Tag Archives: Leadership

How to Design Offsites That Generate Revenue

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Corporate offsites – the phrase conjures images of everything from “mandatory fun” with colleagues to long and exhausting days debating strategy with peers. Rarely are the images something that entice people to sit up and shout, “YEA!” But what if the reality could be something YEA! worthy?

That’s exactly what the authors of the recent Harvard Business Review (HBR) article, “Why Offsites Work – and How to Get the Most Out of Them,” describe and offer a guide to accomplish.

Offsites May Be the Answer to the WFH vs. RTO Debate

Offsites aren’t new but they’ve taken on a new role and new significance as companies grapple with how to manage Work from Home (WFH) and Return To Office (RTO) policies.

As with most things in life, the pendulum swings from one extreme to another until eventually, finally, landing in a stable and neutral midpoint. When the pandemic hit, we swung from every day in the office to every day at home. Then society opened back up and corporate landlords came calling for rent, whether or not people were in the offices, so we swung back to Return to Office mandates.

Offsites, the authors suggest, may be the happy medium between the two extremes because offsites:

“give people opportunities for interactions that otherwise might not happen. Offsites create unique opportunities for employees to connect in person, forming new relationships and strengthening existing ones. As a result, offsites help people learn about others’ knowledge and build interpersonal trust, which are both critical ingredients for effective collaboration.”

Offsite Connections Lead to Collaborations that Generate ROI

After analyzing eight years of data from a global firm’s offsites and 350,000 “instances of formal working relationships” for 750 employees, the authors found that intentionally designed offsites (more on that in a moment) yield surprisingly measurable and lasting results:

24% more incoming requests for collaboration amongst attendees post vs. pre-offsite (silos busted!)
17% of new connections were still active two years after the offsite (lasting change!)
$180,000 in net new revenue from collaborations within the first two months post offsite (real results!)

The benefits event extended to non-attendees because they “seemed to get the message that collaboration is important and wanted to demonstrate their commitment to being collaborative team players” and “likely identified new collaborators after the offsite through referrals.”

How to Design Offsites That Get Results

Four key strategies emerged from the authors’ research and work with over 100 other organizations:

Design for the people in the audience, not the people on stage. Poll attendees to understand their specific needs and goals, then design collaborative activities, not management monologues.
Design for the new hires, not the tenured execs. Create opportunities for new hires to meet, connect with, and work alongside more experienced colleagues.
Set and communicate clear goals and expectations. Once the offsite is designed and before it happens, tell people what to expect (the agenda) and why to expect it (your design intentions and goals). Also, tell them how to make the most of the offsite opportunities by thinking about the skill and network gaps they want to fill.
Track activities to measure ROI. The connections, collaborations, and commitments that start at the offsite need to continue after it in the form of ongoing communication, greater collaboration, and talent engagement. Yes, conduct a post-event survey immediately after the event but keep measuring every 2-3 months until the next offsite. The data will reveal how well you performed against your goals and how to do even better the next time.

Offsites can be a powerful tool to build an organization’s culture and revenue, but only if they are thoughtfully designed to go beyond swanky settings, sermons from the stage, and dust-collecting swag and build the connections and collaborations that only start when people are together, in-person, outside of the office.

Image credit: Unsplash

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You Are Doing Strategic Planning Wrong

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(According to Seth Godin)

You Are Doing Strategic Planning Wrong

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

It’s that time of year again – the annual ritual of strategic planning. But as Seth Godin points out in “How to Avoid Strategy Myopia,” we often mistake annual budgets and operational efficiency plans for true strategy. Strategies are not plans or guarantees; they’re informed choices to pursue possibilities that may or may not work.

Godin’s insights, while often associated with innovation, are fundamentally about strategy in its purest form. They challenge us to look beyond next quarter’s earnings and focus on transformative potential just beyond our current vision.

The Myth of “Strategic Planning”

Consider for a moment the last strategic planning session you attended. Was it dominated by discussions of cost-cutting measures, market share percentages, and incremental improvements? If so, you’re not alone. Many organizations focus on optimizing their current operations, behavior that is reinforced by the processes, templates, and forms required to secure next year’s funding.

However, as Godin warns, “When the boss demands a strategy that comes with certainty and proof, we’re likely to settle for a collection of chores, tasks, and tactics, which is not the same as an elegant, resilient strategy. To do strategy right, we need to lean into possibility.”

The Realities We Must Confront

Godin challenges us to confront several uncomfortable truths:

Today’s data doesn’t predict tomorrow: Executives rely heavily on easily measurable metrics based on false proxies when they make decisions. While these metrics provide a sense of control and comfort, they close our eyes to emerging opportunities and threats. When AT&T’s executives considered exiting the cell phone market in the 1980s, they turned to McKinsey to find data to inform their decision. Estimating that the total worldwide market for cell phones was 900,000, AT&T executives were comfortable exiting. It’s unknown if that comfort was worth the $11.5 billion AT&T spent to acquire McCaw Cellular in 1995.

Serving everyone serves no one: “Strategy myopia occurs when we fail to identify who we seek to serve and focus on what we seek to produce instead.” AMEN! True strategy begins with a deep understanding of our customers’ evolving needs, not just their current preferences. This requires empathy, foresight, and a willingness to challenge our assumptions. It also requires us to listen and act on what we hear from customers and not just from our bosses.

