all wish we could predict how change will affect our business, our market and our people. No matter what business area you come from, change affects us all and can produce great outcomes when managed well. In Braden Kelley’s newest book, Charting Change, he provides a terrific toolkit to manage this process and make it stick.”
“Higher employee retention? Increased revenue? Process enhancements? Whatever your change goal, Charting Change is full of bright ideas and invaluable visual guides to walk you through change in any area where your organization needs it.”
– Marshall Goldsmith is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Triggers, MOJO and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
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In the traditional corporate lexicon, resilience is often treated as a defensive trait—the ability to “weather the storm” or “bounce back” to a previous state of stability. But in a world defined by permanent volatility, bouncing back is no longer enough. To thrive in 2026, organizations must redefine resilience not as a recovery mechanism, but as a generative innovation capability.True resilience is the human engine of continuous adaptation. It is the proactive capacity to transform pressure into progress and friction into fuel. As a human-centered change leader, I’ve observed that the most innovative companies don’t just survive disruption; they use the shockwaves of change to crack open legacy thinking and reveal new pathways for value creation.
Moving Beyond Robustness to Anti-fragility
A bridge is robust when it resists a load. An organization is resilient when it learns from the load. When we focus purely on robustness, we build rigid structures that eventually shatter under unprecedented stress. When we focus on human-centered resilience, we empower our people to iterate in real-time.
This shift requires us to address Subjective Time Pressure. When employees feel “bullied by time,” their cognitive bandwidth shrinks, and they default to survival instincts. Innovation requires the opposite: the mental “white space” to see a crisis as a collection of data points rather than a series of threats. By designing conditions that provide temporal agency, leaders allow their teams to process change with curiosity rather than fear.
“The most valuable innovation isn’t a new product; it’s a resilient culture. Products can be copied, and technologies will be disrupted, but a team that has mastered the art of continuous adaptation is an insurmountable competitive advantage.”
— Braden Kelley
Case Studies: Resilience in Action
Case Study 1: The Supply Chain Transformation
A global electronics manufacturer faced a catastrophic disruption when a primary regional hub was taken offline by an environmental crisis. Traditional disaster recovery focused on restoring the status quo. However, the leadership team utilized my Change Planning Toolkit™ to reframe the crisis. Instead of just rebuilding, they empowered cross-functional “Agility Cells” to design a decentralized, AI-driven sourcing model. This wasn’t just recovery; it was a structural innovation. The new system was 15% more cost-effective and reduced lead times by 30%, proving that resilience is the catalyst for the next leap in operational excellence.
Case Study 2: Retail Pivot through Psychological Safety
A national retail chain saw a dramatic shift in consumer behavior that rendered their flagship store model obsolete almost overnight. Rather than implementing top-down layoffs, the CEO fostered psychological safety by launching an internal “Phoenix Initiative.” Store managers—the people closest to the customer—were given the agency to experiment with hyper-local micro-fulfillment and “service-as-an-experience” concepts. By treating their frontline staff as distributed innovators rather than mere executors, the company successfully pivoted 80% of its footprint to a high-growth hybrid model within 12 months.
Tools for Cultivating Adaptive Resilience
To turn resilience into an innovation engine, leaders need a structured approach. It isn’t enough to tell people to “be resilient.” You must provide the scaffolding for it. This involves:
The Change Planning Canvas™: Visualizing the transition to ensure everyone understands the why behind the what.
Metabolic Alignment: Ensuring the organization’s pace of decision-making matches the pace of market change.
Cognitive Slack: Intentionally protecting time for reflection and synthesis during high-stress periods.
When these tools are in place, resilience stops being an exhausting effort and starts being a natural state of flow. We stop fighting the waves and start learning how to surf them.
Resilience is the ultimate form of innovation because it is the only one that is self-sustaining. As we look toward the future of work, the winners will be those who recognize that their greatest asset isn’t their intellectual property, but the adaptive capacity of their people. By leading with empathy, providing the right visual tools, and reclaiming our agency over time, we can build organizations that are not just built to last, but built to evolve.
