Tag Archives: Human Resources

What is a Chief Innovation Officer?

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

The Chief Innovation Officer is a relatively new position, but one that is gaining traction in many organizations. It is a role that is becoming increasingly important as businesses become more focused on pushing the boundaries of their industries and developing new products and services.

The Chief Innovation Officer is typically responsible for developing innovative strategies and leading the organization’s efforts to identify and implement new ideas and technologies. This person is tasked with creating a culture of innovation that encourages collaboration, experimentation, and risk-taking, while also ensuring that the organization remains competitive and current in the marketplace.

The Chief Innovation Officer generally works closely with the executive team and other leaders within the organization to ensure that the innovation process is well-defined and aligned with the organization’s overall goals and objectives. This person is often responsible for developing and executing an innovation strategy, which may include identifying and testing new ideas, products, services, and processes in order to develop new value for the organization.

The Chief Innovation Officer is also responsible for ensuring that the organization has the necessary resources to bring new ideas to life. This includes assembling the right teams, managing budgets, and developing partnerships and collaborations. Additionally, this position is often responsible for staying abreast of industry trends and changes in order to best position the organization for success.

Ultimately, the Chief Innovation Officer is responsible for helping the organization stay ahead of the competition and remain competitive in the market. This person is a leader who is passionate about innovation and brings a unique perspective to the table. They are an invaluable asset to any organization that is looking to create and maintain a culture of innovation and stay ahead of the curve.

To read more about Chief Innovation Officers, see these other articles:

Hiring the Right Chief Innovation Officer — by Braden Kelley
Birth of the Part-Time Chief Innovation Officer — by Braden Kelley
Are You Hanging Your Chief Innovation Officer Out to Dry? — by Teresa Spangler
Death of the Chief Innovation Officer — by Braden Kelley

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: Pexels

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The Rise of Employee Relationship Management (ERM)

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The Rise of Employee Relationship Management (ERM)

by Braden Kelley

What’s in a name?

From the early days when HR was referred to as workforce management or personnel management, to the emergence of scientific management and labor unions, the practice of human resources has been constantly evolving.

The name for the practice and principles of getting the most out of people in business has continued to change too, with the latest term ‘human resources’ coming into being along with an acceptance that human factors were more important than physical factors and monetary rewards for motivation.

The Accelerating Pace of Change

But, in an era when the pace of change and transformation are constantly accelerating and innovation is increasingly important to maintaining relevance, should we still be focused on ‘human resources’? Or does our view and language need to evolve?

Every day customer experience becomes more crucial to market success, and more people are talking about happy employees as being the key to happy customers. But, are employers backing up this talk?

Today most digital transformations have at their heart, several elements of an evolved customer relationship management (CRM) approach and often one or more customer journey maps.

The Shift from HCM to ERM

So, should we be shifting our views from a focus on Human Capital Management (HCM) to a focus on ERM (Employee Relationship Management) and EX (Employee Experience) to mirror how we are thinking about the importance of employees as something not to be managed but instead to be empowered, supported and developed?

And how will Generation Z change expectations of employers?

Making a shift in our mindset and our language when it comes to employees, could also cause us to focus on different metrics – shifting from a focus on controlling the costs of salaries and benefits to optimizing employee lifetime value (ELV).

Unlocking the True Value of Employees

Employees are not just a cost, they are a source of incredible value and to unlock their full potential we must invest in helping them maximize the value they can create, access, and translate for customers. Me must go beyond training and invest in even more powerful initiatives like human libraries and internal internships to help each employee not just do the job they were hired to do, but to do the job they were born to do.

Innovators Framework (one of the many concepts introduced in my first book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire)

Building on the work of London Business School’s Gary Hamel and shifting to an Employee Relationship Management (ERM) mindset we can get beyond the obedience, diligence and intellect that fear, greed, management and leadership can deliver, and instead focus on unlocking the initiative, creativity, passion and innovation that will drive the organization to higher levels of success and continuing relevance with customers.

Employee Relationship Management (ERM) is the Future of HR

We must reimagine our approach to the humans in our organizations and to recognize and leverage their uniqueness instead of treating them as replaceable cogs in a machine.

The time has come for organizations to manage both the experiences and the relationships with each of their employees as individuals to make the collective stronger, healthier, and more resilient.

Now is the time to build a conscious, measured, professional approach to Employee Relationship Management (ERM).

What say you?

Accelerate your change and transformation success

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An Innovation Evangelist Can Increase Your Reputation and Innovation Velocity

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Chief Evangelist Braden Kelley

by Braden Kelley

Building upon my popular article Rise of the Evangelist, I wanted to create an article for the global innovation community focused specifically on the importance of the innovation evangelist role.

In my previous article I defined five different types of evangelists that organizations may already have, or may want to hire, including:

Chief Evangelist
Brand Evangelists
Product Evangelists
Service Evangelists
Innovation Evangelists

This specialization occurs when the evangelism an organization needs become too big for one evangelist to handle. At that point, a Chief Evangelist creates the evangelism strategy and manages the execution across the team of brand, innovation, and other evangelism focus areas.

When should an organization focus on innovation evangelism?

To continue to exist as a business, every organization should build an infrastructure for continuous innovation, but many don’t. If you’re not sure what this looks like, here is my Infinite Innovation Infrastructure (which leverages the Nine Innovation Roles):

Infinite Innovation Infrastructure

For those organizations investing in innovation, it is crucial to also invest in innovation evangelism when:

Innovation is part of the company’s strategy
Innovation is central to competitive differentiation
The company wants to share their innovation stories
The company wants to partner with customers to innovate
The company wants to partner with suppliers to innovate
The company wants to engage experts in innovation
The company wants to engage the general public in innovation

You’ll notice many of these points hint at the need for an external talent strategy, and Innovation Evangelism must play a key role. Because of this, I encourage you to download and consult the success guide I created for Innocentive on Harnessing the Global Talent Pool to Accelerate Innovation which focuses on the elements and importance of external talent in any company’s innovation efforts.