“All of the Above” is not an option: Strategy requires that we make choices and is as much about what we choose not to do as what we commit to doing. It requires the courage to say no to good opportunities in service of great ones. It requires facing your FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), loss aversion bias, and finding the courage to keep going.

5 Practical Steps You Can Take

If any of these sound familiar, it’s because they’re also innovation best practices.

Dedicate One Day per Month for Strategic Thinking: Set aside one full day each month for long-term strategic questions, free from the “Tyranny of Now.”
Cultivate Diverse Perspectives: Invite and listen to voices from different backgrounds, disciplines, and levels within the organization.
Embrace Small-Scale Experimentation: Run a series of small, low-cost, low-profile experiments instead of betting everything on a single initiative.
Redefine Success Metrics: Move beyond traditional financial metrics to include indicators of future potential, such as customer lifetime value and adaptability to change.
Foster a Culture of Questioning: Channel your inner two-year-old and ask “why” with genuine curiosity. Encourage your team to challenge assumptions because the most transformative strategies often emerge from questioning the status quo.

As we continue through this season of strategic planning, let’s challenge ourselves to think beyond the annual budget. Let’s envision the future we want to create and chart a course to get there. After all, in the words of Godin himself, “It doesn’t matter how fast you’re going if you’re headed in the wrong direction.”

Image credit: Pexels

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Top Six Trends for Innovation Management in 2025

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Top Six Trends for Innovation Management in 2025

GUEST POST from Jesse Nieminen

Looking back at the beginning of this decade now that we’re closing in on the halfway point, it’s clearly been a wild ride!

We’ve had a global pandemic, groundbreaking technological breakthroughs, geopolitical shocks, supply chain disruptions, and so much more.

These challenges have revealed a critical truth: organizations need to adapt and innovate faster than ever before.

Add to this the tough economic climate, shrinking capital availability, the disillusionment many business leaders feel toward their innovation teams (sometimes justified, sometimes less so), and we’re looking at a highly turbulent environment for corporate innovation.

The mandate has never been so clear: deliver more results, faster, and with fewer resources. For seasoned innovators, that’s just business as usual. However, structural shifts are poised to reshape the innovation management landscape.

With that background, here’s our take on the top trends to watch in 2025.

1. Innovation as a Distributed Core Capability

With tighter budgets, the rise of AI and other transformative technologies, the pressing need for organizations to reinvent themselves, and you can see why innovation is increasingly owned by individual business units.

This shift can arise from necessity—businesses needing to transform—or simply from a desire for better strategic alignment and more measurable outcomes.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s still a need for innovation expertise, but the role of corporate innovators is undoubtedly evolving. Instead of driving innovation directly, they are now enablers and educators, equipping the broader organization to innovate effectively. Embodying this phenomenon is TD Bank, for example:

“The program is truly driven by each line of business—we’re here as a tool to empower their innovation, not to direct it.”

– Josh Death, VP of Intellectual Property and Ideation at TD Bank.

To pull that off, every organization needs to have 3 key elements in place:

Innovation is now at a similar transition point as IT was during the digital transformation era a couple of decades ago: the exact method and approach can be debated, but one thing is clear: every organization must embed innovation as a core capability. Just as some organizations are “digital natives,” the situation is the same for “innovation natives.”

Frameworks, toolkits, and best practices: Innovation isn’t (always) rocket science, but you still need to know what you’re doing. To pull this off, the organization needs to provide its employees with practical tools, frameworks and practices, preferably in the format of a well-designed Innovation System or Program. The recently published ISO 56000 series of standards is now a great starting point, but they need to be complemented with tools that innovators across the organization can use.
Education, coaching, and enablement: A good framework serves as an efficient and effective launching pad, but without proper education, most employees won’t benefit from it. This is where corporate innovation leaders play a key role. They need to organize education and enablement for innovators across the organization, and coach people on how to get past common obstacles. However, doing that at the scale of a large organization is complex—that’s where programs such as The Innovation System, which is included for all HYPE software customers, can be highly effective.
Scalable and adaptive system support: To get measurable outcomes from innovation, you need to operationalize your program. Even the best designed programs with highly effective leaders and coaches can struggle to scale their work and get the outcomes they want without proper system support.
That’s where a holistic innovation platform, such as the HYPE Suite, can play a key supporting role.

AI as an Accelerator

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming an essential tool for corporate innovators, and it’s safe to say that it plays a huge role in the future of innovation management.

Generative AI has been the focus of most of the hype around AI lately, and for good reason, but there’s more to AI than that. When you combine the latest generative AI models with proven innovation best practices, more traditional machine learning algorithms, and data from your innovation ecosystem, you have a powerful toolkit that enables a variety of different use cases.

AI can:

Analyze and structure large datasets.
Provide actionable recommendations.
Help users locate relevant information more efficiently.
Detect market signals earlier.
Generate novel ideas.
Coach innovators to enhance their work.

The common denominator for all of them is that AI can help streamline, automate, and accelerate work, and provide easier access to information and skills that used to be the domain of only a few experts within the organization.

