Tag Archives: disruption

Navigating Disruption with Clarity

Purpose as Your North Star

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

In a world defined by constant disruption, where technologies, markets, and customer needs shift at an unprecedented pace, organizations are often left feeling adrift. The old playbooks of strategic planning and forecasting are proving insufficient to navigate the volatility. In this environment of chronic uncertainty, I believe the most powerful anchor for any organization is a clearly defined and deeply embedded sense of purpose. Purpose, when authentically articulated and lived, acts as a North Star, providing clarity, inspiring action, and uniting a workforce to not just survive disruption, but to thrive within it.

Purpose is more than just a mission statement or a marketing slogan. It is the fundamental reason an organization exists beyond making a profit. It is the why behind the what. When a company’s purpose is its guiding light, it helps leaders and employees make better decisions, prioritize more effectively, and remain resilient in the face of setbacks. Purpose creates a shared sense of meaning that transcends individual roles and responsibilities, fostering a culture of trust and collective commitment. It gives people a reason to come to work every day that is bigger than a paycheck.

Navigating disruption with purpose requires a human-centered approach to strategy. It’s about moving from a rigid, top-down model to one that is driven by a shared sense of why. This enables organizations to adapt more quickly, as everyone is aligned on the ultimate goal, even if the path to get there needs to change. An organization with a strong purpose will find that its people are more engaged, more innovative, and more willing to go the extra mile. The key elements for leveraging purpose as a navigational tool include:

Authenticity: The purpose must be genuine and deeply ingrained in the company’s DNA, not an afterthought.
Clarity: The purpose must be simple, clear, and easy for every employee to understand and articulate.
Alignment: All business decisions, from product development to hiring, should be evaluated against the organization’s purpose.
Empowerment: Employees must be empowered to act on the purpose, not just told what it is. This fosters ownership and bottom-up innovation.
Storytelling: The organization’s purpose should be constantly reinforced through stories that illustrate its impact on customers, communities, and employees.

Case Study 1: Patagonia’s Environmental Activism as a Business Strategy

The Challenge: Competing in a Fast-Fashion Market with a Commitment to Sustainability

Patagonia, the outdoor apparel company, operates in a highly competitive market often driven by low prices and rapid consumption. The company’s business model, which prioritizes durability and environmental responsibility, stands in stark contrast to the fast-fashion industry. Navigating this landscape while remaining true to its values presented a constant challenge.

The Purpose-Driven Strategy:

Patagonia’s purpose is “We’re in business to save our home planet.” This isn’t just a slogan; it is the core of their business strategy. Every decision, from material sourcing to marketing campaigns, is evaluated through this lens. When faced with disruption, such as a downturn in the economy, Patagonia doesn’t compromise on its purpose. Instead, it doubles down, knowing that its loyal customer base values this commitment. For example, during Black Friday, a time when most retailers encourage consumption, Patagonia famously ran a campaign telling customers, “Don’t Buy This Jacket.” This counterintuitive approach reinforced their purpose and created an even stronger connection with their customers. Their commitment to their purpose has allowed them to attract top talent, build a fiercely loyal community, and remain profitable while staying true to their core values.

The Results:

Patagonia has not only survived but thrived by leveraging its purpose as a navigational tool. It has demonstrated that a strong, authentic purpose is a powerful source of competitive advantage and resilience. The company’s clear “why” has enabled it to make bold decisions that might seem risky from a traditional business perspective, but which ultimately resonate deeply with its customers and employees. This case study shows that a purpose-driven approach provides a clear framework for navigating disruption, allowing a company to stand out and build a sustainable business in the long term.

Key Insight: An authentic and unwavering purpose can act as a powerful differentiator and a source of competitive advantage, enabling an organization to make bold, values-aligned decisions that build long-term loyalty and resilience.

Case Study 2: Microsoft’s Cultural Transformation under Satya Nadella

The Challenge: A Stagnant Culture and Missed Opportunities in a Rapidly Changing Tech Landscape

In the early 2010s, Microsoft was widely perceived as a company that had lost its way. Its culture was siloed and competitive, and it had missed key shifts in the tech industry, such as the rise of mobile computing. The company was in a state of internal turmoil, lacking a unified vision to guide it through the ongoing disruption. New leadership was needed to redefine the company’s direction and reignite innovation.

The Purpose-Driven Strategy:

When Satya Nadella became CEO, he didn’t start with a new product strategy; he started with purpose. He re-framed Microsoft’s mission to “empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.” This purpose was intentionally broad and human-centered. It was a clear departure from the company’s past focus on “putting a computer on every desk.” This new North Star guided every subsequent strategic decision, from embracing open-source software and cloud computing to acquiring LinkedIn and GitHub. The purpose served as a unifying force, helping different business units collaborate and innovate together. It allowed the company to pivot into new markets with a clear sense of direction, moving beyond its traditional software dominance.

The Results:

Nadella’s purpose-driven leadership led to a remarkable cultural and business renaissance at Microsoft. The company’s stock price soared, and it regained its position as a global technology leader. By using a clear and human-centered purpose as its guide, Microsoft was able to navigate the complex and disruptive tech landscape with newfound clarity and agility. This case study demonstrates how a renewed sense of purpose, when effectively communicated and integrated into the culture, can act as a powerful engine for change, enabling a large organization to reinvent itself and thrive in a period of intense disruption.

Key Insight: Reclaiming and re-framing an organization’s purpose can serve as the most effective catalyst for a large-scale cultural transformation and business revitalization.

Making Purpose Your Guiding Light

In an era of relentless disruption, a clearly defined purpose is no longer a luxury—it is an essential strategic asset. It provides the clarity needed to make tough decisions, the inspiration required to foster innovation, and the resilience necessary to weather any storm. As leaders, our role is not just to set a course, but to articulate a compelling “why” that will serve as our collective North Star. By putting purpose at the center of our strategy, we can move from being passive observers of change to active agents of a future we are all proud to create.

Extra Extra: Because innovation is all about change, Braden Kelley’s human-centered change methodology and tools are the best way to plan and execute the changes necessary to support your innovation and transformation efforts — all while literally getting everyone all on the same page for change. Find out more about the methodology and tools, including the book Charting Change by following the link. Be sure and download the TEN FREE TOOLS while you’re here.

Image credit: Pixabay

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

Making Innovation the Way We Do Business (easy as ABC)

Leave a reply

Making Innovation the Way We Do Business (easy as ABC)

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

“We need to be more innovative.”

How many times have you said or heard that? It’s how most innovation efforts start. It’s a statement that reflects leaders’ genuine desire to return to the “good ol’ days” when the company routinely created and launched new products and enjoyed the publicity and growth that followed.

But what does it mean to be more innovative?

Innovation’s ABCs

A is for Architecture

Architecture includes most of the elements people think of when they start the work to become more innovative – strategy, structure, processes, metrics, governance, and incentives.

Each of these elements answers fundamental questions:

Strategy: Why is innovation important? How does it contribute to our overall strategy?
Structure: Who does the work of innovation?
Process: How is the work done?
Metrics: How will we know when we’re successful? How will we measure progress?
Governance: Who makes decisions? How and when are decisions made?
Incentives: Why should people invest their time, money, and political capital? How will they be rewarded?

When it comes to your business, you can answer all these questions. The same is true if you’re serious about innovation. If you can’t answer the questions, you have work to do. If you don’t want to do the work, then you don’t want to be innovative. You want to look innovative*.

