Tag Archives: Leadership

Focus your Emotional Energy Purposefully

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

When I exited my corporate career more than thirty-five years ago, I was privileged to be regarded and respected as the Fashion Direction Manager for the Grace Bros Department Store group, one of Australia’s most senior women in retail management. This launched my global reputation as a fashion and lifestyle marketing innovator. In this exciting role, I was responsible for designing and implementing a company-wide fashion information system for apparel, accessories, homeware, merchandising, and advertising. This required me to focus my emotional energy on researching, analyzing, and conceptualizing global fashion and lifestyle trends and adapting them to suit the Australian consumer lifestyle.

It was a dream role before the invention of the Internet, the implosion of the mass media, and the dominance of fast fashion. It required our team to focus their emotional energy on intensively researching different global and diverse media sources, including yarn, textile, couture, designer, ready-to-wear shows, trade journals, magazines, and seasonal sales data.

Generating creative thinking

Creativity is about connecting things, and in the fashion world, the best designers make the most unlikely connections to produce novel and wondrous creations. As my professional background included graphic and fashion design and marketing, I could further hone my associative (lateral and connective) thinking skills to think creatively and critically in this role. To focus my emotional energy and attention on guiding my intuition, values, and decisions on the needs and wants of buyers, merchandisers, marketers, and customers. To emerge, diverge and converge the key connections and patterns occurring globally in the fashion world and external complex fashion systems. I also learned the importance of being customer-focused and the value and role of being empathic with customers, manufacturers’ value chains and fashion information system users.

It was an incredibly emotional, physical, and stressful role, which required me to travel overseas four times a year to stay current on the different global fashion streams.

This caused my life to melt into being at work, the gym, or the airport.

Stress-induced exhaustion and burnout

This resulted in my first profound encounter with stress-induced exhaustion and burnout, which hit me right in the face one morning when my body refused to move, and I was unable to get out of bed.

I have also noticed that many of my global coaching clients have faced a similar challenge: stress-induced exhaustion and burnout. Fortunately, they can use the coaching partnership to unearth their particular pattern and unresourceful ways of being and learn how to focus their emotional energy to disrupt, dispute, and deviate from it into a more resourceful way of being and acting. However, it has shifted the coach’s role as a healer, making it even more critical in our current environment.

Focusing emotional energy on pursuing mattering, meaning and purposeful work

This ultimately manifests as a crisis and becomes a defining moment. In my case, I made a fundamental choice to focus emotional energy on pursuing meaning, mattering, and purposeful work, which still focuses my full attention and drives me today.

It created a “crack, “or an opening and threshold for making two fundamental choices: to embark on a healing journey to become the kind of person I wanted to be and to find a way to focus my emotional energy on making the difference I wanted to make in the world.

This enabled me to use my knowledge, experience, and skills to establish Australia’s first design management consultancy.

What is emotional energy?

Emotional energy is the catalyst that fuels creativity, invention, and innovation.

Understanding and harnessing this energy inspires and motivates individuals to explore and embrace creative and critical thinking strategies, now in partnership with AI.

When a person’s emotional energy has contracted, it results in constrained, negative, pessimistic, and even catastrophic thinking habits, which have a toxic impact on the person’s identity and emotional and physical well-being.

This means there is no space, doorway, or threshold to take on anything new, novel, or different. Nor can they imagine what might be possible to evolve, advance, or transform their personal or professional lives in an uncertain future.

Emotional energy catalyses and directs your intrinsic motivation, conviction, hope, positivity, and optimism to approach your world purposefully, meaningfully, and differently.

When you are true to your calling or purpose, you will make extra efforts to be healthier, positively impact your well-being, and improve your resilience.

How does this apply to leadership in uncertain times?

“I think leaders need to remember that they are in the energy management business,” says Halsey. “Their role is to keep people focused, energized, and positive about themselves and their work. They may be unable to change external circumstances, but they can create a safe, nurturing, and empowering work environment. By setting clear goals, diagnosing individual needs, and providing the right leadership style, leaders can help their teams thrive—even in uncertain times.”

People want work to be less of a job and more of a calling.