However, scaling AI’s benefits isn’t without challenges. Most employees aren’t going to be expert prompters or data analysts that know all the right innovation best practices. So, to unlock the real benefits of using AI, you’re going to need a capable system that is specifically designed for corporate innovation and deeply integrated with AI across the board. When deployed right, AI can help democratize, scale and accelerate innovation like never before.

3. Democratization of Innovation

The third trend builds on the first two. As innovation becomes a core capability better supported by tools, processes, and technology, it will also become more democratized.

Here are the three key shifts are driving this transformation:

Innovation tools, frameworks, and best practices are becoming more widely available, understood, and easier to use: This makes it easier for anyone that wants to be an innovator to get started on the right path and avoid many of the common beginner mistakes.
Technology reduces barriers to entry: Thanks to technologies such as 3D printing, low or no-code software, and Gen AI, it’s never been easier, faster, and cheaper to prototype innovations, whether focused on digital solutions, physical products, or process improvements.
Organizations are looking for more bottom up, employee and team-led innovation and intrapreneurship: Corporate innovation is no longer solely driven by top management. While management needs to set the strategy and targets, more and more organizations are looking towards empowering their employees to help them get where they want to go. It all starts from ideas, but self-organized teams, business units, and intrapreneurship programs are all on the rise. Companies increasingly want to encourage employees to think and act more like entrepreneurs.

When you put all three together, they create a powerful combination that can propel organizations to new heights of innovation and growth.

4. Partner Innovation and the Venture Client Model

No organization, no matter how large or powerful, can house all the best talent on every topic. That’s why the “Not Invented Here” syndrome can be particularly dangerous.

When you need to move fast, and do so with a lower budget, your best bet is to leverage talent from outside your organization.

The trick? Partnering with leaders and early movers in your area of interest to accelerate time to market and gain valuable insights. These partners can include research institutes, universities, or, increasingly, startups.

Historically, large organizations have relied on accelerators or Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) investments to engage with startups. However, both approaches have limitations:

Learning is indirect and secondhand.
They often fail to directly contribute to strategic business goals.
CVC investments require significant capital that could be allocated elsewhere.

The better approach? The Venture Client Model. This approach allows organizations to act as customers and development partners to startups that align with their strategic goals, resulting in:

Lower costs and faster time to market.
Accelerated learning through direct engagement.
Quick ROI by leveraging the organization’s existing scale.

To succeed with this model, you need a systematic approach, the right tools—like HYPE Partnering—and a clear focus on addressing real business problems, not just nice to haves.

The Venture Client Model, featured in Gartner’s latest Hype Cycle for Innovation Practices, brings all these elements together, making it a proven and effective strategy for driving innovation.

5. Cross-industry Collaboration

Building on the trend of partnering, companies are increasingly looking beyond their industries to find innovation opportunities.

Experienced innovators know that there’s no such thing as a new idea. Every idea is simply a combination of previous concepts and ideas applied to solve a specific problem. By partnering with organizations in different industries, companies can leverage highly advanced, specialized capabilities to uncover surprising opportunities and tackle the often-difficult execution phase of innovation.

As such, we’re seeing more and more strategic partnerships between companies from different industries, such as automotive or life science firms partnering with tech companies, to not just learn from one another, but to cocreate hybrid solutionsand products that unlock new value for customers and enable breakthroughs that neither industry could achieve alone.

6. Sustainability and ESG-driven Innovation

Last decade, ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) was all the rage. In the last couple of years, many of these initiatives took a backseat due to economic pressures and growing disillusionment with some of the failures associated with many of these programs.

The problem was that many organizations implemented ESG at a superficial level—promises and policies with little real-world impact—leading to skepticism about the value behind the topic at large.

However, the fundamental need for transformation remains critical. From addressing government deficits to combating climate change, the urgency for sustainable innovation is greater than ever.

What’s different now? The drivers and enablers are firmly in place:

Regulatory Pressure: Many governments across the globe are introducing stricter mandates for sustainable practices.
Technological Advancements: Breakthroughs in renewable energy, electrification, AI, and circular solutions provide tools for real change.
Consumer Preferences: Shifts toward sustainability are influencing demand and shaping circular economic models.

For innovators, this is a perfect storm—a unique opportunity to create breakthroughs that move the needle for both their organizations and the planet. Sustainability has been through the Hype Cycle, and is now nearing the plateau of productivity. For many, it’s no longer a “nice-to-have” but a strategic imperative, making ESG-driven innovation one of the most significant trends shaping the future of corporate innovation and strategy.

Conclusion

 These trends highlight a clear shift toward more agile, sustainable, and externally focused innovation practices. For many organizations, they’re not just a nice addition, but a must to stay competitive in increasingly complex and fast-moving global markets. What hasn’t changed, is that those organizations that master innovation, unlock new opportunities to create value, drive impact. They will be able to future-proof themselves and leave the competition in the dust.

This article was originally published in HYPE’s blog.
Images from Unsplash and Pixabay.

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Why Reason Matters

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Why Reason Matters

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

How many times a day do you ask someone to do something? If you total all the requests you make of coworkers, family members, friends, people at restaurants and shops, and even strangers, the total is somewhere between 100 and 1 bazillion. Now, what if I told you that by including just one word in your request, the odds of receiving a positive response increase by 50%?

And no, that word is not “please.”