Bill Joy, a co-Founder of Sun Microsystems, once famously said:

“There are always more smart people outside your company than within it.”

Any external talent strategy must accumulate energy and then unleash it in a focused direction. And part of the way to do that is by establishing a common language of innovation. The process begins by defining what innovation means to your organization. Consider looking at this as the WHO – WHAT – WHEN – WHERE – WHY – HOW of innovation:

WHO is to be involved in your innovation efforts?
WHAT does innovation mean to you? WHAT types of innovation are you focused on?
WHEN will you be looking for innovation input?
WHERE can people go to find out more? WHERE do they go to contribute?
WHY should people want to participate?
HOW can they participate?

Continue reading this article on InnovationManagement.se

… where we will answer these questions and more:

Should innovation evangelism be a role or a job?
What does an innovation evangelist do?
What makes a good innovation evangelist?

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Rise of the Evangelist

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by Braden Kelley

What is an evangelist?

When many people hear this term, their minds used to picture Billy Graham or Pat Robertson, but this is changing. Why?

Our perceptions of evangelists are transforming as the pace of change accelerates to construct a new reality faster than most human brains can process the changes.

This creates a chasm in understanding and change readiness that evangelists can help bridge in a number of different ways.

Let us look at what an evangelist really is…

Oxford Dictionaries say an evangelist is a “zealous advocate of something.”

In business, the evangelist is a role that any of us can take on (with varying levels of success). Evangelism is very important to innovation success, which is why the evangelist is one of The Nine Innovation Roles™. This is how I define this particular role:

“The Evangelists know how to educate people on what the idea is and help them understand it. Evangelists are great people to help build support for an idea internally, and also to help educate customers on its value.”

Notice at this point we are talking about an evangelist as a role that can be played by one or more people, and not as a job that one or more people hold. Evangelism normally will be a role and not a job, but there are inflection points where this must change.

Outside of an innovation context, evangelism often falls on the shoulders of CEOs, business owners and product managers within organizations. When the need for evangelism is small, this can work. But for most organizations, this is no longer the case.

When should you hire an evangelist?

The time to cross over from evangelism as a role to evangelism as a job is when:

The pace of internal change is accelerating faster than employees can grasp without help
The pace of external change is accelerating faster than customers can understand without help
Your company is facing disruption by new entrants or existing competitors
You’re considering a digital transformation
You’ve already embarked upon a digital transformation
You’re using Agile in product development
Your brand essence is being shifted by you or your customers
You need a more human and personal presence in your marketing efforts to better connect with customers

When one or more of these conditions are true, you’ll find that it isn’t possible for CEOs, business owners and product owners to meet the needs for evangelism in the short spurts of time these people can dedicate to the necessary activities.

As highlighted by Agile Product Development’s presence in the list, organizations leveraging Agile to develop software-based products will find that their product managers are always engaged with the backlog with little time to focus on evangelism. They’re always focused on shipping something.

Some organizations will resist adding evangelists to their team, feeling that such a role is superfluous, but having one or more people focused on evangelism delivers value to the organization by executing a range of incredibly important activities, including:

Growing awareness

Building a community around the company and/or plugging the company into pre-existing external communities (potentially taking the brand to places it has never been before)

Generating interest

Working with customers and the marketing team to identify the stories that need to be told and the themes that need to be introduced and/or reinforced

Creating desire

Building and maintaining conversations with the community that cares about your products/services/brands

Engaging in an open and honest dialogue to help gather the voice of the customer

Facilitating action

Practicing a human-centered design mindset to continuously elicit needs and surface wants and desired outcomes

Depending on the size of the organization you may decide to have a single evangelist, or some larger organizations have more than one type of evangelist, including:

Chief Evangelist
Brand Evangelists
Product Evangelists
Service Evangelists
Innovation Evangelists

This specialization occurs when the evangelism an organization needs become too big for one evangelist to handle. At that point a Chief Evangelist creates the evangelism strategy and manages the execution across the team of brand, product, service and other evangelism focus areas.

So what makes a good evangelist?

Evangelists arrive from a range of different job specialties, but key knowledge, skills and abilities include:

Empathetic
Passionate About the Company’s Mission, Products/Services, and Customers
Comfortable Public Speaker
Efficient and Effective Writer
Human-Centered Design Mindset
Experienced with Social Media, Audio and Video
Skilled Content Creator
Continuous Learner
Self-Directed and Comfortable with Ambiguity

… and ideally your chosen evangelists will already have some presence in the communities important to you, or the knowledge of how to establish a presence in these communities.

Customer buying journeys are notoriously unpredictable, meandering, long and non-linear. Evangelism is a critical part of helping to build relationships with potential buyers and increasing the chances that your brand will be top of mind when a non-buyer finally becomes a potential customer of your products or services.

It’s a long-term non-transactional investment, one that will pay dividends if you see the wisdom in making the expenditure.

Has your organization already invested in evangelists? What learnings would you like to share in the comments?

Are you ready for the evangelists to rise in your organization?

Or do you need help with evangelism? (contact me if you do)

Share the love!

p.s. I wrote a follow-up article for InnovationManagement.se that you might also enjoy — Increase Your Innovation Reputation and Velocity with an Innovation Evangelist

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Innovative Employee Recognition Programs

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Going Beyond Traditional Rewards

Innovative Employee Recognition Programs

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

Employee recognition is a key component of fostering a positive workplace culture and driving employee engagement. While traditional rewards such as bonuses and gift cards are commonly used to recognize and reward employees, there is a growing trend towards more innovative and personalized recognition programs.

Companies that are truly invested in recognizing the hard work and dedication of their employees understand the importance of going beyond traditional rewards to create meaningful and lasting experiences that not only motivate employees but also foster a sense of belonging and appreciation. In this thought leadership article, we will explore two case studies of companies that have implemented innovative employee recognition programs with great success.