According to Martin Seligman and Gabriella Rosen Kellerman in their book Tomorrowmind, a US-based research study that included two thousand employees of all ages, industries, tenures, and incomes, revealed that people craved more meaning at work regardless of sector or position. Everyone wanted work to be less of a job and more of a calling and gave their current jobs a rating of 49, which suggests that their “meaning cups” are only half full.

This search for meaning, mattering, and being of service to humanity in a different and value-adding way enables innovators, entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs to cultivate the emotional energy and develop the agility required to drive their creativity, invention and innovation endeavors.

It is the most critical ingredient that motivates, empowers, enables, fuels and sustains innovators, entrepreneurs, and intrapreneurs to adapt, survive and thrive on the innovation roller coaster.

Channeling emotional energy meaningfully and purposefully

From my leadership training and coaching experience, I have learned that most people desperately want their lives to make sense and be meaningful and to know that who they are and what they do matters. It is possible to link meaning and mattering to being intentionally motivated and directed by your core values to make a difference and a contribution that provides value and significance to someone, a community, or society.

Being purposeful

Being purposeful focuses your emotional energy, guides your life decisions influences your behaviors, shapes your goals, offers a sense of direction, and creates meaning. Rather than engaging in shallow, empty, or pointless activities, it gives you agency.

In our uncertain, volatile and disruptive world, it is crucial to think about your “purpose in life.” Be like an Entrepreneur and link your purpose as a guidepost to help you deal with uncertainty, navigate it better, mitigate the damaging effects of long-term stress, and become psychologically resilient.

People with a strong sense of purpose direct and focus their emotional energy on what really matters to them. They tend to be more agile and adaptive, hardier and resilient, and more able to refocus and recover quickly from adverse and catastrophic events.

According to McKinsey & Co.’s article “Igniting individual purpose in times of crisis,” purposeful people also live longer and healthier lives and are essential to employee experience. This results in higher levels of employee engagement, more substantial organizational commitment, and increased feelings of well-being. Like many entrepreneurs, people who find their purpose congruent with their jobs tend to get more meaning from their roles, making them more productive and more likely to outperform their peers.

How can you add more meaning, mattering and purpose?

Meaning is an outcome of purpose, and many people, due to their experience of the pandemic and hybrid workplace in a chaotic and uncertain world, are seeking to re-engage with their work and workplaces by focusing their emotional energy on improving their well-being and creating more purposeful, balanced, and meaningful lives.

This is a short section from our new book, “Conscious Innovation – Activating the Heart, Mind and Soul of Innovation”, which will be published in 2025.

Please 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. It 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.

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Job Design as Innovation Strategy

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How Complex Problem-Solving Creates Automation Champions

Job Design as Innovation Strategy

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Imagine a manufacturing company. On the factory floor, machines whirl and grind, torches flare up as welding helmets click closed, and parts and products fall off the line and into waiting hands or boxes, ready to be shipped to customers. Elsewhere, through several doors and a long hallway, you leave the cacophony of the shop floor for the quiet hum of the office. Computers ping with new emails while fingers clickety-clack across the keyboard. Occasionally, a printer whirs to life while forcing someone to raise their voice as they talk to a customer on the other end of the phone.

Now, imagine that you ask each person whether AI and automation will positively or negatively affect their jobs. Who will champion new technology and who will resist it?

Most people expect automation acceptance to be separated by the long hallway, with the office workers welcoming while the factory workers resist.

Most people are wrong.

The Business Case for Problem-Solving Job Design

Last week, I wrote about findings from an MIT study that indicated that trust, not technology, is the leading indicator of whether workers will adopt new AI and automation tools.

But there’s more to the story than that. Researchers found that the type of work people do has a bigger influence on automation perception than where they do it. Specifically, people who engage in work requiring high levels of complex problem-solving alongside routine work are more likely to see the benefit of automation than any other group.

Or, to put it more simply

Net Impact of Automation & New Technology on Your Work

While it’s not surprising that people who perform mostly routine tasks are more resistant than those who engage in complex tasks, it is surprising that this holds true for both office-based and production-floor employees.

Even more notable, this positive perception is significantly higher for complex problem solvers vs. the average across all workers::

Safety: 43% and 41% net positive for office and physical workers, respectively (vs. 32% avg)
Pay: 27% and 25% net positive for physical and office workers, respectively (vs. 3.9% avg)
Autonomy: 33% net positive for office workers (vs. 18% average)
Job security: 25% and 22% net positive for office and physical workers, respectively (vs. 3.5%)

Or, to put it more simply, blend problem-solving into routine-heavy roles, and you’ll transform potential technology resistors into champions.