B is for Behavior

Innovation isn’t an idea problem. It’s a leadership problem.

Leaders that talk about innovation, delegate it to subordinates and routinely pull resources from innovation to “shore up” current operations don’t want to be innovative. They want to look innovative.

Leaders who roll up their sleeves and work alongside innovation teams, ask questions and listen with open minds, and invest and protect innovation resources want to be innovative.

To be fair, it’s incredibly challenging to be a great leader of both innovation and operations. It’s the equivalent of writing equally well with your right and left hands. But it is possible. More importantly, it’s essential.

C is for Culture

Culture is invisible, pervasive, and personal. It is also the make-or-break factor for innovation because it surrounds innovation architecture, teams, and leaders.

Culture can expand to encourage and support exploration, creativity, and risk-taking. Or it can constrict, unleashing antibodies that swarm, suffocate, and kill anything that threatens the status quo.

Trying to control or change culture is like trying to hold water in your fist. But if you let go just a bit, create the right conditions, and wait patiently, change is possible.

Easy as 123

The most common mistake executives make in the pursuit of being “more innovative” is that they focus on only A or only B or only C. But, as I always tell my clients, the answer is “and, not or.”

Start with Architecture because it’s logical, rational, and produces tangible outputs like org charts, process flows, and instruction manuals filled with templates and tools. Architecture is comforting because it helps us know what to do and how.
Use Architecture to encourage Behavior because the best way to learn something is to do it. With Architecture in place (but well before it’s finished), bring leaders into the work – talking to customers, sharing their ideas, and creating prototypes. When leaders do the work of innovation, they quickly realize what’s possible (and what’s not) and are open to learning how to engage (behave) in a way that supports innovation.
Leverage Architecture and Behavior to engage Culture by creating the artifacts, rituals, and evidence that innovation can happen in your company, is happening and will continue to happen. As people see “innovation” evolve from a buzzword to a small investment to “the way we do business,” their skepticism will fade, and their support will grow.

Just like the Jackson 5 said

ABC, It’s easy a 123

Architecture, behavior, culture – they’re all essential to enabling an innovation capability that repeatedly creates new revenue.

And while starting with architecture, building new leadership behaviors, and investing until the culture changes isn’t easy, it’s the 123 steps required to “be more innovative.”

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

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

Neuroscience-Backed Strategies for Embracing Disruption

Leave a reply

The Brain on Change

Neuroscience-Backed Strategies for Embracing Disruption

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

In today’s hyper-accelerated world, the only constant is change. Yet, for all our talk of agility and transformation, up to 70% of organizational change initiatives still stumble or outright fail. Why? Because we often overlook the most powerful and complex component in the equation: the human brain. We mandate, we communicate, we train, but we rarely design for how the brain actually processes disruption.

Our brains are exquisitely wired for survival. They crave predictability, efficiency, and safety. When faced with the unknown, the uncertain, or a perceived loss of control, our ancient limbic system – specifically the amygdala – fires up, triggering a “threat response.” This isn’t a conscious choice; it’s a primal, neurobiological reaction that floods our system with stress hormones, impairs rational thought, and leads directly to resistance, disengagement, and even outright rebellion. Trying to force change against this innate wiring is like trying to drive a car with the brakes on.

But what if we could shift our approach? What if we could harness the incredible power of neuroplasticity – the brain’s lifelong ability to rewire itself and form new connections – to cultivate a workforce not just tolerant of change, but genuinely adaptable and innovative? The burgeoning field of neuro-leadership offers a compelling, science-backed roadmap for doing just that.

The SCARF Model: A Compass for Navigating the Inner Landscape of Change

At the heart of understanding the brain on change lies Dr. David Rock’s insightful SCARF model. This framework identifies five key social domains that strongly influence whether our brains perceive a situation as a threat or a reward:

Status: Our sense of relative importance or standing. A perceived reduction in status can be deeply threatening.
Certainty: Our need for predictability and clear expectations about the future. Ambiguity is a major threat trigger.
Autonomy: Our sense of control over our own lives and work. Being told what to do without input can feel disempowering.
Relatedness: Our need for social connection, belonging, and trust. Feeling isolated or excluded is a significant threat.
Fairness: Our perception of equitable exchanges and just treatment. Injustice triggers strong threat responses.

When these domains are threatened during a period of organizational change, resistance is a natural, albeit often unconscious, outcome. Conversely, by consciously designing change initiatives that bolster these elements, leaders can foster psychological safety and activate the brain’s reward pathways, making people more receptive and engaged.

Neuroscience-Backed Strategies for a Human-Centered Transformation

Translating this understanding into actionable strategies is where the real power lies:

Cultivate Unwavering Psychological Safety: This is the bedrock. For true embrace of disruption, people must feel safe to voice concerns, ask “dumb” questions, experiment, and even fail without fear of retribution. Leaders must actively model vulnerability, admit what they don’t know, and create open forums for dialogue. When the amygdala is calm, the prefrontal cortex – our center for rational thought, creativity, and problem-solving – can engage fully. A culture that embraces “failing fast” subtly reinforces safety around risk-taking.
Break Down Change into Digestible Increments (and Celebrate Each Bite): Large, amorphous changes can overwhelm the brain, triggering an “energy drain” threat response. Our brains seek efficiency, and tackling a massive, ill-defined task feels incredibly inefficient. Instead, break down the transformation into smaller, clearly defined, and achievable steps. Each successful completion, no matter how minor, triggers a dopamine release – the brain’s natural reward chemical – reinforcing the new behavior and building momentum. This consistent positive reinforcement literally helps to hardwire new neural pathways, making the desired behaviors more automatic over time.
Maximize Autonomy and Empower Co-Creation: Nothing triggers a threat response faster than a feeling of powerlessness. Mandating change from the top down, without input, crushes individual autonomy. Instead, involve employees in the design and implementation of the change. Empower teams to explore solutions, define processes, and even identify problems. This sense of ownership not only vastly increases buy-in but also taps into the collective intelligence and creativity of your workforce, activating the brain’s reward centers associated with competence and control.
Strengthen Relatedness and Build Community: Humans are profoundly social creatures; our survival historically depended on strong group bonds. During periods of uncertainty, social isolation is a major threat. Foster collaboration, build strong cross-functional teams, and create frequent opportunities for people to connect, share experiences, and support one another. Initiatives that reinforce a sense of “we’re in this together” mitigate threat responses and build the trust essential for navigating disruption.
Prioritize Transparency and Reduce Ambiguity (Where Feasible): While complete certainty is a mirage in a disruptive world, leaders can significantly reduce the brain’s cognitive load – and thus its threat response – by providing clear, consistent, and transparent communication. Explain the “why” behind the change, the anticipated outcomes, and the evolving roadmap. Even when details are uncertain, communicate what is known and what is still being figured out. This honest approach helps the brain create a clearer mental map, conserving precious cognitive energy that can then be redirected towards adapting to the change itself.

Case Study 1: Transforming a Legacy Financial Institution

A venerable financial institution, facing existential threats from nimble fintech startups, embarked on a sweeping digital transformation. Their initial top-down directives to adopt new technologies were met with palpable fear, resistance, and an alarming spike in employee turnover. Recognizing the human cost, the executive team pivoted, bringing in a change consultancy that prioritized neuroscience-backed approaches.