Case Study 1: Google’s Peer Bonus Program

Google is known for its innovative workplace culture, and its peer bonus program is no exception. Instead of relying solely on monetary rewards, Google gives employees the opportunity to nominate their peers for a bonus based on their contributions to the company. This program not only recognizes employees for their hard work but also fosters a culture of appreciation and collaboration.

Employees at Google have the opportunity to nominate their peers for a bonus of up to $1,000, which is awarded based on the impact of their work on the company. This not only incentivizes employees to go above and beyond in their roles but also creates a sense of camaraderie and support among team members.

Case Study 2: Salesforce’s Thank-You Economy

Salesforce, a leading customer relationship management company, takes employee recognition to the next level with its Thank-You Economy program. This program is centered around the idea of gratitude and appreciation, with employees encouraged to express their thanks to their colleagues in meaningful ways.

One unique aspect of Salesforce’s Thank-You Economy program is its emphasis on peer-to-peer recognition. Employees are given a platform to publicly recognize their colleagues for their contributions, whether it be a job well done on a project or going above and beyond to help a team member. This not only boosts employee morale but also reinforces a culture of appreciation and support within the company.

Conclusion

Traditional rewards are no longer enough to truly recognize and motivate employees. Companies that are committed to fostering a positive workplace culture and driving employee engagement are turning to innovative recognition programs that go beyond monetary rewards to create meaningful and personalized experiences for their employees. By implementing programs such as Google’s peer bonus program and Salesforce’s Thank-You Economy, companies can create a culture of appreciation and support that not only motivates employees but also strengthens team dynamics and drives organizational success.

Bottom line: 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

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The Agency Revolution

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What People Really Want from Employers Today

LAST UPDATED: April 19, 2026 at 5:38 PM

The Agency Revolution

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

The Death of the “Conscript” Mentality

For decades, the traditional employment contract was built on a transactional foundation: the “Conscript” model. Organizations expected employees to trade their time, compliance, and cognitive labor for a steady paycheck and a cubicle. But the world has shifted. In a landscape defined by rapid technological acceleration and shifting social values, the era of the industrial-era conscript is officially over.

Today, people are looking to be Architects and Magic Makers. They are no longer content being cogs in a machine; they want to be the designers of the machine itself. This shift represents a fundamental move from passive participation to active contribution. If innovation is truly the act of removing friction from the human experience, then as leaders, we must start by removing the friction within our own organizational structures.

“The most attractive employers in 2026 aren’t those offering the flashiest perks, but those who provide the highest level of Human Agency.”

In this article, we explore how the most successful organizations are moving away from managing “headcount” and toward empowering individuals to own their impact, drive change, and find a sense of true agency in their professional lives.

Radical Transparency & Psychological Safety: The Fuel for Change

Innovation and change are inherently risky endeavors. If an employee fears that a failed experiment or a dissenting opinion will lead to professional exile, they will naturally default to the status quo. Psychological safety is not a “soft” HR concept; it is the essential fuel for an agile organization. Without it, your innovation engine is running on an empty tank.

To move forward, leaders must dismantle the “Zero-Error Trap.” In many corporate cultures, the cost of being wrong is perceived as higher than the benefit of being right. This creates a culture of silence where employees hide their best ideas and mask emerging problems. To thrive, we must shift the focus from “avoiding failure” to “maximizing learning velocity.”

Achieving this requires Radical Communication Loops. We need to create direct, unfiltered lines of communication from the “edges” of the organization — where the employees interact with customers — to the “center” where strategy is formed. When people see that their insights lead to tangible change, they stop being observers and start being owners.

Safety as Fuel: Creating an environment where curiosity is prioritized over compliance.
Dismantling the Zero-Error Trap: Celebrating the “intelligent failure” that provides a competitive roadmap.
Edge-to-Center Feedback: Ensuring the front lines have a voice in the boardroom.

The “Agency First” Model: Automating the Mundane to Elevate the Human

We are entering an era where the value of a human being in the workplace is no longer measured by their ability to perform repetitive tasks. The “Agency First” model focuses on Cognitive Offloading — using AI and automation to strip away the “mental noise” of administrative drudgery. This isn’t about replacement; it’s about liberation. When we automate the mundane, we don’t just save time; we reclaim the cognitive bandwidth necessary for deep thought and creative problem-solving.

This shift requires a fundamental evolution in management: moving from Monitor to Mentor. Instead of supervisors checking machine-generated outputs, the modern employee takes on the role of a system architect or “AI Coach.” They are responsible for the Human-in-the-Loop upgrade, ensuring that technology serves human goals rather than the other way around.

Ultimately, people today want to focus on Intent. In a world of infinite digital “busyness,” the most valuable skill is the ability to define the Commander’s Intent — the “why” behind the work. By letting intelligent systems handle the “how,” employees are empowered to steer the ship rather than just rowing in the galley. This is how we move from a workforce that is merely busy to a workforce that is profoundly impactful.

“The goal of digital transformation isn’t to make people work more like machines; it’s to use machines so that people can work more like humans.” — Braden Kelley

The Experience Nexus: Co-Creating the Workplace

In the past, organizations treated Customer Experience (CX) and Employee Experience (EX) as separate silos. Today, we realize they are two sides of the same coin. I call this the Experience Nexus. To deliver a seamless external brand, you must first design a seamless internal culture. We are seeing the rise of the Experience Management Office (XMO) — a centralized hub that integrates CX, EX, and Partner Experience (PX) to ensure every touchpoint is human-centered.

Modern employees don’t want to be passive recipients of HR policies; they want to be active designers. This is where the Employee Advisory Board comes in. By involving staff in the co-creation of the workplace — from hybrid work rituals to the selection of software — you shift the dynamic from “us vs. them” to a shared mission. When people help build the house, they care more about the foundation.

However, co-creation requires Radical Transparency regarding the data we collect. As we move toward neuroadaptive workplaces and advanced sensing, maintaining Data Sovereignty is critical. People want to know what is being measured and why. They want the assurance that technology is being used to support their flourishing, not just to track their keystrokes. Transparency builds the trust that makes innovation possible.