3 Ways to Build Problem-Solving Into Any Role

The importance of incorporating problem-solving into every job isn’t just a theory – it’s one of the core principles of the Toyota Production System (TPS). Jidoka, or the union of automation with human intelligence, is best exemplified by the andon cord system, where employees can stop manufacturing if they perceive a quality issue.

But you don’t need to be a Six-Sigma black belt to build human intelligence into each role:

Create troubleshooting teams with decision authority
Workers who actively diagnose and fix process issues develop a nuanced understanding of where technology helps versus hinders. Cross-functional troubleshooting creates the perfect conditions for technology champions to emerge.
Design financial incentives around problem resolution
The MIT study’s embedded experiment showed that financial incentives significantly improved workers’ perception of new technologies while opportunities for input alone did not. When workers see personal benefit in solving problems with technology, adoption accelerates.
Establish learning pathways connected to problem complexity
Workers motivated by career growth (+33.9% positive view on automation’s impact on upward mobility) actively seek out technologies that help them tackle increasingly complex problems. Create visible advancement paths tied to problem-solving mastery.

Innovation’s Human Catalyst

The most powerful lever for technology adoption isn’t better technology—it’s better job design. By restructuring roles to include meaningful problem-solving, you transform the innovation equation.

So here’s the million-dollar question every executive should be asking: Are you designing jobs that create automation champions, or are you merely automating jobs as they currently exist?

Image credits: Robyn Bolton and misterinnovation.com (1 of 850+ free quote slides for download)

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Automation Success More About Trust Than Technology

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Automation Success More About Trust Than Technology

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

We’ve all seen the apocalyptic headlines about robots coming for our jobs. The AI revolution has companies throwing money at shiny new tech while workers polish their résumés, bracing for the inevitable pink slip. But what if we have it completely, totally, and utterly backward? What if the real drivers of automation success have nothing to do with the technology itself?

That’s precisely what an MIT study of 9,000+ workers across nine countries asserts. While the doomsayers have predicted the end of human workers since the introduction of the assembly line, those very workers are challenging everything we think we know about automation in the workplace.

The Secret Ingredient for Technology ROI

MIT surveyed workers across the manufacturing industry—50% of whom reported frequently performing routine tasks—and found that the majority ultimately welcome automation. But only when one critical condition is present. And it’s one that most executives completely miss while they’re busy signing purchase orders for the latest AI and automation systems.

Trust.

Read that again because while you’re focused on selecting the perfect technology, your actual return depends more on whether your team feels valued and believes you are invested in their safety and professional growth.

Workers Who Trust, Automate

This trust dynamic explains why identical technologies succeed in some organizations and fail in others. According to MIT’s research:

Job satisfaction is the second strongest indicator of technology acceptance, with a 10% improvement that researchers identified as consistently significant across all analytical models
Feeling valued by their employer shows a highly significant 9% increase in positive attitudes toward automation
Trust also consistently predicts automation acceptance, as workers scoring higher on trust measures are significantly more likely to view new technologies positively.

For example, Sam Sayer, an employee at a New Hampshire cutting tool manufacturer, has become an automation champion because his employer helped him experience how factory-floor robots could free him from routine tasks and allow him to focus on more complex problem-solving. “I worked in factories for years before I ever saw a robot. Now I’m teaching my colleagues on the factory floor how to use them.”

This contrasts with an aerospace manufacturer in Ohio that hired a third party to integrate a robot into its warehouse processes. Despite the company’s efforts to position the robot as a teammate, even giving it a name, workers resisted the technology because they didn’t trust the implementation process or see clear personal benefits.

These patterns hold across industries and countries: When workers perceive their employer as invested in their development and well-being, automation initiatives succeed. When that foundation is missing, even the most sophisticated technologies falter.

