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

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of October 2025Drum 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 October’s ten most popular innovation posts:

  1. AI, Cognitive Obesity and Arrested Development — by Pete Foley
  2. Making Decisions in Uncertainty – This 25-Year-Old Tool Actually Works — by Robyn Bolton
  3. The Marketing Guide for Humanity’s Next Chapter – How AI Changes Your Customers — by Braden Kelley
  4. Don’t Make Customers Do These Seven Things They Hate — by Shep Hyken
  5. Why Best Practices Fail – Five Questions with Ellen DiResta — by Robyn Bolton
  6. The Need for Organizational Learning — by Mike Shipulski
  7. You Must Accept That People Are Irrational — by Greg Satell
  8. The AI Innovations We Really Need — by Art Inteligencia
  9. Three Reasons You Are Not Happy at Work – And What to Do to Become as Happy as You Could Be — by Stefan Lindegaard
  10. The Nuclear Fusion Accelerator – How AI is Commercializing Limitless Power — by Art Inteligencia

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

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!

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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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Change Management Needs to Change

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Change Management Needs to Change

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

In 1983, McKinsey consultant Julien Phillips published a paper in the journal, Human Resource Management, that described an ‘adoption penalty’ for firms that didn’t adapt to changes in the marketplace quickly enough. His ideas became McKinsey’s first change management model that it sold to clients.

But consider that research shows in 1975, during the period Phillips studied, 83% of the average US corporation’s assets were tangible assets, such as plant, machinery and buildings, while by 2015, 84% of corporate assets were intangible, such as licenses, patents and research. Clearly, that changes how we need to approach transformation.

When your assets are tangible, change is about making strategic decisions, such as building factories, buying new equipment and so on. Yet when your assets are intangible, change is connected to people—what they believe, how they think and how they act. That’s a very different matter and we need to reexamine how we approach transformation and change.

The Persuasion Model Of Change

Phillips’ point of reference for his paper on organizational change was a comparison of two companies, NCR and Burroughs, and how they adapted to changes in their industry between 1960 and 1975. Phillips was able to show that during that time, NCR paid a high price for its inability to adapt to change while it’s competitor, Burroughs prospered.

He then used that example to outline a general four-part model for change:

  • Creating a sense of concern
  • Developing a specific commitment to change
  • Pushing for major change
  • Reinforcing and consolidating the new course

Phillips’ work kicked off a number of similar approaches, the most famous of which is probably Kotter’s 8-step model. Yet despite the variations, the all follow a similar pattern. First you need to create a sense of urgency, then you devise a vision for change, communicate the need for it effectively and convince others to go along.

The fundamental assumption of these models, is that if people understand the change that you seek, they will happily go along. Yet my research indicates exactly the opposite. In fact, it turns out that people don’t like change and will often work actively to undermine it. Merely trying to be more persuasive is unlikely get you very far.

This is even more true when the target of the change is people themselves than when the change involves some sort of strategic asset. That’s probably why more recent research from McKinsey has found that only 26% of organizational transformations succeed.

Shifting From Hierarchies To Networks

Clearly, the types of assets that make up an enterprise aren’t the only thing that has changed over the past half-century. The structure of our organizations has also shifted considerably. The firms of Phillips’ and Kotter’s era were vlargely hierarchical. Strategic decisions were made at the top and carried out by others below.

Yet there is significant evidence that suggests that networks outperform hierarchies. For example, in Regional Advantage AnnaLee Saxenian explains that Boston-based technology firms, such as DEC and Data General, were vertically integrated and bound employees through non-compete contracts. Their Silicon Valley competitors such as Hewlett Packard and Sun Microsystems, on the other hand, embraced open technologies, built alliances and allowed their people to job hop.

The Boston-based companies, which dominated the microcomputer industry, were considered to be very well managed, highly efficient and innovative firms. However, when technology shifted away from microcomputers, their highly stable, vertical-integrated structure was completely cut off from the knowledge they would need to compete. The highly connected Silicon Valley firms, on the other hand, thrived.

Studies have found similar patterns in the German auto industry, among currency traders and even in Broadway plays. Wherever we see significant change today, it tends to happen side-to-side in networks rather than top-down in hierarchies.

Flipping The Model

When Barry Libenson first arrived at Experian as Global CIO in 2015, he knew that the job would be a challenge. As one of the world’s largest data companies, with leading positions in the credit, automotive and healthcare markets, the CIO’s role is especially crucial for driving the business. He was also new to the industry and needed to build a learning curve quickly.