Unified Experience: Bridging the gap between how we treat customers and how we treat our team.
Co-Design Principles: Moving from top-down mandates to collaborative culture-building.
Privacy as a Pillar: Respecting individual sovereignty in an increasingly digital environment.

Meaning as the North Star (Not Just “Happiness”)

There is a common misconception in leadership circles that the ultimate goal is “employee happiness.” While happiness is wonderful, it is a trailing indicator. The leading indicator — the one that actually drives retention and brilliance — is Meaning. People don’t just want to feel good at work; they want to feel that their work matters. They want to see the direct line between their daily tasks and the success of the customer.

This shift requires us to rethink performance management entirely. We need to move away from the industrial mindset of “weeding out” low performers and toward a philosophy of “Re-potting.” Often, an employee isn’t failing; they are simply planted in the wrong soil. By identifying their unique aspirations and shifting them into roles where their specific talents can flourish, we honor the human being while optimizing the organization.

The Dream Organization is one where the friction between individual aspiration and corporate objectives disappears. When a company’s North Star aligns with the employee’s personal sense of purpose, you don’t need to “manage” them in the traditional sense. You simply need to provide the resources and get out of their way. In 2026, the competitive advantage belongs to the companies that can bridge the gap between “making a living” and “making a difference.”

“Stop trying to engineer happiness. Start designing for significance.”

Conclusion: Getting to the Future First

We are currently living through a profound transition in the nature of work. We are moving from a world where we use tools to perform tasks, to a world where we inhabit intelligent systems. Navigating this shift requires a FutureHacking™ mindset — the ability to look at the horizon not with fear, but with the intent to shape it. The future isn’t something that happens to us; it’s something we build through the choices we make today.

As leaders, our primary call to action is simple yet challenging: Stop trying to “make people happy” and start making their work important. When an individual understands their role in the larger story of innovation and human experience, engagement becomes a natural byproduct rather than a forced metric. We must provide the agency, the safety, and the tools that allow our teams to move from being participants in a process to being masters of their craft.

Change doesn’t happen in the boardroom through slide decks and mandates. It happens in the hearts and minds of the people on the front lines who choose to bring their best selves to work every day. By designing an organization that honors human potential, you don’t just stay competitive — you get to the future first.

The question isn’t whether the workplace will change, but whether you will be the one to lead that change. Let’s build something meaningful together.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is the difference between a “Conscript” and a “Magic Maker”?

A “Conscript” is an employee who performs work based on transactional compliance — trading time for a paycheck. A “Magic Maker” is an empowered individual who uses their agency to solve problems, innovate, and create value through human-centered design and passion.

2. Why is psychological safety considered the “fuel” for innovation?

Innovation requires the freedom to experiment and fail. Psychological safety ensures that employees can take calculated risks and share dissenting opinions without fear of retribution, which is essential for rapid learning and organizational agility.

3. What does “re-potting” talent mean in a modern organization?

Rather than traditional performance management that “weeds out” low performers, “re-potting” involves identifying an individual’s unique strengths and moving them into a different role or environment where they can better flourish and contribute to the mission.

Image credit: Google Gemini

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Revisiting Performance Reviews for the Innovation Era

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LAST UPDATED: April 17, 2026 at 8:21 AM

Revisiting Performance Reviews for the Innovation Era

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

The “Innovation Gap” in Modern HR

The traditional annual performance review is increasingly becoming a relic of a bygone industrial era. To foster a culture of true innovation, we must address the fundamental disconnects between legacy management systems and the needs of a modern, agile workforce.

The Mismatch: Compliance vs. Creativity

Standard Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are often designed for optimization and predictability. In an innovation context, these rigid metrics act as “creativity killers” by penalizing the very risk-taking and divergent thinking required for breakthrough ideas. If employees are only measured on “hitting the numbers,” they will naturally avoid the uncertainty inherent in pioneering new solutions.

The Velocity Problem

There is a growing friction between the annual review cycle and the rapid loops of modern product development. In a world of “build-measure-learn,” waiting twelve months to course-correct a career path is an eternity. Innovation requires real-time pivots, yet our HR systems often remain stuck in a slow, linear cadence.

Psychological Safety and the Brain

Traditional grading systems and “forced rankings” often trigger a threat response in the human brain. When the prefrontal cortex — the center for creativity and problem-solving — is clouded by the anxiety of a performance rating, innovation ceases. We must redesign these interactions to prioritize psychological safety, allowing the creative brain to remain “online” and engaged.

Shifting from Outputs to Inputs

In the innovation era, measuring success solely by what was delivered is a lagging indicator. To build a sustainable engine of growth, we must shift our focus toward the leading indicators of innovation: the behaviors, mindsets, and inputs that make breakthroughs possible.

Measuring Curiosity and Knowledge Acquisition

In a rapidly changing landscape, the ability to learn is more valuable than what you already know. We must transition from the “What did you finish?” mentality to “What did you learn?”. By valuing the insights gained from customer research and market exploration, we encourage employees to stay curious and keep their skills relevant.

The Value of “Productive Failure”

Innovation is inherently messy and unpredictable. If we only reward successes, we implicitly punish the experiments that didn’t go as planned. We need metrics that reward well-designed experiments — those that were executed with rigour and provided valuable data — regardless of whether they resulted in a product launch. This de-risks the act of trying something new.

Recognizing Network Effects and “Invisible Work”

Breakthroughs rarely happen in isolation. Standard performance reviews often ignore the “Invisible Work” that fuels a creative culture: mentorship, cross-departmental collaboration, and the “dot-connecting” that bridges silos. We must find ways to quantify and celebrate the individuals who act as the glue in our innovation ecosystem, ensuring that collaborative value is just as visible as individual output.

Designing the New Feedback Experience

The structure of the feedback session itself must mirror the Human-Centered Design principles we apply to our products. It should be an iterative, empathetic, and forward-looking experience that reduces cognitive load and maximizes professional growth.