For years, innovation has been framed as a forward-looking activity: new ideas, new technologies, new business models. But the most overlooked truth about innovation is that it is not powered by novelty. It is powered by people who can absorb disruption, learn quickly, and adapt continuously.
Resilience is not a soft skill. It is the human engine that makes innovation sustainable over time. Without resilience, innovation becomes episodic—bursts of creativity followed by exhaustion, resistance, or collapse. With it, organizations evolve steadily, even under pressure.
As I often say, “Innovation isn’t about how fast you move when conditions are perfect; it’s about how well you adapt when they aren’t.”
Why Resilience Is the Missing Link in Innovation
Many organizations invest heavily in innovation labs, design thinking workshops, and emerging technologies, yet struggle to translate these efforts into lasting change. The issue is rarely a lack of ideas. It is a lack of human capacity to sustain change.
Resilience enables individuals and teams to stay curious under stress, to reframe setbacks as learning, and to recover quickly when experiments fail. Innovation demands repeated exposure to uncertainty. Resilience determines whether that uncertainty becomes energizing or debilitating.
When resilience is absent, organizations default to risk avoidance, short-term thinking, and defensive behavior. When resilience is present, they experiment, learn, and adapt faster than their competitors.
Case Study 3: Microsoft’s Cultural Reset
When Satya Nadella became CEO of Microsoft, the company faced a familiar innovation challenge: strong legacy products, slowing growth, and an internal culture resistant to change.
Rather than focusing first on new technologies, Nadella emphasized a shift from a “know-it-all” culture to a “learn-it-all” culture. This cultural reframing prioritized psychological safety, growth mindset, and continuous learning.
The result was a more resilient organization. Teams became more open to experimentation and failure. Collaboration improved across silos. Innovation accelerated not because people were pushed harder, but because they felt safer adapting.
Resilience turned cultural humility into a competitive advantage.
Resilience Is Built, Not Declared
Organizations often mistake resilience for grit or endurance. In reality, resilience is about recovery and renewal. It requires intentional design.
Resilient systems balance challenge with support. They create clear priorities, reduce unnecessary friction, and provide space for reflection. Leaders play a critical role by modeling learning, acknowledging uncertainty, and reinforcing progress rather than perfection.
Without these conditions, resilience degrades. Burnout replaces creativity. Innovation becomes performative instead of practical.
Case Study 4: Toyota and Continuous Improvement
Toyota’s long-standing commitment to continuous improvement offers another powerful example of resilience as innovation.
The Toyota Production System encourages employees at all levels to identify problems, stop the line if needed, and propose improvements. Mistakes are treated as signals, not failures.
This approach builds organizational resilience by embedding adaptation into daily work. Small improvements accumulate. Learning compounds. The system remains flexible even as complexity increases.
Toyota’s resilience is not reactive; it is designed into the way work gets done.
The Human Experience of Adaptation
Innovation ultimately happens inside people. Resilience is shaped by how individuals experience change: whether they feel informed or surprised, supported or isolated, empowered or constrained.
Human-centered innovation recognizes that adaptation is emotional as well as cognitive. Anxiety, fatigue, and identity threats can stall even the best ideas.
“You don’t scale innovation by demanding more from people. You scale it by removing what drains them and reinforcing what helps them adapt.”
— Braden Kelley
Resilience as a Strategic Capability
Organizations that treat resilience as a strategic capability outperform those that treat it as a personal responsibility. They invest in leadership development, clarity of purpose, and systems that reinforce learning.
They understand that the pace of change will not slow, and that resilience is the only sustainable response.
Innovation, in this light, becomes less about disruption and more about evolution. Less about heroic breakthroughs and more about consistent progress.