Instead of simply rolling out new software, they launched “Digital Reimagination Labs.” These were safe spaces where employees from all levels and departments could experiment with emerging technologies without fear of judgment or failure. This directly addressed Status (by valuing their input and learning) and Autonomy (by giving them control over their exploration). Regular “Future of Finance” town halls, led by transparent executives, directly confronted anxieties about job displacement by outlining new skill development programs and career pathways (boosting Certainty and Fairness). Small, cross-functional “Agile Pods” were formed to prototype new digital products, giving members immense Autonomy and fostering strong Relatedness. Each successful pilot was widely celebrated, reinforcing positive neural pathways.

The transformation was profound. Employee engagement soared, internal innovation flourished, and the institution successfully launched several cutting-edge digital products, not just staving off disruption but reclaiming market leadership. The shift was less about technology implementation and more about a deliberate rewiring of the organizational culture.

Case Study 2: Agile Adoption in a Global Manufacturing Giant

A global manufacturing powerhouse aimed to implement agile methodologies across its product development divisions to accelerate innovation and time-to-market. The deeply entrenched, hierarchical “waterfall” processes had created a culture where rigidity was king. Engineers and project managers, accustomed to meticulous planning, saw agile as a chaotic threat to their expertise and stability.

The leadership team, informed by neuroscientific principles, recognized that simply mandating agile would fail. They began by re-framing agile not as a radical overthrow, but as an evolution that would empower teams and lead to more satisfying, impactful work (appealing to Status and Autonomy). They introduced agile incrementally, starting with small, volunteer pilot teams in non-critical areas. This “small batch” approach significantly reduced the perceived Certainty threat. “Agile Coaches” were introduced, not as process police, but as supportive mentors and facilitators, fostering strong Relatedness and psychological safety. Critically, regular “Lessons Learned & Wins” sessions openly discussed challenges and celebrated every small success, from a smoother stand-up meeting to a completed sprint. This consistent positive reinforcement (dopamine hit) and normalization of learning from mistakes helped to literally rewire the perception of agile from a threat to an opportunity.

Within two years, over 70% of product development teams had adopted agile practices, leading to a 30% reduction in time-to-market and a dramatic improvement in cross-functional collaboration. The success wasn’t just about new processes; it was about intelligently engaging the human brain.

The Path Forward: Leading with the Brain in Mind

Embracing disruption is no longer just a strategic imperative; it’s a profound challenge to our very biology. By consciously applying neuroscience-backed strategies, leaders can move beyond simply managing change to truly cultivating a human-centered culture of continuous adaptation and innovation. It’s about creating environments where the brain feels safe, empowered, and rewarded, allowing our incredible human capacity for creativity, collaboration, and resilience to truly flourish. The future, without a doubt, belongs to those who understand and leverage the brain on change.

Image credit: Gemini

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

Leadership Lessons from Industry Disruptors

Leave a reply

Navigating the Future

Leadership Lessons from Industry Disruptors

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

In our volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world, disruption isn’t an occasional event; it’s the constant drumbeat of progress. Every sector, from finance to healthcare, is ripe for transformation, and the organizations leading this charge—the true industry disruptors—offer invaluable lessons. As a human-centered change and innovation thought leader, I constantly examine what sets these trailblazers apart. It extends far beyond pioneering technology or clever business models; it’s fundamentally about a distinct style of leadership that empowers people, fosters relentless innovation, and fearlessly navigates the unknown. These lessons are not just for startups; they are essential for any established leader aiming to not merely survive, but truly thrive and shape the future.

Cultivating a Visionary, Purpose-Driven North Star

Industry disruptors are rarely driven by profit alone. Instead, they are propelled by a powerful, often audacious, purpose-driven vision that transcends conventional financial goals. Leaders of these organizations articulate a compelling future state – perhaps solving a societal problem, democratizing access, or creating an entirely new category of experience. This vision acts as an unwavering North Star, inspiring employees, attracting mission-aligned talent, and deeply resonating with customers. It provides immense resilience during inevitable setbacks and guides every strategic decision, ensuring sustained momentum toward a transformative objective.

“Disruptors are propelled by a powerful, often audacious, purpose-driven vision that transcends conventional financial goals.”

Relentless, Empathetic Customer Obsession

While many companies pay lip service to customer-centricity, disruptors embody it as an absolute obsession. Their leaders cultivate an organizational culture where understanding and even anticipating customer needs—often before customers themselves can articulate them—is paramount. This goes far beyond traditional market research. It involves deep empathy mapping, immersing teams in the customer journey, conducting ethnographic studies, and maintaining iterative product development cycles based on continuous feedback. They aren’t just selling a product or service; they’re designing an experience around the user’s authentic desires and pain points, willing to completely redesign fundamental aspects of their offerings if it improves the customer’s life.

Embracing Intelligent Experimentation and Learning from Failure

Innovation is rarely a linear process; it’s inherently iterative and often messy. Leaders of disruptive companies recognize that failure is not the opposite of success, but a crucial stepping stone. They actively create environments where intelligent experimentation is encouraged, and setbacks are meticulously analyzed as valuable learning opportunities, not causes for blame or punishment. This requires building psychological safety, de-risking rapid prototyping, and embedding processes that enable quick pivots based on data and emerging insights. They model a “test, learn, and iterate rapidly” mindset, understanding that speed of learning often outpaces speed of execution in uncharted territories.

Case Study 1: Netflix – Pioneering the Streaming Revolution

Netflix’s evolution from a DVD-by-mail service to a global streaming and content production juggernaut is a definitive case study in disruptive leadership. Under Reed Hastings’ guidance, the company didn’t just adapt; it courageously **cannibalized its own highly successful business model**. Their audacious strategic pivot into streaming, despite significant initial investment and risk, demonstrated profound foresight into shifting consumer behavior and technological trends. They understood the future was digital, on-demand, and personalized.

Key leadership lessons from Netflix include: a **visionary long-term view** that anticipated the death of physical media; a **radical culture of “freedom and responsibility”** that empowered employees with unparalleled autonomy and expected peak performance, famously codified in their culture deck; and a **relentless, almost scientific, focus on data-driven decision-making** regarding content acquisition, personalization algorithms, and user experience. They weren’t afraid to make bold, initially unpopular internal decisions (like the Qwikster split, though later reversed) in pursuit of their long-term vision, always prioritizing customer experience and future growth over short-term revenue. Their willingness to “break” what was working to build what would ultimately dominate the entertainment landscape is a hallmark of their leadership.

Key Takeaway: Bold visionary leadership, a culture of high freedom and responsibility, and deep data obsession enable successful self-disruption and market transformation.

Empowering Autonomous, Cross-Functional Teams

Disruptive leaders understand that genuine innovation rarely flourishes within rigid, hierarchical silos. Instead, they actively flatten organizational structures, decentralizing decision-making authority and delegating significant power to small, agile, autonomous, cross-functional teams. These teams are given clear strategic objectives but significant freedom and ownership over how to achieve them. This structure fosters remarkable agility, enhances accountability, and cultivates a stronger sense of purpose and psychological ownership among team members. The result is an accelerated pace of innovation and a superior ability to respond rapidly to market changes. It’s a shift from leading with control to leading with context and trust.