Continuous Iteration over “Big Bang” Events

Just as we have moved from Waterfall to Agile development, we must move from annual reviews to continuous “Syncs.” By breaking feedback into smaller, more frequent interactions, we remove the “recency bias” of annual reviews and allow for real-time course corrections. These micro-feedback loops keep the employee’s development in lockstep with the organization’s evolving needs.

Feed-Forward vs. Feed-Back

While traditional “Feedback” looks in the rearview mirror at past mistakes, “Feed-Forward” focuses on future potential. By shifting the conversation to upcoming design challenges and career aspirations, we transform the manager from a judge into a strategic partner. This approach aligns individual passions with the firm’s future innovation roadmap.

360-Degree Empathy and Social Impact

Innovation is a team sport. To get a holistic view of performance, we must incorporate 360-degree perspectives that measure an individual’s impact on team dynamics and their ability to practice empathy with stakeholders. Success in the innovation era is defined by how well you enable others to succeed, not just your personal contribution.

Tools and Frameworks for Change

Moving beyond theory requires a new set of organizational instruments. To institutionalize a culture of innovation, we must deploy frameworks that prioritize flexibility, strategic alignment, and the unique contributions of every “architect” within the system.

OKRs for Innovation and Growth

While KPIs focus on maintaining the status quo, Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are designed for stretching boundaries. By aligning personal development goals with the organization’s “North Star,” we ensure that individual efforts are directly contributing to the most critical innovation breakthroughs. This creates a shared language of ambition and progress.

The Innovation Portfolio Approach

Just as we manage product pipelines, we should view an employee’s career through an Innovation Portfolio lens. This means evaluating contributions across three horizons: Core (optimizing current systems), Adjacent (expanding into new areas), and Transformational (high-risk, high-reward future-hacking). This prevents the “efficiency trap” and honors those working on the messy edges of the future.

Co-Creation and Self-Design

In a human-centered organization, the employee is a co-designer of their own role. We must empower individuals to help co-create their own performance metrics based on their unique strengths and their specific position within the innovation ecosystem. When people have agency over how they are measured, they take greater ownership of the outcomes.

Conclusion: Cultivating a Growth Ecosystem

The shift toward innovation-era performance reviews is not merely an HR upgrade; it is a fundamental reconfiguration of the employer-employee relationship. We must move from a culture of surveillance to a culture of enablement.

The Leader as Coach and Experience Designer

In this new paradigm, the manager’s role is redefined. They are no longer a “judge” delivering a verdict once a year, but a Coach and Experience Designer. Their primary responsibility is to remove friction, reduce cognitive load, and design the conditions where creative talent can thrive.

The Bottom Line: A Competitive Necessity

Human-centered performance management is not a “soft” initiative — it is a competitive mandate. In an economy increasingly driven by AI and automation, the human capacity for empathy, complex problem-solving, and “future-hacking” is our most valuable asset. Organizations that fail to measure and reward these traits will lose their best people to those that do.

Call to Action: Prototype Your Future

The time for theorizing has passed. Leaders must begin to prototype new review models today. Start small — test a “Feed-Forward” approach with one team, or replace a quarterly KPI check-in with a learning-based “Sync.” Iteration is the only way to build a performance system that is as dynamic and resilient as the world we are trying to create.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the main difference between traditional and innovation-era performance reviews?

Traditional reviews focus on past outputs and compliance, often penalizing risk-taking. Innovation-era reviews focus on leading indicators like curiosity, learning velocity, and well-designed ‘productive failures’ that drive future growth.

How do OKRs replace traditional KPIs in performance management?

While KPIs maintain current standards, OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) align individual growth with the organization’s strategic ‘North Star,’ encouraging employees to reach for transformational goals rather than just hitting safe targets.

Why is ‘Feed-Forward’ better than ‘Feedback’ for creative teams?

Feedback often focuses on historical mistakes, which can trigger defensiveness. ‘Feed-Forward’ is a human-centered approach that looks at future potential and upcoming challenges, positioning the manager as a coach rather than a judge.

Image credit: Google Gemini

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The Innovation Value of Cross-Pollination

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Internal Mobility as Retention Strategy

The Innovation Value of Cross-Pollination

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato
LAST UPDATED: January 10, 2026 at 11:16AM

In the current landscape of the global economy, the most valuable currency isn’t capital — it’s human potential. We are witnessing a fundamental shift in the employer-employee social contract. For decades, the “career ladder” was the dominant metaphor for progress. You started at the bottom, climbed vertically within a single functional silo, and retired at the top. But in an era defined by rapid technological disruption and shifting human expectations, that ladder has become a liability. It is rigid, fragile, and increasingly disconnected from how innovation actually happens.

To survive and thrive today, organizations must replace the ladder with the Career Lattice. This human-centered approach to organizational design prioritizes internal mobility not just as an HR checkbox for retention, but as a primary engine for innovation. When we facilitate the movement of talent across traditional boundaries, we trigger a process I call “Organizational Cross-Pollination.”

The Retention Crisis is a Growth Crisis

Why do people leave? Exit interviews often cite compensation, but deeper inquiry reveals a more pervasive cause: stagnation. High-performing individuals are biologically and psychologically wired for growth. When an employee feels they have mastered their domain and sees no path to diversify their skills without leaving the company, they begin to look elsewhere. Retention is not about holding someone in place; it is about providing enough internal space for them to move.

Internal mobility acts as a pressure-release valve for talent. By allowing a software engineer to spend six months with the customer success team, or a marketing strategist to pivot into product development, the organization provides the “newness” and challenge that high-potential employees crave. This human-centric flexibility creates a culture where the organization is seen as a platform for a lifetime of different careers, rather than a single, static destination.

“Innovation is the byproduct of human curiosity meeting organizational opportunity. When we restrict mobility to protect functional silos, we stifle the very curiosity that sustains our competitive advantage. A truly innovative culture is one where the ‘Not Invented Here’ syndrome is cured by people who have actually been ‘There’.” — Braden Kelley

Unlocking the Innovation Value of Cross-Pollination

Beyond retention, the strategic value of internal mobility lies in the breaking of silos. Silos are where innovation goes to die. They create “echo chambers” where teams solve the same problems using the same tired methodologies. Cross-pollination — the movement of people, ideas, and “tacit knowledge” from one department to another — introduces the constructive friction necessary for breakthrough thinking.