So he devoted his first few months at the firm to looking around, talking to people and taking the measure of the place. “I especially wanted to see what our customers had on their roadmap for the next 12-24 months,” he told me and everywhere he went he heard the same thing. They wanted access to real-time data.

As an experienced CIO, Libenson knew a cloud computing architecture could solve that problem, but concerns that would need to be addressed. First, many insiders had concerns that moving from batched processed credit reports to real-time access would undermine Experian’s business model.. There were concerns about cybersecurity. The move would also necessitate a shift to agile product management, which would be controversial.

As CIO, Libenson had a lot of clout and could have, as traditional change management models suggest, created a “sense of urgency” among his fellow senior executives and then gotten a commitment to the change he sought. After the decision had been made, they then would have been able to design a communication campaign to persuade 16,000 employees that the change was a good one. The evidence suggests that effort would have failed.

Instead, he flipped the model and began working with a small team that was already enthusiastic about the move. He created an “API Center of Excellence” to help willing project managers to learn agile development and launch cloud-enabled products. After about a year, the program had gained significant traction and after three years the transformation to the cloud was complete.

Becoming The Change That You Want To See

The practice of change management got its start because businesses needed to adapt. The shift that Burroughs made to electronics was no small thing. Investments needed to be made in equipment, technology, training, marketing and so on. That required a multi-year commitment. Its competitor, NCR, was unable or unwilling to change and paid a dear price for it.

Yet change today looks much more like Experian’s shift to the cloud than it does Burroughs’ move into electronics. It’s hard, if not impossible, to persuade a product manager to make a shift if she’s convinced it will kill her business model, just it’s hard to get a project manager to adopt agile methodologies if she feels she’s been successful with more traditional methods. .

Libenson succeeded at Experian not because he was more persuasive, but because he had a better plan. Instead of trying to convince everyone at once, he focused his efforts on empowering those that were already enthusiastic. As their efforts became successful, others joined them and the program gathered steam. Those that couldn’t keep up got left behind.

The truth is that today we can’t transform organizations unless we transform the people in them and that’s why change management has got to change. It is no longer enough to simply communicate decisions made at the top. Rather, we need to put people at the center and empower them to succeed.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credit: Pexels

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The Top 5 Change Leadership Models Every Leader Should Know

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The Top 5 Change Leadership Models Every Leader Should Know

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

Change leadership is a vital aspect of any organization’s success. It involves guiding and influencing the strategic transformation within companies to ensure they remain competitive and relevant. Here, we explore the top five change leadership models that have proven effective in various organizational settings, accompanied by two case studies that illustrate these models in action.

1. Kotter’s 8-Step Change Model

Developed by Harvard Business School professor John Kotter, this model provides a comprehensive step-by-step approach to implementing successful change. It emphasizes the importance of creating a sense of urgency, forming a powerful coalition, and generating short-term wins to maintain momentum1.

2. Lewin’s Change Management Model

Kurt Lewin’s model is one of the founding frameworks of change management. It’s built on the concept that change involves three stages: Unfreezing, Changing, and Refreezing. This model is particularly useful for understanding the human aspect of change and the need for a structured approach1.

3. McKinsey’s 7-S Model

The McKinsey 7-S model focuses on seven internal elements of an organization that need to be aligned for successful change: Strategy, Structure, Systems, Shared Values, Skills, Style, and Staff. It’s a holistic approach that considers both hard and soft aspects of the organization1.

4. Braden Kelley’s Flow of Change Model v1.5

According to Braden Kelley, “achieving successful change is a complex undertaking, that we must make a more human process so that it is less overwhelming for those most affected by it and for change leaders and planners as well. Change Leaders can simplify change in certain ways, but they can’t make it simple.”

When you see his model in the best-selling book Charting Change (now in its Second Edition), you will notice that there are not three, but eleven different distinct stages to strike the proper balance between simplicity and complexity. Braden Kelley highlights in the model that the Disequilibrium stage is where many change efforts fail. According to Kelley, “The organization has begun ending the old way of doing things (and potentially even celebrated that ending) and has tried doing things the new way. This leads to a feeling of disequilibrium in most people as they determine whether the new way is better and decide whether they feel justified in continuing to resist the new way or whether to acclimate to doing things the new way.”