Four Steps to Convert Resistors to Champions

Whether it’s for the factory floor or the office laptop, if you want ROI and revenue growth from your automation investments, start with your people:

Design roles that connect workers to outcomes: When people see how their input shapes results, they become natural technology allies.
Create visible growth pathways. Workers motivated by career advancement are significantly more likely to embrace new technologies.
Align financial incentives with implementation goals. When workers see the personal benefits of adoption, resistance evaporates faster than free donuts in the break room.
Make safety improvements the leading edge of your technology story. It’s the most universally appreciated benefit of automation.

A Provocative Challenge

Ask yourself this (potentially) uncomfortable question: Are you investing as much in trust as you are in technology?

Because if not, you might as well set fire to a portion of your automation budget right now. At least you’d get some heat from it.

The choice isn’t between technology and workers—it’s between implementations that honor human relationships and those that don’t. The former generates returns; the latter generates résumé updates.

What are you choosing?

Image credit: misterinnovation.com (1 of 850+ free quote slides for download)

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of February 2025

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of February 2025 Drum roll please…

At the beginning of each month, we will profile the ten articles from the previous month that generated the most traffic to Human-Centered Change & Innovation. Did your favorite make the cut?

But enough delay, here are February’s ten most popular innovation posts:

Innovation is Dead. Now What? — by Robyn Bolton
When Best Practices Become Old Practices — by Mike Shipulski
3 Keys to Improving Leadership Skills — by David Burkus
Audacious – How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World — Exclusive Interview with Mark Schaefer
Which Go to Market Playbook Should You Choose? — by Geoffrey A. Moore
Turns Out the Tin Foil Hat People Were Right — by Braden Kelley
Are You a Leader? — by Mike Shipulski
Time to Stop These Ten Bad Customer Experience Habits — by Shep Hyken
Beyond the AI Customer Experience Hype — by Shep Hyken
A Tumultuous Decade of Generational Strife — by Greg Satell

BONUS – Here are five more strong articles published in January that continue to resonate with people:

A Toolbox for High-Performance Teams — by Stefan Lindegaard
Lean is the Enemy of Learning — by Robyn Bolton
Is it Time to ReLearn to Work? — by Geoffrey A. Moore
Why CIOs Should Co-Lead Customer Experience — by Howard Tiersky
There is Nothing Without Trust — by Mike Shipulski

If you’re not familiar with Human-Centered Change & Innovation, we publish 4-7 new articles every week built around innovation and transformation insights from our roster of contributing authors and ad hoc submissions from community members. Get the articles right in your Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin feeds too!

SPECIAL BONUS: While supplies last, you can get the hardcover version of my first bestselling book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire for 44% OFF until Amazon runs out of stock or changes the price. This deal won’t last long, so grab your copy while it lasts!

Have something to contribute?

Human-Centered Change & Innovation is open to contributions from any and all innovation and transformation professionals out there (practitioners, professors, researchers, consultants, authors, etc.) who have valuable human-centered change and innovation insights to share with everyone for the greater good. If you’d like to contribute, please contact me.

P.S. Here are our Top 40 Innovation Bloggers lists from the last four years:

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Getting Buy-In for Change Now That Innovation is Dead

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Getting Buy-In for Change Now That Innovation is Dead

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Innovation is undergoing a metamorphosis, and while it may seem like the current goo-stage is the hard part (it’s certainly not easy!), our greatest challenge is still ahead. Because while we may emerge as beautiful butterflies, we still need to get buy-in for change from a colony of skeptical caterpillars who’ve grown weary of transformation talk.

The Old Playbook Is Dead, Too

Picture this: A butterfly lands, armed with PowerPoint slides about “The Future of Leaf-Eating” and projections showing “10x Nectar Collection Potential.” The caterpillars stare blankly, having seen this show before.

The old approach – big presentations, executive sponsorship, and promises of massive returns within 24 months – isn’t just ineffective. It’s harmful. Each failed transformation makes the next one harder, turning your caterpillars more cynical and more determined to cling to their leaves.

The Secret Most Change Experts Miss

Butterflies don’t convince caterpillars to transform by showing off their wings. They create conditions where transformation feels possible, necessary, and safe. Your job isn’t to sell the end state – it’s to help others see their own potential for change.

Here’s how:

Start With the Hungriest Caterpillars

Find those who feel the limitations of their current state most acutely. They’re not satisfied with their current leaf, and they’re curious about what lies beyond. These early adopters become your first chrysalis cohort.