The real magic word

Harvard 1978. Decades before everyone had access to computer labs, home computers, and personal printers, students had to line up at the copy machine to make copies. You could easily spend hours in line, even if you only had a few copies to make. It was an inefficient and infuriating problem for students.

It was also a perfect research opportunity for Ellen Langer, a professor in Harvard’s Psychology Department.

Prof. Langer and her colleagues asked students to break into the line using one of three phrases:

“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the xerox machine?”
“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the xerox machine, because I have to make copies?”
“Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?”

The results were definitive and surprising. Students who used the first phrase were successful 60% of the time, but those who used the phrases with “because” were successful 93% and 94% of the time.

“Because” matters. The reason does not.

Note that in phrases two and three, the reason the student is asking to cut in line isn’t very good. You can practically hear the snarky responses, “Of course, you have to make copies; why else would you be at the copy machine?” or “We’re all in a rush,” and the request is denied.

But that didn’t happen.

Instead, the research (and hundreds of subsequent studies) showed that when the ask is simple or familiar, people tend to follow instructions or respond positively to requests without paying attention to what’s said, even if the instructions don’t make sense or the request disadvantages them in some way. Essentially, people hear “because,” assume it’s followed by a good reason and comply.

“Because” matters. How you use it matters more.

The power of “because” isn’t about manipulation or coercion. It’s about fostering a culture of transparency, critical thinking, and effective communication.

Taking the time to think about when and how to communicate the Why behind your requests increases your odds of success and establishes you as a strategic and thoughtful leader. But building your “Because’ habit takes time, so consider starting here:

Conduct a “Because” Audit: For one day, track your use of “because.” How many times do you make a request? How many times to you explain your requests with “because?” How many times do you receive a request, and how many of those include “because?” Simply noticing when “because” is used and whether it works provides incredible insights into the impact it can have in your work.

Connect your “Becauses” As leaders, we often focus on the “what” and “how” of directives, but the “why” is equally crucial. Take your top three strategic priorities for the quarter and craft a compelling “because” statement that clearly articulates the reasoning behind it. For instance, “We’re expanding into the Asian market because it represents a $50 billion opportunity that aligns perfectly with our core competencies.” This approach not only provides clarity but also helps in rallying your team around a common purpose.

Cascade the “Because” Habit: Great leaders don’t just adopt best practices; they institutionalize them. Challenge your direct reports to incorporate “because” into their communications. When they bring you requests, ask them for the “because” if they don’t offer it. Make it a friendly competition and celebrate people who use this technique to drive better outcomes.

Tell me how you’ll start because then you’re more likely to succeed.

(see what I did there?)

Image credit: Pexels

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Innovation Mythbusters – Top 5

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Innovation Mythbusters - Top 5

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

Amazingly Fabulous Tools is an award-winning, entrepreneurial market leader in the global machine engineering industry. The ambitious and proactive CEO Charlie Chaps invested in dispatching a Terrific Team of Enthusiastic Engineers to Silicon Valley to research, investigate, and report on how to capture and emulate the critical ingredients of its “secret innovative sauce.” Upon their return, the Terrific Team of Enthusiastic Engineers created and shared a beautiful, illustrated PowerPoint presentation with the board despite secretly knowing and passively avoiding saying that Amazingly Fabulous Tools could not replicate what they had discovered, primarily due to how the top five innovation myths clandestinely operated in the organization.

The Corporate Antibodies

This is due to their overt experience with the organization’s “innovation antibodies,” which cause an organization to resist change and protect the status quo. These antibodies consist of rigid people and inconsistent processes that extinguish a new idea as soon as it begins to course through the organization. In the Amazingly Fabulous Tool company, most people, especially the founders and the board, unconsciously and powerfully neutralized any forces that threatened to destabilize the company’s current state and stunt its growth by shutting down the fresh ideas and unconventional thinking their company badly needed.

Charlie Chaps built a fantastic, largely incomprehensible strategic plan with a BHAG, strategic goals, and sets of individual KPIs. This plan provided concrete evidence that reassured the board that the company was taking action to sustain its leadership position in the market and would take the business to the next level by growing its ROI. It also aimed to leverage the collective genius of its owners, Bob the Brave Builder and Eric the Energetic Entrepreneur, to ensure a legacy was left no matter who was at the helm.

The Innovation Culture Diagnostic Findings

A quantitative and qualitative cultural diagnostic revealed that people lacked permission, safety, and trust to speak up, rock the boat and challenge the status quo. It also showed that the organization lacked rigor in its process disciplines and a focus on developing its people’s capabilities.

It also revealed that Amazingly Fabulous Tools was secretly driven by its founders’ and sales directors’ self-interest and greed due to the highly competitive profit-share sales model. Not by an obligation and commitment to creating, inventing, designing, and delivering disciplined, innovative process improvements, products, and services that their customers purchased and did not appreciate and cherish.

This was a stark contradiction and barrier to the company’s ability to sustain its enviable global reputation. Finally, people believed that Charlie Chaps’ fantastic strategic plan, BHAG, goals, and KPIs were confusing and disconnected from the organization’s current reality and would not produce a collaborative and innovative organization.

So, they did not accept or apply the plan and kept safe by conducting business as usual.