People who license the Change Planning Toolkit get access to the Flow of Change Model v1.5 Worksheet and the ability to track the Triple-T Metric (Time to Transform) over time for equivalent size change initiatives to see whether their change realization efficiency is accelerating or not across the eleven stages.

5. The Kubler-Ross Change Curve

Based on the stages of grief, this model applies the emotional journey to organizational change. It helps leaders understand employee resistance to change and the emotional transition needed to accept new ways of working.

Case Study 1: Adobe’s Transformation of HR Functions

Adobe’s shift from traditional software sales to a cloud-based subscription model required a significant change in their HR functions. They applied the 7-S framework to align their internal strategies and structures with their new business model, leading to a successful transformation.

Case Study 2: Barclays Bank’s Change in Business Practices

Barclays Bank underwent a major shift in its ways of doing business to adapt to the digital age. They utilized Lewin’s model to unfreeze old habits, introduce new digital banking practices, and refreeze the new processes into the company culture, resulting in improved customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.

Conclusion

Understanding and applying these change leadership models can significantly enhance a leader’s ability to steer their organization through the complexities of change. The case studies of Adobe and Barclays Bank serve as exemplary instances of how theoretical models can translate into practical success.

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

Image credit: Pixabay

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Six Innovation Leadership Skills to Master

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Six Innovation Leadership Skills to Master

GUEST POST from Robert B. Tucker

You don’t need a crystal ball to see that the world of work is changing. According to an important new study from McKinsey Global Institute, almost half the jobs people currently perform have the potential to be automated by currently existing technology. It sort of makes you wonder: what kind of work will be left for humans to do?

The answer: innovation. Clearly, to thrive in this new world of work will require different skill-sets, mindsets, and tool-sets. Chief among them: the need to bring people together as a team. The need to demonstrate deeper empathy. The ability to get new things done.

Innovation in the next economy is about much more than inventing. It’s about figuring out how and where you can add unique value. It’s about how fast you can unlearn, relearn and master new skills. It’s about how you engage others at a deeper, more humanistic and passionate level.

Here are six critical leadership skills that will help you turbocharge your career in the coming days:

1. You Continuously Embrace The Opportunity Mode Of Thinking

Innovation in the new workplace is not what you do after you get your work done; it’s how you approach your work. In its simplest form, innovation is coming up with ideas and bringing them to life. To solve problems. Create opportunities. Instead of innovation being a department (new product development, research and development, IT, etc.), it is quickly becoming everybody’s business.

In Opportunity Mode you are passionately alert to possibility, to unmet needs, to the power of imagination, and to the thrill of turning vision into reality. Where others see problems, you sense potential. When others stress over details, you see the big picture, the progress being made, the vision of how things can be but are not yet. You realize that your perspective and attitude determines everything. And you know progress will happen, if only you keep the mood right and press ahead.

Action step: Exercise your imagination muscle. To shift perspective at any time during your day, invite yourself to come up with additional solutions to a challenge you currently face. Ask yourself (and your team members): what are five alternate ways to address this problem? What 10 things are working well in my life, team, job or organization right now? Learn to be aware of what mode of thinking – Defeatist, Dreamer, Sustainer or Innovator – you are in at present, and invite yourself to shift.

2. You Are Adept At Assaulting Assumptions

Assumptions are like barnacles on the side of a boat; they slow us down. In my work with hundreds of teams, ranging from C-suite executives to graduate students to mid-level managers and front line employees, I’ve developed some simple but powerful techniques to help people blast away at assumptions. This proactive bombardment of new stimuli is essential because the brain, left to its own devices, routinely takes what brain researchers call “perceptual shortcuts” to save time and energy.

Years of experience in an industry, profession or job can also be a deterrent. “It’s always been done that way” or “we already tried that” are often a sign that you and your team could use a technique to move beyond habitual thinking blocks in order to imagine alternate possibilities. Innovation begins where assumptions end. In today’s hypercompetitive world, we can either assault our assumptions, or somebody else will do it for us and reap the benefits.

Action steps: Consciously challenge personal, professional and industry assumptions. Do this to spawn fresh thinking. Asking such questions as “I wonder if we…” or “what would an entirely different way of handling this situation look like?”

When the thought that “there’s got to be a better way” pops into your mind just remember, there probably is. Nudge yourself to envision that better way. Experiment with alternatives and possibilities. In such moments, you are challenging the assumption that the status quo is the best or the only way – and you invited new thinking.