Make it About Their Problems, Not Your Vision

Instead of talking about transformation, focus on specific pain points. “Wouldn’t it be easier to reach that juicy leaf if you could fly?” is more compelling than “Flying represents a paradigm shift in leaf acquisition strategy.”

Build a Network of Proof

Every successful mini-transformation creates evidence that change is possible. When one caterpillar successfully navigates their chrysalis phase, others pay attention. Let your transformed allies tell their stories.

Set Realistic Expectations

Metamorphosis takes time and isn’t always pretty. Be honest about the goo phase – that messy middle where things fall apart before they come together. This builds trust and prepares people for the real journey, not the sanitized version.

Where to Start

Identify your first chrysalis cohort – the people already feeling the limits of their current state
Focus on solving immediate problems that showcase the benefits of change
Document and share small victories, letting others tell their transformation stories
Create realistic timelines that acknowledge both quick wins and longer-term metamorphosis

What’s your experience? Have you successfully guided a transformation without relying on buzzwords and fancy presentations? Drop your stories in the comments.

After all, we’re all just caterpillars and butterflies helping each other find our wings.

Image credit: misterinnovation.com

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We Need a New Language for Change

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We Need a New Language for Change

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

If innovation (the term) is dead and we will continue to engage in innovation (the activity), how do we talk about creating meaningful change without falling back on meaningless buzzwords? The answer isn’t finding a single replacement word – it’s building a new innovation language that actually describes what we’re trying to achieve. Think of it as upgrading from a crayon to a full set of oil paints – suddenly you can create much more nuanced pictures of progress.

The Problem with One-Size-Fits-All

We’ve spent decades trying to cram every type of progress, change, and improvement into the word “innovation.” It’s like trying to describe all forms of movement with just the word “moving.” Sure, you’re moving but without the specificity of words like walking, running, jumping, bounding, and dancing, you don’t know what or how you’re moving or why.

That’s why using “innovation” to describe everything different from today doesn’t work.

Use More Precise Language for What and How

Before we throw everything out, let’s keep what actually works: Innovation means “something new that creates value.” That last bit is crucial – it’s what separates meaningful change from just doing new stuff for novelty’s sake. (Looking at you, QR code on toothpaste tutorials.)

But, just like “dancing” is a specific form of movement, we need more precise language to describe what the new value-creating thing is that we’re doing:

Core IMPROVEMENTS: Making existing things better. It’s the unglamorous but essential work of continuous refinement. Think better batteries, faster processors, smoother processes.
Adjacent EXPANSIONS: Venturing into new territory – new customers, new offerings, new revenue models, OR new processes. It’s like a restaurant adding delivery service: same food, new way of reaching customers.
Radical REINVENTION: Going all in, changing multiple dimensions at once. Think Netflix killing its own DVD business to stream content they now produce themselves. (And yes, that sound you hear is Blockbuster crying in the corner.)

Adopt More Sophisticated Words to Describe Why

Innovation collapsed because innovation became an end in and of itself. Companies invested in it to get good PR, check a shareholder box, or entertain employees with events.

We forgot that innovation is a means to an end and, as a result, got lazy about specifying what the expected end is. We need to get back to setting these expectations with words that are both clear and inspiring

Growth means ongoing evolution
Transformation means fundamental system change (not just putting QR codes on things)
Invention means creating something new without regard to its immediate usefulness
Problem Solving means finding, creating, and implementing practical solutions
Value Creation means demonstrating measurable and meaningful impact

Why This Matters

This isn’t just semantic nitpicking. Using more precise language sets better expectations, helps people choose the most appropriate tools, and enables you to measure success accurately. It’s the difference between saying “I want to move more during the day” and “I want to build enough endurance to run a 5K by June.”

What’s Next?

As we emerge from innovation’s chrysalis, maybe what we’re becoming isn’t simpler – it’s more sophisticated. And maybe that’s exactly what we need to move forward.

Drop a comment: What words do you use to describe different types of change and innovation in your organization? How do you differentiate between what you’re doing and why you’re doing it?

Image credit: Pexels

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Innovation is Dead. Now What?

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Innovation is Dead. Now What?

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Innovation has always had its problems. It’s a meaningless buzzword that leads to confusion and false hope. It’s an event or a hobby that allows executives to check the “Be innovative” box on shareholders’ To-do lists. It’s a massive investment that, if you’re lucky, is break-even.