The Top Five Innovation Myths

Because the corporate antibodies revealed that people unanimously believed each of the key myths, including:

Myth # 1: Innovation is a solo activity; people believe that ” only the owners can innovate.”
The Brutal Truth: Innovation is impossible without inclusion and collaboration, which are achieved through practical and disciplined teaming and networking.

Myth #2: Innovation is top-down; people believed they were not responsible or accountable for planning and were forced to be reactive. “The planning is difficult, that is for sure, because we are firefighting all the time, and that goes back to the frustration of not having enough time to do what needs to get done…and resources and …tools.”
The Brutal Truth: When people have the permission and safety to challenge the status quo, make mistakes, and are trusted to learn through experimentation, innovation can emerge anywhere in an organization, or team.

Myth #3: Innovation is about the newest thing; people believed that radical innovation was needed when agility was the problem; “The scary thing is our key competitor is getting more flexible (agile); we’re just getting more reliable (stable). It’s the stupid things that are so annoying. It’s the embarrassing things.”
The Brutal Truth: Innovation is guided by its strategic intent. It can be incremental, continuous, radical, breakthrough, disruptive, or differentiated, as there is no one best way of innovating.

Myth # 4: Innovation can’t be taught; people believed that they did not have to learn to improve or innovate when they encountered quality issues continuously; “A lot of times, it’s not because the customer wants the machine tomorrow but because we want to ship it tomorrow because we want to get it off the floor, we want to meet numbers, we want the cash. We usually drive the time frame and rush it out the door, creating many internal problems. It also creates problems externally with the customer when they think they’re getting a machine fully intact, but half its parts are missing….”
The Brutal Truth: Innovators are not born and are made. Anyone can learn to innovate,

Myth #5: You can’t force innovation; people were dis-empowered and did not take responsibility for influencing their environment to provide order and discipline; “It’s a traffic jam. That’s what we’ve got. It’s a traffic jam. Cars sitting bumper to bumper look like they are gridlocked. It represents the log jam of our activities. Where people are trying to push so many activities through two lanes of traffic when we’ve got six lanes worth of traffic.”
The Brutal Truth: Innovation can emerge when people have a sense of urgency, understand, and are motivated to engage in necessary, high-impact cultural and organizational change.

People must be prepared for it, change-ready and receptive, and intentionally pulled towards a compelling and desired future within an equalized environment that balances chaos and creativity with rigidity and discipline through rigorous planning.

The real costs to the organization

People believed that “This business makes money despite itself. There is potential to be truly great”. This was the most significant innovation antibody because there was no sense of urgency or even a financial or growth necessity to innovate. The company was quite comfortable with the status quo and had no reason to shift its habitual and unconscious comfort zone in ways that people and organizations must do to innovate because it involves being ready and receptive to mega-changes.

The significant investment in sending the Terrific Team of Enthusiastic Engineers to Silicon Valley sadly remained in the mythical realm of Innovation Dreamland.

So, lacking focus, discipline and rigor, the group of seriously qualified and intelligent engineers knowingly consistently dispatched faulty million-dollar machines to highly valued, global customers.

The cost of rework and brand erosion were considerable.

These machines required considerable analysis, problem-solving, and rework upon their return. Their costs were not recorded as repairs, causing the engineering division to be consistently over budget. Charlie Chaps reacted by restricting its budget and inhibiting its investment in critical research and development, which is needed to create, invent, and innovate to repair and sustain its global reputation as an innovator.

Innovation Dreamland remained a mythical and magical fantasy in Amazingly Fabulous Tools.

Sadly, the organization failed to shift its focus from challenge to opportunity because it could not resolve the corporate antibodies (implicit killers), remove the roadblocks, break down the internal cultural barriers to innovation and develop the agility necessary to become both a people-centric and customer-centric organization.

It lost an opportunity to make innovation a daily habit for everyone by failing to embed it in its organization as a way of life. It needed to empower, enable, and equip its talented, experienced and motivated people with the emotional energy, change, cognitive, and innovation agility to expose, challenge and resolve the underlying corporate antibodies.

It did not prioritize customer satisfaction and keep its promises by creating, inventing, and innovating high-value, quality products and services that improve the quality of their lives that are appreciated and cherished.

Many transformations and change-led innovation initiatives designed as strategic interventions fail due to a lack of alignment between strategy, structure, processes, and human skills, resulting in unproductive actions and poor human behaviors.

This is a short section from Chapter One of our new book, “Conscious Innovation – Empowering People to Be, Think and Act Differently in a Constantly Changing World”, which will be published in 2025.

Find out more about our work at ImagineNation™.

Please find out about our collective learning products and tools, including The Coach for Innovators, Leaders, and Teams Certified Program, presented by Janet Sernack, it is a collaborative, intimate, and profoundly personalized innovation coaching and learning program supported by a global group of peers over 9-weeks, and can be customized as a bespoke corporate learning program.

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-focused, human-centric approach and emergent structure (Theory U) to innovation. It will also up-skill people and teams and develop their future fitness within your unique innovation context. Please find out more about our products and tools.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

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An Innovation Leadership Fable

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Wisdom from the Waters

An Innovation Leadership Fable

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Once upon a time, in a lush forest, there lived a colony of industrious beavers known far and wide for their magnificent dams, which provided shelter and sustenance for many.