An employee moving from Department A to Department B brings with them a unique set of lenses. They see inefficiencies that long-tenured members of the team have become blind to. They recognize patterns that exist across the organization and can connect dots that were previously invisible. This is the Innovation Premium of internal mobility.

Case Study 1: The Global Tech Giant’s Talent Marketplace

A major enterprise software provider faced a significant “brain drain” as mid-level managers sought roles at smaller, more agile startups. The leadership realized that while they had thousands of open roles, their internal hiring process was more bureaucratic than their external one. They implemented an AI-driven Internal Talent Marketplace.

This system allowed employees to see not just full-time roles, but “micro-projects” across the company. A data scientist in the Finance department could spend 10% of their time helping the Sustainability team model carbon footprints. The Result: The company saw a 25% increase in retention for participating employees. More importantly, the Sustainability team launched a new product feature based on a financial modeling technique the data scientist brought from their home department — a feature that became a primary market differentiator within one year.

Case Study 2: The Industrial Manufacturer’s Digital Bridge

A century-old manufacturing firm was struggling to integrate IoT (Internet of Things) sensors into its heavy machinery. Their software developers were brilliant at code but didn’t understand the physical stresses of a factory floor. Conversely, their mechanical engineers knew the machines but feared the digital shift.

The firm launched a “Cross-Pollination Fellowship,” moving mechanical engineers into the software UI/UX teams for 12 months. The Result: The software became significantly more intuitive for actual operators because the designers now possessed deep “domain empathy.” This internal move saved the company an estimated 18 months in development time and resulted in three new patents that combined physical mechanical insights with predictive software algorithms.

The Barrier: Overcoming Talent Hoarding

The biggest obstacle to internal mobility is not technology or lack of interest; it is talent hoarding. Middle managers are often incentivized solely on the output of their specific team. When a star performer wants to move to a different department, the manager views it as a loss rather than an organizational win. To fix this, we must change the incentive structure.

Leaders must be measured on their “Talent Export Rate.” We should celebrate managers who develop employees so effectively that they are recruited by other parts of the business. This requires a human-centered change in mindset: seeing the organization as a single ecosystem where the flow of talent is the lifeblood of the whole, not the property of the part.

A Call to Action for Innovation Leaders

If you are an innovation leader, your job is not just to manage ideas; it is to manage the environment where ideas are born. Internal mobility is the most underutilized tool in your kit. By championing a culture where people can move freely, you are building a resilient, adaptive, and deeply human organization. The next great idea for your company is already inside your building — it just might be sitting in the wrong department.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does internal mobility directly improve the ROI of an innovation program?

Internal mobility improves ROI by reducing “time-to-competency” and “acquisition costs.” When an internal employee moves to a new role, they already understand the organizational culture and network. Furthermore, the cross-pollination of their previous knowledge into a new area often leads to faster problem-solving and unique intellectual property that external hires would take months to develop.

What are “micro-projects” and how do they support retention?

Micro-projects are short-term, part-time assignments that allow employees to contribute to a different department without leaving their current role. They support retention by satisfying the employee’s need for variety and skill-building, effectively “scratching the itch” for change without the risk of a full-scale resignation or transfer.

How can a company start an internal mobility program with limited resources?

Start by mapping the skills your organization needs for its top three innovation goals. Then, identify employees in unrelated departments who possess those skills as hobbies or previous experience. Create a simple “Internal Shadowing” program where these employees spend 4 hours a week with the target team. This low-cost pilot demonstrates value and builds the cultural appetite for more formal mobility later.

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 credits: Unsplash

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Talent Acquisition as Futurology

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Hiring for Skills That Don’t Exist Yet

LAST UPDATED: December 21, 2025 at 6:34PM

Talent Acquisition as Futurology

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

The future of work is arriving faster than our hiring systems can adapt. Roles are dissolving, technologies are converging, and customer expectations are in constant motion. In this environment, talent acquisition must become less about matching resumes to roles and more about sensing the future.

As a human-centered change and innovation practitioner, I see talent acquisition as a form of applied futurology. It is the practice of anticipating emerging capabilities and building human systems resilient enough to evolve.

Why Prediction Is the Wrong Goal

Many organizations attempt to predict future skills with precision. This approach creates false confidence. The better strategy is to hire for people who can thrive amid uncertainty.

Curiosity, systems thinking, and learning agility consistently outperform narrowly defined technical skills when environments shift.

Reimagining the Talent Signal

Resumes and job titles are poor indicators of future capability. Human-centered organizations look for signals such as self-directed learning, cross-disciplinary experience, and the ability to make meaning from complexity.

This shift requires new assessment tools and interviewer training focused on how candidates learn and adapt.

Case Study One: IBM’s Capability-Centered Hiring Model

IBM’s move away from degree requirements in many roles was not about lowering standards. It was about aligning hiring with reality. Many emerging roles simply did not have established educational pathways.

By investing in internal learning and apprenticeships, IBM built a workforce capable of evolving with technology rather than chasing it.

Hiring as an Inclusion Strategy

Future-oriented hiring naturally expands access. When organizations focus on potential instead of pedigree, they unlock overlooked talent and improve diversity of thought.

Inclusion becomes a structural outcome rather than a stated goal.

Case Study Two: Spotify’s Culture of Adaptation

Spotify’s emphasis on mindset and mission alignment enables teams to reorganize without constant disruption. People are hired with the expectation that their roles will change.

This cultural clarity reduces friction and increases resilience as the organization experiments and scales.

Leadership Responsibilities

Leaders must reward learning, not just execution. Performance systems should recognize capability growth and collaboration across boundaries.

Talent acquisition cannot do this alone. It must be supported by culture, incentives, and leadership behavior.