3. You Develop Empathy For The End Customer

Jennifer Rock worked in the marketing department at Best Buys’ Minneapolis headquarters when she was tapped to oversee the company’s intranet. The intranet was used to push policy changes out to the company’s 1500 stores, but Jennifer and her team transformed the intranet into a two-way communications vehicle. They began hosting weekly online surveys with store employees and managers. They created online discussion sessions for employees in disparate locations. And they hosted agenda-less town hall meetings where employees can interact with senior leaders.

When I asked Jennifer about why she took these steps, she spoke of her passion for the end customer – in this case, the company’s employees. “We wanted to do something about the disconnect between management and the field,” she explained to me in an interview. At the beginning of Jennifer’s journey to make the intranet a two-way communication vehicle, Best Buy’s employee turnover rate was over 80%. Today, it’s less than 50%.

Action steps: Strive to understand the business you’re in on a deeper level. Develop empathy for your end user, whether that customer is internal or external. Try to walk in their shoes. Seek to understand their pain points. Listen deeply to what that customer wants to accomplish, what problems they face, and how you and your organization might take on their problem. Step outside the bubble of your culture. Interact with more people. Wrap your brain gently around what they are trying to express.

4. You Proactively Think Ahead Of The Curve

Ever try walking around in the dark without a flashlight? It’s an unsettling feeling and can often lead to injury if you walk straight into something you couldn’t see. In today’s hyper-changing world, you need your own version of a flashlight. Things happen fast when we aren’t paying attention. Responding to issues on the home-front and in your personal life, and myriad other distractions and deadlines in the workplace can blind us to important societal, technological and other external changes. We can miss important trends, disruptions, and technologies. With your “flashlight” in hand, however, you will find things do not happen quite so suddenly.

Action steps: Your flashlight, as I tell my audiences, is your ability to illuminate the trends that surround you. Every innovator I’ve ever met has a voracious information diet: books, articles, alerts, reports. Developing the ability to track emerging trends is a skill. You get better at it with practice. It involves projecting out where these trends will go. Connecting the dots. It involves looking at what you must do or can do proactively to prepare for the future. By assessing and interpreting changes as they relate to your world, you position yourself to transform them into new opportunities.

5.You Continuously Fortify Your Idea Factory

Everybody has ideas. But only some people know how to keep their “idea factories” fortified to churn out a wealth of them on a consistent basis, when and where needed. Only a rare few know how to fuel their work with a constant flow of ideas from “ah ha” to “done.” This ability to “ideate” and invite ideas on purpose using tools like mind-mapping and simple brainstorming is an essential skill of the dawning world of work.

Action steps: Always consciously manage your mental environment so that you’re able to recognize the ideas that flutter into your life. Enhance your creative environment at home and at work. Turn your office into a creative place. Or, make efforts to seek inspiration outside the office. Practice encouraging creativity in the people around you. Compliment them for their “brilliant” suggestions and watch more of them appear. Remember: creativity is not a gift from the gods, but the result of preparation, routine, discipline.

6. You Are Adept At Building The Buy-In

In a world where everything seems to “go viral” instantly, we sometimes forget that persuading other people – colleagues, the boss, customers, our spouse – is an essential and developable skill. In studying breakthrough products and business models, I often find a whole lot of selling going on behind the scenes that helped the idea succeed.

For example, the 3M team responsible for launching Post-It Notes was growing desperate when senior management threatened to kill the product as a loser. Nobody was buying it. Retail stores were indifferent as nobody was requesting the funny little pads. So the team took action. They handed out Post-It Notes and showed people how to use them. They sent them to the administrative assistants of top CEOs, who began using them on documents. That was the turning point. Eventually, people started sticking them everywhere and began asking for them at retail stores. The new product took off.

Action steps: Strive to get better at communicating the merits of taking a certain course of action. Selling new ideas is about surmounting obstacles, overcoming objections and gaining commitment for (your) new way of doing things. Always focus on the benefits of adopting the new way, and avoid getting caught up in the features and technical details. Solicit feedback from friends, mentors and others you trust to sharpen your message. Watch the television program Shark Tank to understand how not to sell ideas. Always think about the individual or individual you’re presenting your ideas to. For instance, if your idea buyer is numbers oriented, use plenty of charts and graphs. If more aspirational, don’t bog down with details, and show how this enhances the brand. And be persistent: building the buy-in for a change often takes time and patience.

This article originally appeared in Forbes
Image credit: Pexels

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