One day, the wise old owl who governed the forest decreed that all dams must be rebuilt to withstand the increasingly fierce storms that plagued their land. She gave the beavers two seasons to complete it, or they would lose half their territory to the otters.

The Grand Design: Blueprints and Blind Spots

The beaver chief, a kind fellow named Oakchew, called the colony together, inviting both the elder beavers, known for their experience and sage advice and the young beavers who would do the actual building.

Months passed as the elders debated how to build the new dams. They argued about mud quantities, branch angles, and even which mix of grass and leaves would provide structural benefit and aesthetic beauty. The young beavers sat silently, too intimidated by their elders’ status to speak up.

Work Begins: Dams and Discord

As autumn leaves began to fall, Oakchew realized they had yet to start building. Panicked, he ordered work to commence immediately.

The young beavers set to work but found the new method confusing and impractical. As time passed, progress slowed, panic set in, arguments broke out, and the once-harmonious colony fractured.

One group insisted on precisely following the new process even as it became obvious that they would not meet the deadline. Another reverted to their old ways, believing that a substandard something was better than nothing. And one small group went rogue, retreating to the smallest stream to figure it out for themselves.

As the deadline grew closer, the beavers worked day and night, but progress was slow and flawed. In desperation, Oakchew called upon the squirrels to help, promising half the colony’s winter food stores.

Just as the first storm clouds gathered, Oakchew surveyed the completed dams. Many were built as instructed, but the rushed work was evident and showed signs of weakness. Most dams were built with the strength and craftsmanship of old but were likely to fail as the storms’ intensity increased. One stood alone and firm, roughly constructed with a mix of old and new methods.

Wisdom from the Waters: Experiments and Openness

Oakchew’s heart sank as he realized the true cost of their efforts. The beavers had met their deadline but at a great cost. Many were exhausted and resentful, some had left the colony altogether, and their once-proud craftsmanship was now shoddy and unreliable.

He called a final meeting to reflect on what had happened. Before the elders could speak, Oakchew asked the young beavers for their thoughts. The colony listened in silent awe as the young builders explained the flaws in the “perfect” process. The rogue group explained that they had started building immediately, learning from each failure, and continuously improving their design.

“We wasted so much time trying to plan the perfect dam,” Oakchew admitted to the colony. “If we had started building sooner and learned from our mistakes, we would not have paid such a high cost for success. We would not have suffered and lost so much if we had worked to ensure every beaver was heard, not just invited.”

From that day forward, the beaver colony adopted a new approach of experimentation, prototyping, and creating space for all voices to be heard and valued. While it took many more seasons of working together to improve their dams, replenish their food stores, and rebuild their common bonds, the colony eventually flourished once more.

The Moral of the Story – (just in case it isn’t obvious)

The path to success is paved not with perfect plans but with the courage to act, the wisdom to learn from failures, and the openness to embrace diverse ideas. True innovation arises when we combine the best of tradition with the boldness of experimentation.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Collaboration Being Killed by Collaboration Software

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Collaboration Being Killed by Collaboration Software

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

In our race to enable and support hybrid teams, our reliance on collaboration software has inadvertently caused us to forget the art of true collaboration.

The pandemic forced us to rely on digital platforms for communication and creativity. But as we embraced these tools, something essential was lost in translation. Last week, I watched team members sitting elbow-to-elbow spend two hours synthesizing discovery interviews and debating opportunity areas entirely by chat.

What collaboration is

“Collaboration” seems to have joined the ranks of meaningless corporate buzzwords. In an analysis of 1001 values from 172 businesses, “collaboration” was the #2 most common value (integrity was #1), appearing in 23% of the companies’ value statements.

What it means in those companies’ statements is anyone’s guess (we’ve all been in situations where stated values and lived values are two different things). But according to the dictionary, collaboration is “the situation of two or more people working together to create or achieve the same thing.”

That’s a short definition with a lot of depth.

“The same thing” means that the people working together are working towards a shared goal in which they have a stake in the outcome (not just the completion).
“Working together” points towards interdependence, that everyone brings something unique to the work and that shared goal cannot be achieved without each person’s unique contribution.
“Two or more people” needing each other to achieve a shared outcome requires a shared sense of respect, deep trust, and vulnerability.

It’s easy to forget what “collaboration” means. But we seem to have forgotten how to do it.

What collaboration is not

As people grow more comfortable “collaborating” online, it seems that fewer people are actually collaborating.

Instead, they’re:

Transacting: There is nothing wrong with email, texts, or messaging someone on your platform of choice. But for the love of goodness, don’t tell me our exchange was a collaboration. If it were, every trip to the ATM would be a team-building exercise.
Offering choices: When you go out to eat at a fast-food restaurant, do you collaborate with the employee to design your meal? No. You order off a menu. Offering a choice between two or three options (without the opportunity to edit or customize the options), isn’t collaboration. It’s taking an order.
Complying: Compliance is “the act of obeying a law or rule, especially one that controls a particular industry or type of work.” Following rules isn’t collaboration, it’s following a recipe
Cooperating: Cooperation is when two or more people work together independently or interdependently to achieve someone else’s goal. Collaboration requires shared objectives and ownership, not just shared tasks and timelines.

There’s nothing wrong with any of these activities. Just don’t confuse them with collaboration because it sends the wrong message to your people.