“The organizations that win the future will not be the ones that predict it best, but the ones that build people capable of adapting fastest.”

— Braden Kelley

Conclusion

Hiring for skills that do not yet exist is not reckless. It is responsible. It acknowledges uncertainty and invests in human adaptability as the ultimate competitive advantage.

Talent acquisition as futurology is not about seeing the future clearly. It is about preparing people to meet it with confidence.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why are traditional job descriptions failing?

Because they assume stability in roles that are constantly evolving.

What capabilities matter most for future roles?

Learning agility, systems thinking, collaboration, and sense-making.

How can leaders support future-oriented hiring?

By aligning incentives, performance metrics, and learning investments with adaptability.

Image credit: Google Gemini

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Hiring the Right Chief Innovation Officer

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Hiring the Right Chief Innovation Officer

Every company begins as the nimble startup, organized around the solution to a single customer problem and executing that solution better than anyone else in the market (including the incumbents with deep pockets). But at some point the hunter inevitably becomes the hunted and that nimble startup as it evolves and scales, eventually becomes that more complex (but capable) incumbent. Inevitably it finds itself so focused on capturing all of the business for its existing solutions, that it finds itself at risk of missing the next evolution in customer needs.

The companies that last the longest, manage to fulfill existing customer needs with well delivered solutions, and identify new customer needs they can satisfy as customer needs (or wants) continue to evolve. But many companies fail to do so quickly enough, especially in our new reality where it is easier than ever to start and scale a solution around the globe with limited resources. Innovation is the key to remaining relevant with customers. Innovation is the key to remaining alive.

It’s innovate or die, and this new reality leaves all companies focused on Winning the War for Innovation.

This quest to win the war for innovation has led many organizations to begin hiring Chief Innovation Officers (CINO), Innovation Managers, VP’s of Innovation, or Innovation Directors.

But many organizations have done so in haste…

There is a right way and a wrong way to hire a Chief Innovation Officer (or other innovation leader).

In this article we will look at the Do’s and Don’ts of successfully hiring the right Chief Innovation Officer.

First, the Don’ts:

Don’t hire a Chief Innovation Officer before the Board of Directors and senior leadership understands what innovation is (AND ISN’T)
Don’t hire a Chief Innovation Officer before the Board of Directors and senior leaders are all publicly committed to innovation
Don’t hire a Chief Innovation Officer before the Board of Directors and senior leadership have created a budget to fund discrete innovation projects
Don’t hire a Chief Innovation Officer before you move beyond the innovation as a project mindset to view innovation as a process and a capability that you need to build (like good governance or operational excellence)
Don’t hire a Chief Innovation Officer before you understand how new product development (NPD), research and development (R&D), and innovation will differ in your organization

Being cognizant of the Don’ts will help you avoid hiring a Chief Innovation Officer before you’re able to help set them (and the organization) up for success.

We are now ready to look at the Do’s, the characteristics, skills, and abilities to look for as you search for a great Chief Innovation Officer (and team).

As I’ve written before in Death of the Chief Innovation Officer, when we think about hiring a Chief Innovation Officer (CINO) or an Innovation Director, VP of Innovation, or Innovation Manager, it is important to view your innovation leader, not as the person responsible for innovating, but instead as the person responsible for enabling innovation, encouraging it, inspiring it, facilitating it, and coordinating it. In short, what you are looking for is more of an Innovation Enablement Leader.

The implication? This person’s job should be to lead not to manage, and to enable instead of control. What you’re looking for is someone to facilitate the Seven C’s of a Successful Innovation Culture:

Cultivating a Culture of Curiosity
Collection of inspiration and insight
Connections
Creation
Collaboration
Commercialization
Communications

1. Cultivating a Culture of Curiosity

Curiosity drives innovation, and so the more curious people you have in your organization, the more innovation you are going to be able to generate. A good Chief Innovation Officer (Innovation Enablement Leader) can help cultivate a culture of curiosity. Amplifying curiosity in your organization is one of the most important improvements you can make in your culture.

Many of my views on improving your innovation culture have been detailed in this white paper Five Ways to Make Your Innovation Culture Smell Better I wrote for Planview and in my popular book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire.

2. Collection of Inspiration and Insight

Curiosity is driven by inspiration and insight, and so a good Innovation Enablement Leader excels at collecting and sharing inspiration and insight. This can include:

Teaching people inspiration gathering frameworks like the Four Lenses of Innovation from Rowan Gibson and idea generation methods like SCAMPER
Installing an insight gathering tool (which may or may not be merged together with an idea management solution)
Building a Global Sensing Network (click the link to learn more)

Building a Global Sensing Network

3. Connections

Innovation is about collecting and connecting the dots. A good Innovation Enablement Leader is good at building the connections inside (and outside) the organization that help to accelerate the gathering and dissemination of inspiration, insight, and the other elements crucial to effective (and sustained) innovation. Building on the idea of building a global sensing network (see #2), innovative organizations increasingly turn their attention outwards for innovation, recognizing that there are more smart people outside the organization than inside. This leads a good Innovation Enablement Leader to focus on Harnessing the Global Talent Pool to Accelerate Innovation.

4. Creation

The job of an Innovation Enablement Leader (or Innovation Facilitator) is to serve the rest of the organization and to work across the organization to help remove barriers to innovation and to focus on the Seven C’s of a Successful Innovation Culture. This could also mean providing a set of tools and methodologies for creative problem solving and other aspects of innovation work, organizing events, and other activities that support deepening capabilities across the Seven C’s of Successful Innovation Culture.

And because innovation is all about change, a good Innovation Enablement Leader will have a strong organizational change understanding and capabilities, including an understanding of the Five Keys to Successful Change from the Change Planning Toolkit™ (coming soon) and from my upcoming book Charting Change (Feb 2016):

Five Keys to Successful Change 550

A good Innovation Enablement Leader will know when to create a new innovation in-house, when to partner with an external entity like a University, startup, supplier, or other organization, and when to license a piece of technology or to acquire another company or startup in order to realize the desired innovation result for the company’s customers.