Innovation is often portrayed as a moment—a breakthrough idea, a disruptive product, a bold strategic move. But in reality, innovation is a long game played under conditions of uncertainty, pressure, and constant change. The organizations that win are not simply the most creative. They are the most resilient.
Resilience is the hidden infrastructure of innovation. It is the capacity that allows people, teams, and systems to absorb disruption, learn quickly, and keep moving forward without losing coherence or energy.
As I often say, “Innovation doesn’t start with ideas. It starts with the human capacity to adapt when the old answers stop working.”
Why Innovation Breaks Without Resilience
Most innovation efforts fail not because the idea was wrong, but because the organization could not sustain the journey. Uncertainty creates stress. Stress narrows thinking. Narrow thinking kills experimentation.
Resilience interrupts this cycle. It allows people to stay open when outcomes are unclear and to reframe setbacks as feedback rather than failure.
Without resilience, organizations retreat to what feels safe. With it, they move toward what is necessary.
Case Study 3: Microsoft and the Power of Learning
Microsoft’s resurgence under Satya Nadella is a powerful example of resilience driving innovation.
Nadella recognized that technical excellence alone was not enough. The organization needed to become more adaptable. By emphasizing growth mindset, collaboration, and empathy, Microsoft rebuilt its cultural foundation.
Teams became more willing to experiment, more open to feedback, and less defensive about legacy success. This cultural resilience enabled innovation across cloud computing, AI, and enterprise services.
Innovation followed resilience, not the other way around.
Designing for Human Recovery
Resilience is often misunderstood as toughness. In practice, it is about recovery. Resilient organizations create space to pause, reflect, and learn.
They limit initiative overload. They clarify priorities. They normalize saying “we don’t know yet.” These behaviors reduce cognitive strain and preserve creative energy.
“People don’t resist change because they hate progress. They resist it because they’re exhausted.”
— Braden Kelley
Case Study 4: Toyota and Embedded Adaptation
Toyota’s approach to continuous improvement demonstrates how resilience can be embedded into daily work.
Employees are encouraged to surface problems early, test small improvements, and share learning openly. This creates a system that adapts constantly rather than episodically.
The organization does not rely on heroic change initiatives. It evolves continuously.
Resilience as a Leadership Responsibility
Resilience is not an individual burden. It is a leadership responsibility.
Leaders shape resilience through clarity, consistency, and compassion. They influence whether people feel safe experimenting or afraid of being wrong.
When leaders reward learning instead of just outcomes, resilience grows. When they model adaptability, others follow.
The Strategic Payoff
Organizations that invest in resilience outperform those that chase innovation theater. They adapt faster, recover quicker, and sustain momentum longer.
Resilience transforms innovation from a risky bet into a repeatable capability.
In an era defined by volatility, resilience is not optional. It is the price of admission.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does Braden Kelley define resilience in an innovation context?
Braden Kelley defines resilience not as bouncing back to the status quo, but as a generative capability where the organization uses change and disruption as a stimulus for continuous adaptation and new value creation.
Why is psychological safety important for organizational resilience?
Psychological safety allows employees to take the risks necessary for adaptation. Without it, fear of failure leads to rigid thinking and resistance to change, which are the opposites of a resilient, innovative culture.
What role do visual tools play in resilience?
Visual tools like the Change Planning Canvas™ provide clarity and alignment during periods of chaos. They help teams externalize complex problems, reducing cognitive load and allowing for faster, more collaborative decision-making.
Image credits: ChatGPT
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Some of the smartest people and organizations in the world are learning how to use the Change Planning Toolkit™ to change how they plan and execute change and to undertake the transformation work necessary to thrive in the experience economy. Who wouldn’t want to beat the 70% change failure rate?
It’s super easy to get started with the Change Planning Toolkit™.