Fostering a Culture of Perpetual Learning and Adaptability

The unrelenting pace of technological and societal change means that yesterday’s winning formula might be tomorrow’s obsolescence. Disruptive leaders intrinsically understand this, and they cultivate an organizational culture of perpetual learning—at both the individual and systemic levels. This involves continuous investment in skill development and reskilling, championing knowledge sharing across teams, and nurturing a strong growth mindset throughout the organization. Critically, these leaders embody adaptability themselves, demonstrating a willingness to pivot strategies, embrace new technologies, challenge long-held assumptions, and even admit when initial approaches were wrong. They build learning organizations, not just performing ones.

Case Study 2: Tesla – Redefining Automotive, Energy, and Manufacturing

Under the visionary, albeit often controversial, leadership of Elon Musk, Tesla has done far more than simply build electric cars. It has fundamentally challenged and disrupted the automotive industry’s traditional manufacturing, sales, and service models, while simultaneously forging a path into the sustainable energy sector with integrated solar and battery solutions. This represents disruption across multiple, deeply entrenched industries.

Key leadership lessons from Tesla include: an **audacious, almost impossible, mission-driven vision** to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy, which acts as a powerful magnet for passionate, top-tier talent; an **extreme bias for action and rapid iteration**, even in hardware and complex manufacturing processes, exemplified by continuous over-the-air software updates to vehicles and relentless factory optimizations; and a bold **vertical integration strategy** that grants unparalleled control over the entire value chain, from battery production to direct-to-consumer sales and a proprietary charging infrastructure. Musk’s leadership, while intense, is defined by a singular, unwavering focus on the long-term mission, an unparalleled willingness to push technological boundaries to their absolute limit, and an acceptance of intense scrutiny and immense risk in pursuit of a truly transformative future. He cultivates a culture of urgency, engineering excellence, and seemingly impossible ambition.

Key Takeaway: An audacious, mission-driven vision combined with extreme bias for action, vertical integration, and a culture of urgency can drive multi-industry disruption.

Leading with Unwavering Transparency and Authenticity

In environments characterized by rapid change and inherent uncertainty, trust is not merely beneficial; it’s foundational. Leaders of disruptive organizations often operate with remarkably high degrees of transparency and authenticity. They openly share both triumphs and setbacks, strategic challenges and emerging opportunities, fostering a deeper sense of psychological safety within the organization. This builds profound credibility, encourages open communication, facilitates constructive feedback, and helps align every individual around the core mission and strategic pivots. When leaders are genuine and vulnerable, it empowers employees to bring their full selves to work and contribute freely to the shared journey of innovation.

Conclusion: The Imperative for Disruptive Leadership

The transformative lessons emanating from industry disruptors are crystal clear: the future of leadership is not about maintaining the status quo or simply adapting to change; it’s about courageously initiating and forging new paths. It demands a visionary purpose, relentless customer obsession, a deep commitment to intelligent experimentation and continuous learning, the empowerment of autonomous teams, and unwavering transparency and authenticity. These aren’t abstract ideals solely applicable to burgeoning startups; they are concrete, actionable principles essential for any established organization seeking to remain relevant, innovative, and impactful in an era of constant transformation. By deliberately embracing and cultivating these leadership qualities, we can shift from being disrupted to becoming the disruptors, actively shaping tomorrow’s industries today.

Extra Extra: Futurology is not fortune telling. Futurists use a scientific approach to create their deliverables, but a methodology and tools like those in FutureHacking™ can empower anyone to engage in futurology themselves.

Image credit: Pixabay

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

3 Ways to Get Customer Insights without Talking to Customers

1 Reply

3 Ways to Get Customer Insights without Talking to Customers

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Most of my advice to leaders who want to use innovation to grow their businesses boils down to two things*:

Talk (and listen) to customers
Do something

But what if you don’t want to talk to customers?

After all, talking to customers can be scary because you don’t know what they’ll say. It can be triggering if they say something mean about your product, your business, or even you as a person. It can be draining, especially if you’re an introvert.

Plus, there are so many ways to avoid talking to customers – Send a survey, hire a research firm to write a report, invoke the famous Steve Jobs quote about never doing customer research.

Isn’t it just better to stay tucked away in the office, read reports, state opinions as if they are facts (those opinions are based on experience, after all), and make decisions?

Nope.

It is not better. It is also not safer, easier, or more efficient.

To make the best decisions, you need the best data, which comes from your customers.

But that doesn’t mean you need to talk to them to get it.

The best data

The best data helps you understand why your customers do what they do. This is why Jobs to be Done is such a powerful tool – it uncovers the emotional and social Jobs to be Done that drive our behavior and choices (functional Jobs to be Done are usually used to justify our choices).

But discovering Jobs to be Done typically requires you to talk to people, build rapport and trust in a one-on-one conversation, and ask Why? dozens of times so surface emotional and social JTBD.

Luckily, there are other ways to find Jobs to be Done that don’t require you to become an unlicensed therapist.

Observe your customers

Go where your customers are (or could be) experiencing the problem you hope to solve and try to blend in. Watch what people are doing and what they’re not doing. Notice whether people are alone or with others (and who those others are – kids, partners, colleagues, etc.). Listen to the environment (is it loud or quiet? If there’s noise, what kind of noise?) and to what people are saying to each other.

Be curious. Write down everything you’re observing. Wonder why and write down your hypotheses. Share your observations with your colleagues. Ask them to go out, observe, wonder, and share. Together you may discover answers or work up the courage to have a conversation.

Quick note – Don’t be creepy about this. Don’t lurk behind clothing racks, follow people through stores, peep through windows, linger too long, or wear sunglasses, a trench coat, and a fedora on a 90-degree day, so you look inconspicuous. If people start giving you weird looks, find a new place to people-watch.

Observe yourself

Humans are fascinating, and because you are a human, you are fascinating. So, observe yourself when you’re experiencing the problem you’re hoping to solve. Notice where you are, who is with you, the environment, and how you feel. Watch what you do and don’t do. Wonder why you chose one solution over another (or none).

Be curious. Write down everything you did, saw, and felt and why. Ask your colleagues to do the same. Share your observations with your colleagues and find points of commonality and divergence, then get curious all over again.

Quick note – This only works if you have approximately the same demographic and psychographic profiles and important and unsatisfied Jobs to be Done of your target customers.

Be your customer

What if your business solves a problem that can’t be easily observed? What if you don’t have the problem that your business is trying to solve?

Become your customer (and observe yourself).

Several years ago, I worked with a client that made adult incontinence products. I couldn’t observe people using their products, and I do not have important (or unsatisfied) Jobs to be Done that the products can solve.

So, for one day, I became a customer. I went to Target and purchased their product. I went home, wore, and used the product. I developed a deep empathy for the customer and wrote down roughly 1 million ways to innovate the product and experience.

Quick note – Depending on what’s required to “be your customer,” you may need to give people a heads up. My husband was incredibly patient and understanding but also a little concerned on the day of the experiment.

It’s about what you learn, not how you learn it

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking there is one best way to get insights. I’m 100% guilty (one-on-one conversations are a hill I have died on multiple times).

Ultimately, when it comes to innovation and decision-making, the more important thing is having, believing, and using insights into why customers do what they do and want what they want. How you get those insights is an important but secondary consideration.