Why this matters

This isn’t an ivory-tower debate about semantics.

When people believe that simple Q&A, giving limited and unalterable options, following rules, and delivering requests are collaboration, they stop thinking. Curiosity, creativity, and problem-solving give way to efficiency and box-checking. Organizations stop exploring, developing, and innovating and start doing the same thing better, faster, and cheaper.

So, if you truly want your organization to grow because it’s filled with creative and empathetic problem-solvers, invest in reclaiming the true spirit of collaboration. After all, the next big idea isn’t hiding in a chat log—it’s waiting to be born in the spark of genuine collaboration.

Image credit: Unsplash

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What We Can Learn from MrBeast’s Onboarding

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Lessons from a Leaked Document

What We Can Learn From MrBeast's Onboarding

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

In the often murky world of corporate communication, a leaked MrBeast document has emerged as a beacon of clarity. Far from being your typical vague, jargon-filled memo, this onboarding document is a crystal-clear recipe for success that’s as refreshing as it is rare.

But first, let’s address the elephant in the room. MrBeast’s empire isn’t without its share of controversy. Reports of toxic work environments, unsafe conditions for contestants, and allegations of rigged games cast a shadow over his content creation machine and his leadership capabilities. These are serious issues that merit investigation and discussion. As a result, this post isn’t an endorsement of MrBeast as a leader, it’s an endorsement of an onboarding document that he wrote.

The Secret Sauce: Clarity Meets Innovation

What sets this document apart is its razor-sharp clarity and relentless focus on creativity. Unlike the vague platitudes that plague many corporate communications, job descriptions, and performance matrixes, this document clearly outlines expectations, success metrics, and the strategies and tactics to fuel continuous innovation.

This clarity is transformative for people and organizations. When team members understand both the guardrails and the goals, they channel their creative energy into groundbreaking ideas rather than second-guessing their approach and worrying about repercussions.

Expectations: Always Be Learning

The first principle is a clear directive: always be learning. In MrBeast’s world, this isn’t just about personal growth—it’s about staying ahead in a rapidly changing digital landscape. This commitment to continuous learning fuels innovation by ensuring the team is constantly exploring new technologies, trends, and creative techniques.

While some see the definition of A, B, and C-players as evidence of a toxic workplace, the fact is that it’s the reality in most workplaces. It’s the absence of clarity, usually disguised by claims of family-like cultures that value diversity, that makes workplaces toxic.

Metrics: The Start of a Feedback Loop

The focus on specific success metrics like Click-Through Rate and Average View Duration isn’t just about measurement—it’s about creating a feedback loop for innovation. Clear benchmarks developed over time allow teams to quickly assess the impact of new ideas and iterate accordingly. It also removes the temptation and ability to “move the goalposts” to create the appearance of success.

Strategy: Structure Meets Creativity

After describing what success looks like for employees and how they’ll be measured, the document outlines a structured content formula akin to an innovation strategy. It provides a clear framework of priorities, goals, and boundaries while encouraging creative experimentation within those boundaries.

Starting with a step-by-step guide to making videos with a “wow” factor, the document also emphasizes the criticality of focusing on “critical components” and managing dependencies and

Far from the usual corporate claims that direction and “how to’s” constrain creativity and disempower employees, this approach creates a safety net that allows employees to be successful while still pushing the envelope of what’s possible in content creation.

How to Become Your Version of (a non-controversial) Mr. Beast

You don’t have to be a content creator, social media savant, or company founder to follow MrBeast’s lead. You have to do something much more difficult – communicate clearly and consistently.

Clearly define what success looks like (and doesn’t) for your employees and projects.
Establish frameworks that encourage bold ideas while maintaining focus.
Define objective success metrics and consistently measure, track, and use them.

This leaked MrBeast document offers more than just a glimpse into a YouTube empire; it’s a masterclass in leadership in the era of hybrid workplaces, geographically dispersed teams, and emerging cultures and norms.

The document’s approach shows that innovation doesn’t have to be chaotic. By providing clear expectations and frameworks, leaders can create an environment where creativity thrives, and groundbreaking ideas can be rapidly developed and implemented.

When viewed in the bigger context of the MrBeast organization, however, the document is also a reminder that no matter how clear you think your communication is, you must be vigilant for those who claim that bad behavior is just a “misunderstanding.” Leaders know that no amount of views, clicks, or revenue is worth sacrificing the well-being of their teams.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

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Why Small Innovations Matter Now More Than Ever

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Searching for Silver Linings

Why Small Innovations Matter Now More Than Ever

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Do you feel like you’re drowning in a sea of bad news? You’re not alone. We’re standing in the eye of a storm of war, political division, and endless layoffs. In times like these, why bother with innovation when we’re using all our energy to survive and make sense of things?

I’ve asked myself this question with increasing frequency over the past months. After hours of searching, querying, and reading to understand why you, me, or any other individual should bother with innovation, I can tell you two things:

There’s no logical, data-backed reason why any individual should bother innovating (there are many logical, data-backed reasons why companies should innovate)
Innovation is the only life raft that’s ever carried us from merely surviving to thriving.

If that seems like a big, overwhelming, and exhausting expectation to place on innovators, you’re right. But it doesn’t have to be because innovation is also small things that make you smile, spark your curiosity, and prompt you to ask, “How might we…?”