But, before I tell you WHERE to start, let’s start with WHY…
Top 10 Benefits of the Change Planning Toolkit™
Transparency
Alignment
Engagement
Collaboration
Accountability
Speed
Agility
Adoption
On-Time Delivery
On-Budget Delivery
There are lots of great ways to get started with the Change Planning Toolkit™. Personally I would start by getting a copy of my latest book Charting Change because it was written the toolkit in mind AND because book buyers can get access to 26 of the 50+ tools in the toolkit when they contact me. This includes the powerful Change Planning Canvas™, the keystone designed to sit at the center of all of the other tools and keep everything on track.
Not ready to commit to reading the book?
Then, go ahead and get comfortable for free with some of the frameworks, tools and this more visual, collaborative and kinesthetic way of working by downloading the 10 free change tools, which include a combination of frameworks from the book and powerful tools like:
I’ve invested decades and millions of dollars worth of time into putting this toolkit together for you (this is my 10,000 hour project for those Gladwell fans out there). The crazy part is that your annual investment in the Change Planning Toolkit™ will be less than the cost of hiring a change consultant for even 30 minutes.
You can learn more about the Change Planning Toolkit™ by checking out this short 25-minute introductory webinar.
I hope you’ll consider thinking differently about change, and I encourage you to consider about joining the change revolution at whatever starting point above that feels comfortable for you.
Innovation is the key to staying ahead in a competitive market, but making transformative change can be a challenge. Whether it’s a new product or process that needs to be implemented, or a shift in the way an organization does business, the impact of innovation must be felt throughout the organization in order to be successful. This is especially true when the change needs to be implemented at scale.
Organizations can focus on a few key strategies to ensure that adoption of innovation at scale is successful. First, ensure that the organization is well-prepared for the innovation. This includes having the right technology, infrastructure, and training in place to support the change. By investing in the proper resources upfront, the organization is more likely to be successful in implementing the change.
Second, create a culture of innovation. Encourage employees to think outside the box and take risks. This doesn’t mean that all ideas should be given a green light, but it’s important to ensure that employees feel comfortable bringing their ideas forward and that those ideas are given a fair chance to be explored.
Third, ensure that there is clear and effective communication about the innovation. Make sure that everyone in the organization is aware of what the innovation is and how it will affect them. Provide training and resources to support the change, and make sure to solicit feedback from employees to make sure the change is understood and accepted.
Finally, create systems and processes that make it easier to implement the change. This can include automating certain tasks, streamlining existing processes, and providing tools and resources to make the change easier to adopt.
Braden Kelley, author of Charting Change, offers five key findings to help organizations make change stick at scale:
1. Understand the Nature of Change – The first step to making change stick is to understand the nature of change itself. Kelley emphasizes the importance of recognizing that change is a process, not a single event. By recognizing the complexity of change, organizations can better plan for the process and make sure that new initiatives are implemented successfully.
2. Establish a Change Culture – Establishing a culture of change is essential for making change stick. Kelley recommends that organizations create an environment where change is seen as an opportunity rather than a threat, and where employees are encouraged to take risks and experiment.
3. Make Change Visible – To ensure that change takes hold, Kelley advises organizations to make the process of change visible. This could include creating a visual representation of the desired end-state, or using storytelling to communicate the importance of the change.
4. Embrace Adaptive Change – According to Kelley, organizations should be open to making changes along the way and learning from mistakes. By embracing adaptive change, organizations can adjust and adapt as they learn more about their customers, their industry, and the environment.
5. Celebrate Successes – Finally, Kelley suggests that organizations celebrate their successes. Celebrating successes helps to reinforce the desired behavior and can help to motivate employees to continue to innovate.
By following these five key findings and leveraging the tools in the Change Planning Toolkit from the Human-Centered Change methodology, organizations can make sure that their new initiatives are implemented successfully and that change sticks. By understanding the nature of change, establishing a change culture, making change visible, embracing adaptive change, and celebrating successes, organizations can make sure that their innovations are implemented at scale and that change sticks.