* Each of those two things contains A TON of essential stuff that must be done the right way at the right time otherwise, they won’t work, but we’ll get into those things in another article

Image Credit: Pixabay

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

A Human-Centered Approach to Mastering Disruption

Leave a reply

A Human-Centered Approach to Mastering Disruption

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

Disruption. The word itself can evoke a sense of panic in the boardrooms of established organizations. It represents the unknown, the sudden shift that threatens to destabilize markets, render existing strategies obsolete, and even collapse empires. Yet, in our volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world, disruption is not just a possibility; it’s a relentless certainty. The true differentiator for success in this era isn’t about avoiding disruption, but about mastering its management. And at the heart of this mastery lies a profound commitment to human-centered change and innovation. It’s about recognizing that people – your employees, your customers, your partners – are not merely components of the machine, but the very engines of resilience and reinvention.

Effective disruption management transcends mere contingency planning. It demands an organizational culture that is inherently adaptable, relentlessly curious, and deeply empathetic. It requires the courage to challenge assumptions, the agility to pivot rapidly, and the wisdom to learn from every experience – both good and bad. Let’s explore how leading organizations have exemplified these principles through two powerful case studies, revealing the human thread that weaves through their triumph over turbulence.

Case Study 1: The Global Logistics Industry & The COVID-19 Shock

From Supply Chain Gridlock to Agile Lifeline

The dawn of 2020 brought with it a disruption of staggering scale: the COVID-19 pandemic. For the global logistics and supply chain industry, it was an existential shockwave. Traditional systems, built on predictable flows and just-in-time efficiencies, buckled under unprecedented demand surges, crippled by sudden labor shortages, and fractured by international border closures. The world watched as shelves emptied and critical medical supplies became scarce.

However, amidst this chaos, giants like Amazon, FedEx, and a constellation of regional innovators didn’t just survive; they redefined their roles. Their success wasn’t born from static playbooks, but from a dynamic, human-centered response. They rapidly iterated and deployed contactless delivery models, adapting safety protocols not just for efficiency but for the psychological safety of both their workforce and customers. They harnessed the power of real-time data analytics, not just for route optimization, but to predict demand fluctuations and proactively reroute essential goods to areas of greatest need.

Perhaps most profoundly, their leadership empowered frontline employees. Truck drivers, warehouse workers, and delivery personnel became critical innovators, devising on-the-ground solutions for complex, evolving challenges. Leaders listened, decentralized decision-making, and invested in immediate support—from personal protective equipment to rapid retraining. This cultivated an extraordinary level of trust and shared purpose, transforming a fragmented network into a resilient, adaptive lifeline for global communities.

Key Lessons from the Logistics Response:

Distributed Intelligence & Empowerment: Equip and trust your frontline teams; they hold the most immediate insights and often the most pragmatic solutions.
Rapid Experimentation (Build-Measure-Learn): Don’t strive for perfection upfront. Test, learn from feedback, and quickly iterate new solutions, even under immense pressure.
Empathy-Driven Operations: Prioritize the physical and psychological well-being of your employees and customers; their safety and trust are foundational to resilience.
Data as a Human Enabler: Utilize data not just for efficiency, but to inform human decisions and adapt quickly to evolving needs and risks.

Case Study 2: Netflix vs. Blockbuster – The Empathy Divide

A Masterclass in Customer-Centric Disruption

The story of Netflix and Blockbuster is a cautionary tale and a beacon, respectively, in the annals of disruption. Blockbuster, the once-dominant king of video rentals, famously dismissed an opportunity to acquire a nascent Netflix in 2000 for $50 million. Their rationale? Netflix’s DVD-by-mail model seemed niche, and their own late fees were too lucrative to abandon. This was a classic product-centric, rather than human-centered, blind spot.

Netflix, conversely, was built on a foundation of deep customer empathy. They didn’t just offer DVDs; they offered a solution to the frustrations of physical stores, limited choices, and the egregious late fees that plagued Blockbuster’s customers. They listened to the human desire for convenience, variety, and a sense of fairness. As broadband internet became ubiquitous, Netflix didn’t hesitate to disrupt its *own* successful DVD-by-mail model. They recognized the evolving human need for instant gratification and personalization, investing heavily in streaming technology and, crucially, in data-driven content recommendations and original programming.

Blockbuster, meanwhile, clung to its brick-and-mortar legacy, unable or unwilling to shed the very aspects of its business that were becoming pain points for consumers. Their leadership failed to understand the human shift towards digital access and personalized entertainment experiences. Netflix, by consistently putting the customer’s evolving needs at the very core of its strategy – a true demonstration of Human-Centered Change™ in action – didn’t just manage disruption; it orchestrated it, evolving from a DVD service to a global entertainment powerhouse.

Key Lessons from Netflix’s Triumph:

Obsessive Customer-Centricity: Deeply understand and anticipate evolving human needs and frustrations; this is your ultimate compass.
Strategic Cannibalization: Be willing to disrupt your own profitable business models if it serves a superior, emerging customer experience.
Long-Term Vision over Short-Term Myopia: Resist the temptation to prioritize immediate gains when fundamental market shifts are underway.
Culture of Continuous Learning & Adaptation: Foster an organizational mindset that embraces new technologies and business models, even if they seem small or unprofitable at first.

The Human Thread: Cultivating Resilience and Reinvention

These case studies underscore a critical truth: successful disruption management is not a technological problem; it’s a human one. It demands a leadership commitment to fostering environments where curiosity thrives, experimentation is encouraged, and empathy guides every decision. To build an organization capable of not just surviving but thriving amidst continuous disruption, consider these human-centered imperatives:

Cultivate Psychological Safety: Create a culture where speaking up, challenging norms, and even failing fast are embraced as vital components of learning and innovation. Fear is the enemy of adaptation.
Empower the Adaptive Mindset: Invest in continuous learning, providing opportunities for employees to develop skills in areas like design thinking, agile methodologies, and data interpretation. Equip your people to be lifelong learners.
Champion Cross-Functional Collaboration: Break down silos. Disruptive challenges rarely fit neatly into departmental boxes; solutions emerge when diverse perspectives converge and collaborate.
Lead with Radical Transparency & Empathy: During times of uncertainty, clear, honest, and empathetic communication from leadership builds trust and reduces anxiety, freeing people to focus their energy on solving problems.
Design for Human Resilience: Build systems, processes, and a culture that is inherently flexible, capable of absorbing shocks, learning from them, and quickly reconfiguring. This means focusing on human capabilities and adaptability, not just rigid procedures.

Disruption is not a wave to be merely endured; it is a current that can be navigated, harnessed, and even ridden to new horizons. By placing the human element – our innate capacity for innovation, collaboration, and resilience – at the heart of your strategy, you can transform the daunting challenge of disruption into your greatest opportunity for sustained growth and meaningful impact.

Image credit: 1 of 850+ FREE quote slides from http://misterinnovation.com

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

Benchmarking Innovation Across Industries

Leave a reply

Your Compass for Disruption

Benchmarking Innovation Across Industries

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

In our perpetually accelerating world, the concept of innovation has evolved from a differentiator to an absolute imperative. Yet, many organizations find themselves sailing without a compass, unsure if their innovation efforts are truly moving them forward or simply spinning their wheels. How do you measure the efficacy of your innovation engine? How do you ensure your investments yield meaningful returns? And, most critically for the human-centered leader, how do you cultivate an environment where impactful, empathetic innovation consistently blossoms? The answer lies in the strategic, often counter-intuitive, practice of benchmarking innovation across industries.