Here are three small innovations that broke through the dark clouds of the news cycle, made me smile, and started a domino effect of questions and wonder.

LEGO Braille Bricks: Building a More Inclusive World

You know them, and you love them (unless you’ve stepped on one), and somehow, they got even better. In 2023, LEGO released Braille Bricks to the public.

By modifying the studs (those bumps on the top of the brick) to correspond with the braille alphabet, numbers, and symbols and complementing the toy with a website offering a range of activities, educator resources, and community support, LEGO built a bridge between sighted and visually impaired worlds, one tiny brick at a time.

How might a small change build empathy and connect people?

The Open Book: Fulfilling a Dream by Working on Vacation

Have you ever dreamed of going on vacation so that you could work an hourly job without pay? Would you believe there is a two-year waitlist of people willing to pay for such an experience?

Welcome to The Open Book, a second-hand bookstore in Wigtown, Scotland, that offers “bibliophiles, avid readers, kindred book lovers, and adventure seekers” the opportunity to live out their dreams of running the bookstore by day and living above it in a tiny apartment by night. The bookstore is owned and operated by a local nonprofit, and all proceeds, about $10,000 per year, go to supporting the Wigtown Book Festival.

How might you turn your passion into an experience others would pay for?

The Human Library: Checking Out Books That Talk Back

If used books aren’t your thing, consider going to The Human Library. This innovative concept started in Copenhagen in 2000 and has spread to over 80 countries, offering a unique twist on traditional libraries. Readers “borrow” individuals from all walks of life – from refugees to rockstars refugees, from people with disabilities to those with unusual occupations – to hear their stories, ask difficult questions, and engage in open dialogue.

How might you create opportunities for dialogue and challenge your preconceptions?

Small Things Make a Big Difference

In a world that often feels dark, these small innovations are helpful reminders that if you are curious, creative, and just a bit brave, you can spark joy, wonder, and change.

How will you innovate, no matter how small, to brighten your corner of the world?

Image credit: Pixabay

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Don’t Listen to the ‘We Can’t Do That’ Lie

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These Are the Truths

Don't Listen to the 'We Can't Do That' Lie

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

How many times have you proposed a new idea and been told, “We can’t do that?” Probably quite a few. My favorite memory of being told, “We can’t do that,” happened many years ago while working with a client in the publishing industry:

Client: We can’t do that.

Me: Why?

Client: Because we already tried it, and it didn’t work.

Me: When did you try it?

Client: 1972

Me: Well, things certainly haven’t changed since 1972, so you’re right, we definitely shouldn’t try again.

I can only assume they appreciated my sarcasm as much as the idea because we eventually did try the idea, and, 30+ years later, it did work. But the client never would have enjoyed that success if my team and I had not seen through “we can’t do that” and helped them admit (confess) what they really meant.

Quick acknowledgment

Yes, sometimes “We can’t do that” is true. Laws and regulations define what can and can’t be done. But they are rarely as binary as people make them out to be. In those gray areas, the lie of “we can’t do that” obscures the truth of won’t, not able to, and don’t care.

“I won’t do it.”

When you hear “can’t,” it usually means “won’t.” Sometimes, the “won’t” is for a good reason – “I won’t do the dishes tonight because I have an urgent deadline, and if I don’t deliver, my job is at risk.” Sometimes, the “won’t” isn’t for a good reason – “I won’t do the dishes because I don’t want to.” When that’s the case, “won’t” becomes “can’t” in the hope that the person making the request backs off and finds another solution.

For my client, “We can’t do that” actually meant, “I won’t do that because it failed before and, even though that was thirty years ago, I’m afraid it will fail again, and I will be embarrassed, and it may impact my reputation and job security.”

You can’t work with “can’t.” You can work with “won’t.” When someone “won’t” do something, it’s because there’s a barrier, real or perceived. By understanding the barrier, you can work together to understand, remove, or find a way around it.

“I’m not able to do it.”

“Can’t” may also come with unspoken caveats. We can’t do that because we’ve never done it before and are scared. We can’t do that because it is outside the scope of our work. We can’t do that because we don’t know how.

Like “won’t,” you can work with “not able to” to understand the gap between where you are now and where you want to go. If it’s because you’re scared of doing something new, you can have conversations to get smarter about the topic or run small experiments to get real-world learnings. If you’re not able to do something because it’s not within your scope of work, you can expand your scope or work with people who have it in their scope. If you don’t know how, you can talk to people, take classes, and watch videos to learn how.

“I don’t care.”

As brave as it is devastating, “we can’t do that” can mean “I don’t care enough to do that.”

Executives rarely admit to not caring, but you see it in their actions. When they say that innovation and growth are important but don’t fund them or pull resources at the first sign of a wobble in the business, they don’t care. If they did care, they would try to find a way to keep investing and supporting the things they say are priorities.

Exploring options, trying, making an effort—that’s the difference between “I won’t do it” and “I don’t care.” “I won’t do that” is overcome through logic and action because the executive is intellectually and practically open to options. “I don’t care” requires someone to change their priorities, beliefs, and self-perception, changes that require major personal, societal, or economic events.

Now it’s your turn to tell the truth

Are you willing to ask the questions to find them?

Image credit: Unsplash

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