Bottom Line: Innovation at scale is a challenge, but it is possible. By taking the right steps to ensure the organization is well-prepared for the change, creating a culture of innovation, and providing clear and effective communication and systems, organizations can make sure that their initiatives for change stick.
Image credit: Pexels
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One that you would expect to lead to some risk mitigation behavior, but it doesn’t.
And when you consider that companies are spending an increasing amount of their budget on technology and working to transform their operations to be more digital in order to provide a better experience for customers, employees, partners and suppliers while simultaneously creating a more efficient and effective business, you would think that companies would do everything possible to make sure that these projects succeed, but they don’t.
Everyone knows that a lot of technology projects fail to achieve their intended objectives, timings, and budgets. This fact and the increasing investment levels should cause more executives to look for ways to de-risk these technology investments in digitizing the business, but they’re not.
Why is that?
Are we really so afraid of learning new ways of doing things that would dramatically reduce the risk and expense of project failures that we will continue using the old ways even though we know they don’t work?
Even though there are incredibly inexpensive and easy ways of reducing both the risk of project failures and the cost of project execution, patterns of behavior are not changing…
Perhaps you see the world differently.
Perhaps you’re fed up with project failures and want to increase the speed of both change execution and change adoption.
Consider answering these five simple questions before spending a single minute on your next innovation project, change initiative, or digital transformation effort:
How much is an hour of your time worth to the company you work for? (multiply this by the number of hours you expect to invest in this project or initiative)
What is the fully-loaded monetary value of the time that employees are going to spend on this project or initiative?
How much do you pay to a single contract project manager to spin up a project before the first minute of actual work begins? Over the life of the project?
How much are you planning to spend with consulting companies on this project or initiative?
How much are you planning to spend on contractors to staff this project or initiative?
Have you got the numbers in your mind?
Now, are any of these numbers $100 or more?
I’m sure they are, unless of course you’re going to do the project yourself in less than an hour and don’t value your time very much.
So, what if I told you that for less than $100 you could plan and execute your change initiatives, innovation projects and transformation investments in a much more visual and collaborative way and simultaneously reduce the chances of project failure and the cost of executing your project?
Well, you can. You just have to be willing to challenge orthodoxies and use a new set of tools, a new approach, that will feel very natural and empowering if you’re already comfortable with the Business Model Canvas, Lean, Design Thinking, or the Lean Startup.
All you need to get started is a copy of my latest book Charting Change and a $99.99/yr license for the Change Planning Toolkit™ (which comes with a QuickStart Guide). In exchange you’ll get tools worth more than $1,200 and will help to support the creation of the Human-Centered Innovation Toolkit™.
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“There’s no denying it: Change is scary. But it’s also inevitable. In Charting Change, Braden Kelley gives you a toolkit and a blueprint for initiating and managing change in your organization, no matter what form it takes.”
“Thoughtful, thorough, and practical is the rare blend that Braden has achieved in this Change Management field guide. Much more than a series of tactics, Charting Change will explicitly, sequentially, and visually help users create a diverse set of experiences for stakeholders that will most certainly increase likelihood of success.”
“Braden Kelley and his merry band of guest experts have done a nice job of visualizing in Charting Change how to make future change efforts more collaborative. Kelley shows how to draw out the hidden assumptions and land mines early in the change planning process, and presents some great techniques for keeping people aligned as a change effort or project moves forward.”
“As the pace of change speeds up, the market disruptions and resulting changes can be daunting for all. We all wish we could predict how change will affect our business, our market and our people. No matter what business area you come from, change affects us all and can produce great outcomes when managed well. In Braden Kelley’s newest book, Charting Change, he provides a terrific toolkit to manage this process and make it stick.”
“Higher employee retention? Increased revenue? Process enhancements? Whatever your change goal, Charting Change is full of bright ideas and invaluable visual guides to walk you through change in any area where your organization needs it.”
Have you got the numbers in your mind?