Benchmarking, when applied to innovation, isn’t about mere imitation. It’s a profound exercise in strategic empathy – understanding the deep-seated mechanisms, cultural enablers, and human-centric design philosophies that drive breakthrough success in seemingly unrelated fields. Imagine innovation as a vast ocean: by observing the tides, currents, and successful voyages in different parts of this ocean, you gain insights far beyond the shores of your own industry. This cross-pollination of knowledge is the wellspring of truly disruptive thinking.

The Irresistible Case for Cross-Industry Innovation Benchmarking

Why cast your gaze beyond your immediate competitors? The reasons are compelling:

Shattering Paradigms: Your industry’s “best practices” often represent the collective wisdom of the past, not the blueprint for the future. Looking externally forces a healthy challenge to entrenched assumptions, revealing fresh perspectives on customer pain points and value creation.
Early Warning System & Opportunity Radar: Innovation frequently originates at the periphery. By observing how diverse industries respond to macro trends – technological shifts, demographic changes, or evolving consumer values – you gain an early understanding of both threats and untapped opportunities for your own organization.
Unearthing Novel Methodologies & Human-Centered Approaches: A financial services firm might discover powerful agile methodologies from a leading software developer, or a public sector agency could adapt customer journey mapping techniques perfected by a world-class hospitality chain. These aren’t just process improvements; they’re often deeply rooted in understanding and serving human needs better.
Fostering a Growth Mindset & Innovation Culture: Actively seeking and integrating external insights cultivates an organizational culture of continuous learning, curiosity, and bold experimentation. It signals to your teams that innovation is a shared journey, not a siloed activity.
Setting Ambitious, Data-Driven Goals: Understanding what “great” looks like elsewhere provides empirical context for setting truly ambitious yet achievable innovation metrics, from ideation velocity to commercialization success rates and the human impact of new offerings.

The Strategic Imperative: How to Benchmark Effectively

Effective cross-industry innovation benchmarking isn’t a passive observation; it’s a deliberate, strategic endeavor. Here’s a structured approach:

Pinpoint Your Innovation Challenge: Be specific. Is it accelerating product development, enhancing customer experience, fostering internal creativity, or improving innovation ROI? Your focus determines who you’ll benchmark.
Identify Unconventional Leaders: Look beyond direct competitors. Who is consistently lauded for innovation, regardless of their sector? Think companies known for breakthrough user experiences, unique business models, or unparalleled operational agility. Don’t shy away from smaller, nimble players who are disrupting.
Deconstruct Their Innovation Ecosystem: This is where the depth comes in. Don’t just look at their products. Investigate:
- Culture: How do they foster psychological safety and risk-taking?
- Processes: What methodologies (e.g., design thinking, lean startup) do they employ?
- Structure: How are their innovation teams organized and empowered?
- Metrics: What do they measure to track innovation success?
- Technology & Tools: What platforms enable their innovation?
- Customer Centricity: How deeply do they understand and integrate user needs?
Translate & Adapt, Don’t Copy: This is critical. The goal is to extract the underlying principles and human-centered philosophies, then thoughtfully translate them to your unique organizational context, capabilities, and customer base. A direct copy rarely works; thoughtful adaptation almost always adds value.
Implement, Measure & Iterate Relentlessly: Apply the insights. Crucially, establish clear metrics (e.g., speed to market, patent applications, employee innovation engagement, customer satisfaction with new features, revenue from new offerings) to track the impact of your adapted approaches. Be prepared to learn, refine, and evolve.

Case Study 1: Healthcare’s Surgical Precision from Formula 1 Pits

The Great Ormond Street Hospital & McLaren Racing

In a powerful example of radical cross-industry learning, the cardiac surgery team at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London faced a persistent challenge: transferring critically ill children from the operating theatre to intensive care. Errors, though rare, could have devastating consequences. They turned not to other hospitals, but to the fast-paced, high-stakes world of Formula 1 motor racing, specifically the pit crew of McLaren.

The hospital observed how McLaren’s pit crews executed complex, time-sensitive tasks with astonishing precision under immense pressure. They benchmarked their meticulous checklists, clear communication protocols, designated roles, and rigorous post-event debriefs. By adapting these human-centered process disciplines – focusing on pre-planning, standardized handovers, and structured team communication – the hospital significantly reduced errors and improved patient safety during this critical transition phase. It wasn’t about the cars; it was about the flawless execution of a complex, human-driven process.

Case Study 2: Financial Services Reimagining Customer Experience from Entertainment

Capital One & Walt Disney Parks and Resorts

For years, financial services were synonymous with rigidity and impersonal transactions. Capital One, seeking to radically transform its customer experience, didn’t just look at other banks. They looked at organizations renowned for creating magical, seamless human experiences. One key inspiration? Walt Disney Parks and Resorts.

Capital One benchmarked Disney’s approach to “imagineering” the customer journey, from the moment of initial interaction to ongoing engagement. They studied how Disney designs for emotion, manages queues (wait times), onboards new visitors (customers), and resolves issues with an emphasis on delight. This led to Capital One’s development of new branch designs (Capital One Cafés) that are less transactional and more experiential, offering inviting spaces, digital tools, and human support for financial well-being. They also redesigned their digital interfaces and customer service protocols, infusing a sense of warmth and proactive problem-solving, much like Disney’s commitment to creating memorable moments. They benchmarked not financial products, but the art and science of creating genuinely positive human interactions.

Your Call to Action: Broaden Your Horizon, Deepen Your Impact

As the lines between industries continue to blur, and as customer expectations for seamless, intuitive, and valuable experiences escalate, the future belongs to organizations willing to learn from anyone, anywhere. Don’t allow the comfortable confines of your industry’s echo chamber to limit your potential. Be curious. Be courageous. Be human-centered in your quest for knowledge.

By intentionally looking beyond your immediate competitive landscape – by recognizing that the best solutions to your challenges might exist in an entirely different domain – you not only accelerate your innovation velocity but also enrich your organizational culture. It’s time to equip your innovation engine with a compass that points beyond the obvious, towards the uncharted territories of cross-industry brilliance. That’s where true disruption, and lasting human value, will be found.

Image credit: Pexels

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

Navigating Industry Disruptions with Confidence

Leave a reply

Navigating Industry Disruptions with Confidence

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

In today’s rapidly evolving business environment, disruption is the new normal. Companies that manage to thrive amidst continuous change aren’t necessarily those with the most resources but those that are agile, innovative, and prepared. As we navigate industry disruptions, understanding how to adapt and innovate becomes crucial.

The Essence of Disruption

Disruption can arise from various avenues—technological breakthroughs, regulatory shifts, market dynamics, or global events. The key to navigating these disruptions lies not only in responding to them effectively but anticipating them and embedding adaptability into the organizational fabric.

Case Study 1: Netflix – From DVDs to Streaming

Netflix’s journey is perhaps the quintessential case study of strategic adaptability and innovation. Originally a DVD rental service, Netflix faced significant challenges as technology favored streaming over physical discs. The impending obsolescence of its original business model didn’t deter Netflix; instead, it served as a catalyst for transformation.

By investing heavily in streaming technology and content production, Netflix successfully pivoted to a digital-first model. This shift not only retained its customer base but expanded it exponentially across the globe, making it a leader in content streaming. The company’s commitment to innovation didn’t stop at distribution; Netflix then disrupted the industry again by producing original content, winning numerous accolades, and setting new standards in the entertainment sector.