So, it should be no surprise that interest and investment have dried up to the point that many have declared that innovation is dead.

If you feel an existential crisis coming on, you’re not alone. Heck, I’m about to publish a book titled Unlocking Innovation, which, if innovation is dead, is like publishing Lean Speed: How to Make Your Horse East Less and Go Faster in 1917 (the year automobiles became more prevalent than horses).

But is innovation really dead?

Yes, Innovation is Dead

The word “innovation” is dead, and it’s about time. Despite valiant efforts by academics, consultants, and practitioners to define innovation as something more than a new product, decades of hype have irrevocably reduced it to shiny new objects, fun field trips and events, and wasted time and money.

Good riddance, too. “Innovation” has been used to justify too many half-hearted efforts, avoidable mistakes, and colossal failures to survive.

Except that it is also very much not dead.

While the term “innovation” may have flat-lined, the act of innovating – creating something new that creates value – is thriving. AI continues to evolve and find new roles in our daily lives. Labs are growing everything from meat to fabric to new organs. And speaking of organs, three patients in the US received artificial hearts that kept them alive long enough for donor hearts to be found.

The act of innovation isn’t dead because the need for innovation will always exist, and the desire to innovate – to create, evolve, and improve – is fundamentally human.

Innovation is Metamorphosing (yes, that’s a real word)

Like the Very Hungry Caterpillar, innovation has been inching along, gobbling up money and people, getting bigger, and taking up more space in offices, budgets, and shareholder calls.

Then, as the shock of the pandemic faded, innovation went into a chrysalis and turned to goo.

Just as a caterpillar must break down completely before becoming something new, we’re watching the old systems dissolve:

Old terms like innovation and Design Thinking were more likely to elicit a No than a Yes
Old structures like dedicated internal teams and “labs” were shut down
Old beliefs that innovation is an end rather than a means to an end faded

This is all good news. Except for one tiny thing …

We Don’t Know What’s Next

Humans hate uncertainty, so we’re responding to the goo-phase in different ways:

Collapse in defeat, lament the end of human creativity and innovation, and ignore the fact that cutting all investment in creativity and innovation is hastening the end you find so devastating
Take a deep breath, put our heads down, and keep going because this, too, shall pass.
Put on our big kid pants, muster some courage, ask questions, and start experimenting
I’ve been in #2 for a while (with brief and frequent visits to #1), but it’s time to move into #3.

I’ll start where I start everything – a question about a word – because, before we can move forward, we need a way to communicate.

If innovation (the term) is dead, what do we use instead?

We’ll explore answers in the next post, so drop your words and definitions in the comments.

Image credit: Google Gemini

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How Courage and Trust are Transforming Bayer

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Fewer Rules and Better Results

How Courage and Trust are Transforming Bayer

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

“Consider this question: If workers are hobbled by 1,000 rules, does it make a meaningful difference to reduce them to only 900?”

The answer is No. In fact, this is precisely why most attempts at fighting bureaucracy fail – and why true transformation requires starting completely fresh.

Bill Anderson, CEO of Bayer, knows this and isn’t afraid to admit it. When he took the helm in June 2023, he discovered a company paralyzed by bureaucracy. Instead of trying to optimize the system, he looked at the company’s “1,362 pages” of employee rules and knew the entire structure needed to change.

Breaking the Stranglehold

As Anderson stated in Fortune, “There was a time for hierarchical, command-and-control organizations – the 19th century, to be exact, when many workers were illiterate, information traveled at a snail’s pace, and strict adherence to rules offered the competitive advantage of reliability.”

The modern reality is different. Today’s Bayer employs highly skilled experts, operates at digital speed, and competes in markets where, as Anderson observes, “the most reliable companies are the most dynamic.”

The challenge wasn’t just the encyclopedic rule book. The organization’s “12 levels of hierarchy” created what Anderson called “unnecessary distance between our teams, our customers, and our products.” In today’s innovation-driven market, this industrial-age structure threatened the company’s future.

Unleashing Innovation

Anderson’s solution? “Dynamic Shared Ownership” – a radical model that puts 95% of decision-making in the hands of the people actually doing the work. Instead of annual budgets and endless approvals, self-directed teams work in 90-day sprints with the autonomy to make real-time decisions.