A good Innovation Enablement Leader knows which elements of the successful innovation they can best help to facilitate and where they need to call in help. This leads us nicely into #5.

5. Collaboration

Too often we treat people as commodities that are interchangeable and maintain the same characteristics and aptitudes. Of course, we know that people are not interchangeable, yet we continually pretend that they are anyway — to make life simpler for our reptile brain to comprehend. Deep down we know that people have different passions, skills, and potential, but even when it comes to innovation, we expect everybody to have good ideas.

I’m of the opinion that all people are creative, in their own way. That is not to say that all people are creative in the sense that every single person is good at creating lots of really great ideas, nor do they have to be. I believe instead that everyone has a dominant innovation role at which they excel, and that when properly identified and channeled, the organization stands to maximize its innovation capacity. I believe that all people excel at one of nine innovation roles, and that when organizations put the right people in the right innovation roles, that your innovation speed and capacity will increase.

Here are The Nine Innovation Roles:

1. Revolutionary

The Revolutionary is the person who is always eager to change things, to shake them up, and to share his or her opinion. These people tend to have a lot of great ideas and are not shy about sharing them. They are likely to contribute 80 to 90 percent of your ideas in open scenarios.

2. Conscript

The Conscript has a lot of great ideas but doesn’t willingly share them, either because such people don’t know anyone is looking for ideas, don’t know how to express their ideas, prefer to keep their head down and execute, or all three.

3. Connector

The Connector does just that. These people hear a Conscript say something interesting and put him together with a Revolutionary; The Connector listens to the Artist and knows exactly where to find the Troubleshooter that his idea needs.

4. Artist

The Artist doesn’t always come up with great ideas, but artists are really good at making them better.

5. Customer Champion

The Customer Champion may live on the edge of the organization. Not only does he have constant contact with the customer, but he also understands their needs, is familiar with their actions and behaviors, and is as close as you can get to interviewing a real customer about a nascent idea.

6. Troubleshooter

Every great idea has at least one or two major roadblocks to overcome before the idea is ready to be judged or before its magic can be made. This is where the Troubleshooter comes in. Troubleshooters love tough problems and often have the deep knowledge or expertise to help solve them.

7. Judge

The Judge is really good at determining what can be made profitably and what will be successful in the marketplace.

8. Magic Maker

The Magic Makers take an idea and make it real. These are the people who can picture how something is going to be made and line up the right resources to make it happen.

9. Evangelist

The Evangelists know how to educate people on what the idea is and help them understand it. Evangelists are great people to help build support for an idea internally, and also to help educate customers on its value.

As you can see, creating and maintaining a healthy innovation portfolio requires that you develop the organizational capability of identifying what role each individual is best at playing in your organization. It should be obvious that a failure to involve and leverage all nine roles along the idea generation, idea evaluation, and idea commercialization path will lead to suboptimal results. To be truly successful, you must be able to bring in the right roles at the right times to make your promising ideas stronger on your way to making them successful. Most organizations focus too much energy on generating the ideas and not enough on developing their ideas or their people.

A good Innovation Enablement Leader will recognize which of the Nine Innovation Roles they excel at and bring in other people into their organization that can help create a well rounded innovation team, and utilize the Nine Innovation Roles to build well-balanced innovation project teams during the execution phase.

Successful Innovation Enablement Leaders typically will be strong Revolutionaries, skilled Evangelists and passionate Customer Champions, but they also must work hard to be an impartial Judge.

At the same time, skilled Innovation Enablement Leaders will build strong relationships with the heads of strategy, digital, customer insight, research and development (R&D), new product development, and operations to both understand where to focus on creating new and differentiated value for customers, and how to create innovation that the company can successfully make, distribute, and support at scale.

6. Commercialization

You are hiring an Innovation Enablement Leader (whether that is a Chief Innovation Officer, VP of Innovation, Innovation Director, or Innovation Manager) not to shepherd a single potential innovation project from insight to market, but to build a sustainable, continuous source of innovation, and a culture that reinforces your method for creating continuous innovation. One tool I’ve created for all types of Innovation Enablement Leaders is the Eight I’s of Infinite Innovation™, which as you can see, places inspiration at the center of looping, infinite process (see #2).

Eight I's of Infinite Innovation

7. Communications

Most organizations have innovated at least once in their existence, and in many organizations people are still innovating. A true Innovation Enablement Leader is more of a coach, supporting emergent innovation, and helping people test and learn, prototype and find the right channel to scale the most promising insight-driven ideas (or work with the organization to create new channels).

A good Innovation Enablement Leader excels at helping to define AND consistently communicate and reinforce the organization’s common language of innovation. Several companies all around the world have purchased my book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire in large quantities for their senior leadership team (and even substantial parts of their organization) to help build their common language of innovation, or brought me in to help facilitate innovation workshops and knowledge transfer to help jumpstart their innovation program.

Conclusion

Are you seeking to control innovation with a Chief Innovation Officer or to facilitate it with an Innovation Enablement Leader?

Ultimately, the responsibility for innovation should remain with the business, under an innovation vision, strategy and goals set by the CEO and senior leadership. It’s okay to bring someone in from the outside to help get things off to a strong start, to build a strong foundation, and to set your Innovation Enablement Leader up for success.

Many organizations will want to have someone full-time on their payroll facilitating their innovation efforts, but as I’ll describe in my next post, some organizations may feel more comfortable bringing in a fractional (or part-time) Chief Innovation Officer (CINO) or Innovation Enablement Leader because of their size or their innovation maturity (or readiness), and that’s okay too.

So, stay tuned for an article on fractional or part-time Chief Innovation Officers (CINOs), and keep innovating!

P.S. If you’re looking to hire a Chief Innovation Officer (an Innovation Enablement Leader) on a full-time or part-time basis, drop me an email and I can either tackle the role or find someone else who can!

Image credit: blog.internshala.com

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