Lessons Learned

Anticipate shifts in consumer behavior to stay ahead.
Invest in technology to support scalable change.
Don’t just adapt; innovate to define new industry standards.

Case Study 2: LEGO – Reinventing Through Innovation

LEGO’s story reflects a different, yet equally powerful narrative of navigating industry disruption. In the early 2000s, LEGO faced a significant crisis—falling sales, high debts, and the growing allure of digital games threatened its core business model based on physical play.

LEGO’s response to this disruption was multi-faceted. They realigned their product strategies focusing on core themes that resonated with their customer base like City, Star Wars, and Technic. More importantly, LEGO embraced digitalization, launching video games, movies, and interactive experiences that extended its brand universe beyond physical bricks.

The introduction of the LEGO Ideas platform also marked a pivotal innovation, allowing fans to design new sets with the potential for actual production. This not only sparked greater brand engagement but harnessed the creativity of its community, reinforcing customer loyalty and market relevance.

Lessons Learned

Engage with your customer community for insights and innovation.
Diversify offerings to stay relevant across changing consumer preferences.
Leverage your brand’s strengths while exploring new growth avenues.

Strategies for Confidence in Disruption

Based on the insights from the case studies above, the following strategies can help organizations confidently navigate disruptions:

Build an Agile Culture

Cultivate a culture that embraces change. This means encouraging experimentation, tolerating failures, and iterating quickly. When employees are empowered to innovate and adapt, the organization becomes inherently more resilient.

Continuous Learning and Development

Equip your workforce with the skills needed to address future challenges. Investing in employee development fosters a dynamic environment ready to tackle new technologies and methodologies.

Customer-Centric Innovation

Your customers are your greatest source of feedback and inspiration. Design your products and services around their evolving needs to stay relevant. Use data analytics to glean insights and mold your strategies.

Conclusion

Navigating industry disruptions requires confidence, foresight, and an innovative spirit. Organizations that understand and implement these principles can not only survive disruptive forces but thrive in them. By embedding adaptability into your DNA, like Netflix and LEGO, you can pivot strategically and emerge stronger in any competitive landscape.

Image credit: Pexels

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

Taking Personal Responsibility – Seeing Self as Cause

Leave a reply

Taking Personal Responsibility – Seeing Self as Cause

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

In our last two blogs on Taking Personal Responsibility, we stated that when people aren’t taking personal responsibility, they cannot be accountable, they will fail in their jobs, and their teams, and fail to grow as individuals and as leaders. Taking personal responsibility is an especially crucial capability to develop self-awareness and self-regulation skills in the decade of both disruption and transformation. It all starts with seeing self as the cause of what happens to us, rather than baling it on the effects events and problems have on us! Where people can learn to recognize the structures at play in their lives and change them so that they can create what they really want to create in their lives, teams, or organizations.

In the last two blogs, we shared a range of tips for shifting people’s location, by creating a line of choice, to help them shift from being below the line and blaming others for their reactive response, to getting above the line quickly. Through shifting their language from “you, they and them” to “I, we and us” and bravely disrupting and calling out people when they do slip below the line. How doing this allows people to also systemically shift across the maturity continuum, from dependence to independence and ultimately towards interdependence.

In a recent newsletter Otto Scharmer, from the Presencing Institute states “Between action and non-action there is a place. A portal into the unknown. But what are we each called to contribute to the vision of the emerging future? Perhaps these times are simply doorways into the heart of the storm, a necessary journey through the cycles of time required to create change”.

Creating the place – the sacred pause

When I made a significant career change from a design and marketing management consultant to becoming a corporate trainer, one of the core principles I was expected to teach to senior corporate managers and leaders was taking personal responsibility.

Little knowing, that at the end of the workshop, going back to my hotel room and beating myself up, for all of the “wrongs” in the delivery of the learning program, was totally out of integrity with this core principle.

Realising that when people say – those that teach need to learn, I had mistakenly thought that I had to take responsibility for enacting the small imperfections I had delivered during the day, by berating myself, making myself “wrong” and through below the line self-depreciation!

Where I perfectly acted out the harmful process of self-blame, rather than rationally assessing the impact of each small imperfection, shifting to being above the line where I could intentionally apply the sacred pause:

Hit my pause button to get present, accept my emotional state,
Connect with what really happened to unpack the reality of the situation and eliminate my distortions around it,
Check-in and acknowledge how I was truly feeling about what happened,
Acknowledge some of the many things that I had done really well,
Ask myself what is the outcome/result I want for participants next program?
Ask myself what can I really learn from this situation?
Consciously choose what to do differently the next time I ran the program.

I still often find myself struggling with creating the Sacred Space between Stimulus and Response and have noticed in my global coaching practice, that many of my well-intentioned clients struggle with this too.

The impact of the last two and a half years of working at home, alone, online, with minimal social interactions and contact, has caused many of them to languish in their reactivity, and for some of them, into drowning in a very full emotional boat, rather than riding the wave of disruptive change.

Being the creative cause

In our work at ImagineNation, whether we help people, leaders and teams adapt, innovate and grow through disruption, their ability to develop true self-awareness and be above the line is often the most valuable and fundamental skill set they develop.

It then enables us to make the distinction that creating is completely different from reacting or responding to the circumstances people find themselves in by applying the sacred pause.

When people shift towards seeing self as the cause they are able to create and co-create what they want in their lives, teams or organization by learning to create by creating, starting with asking the question:

What result do you want to create in your life?
What is the reality of your current situation?

This creates a state of tension, it is this tension that seeks resolution.

In his ground-breaking book The Path of Least Resistance Robert Fritz, goes on to describe and rank these desired results as “Fundamental Choices, Primary Choices, and Secondary Choices.”

Because there is one thing that we can all do right and is totally in our control – is to shift towards seeing self as the cause and make a set of conscious choices, with open hearts, minds, and wills, as to how we think, feel and choose to act.

“We are the creative force of our life, and through our own decisions rather than our conditions, if we carefully learn to do certain things, we can accomplish those goals.”

We all have the options and choices in taking responsibility, empowering ourselves and others to be imaginative and creative, and using the range of rapid changes, ongoing disruption, uncertainty, and the adverse pandemic consequences, as levers for shifting and controlling, the way we think, feel.

Benefits of seeing self as the cause and being above the line

Applying the sacred pause to make change choices in how we act – and being brave and bold in shifting across the maturity continuum, will help us to cultivate the creativity, interdependence, and systemic thinking we all need right now because it:

Helps people self-regulate their reactive emotional responses, be more open-hearted and emotionally agile, and helps develop psychologically safe work environments where people can collaborate and experiment, and fail without the fear of retribution or punishment.
Enables people to be more open-minded, imaginative, and curious and creates a safe space for continuous learning, maximizing diversity and inclusion, and proactive intentional change and transformation.
Promotes ownership of a problem or challenging situation and helps develop constructive and creative responses to problems and an ability to take intelligent actions.
Gives people an opportunity to impact positively on others and build empowered trusted and collaborative relationships.
Enables entrepreneurs and innovators to invent creative solutions and drive successful innovative outcomes.
Building the foundations for accountability, where people focus their locus of control on what they promise to deliver, enables them to be intrinsically motivated, and take smart risks on negotiating outcomes that they can be counted on for delivering.