The results are already showing. Take Vividion, Bayer’s independently operated subsidiary. Operating in small, autonomous teams, they went from FDA approval to first patient dosing in just six weeks. They’re now on track to produce one or two new drug candidates for clinical testing every year.

Speed Becomes Reality

The impact extends across the organization. Bayer’s scientists have transformed their plant breeding process, reducing cycles from “five years down to merely four months.”

In the consumer health division, teams have accelerated their development timelines significantly, reducing product launch schedules “by up to nine months” in Asia. Within their first two months under the new system, these teams generated millions in additional value.

While financial markets remain uncertain about this transformation, one crucial metric suggests it’s working: employee retention has improved. The scientists, researchers, and product developers – the people doing the innovative work – are showing their confidence in this dramatic shift toward autonomous operation.

Why This Matters & What to do Next

For most of us, the question isn’t whether our organization has too much bureaucracy – it almost certainly does. The question is: what are you going to do about it?

Try this – Create a small, autonomous team with a 90-day mission. Give them real decision-making power and see what they can accomplish when freed from bureaucratic constraints.

Remember Anderson’s key insight: reducing rules from 1,000 to 900 won’t create meaningful change. Real transformation requires the courage to fundamentally rethink how work gets done.

For anyone who’s ever felt the soul-crushing weight of bureaucracy, Bayer’s radical reinvention offers hope. Maybe the path to innovation isn’t through better rules and processes, but through the courage to trust in human potential.

Image credit: Unsplash

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Lean is the Enemy of Learning

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And Other Counterintuitive Lessons from a Day at MIT

Lean is the Enemy of Learning

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

I firmly believe that there are certain things in life that you automatically say Yes to. You do not ask questions or pause to consider context. You simply say Yes:

Painkillers after a medical procedure
Warm blankets
The opportunity to listen to brilliant people talk about things that fascinate them.

So, when asked if I would like to attend an Executive Briefing curated by MIT’s Industrial Liaison Program, I did not ask questions or pause to check my calendar. I simply said Yes.

I’m extremely happy that I did because what I heard blew my mind.

Lean is the enemy of learning

When Ben Armstrong, Executive Director of MIT’s Industrial Performance Center and Co-Lead of the Work of the Future Initiative, said, “To produce something new, you need to create a lot of waste,” I nearly lept out of my chair, raised my arms, and shouted “Amen brother!”

He went on to tell the story of a meeting between Elon Musk and Toyota executives shortly after Musk became CEO. Toyota executives marveled at how quickly Tesla could build an EV and asked Musk for his secret. Musk gestured around the factory floor at all the abandoned hunks of metal and partially built cars and explained that, unlike Toyota, which prided itself on being lean and minimizing waste, Tesla engineers focused on learning – and waste is a required part of the process.

We decide with our hearts and justify with our heads – even when leasing office space

John E. Fernández, Director of MIT’s Environmental Solutions Initiative, shared an unexpected insight about selling sustainable buildings effectively. Instead of hard numbers around water and energy cost savings, what convinces companies to pay the premium for Net Zero environments is prestige. The bragging rights of being a tenant in Winthrop Center, Boston’s first-ever Passive House office building, gave developers a meaningful point of differentiation and justified higher-than-market-rate rents to future tenants like McKinsey and M&T Bank.

49% of companies are Silos and Spaghetti

I did a hard eye roll when I saw Digital Transformation on the agenda. But Stephanie Woerner, Principal Research Scientists and Executive Director for MIT’s Center for Information Systems Research, proved me wrong by explaining that Digital Transformation requires operational excellence and customer-focused innovation.

Her research reveals that while 26% of companies have evolved to manage both innovation and operations, operate with agility, and deliver great customer experiences, nearly half of companies are stuck operating in silos and throwing spaghetti against the wall. These “silo and spaghetti companies” are often product companies rife with complex systems and processes that require and reward individual heroics to make progress.

What seems like the safest option is the riskiest

How did 26% of companies transform while the rest stayed stuck or made little progress? The path forward isn’t what you’d expect. Companies that go all-in on operational excellence or customer innovation struggle to shift focus and work in the other half of the equation. But doing a little bit of each is even more risky because the companies often wait for results from one step before taking the next. The result is a never-ending transformation slog that is eventually abandoned.