Tips for seeing self as the cause and operating above the line

Taking personal responsibility and seeing self as the cause involves:

Acknowledging that “I/we had a role or contributed in some way, to the fact that this has not worked out the way “I/we wanted.”
Clarifying the outcome or result in you want from a specific situation or a problem.
Seeking alternatives and options for making intelligent choices and actions, and using the language of “I/we can” and “I/we will” to achieve the outcome.
Replacing avoiding, being cynical and argumentative, blaming, shaming, controlling, and complaining with courageous, compassionate, and creative language and acts of intention.
People become victors who operate from “self as cause” where they are empowered to be the creative forces in their own lives by making fundamental, primary, and secondary change choices.
Trust your inner knowing and deep wisdom that everything has a specific and definable cause and that each and every one of us has the freedom to choose how to respond to it.

Back to leadership basics

As Stephen Covey says, people need to deeply and honestly say “I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday” because it’s not what happens to us, it’s our reactive response to what happens that hurts us.

Being willing to step back, retreat, and reflect on the gap between the results you want, and the results you are getting all starts with stepping inward, backward, and forwards, using the sacred pause, to ask:

What happened? What were the key driving forces behind it?

How am I/we truly feeling about it?

What was my/our role in causing this situation, or result?

What can I/we learn from it?

What is the result/outcome I want to create in the future?

What can I/we then do to create it?

As a corporate trainer, consultant and coach, I found out the hard way that developing the self-awareness and self-regulation skills in taking personal responsibility and seeing self as the cause is the basis of the personal power and freedom that is so important to me, and almost everyone else I am currently interacting with.

It’s the foundation for transcending paralysis, overwhelm, and stuck-ness and activating our sense of agency to transform society and ourselves.

This is the third and final blog in a series of blogs on the theme of taking responsibility – going back to leadership basics. Read the previous two here:

Find out about our learning products and tools, including The Coach for Innovators, Leaders, and Teams Certified Program, a collaborative, intimate, and deeply personalized innovation coaching and learning program, supported by a global group of peers over 9-weeks, starting Tuesday, October 18, 2022. It is a blended and transformational change and learning program that will give you a deep understanding of the language, principles, and applications of an ecosystem focus, human-centric approach, and emergent structure (Theory U) to innovation, and upskill people and teams and develop their future fitness, within your unique context.

Image credit: Pixabay

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

Taking Personal Responsibility – Creating the Line of Choice

Leave a reply

Taking Personal Responsibility - Creating the Line of Choice

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

In our last blog, we described how people’s personal power is diminished when they don’t take personal responsibility for the impact of their behaviors and actions and the results they cause. Where many people are feeling minimized and marginalized, anxious as a result of being isolated and lonely, worrying about losing their security and freedom, and dealing with the instability in their working environments. Resulting in many people disengaging from the important conversations, job functions, key relationships, workplaces, and in some instances, even from society. Where managers and leaders lack the basic self-awareness and self-regulation skills to control the only controllable in uncertain and unstable times, is to choose how to respond, rather than react to it.

We have a unique moment in time to shift their defensiveness through being compassionate, creative, and courageous towards helping managers and leaders unfreeze and mobilize to exit our comfort zones. To take intelligent actions catalyze and cause positive outcomes, that deliver real solutions to crises, complex situations, and difficult business problems.

Why do people avoid taking personal responsibility?

People typically avoid taking personal responsibility for reasons ranging from simple laziness, risk adversity, or a fear of failure, to feeling change fatigued, overwhelmed, or even victimized by the scale of a problem or a situation.

Resulting in a range of different automatic defensive, and a range of non-productive reactive responses including:

Avoidant behavior, where feel victimized and targeted, people passively “wriggle” and the buck gets passed onto others, and the real problem or issue does not get addressed or resolved.
Controlling behavior, where people ignore their role in causing or resolving the real problem or issue, and aggressively push others towards their mandate or solution, denying others any agency.
Argumentative behavior, where people play the binary “right-wrong” game, and self-righteously, triggered by their own values, oppose other people’s perspectives in order to be right and make the other person wrong.

Creating the line of choice

At Corporate Vision, we added a thick line of “choice” between “personal responsibility” and “blame, justification and denial” to intentionally create space for people to consider taking more emotionally hygienic options rather than:

Dumping their “emotional boats” inappropriately onto others, even those they may deeply care about,
Sinking into their habitual, and largely unconscious default patterns when facing complex problems, which results in the delivery of the same results they always have.
Not regulating their automatic reactive responses to challenging situations, and not creating the vital space to pause and reflect to think about what to do next.

To enable them to shift towards taking response-ability (an ability to respond) and introducing more useful options for responding in emotionally agile, considered, constructive, inclusive, and creative ways to the problem or the challenge.

Noticing that when we, or others we interact with, do slip below the line to notice whether to “camp” there for the long term or to simply choose to make the “visit” a short one!

Doing this demonstrates the self-awareness and self-regulation skills enabling people to take personal responsibility. Which initiates ownership and a willingness to be proactive, solutions, and achievement orientated – all of which are essential qualities for 21st century conscious leadership that result in innovative outcomes that result in success, growth, and sustainability.

Shifting your location – from “you, they and them” to “I, we and us”

Developing the foundations for transformational and conscious leadership involves:

Supporting people to acknowledge and accept that the problem or challenge is not “out there” and is within their locus of control or influence.
Shifting the “Maturity Continuum” to enable leaders and managers to be both independent and interdependent.
Creating a line of choice to think, act and do things differently.
Calling out people when they slip below the line.

It involves supporting people to let go of their expectation that “they” or someone else, from the outside, will fix it, and supporting them to adopt a stance where:

“I” or “we” can and are empowered to do it,
“I” or “we” are responsible for getting above the line,
“I” or “we” can choose a different way of being, thinking, and acting intelligently in this situation.

Developing conscious leadership

At any time, everyone is either above or below the line because it is elemental to the type of conscious leadership we all need to survive and thrive, in a world where people are seeking leaders, managers, and working environments that require interdependence.

To operate in the paradigm of “we” – we can do it; we can cooperate; we can combine our talents and abilities and create something greater together.

We cooperate together by creating the line of choice where we call out to ourselves and others when we slip below it, to get above the line as quickly as possible.

Where interdependent people and communities combine their efforts, and their self-awareness and self-regulation skills with the efforts of others to achieve their growth and greatest success by increasing:

Transparency and trust,
Achievement and accountability,
Diversity and inclusion,
Experimentation and collaboration.

All of these are founded on the core principle of taking personal responsibility, which is an especially crucial capability to develop self-awareness and self-regulation skills in the decade of both disruption and transformation.

Bravely calling out self and others

When we take responsibility for managing our own, “below the line” reactive responses, by habitually creating the line of choice, we can bravely call out ourselves and others when we slip below it.

Because when we don’t call ourselves and others we interact with, we are unconsciously colluding with their emotional boats, default patterns, and automatic reactive responses, which inhibit their ability to effect positive change.

When we safely awaken ourselves and others, we can get back above the line quickly and choose different ways of being, thinking, and acting intelligently in the situation.

Alternately, people aren’t taking personal responsibility, they cannot be accountable, they will fail in their jobs, and their teams, and fail to grow as individuals and as leaders.

In fact, developing a habitual practice of emotionally intelligent and conscious leadership by safely and bravely disrupting ourselves and our people, in the face of ongoing uncertainty, accelerating change, and continuous disruption.

This is the second in a series of three blogs on the theme of taking responsibility – going back to leadership basics.

Image credit: Unsplash

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