Academia is full of random factoids

They’re not random to the academics, but for us civilians, they’re mainly helpful for trivia night:

50% of US robots are used in the automotive industry
<20% of manufacturing job descriptions require digital skills (yes, that includes MS Office)
Data centers will account for 8-21% of global energy demand by 2030
Energy is 10% of the cost but 90% of the cost of mining bitcoin
Cities take up 3% of the earth’s surface, contain 33% of the population, account for 70% of global electricity consumption, and are responsible for 75% of CO2 emissions

Why say Yes

When brilliant people talk about things they find fascinating, it’s often because those things challenge conventional wisdom. The tension between lean efficiency and innovative learning, the role of emotion in business decisions, and the risks of playing it too safe all point to a fascinating truth: sometimes the most counterintuitive path forward is the most successful.

How have you seen this play out in your work?

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When Scaling Innovation Backfires

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How One Company Became the Theranos of Marshmallows

When Scaling Innovation Backfires

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Here’s a head-scratcher when it comes to scaling innovation: What happens when your innovative product is a hit with customers, but you still fail spectacularly? Just ask the folks behind Smashmallow, the gourmet marshmallow company that went from sweet success to sticky situation faster than you can say “s’mores.”

The Recipe for Initial Success

Jon Sebastiani sold his premium jerky company Krave to Hershey for $240 million and thought he’d found his next billion-dollar idea in fancy French marshmallows. And initially, it looked like he had.

Smashmallow’s artisanal, flavor-packed treats weren’t just another fluffy, tasteless sugar puff – they created an entirely new snack category. Customers couldn’t get enough of their handcrafted, churro-dusted, chocolate-chip-studded clouds of happiness. The company hit $5 million in sales in its first year, doubled that the next, and was available in 15,000 stores nationwide in only its third year.

Sounds like a startup fairy tale, right? Right! If we’re talking about the original Brothers Grimm versions. Corporate innovators start taking notes.

The Candy-coated Vision

Sebastiani and his investors weren’t content with building a successful premium regional brand. They wanted to become the Kraft of craft marshmallows, scaling from artisanal to industrial without losing what made the product special. It’s a story that plays out in corporations every day: the pressure to turn every successful pilot into a billion-dollar business.

So, they invested. Big time.

They signed a contract with “an internationally respected builder of candy-making machines” to design and build a $3 million custom-built machine and another with a copacker to build an entirely new facility to accommodate the custom machine.

Bold visions require bold moves, and Sebastiani was a bold guy.

The Scale-up Meltdown

But boldness can’t overcome reality, and the custom machine couldn’t replicate the magic of handmade marshmallows. It couldn’t even make the marshmallows.

Starch dust created explosion hazards. Cinnamon wouldn’t stick. Workers couldn’t breathe through spice clouds. The handmade ethos of imperfect squares gave way to industrialized perfection. Each attempt to solve one problem created three more, like a game of confectionery whack-a-mole.

By 2022, Smashmallow was gone, leaving behind a cautionary tale about the gap between what customers value and what executives and investors want. The irony? They succeeded in their mission to disrupt the market – by 2028, the North American marshmallow market is projected to more than double its 2019 size, largely thanks to the premium category Smashmallow created. They just won’t be around to enjoy it.

A Bittersweet Paradox

For so many corporate innovators, this story hits close to home. How many promising projects died not because customers didn’t love them but because they couldn’t scale to “move the needle” for a multi-billion dollar corporation? A $15 million business might be a champagne-popping moment for an entrepreneur, but it barely registers as a rounding error on a Fortune 500 income statement.

This is the innovation paradox facing corporate innovators: The very pressure to go big or go home often destroys what makes an innovation special in the first place. It’s not enough to create something customers love – you must create something that can scale to satisfy the corporate appetite for growth.

Finding the Sweet Spot

The lesson isn’t that we should abandon ambitious scaling plans. Instead, we must be brutally honest about whether our drive for scale aligns with what makes our innovation valuable to customers. If it doesn’t, we must choose whether to scale back our ambitions (unlikely) or let go of our successful-but-small idea.

After all, not every marshmallow needs to be a mountain, but every mountain climber (that’s you) needs a mountain.

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