Tag Archives: Tools

Human-Centered Design Tools and Techniques

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Human-Centered Design Tools and Techniques

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

Human-Centered Design Tools and Techniques are some of the most powerful design strategies used to create user-friendly digital products and services. This design approach helps to ensure that end products are tailored specifically to the needs of the user, which can ultimately improve user experience and increase customer loyalty. Human-centered design starts by thoroughly understanding the customer’s needs and then applying processes and tools that bring the customer’s needs to the center of the development process.

The human-centered design toolkit includes a range of techniques such as user research, usability tests, wireframing, prototyping, and cognitive walkthroughs. Below are two case studies to help illustrate different ways in which these tools and techniques can be applied to create successful outputs.

Case Study 1 – Retail

The first example is the development of an ecommerce website for a retail company. Through customer research, the team was able to identify key pain points and usability issues that the customer was experiencing with its current website. The team then used wireframing to develop a prototype that incorporated the customer’s needs and addressed any usability issues. During the development process, usability tests were conducted to allow the team to observe user interaction and make any necessary changes. Finally, a cognitive walkthrough of the final product was conducted to make sure it was intuitive and easy to use. The end result was an improved user experience for the customer and an increase in sales for the company.

Case Study 2 – Online News Service

The second example is the development of a mobile app for an online news service. The design team conducted user research to identify how the customer read news on their mobile device and what features they would like to see implemented. The team then created wireframes and interactive prototypes to incorporate the customer’s needs. During the development process, a usability test was conducted to observe user behavior when navigating the app. Finally, the app was tested through a cognitive walkthrough to make sure it was user-friendly. The end result was an enhanced user experience for the customer and an increase in the number of active users of the app.

Conclusion

These two case studies demonstrate the power of human-centered design tools and techniques. By understanding the customer’s needs and incorporating them into the design process, you can develop successful digital products that are tailored to the user’s needs and improve customer experience.

SPECIAL BONUS: Braden Kelley’s Problem Finding Canvas can be a super useful starting point for doing design thinking or human-centered design.

“The Problem Finding Canvas should help you investigate a handful of areas to explore, choose the one most important to you, extract all of the potential challenges and opportunities and choose one to prioritize.”

Image credit: Pixabay

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Change Management Tools and Techniques for Successful Projects

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Change Management Tools and Techniques for Successful Projects

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

In today’s ever-changing business landscape, it’s important to stay ahead of the curve by employing change management tools and techniques. Change management is a process used to ensure that any changes made to an organization’s processes, products, or services are implemented in a structured, efficient, and effective manner. By taking the time to plan and implement change management tools and techniques, organizations can ensure that their projects are successful and that their employees are on board with the new changes.

One of the most important tools in any change management process is communication. Effective communication is essential to any successful project. It’s important to ensure that everyone involved in the project is aware of the changes that are being made and how these changes will affect them. This includes keeping key stakeholders informed, providing clear instructions to employees, and engaging in open and honest dialogue with any other parties involved.

Another important change management tool is training. Providing employees with the necessary training and resources to effectively implement any changes is essential for successful projects. It’s important to ensure that employees understand the changes and how they will affect their job duties. This can be done through in-person training sessions, online seminars, or other methods.

Finally, it’s important to identify and track project progress. This can be done by setting realistic timelines, monitoring the project’s progress, and making adjustments as needed. By tracking project progress, organizations can identify potential issues early on and take action to rectify them before they become a problem.

Case Study – Microsoft:

Microsoft is an example of a company that has successfully employed change management tools and techniques. In order to successfully implement the company’s move to the cloud, Microsoft used a combination of communication, training, and progress tracking. Microsoft set up a series of training sessions for employees to ensure that they understood the changes and how they would affect their job duties. The company also used regular progress reports and online seminars to track project progress and identify any issues that may arise.

Case Study – Google:

Google is another example of a company that has successfully employed change management tools and techniques. In order to successfully implement its new mobile-first strategy, Google used a combination of communication, training, and progress tracking. Google set up a series of online seminars and workshops to ensure that employees understood the new strategy and how it would affect their job duties. The company also used regular progress reports and online seminars to track project progress and identify any issues that may arise.

Conclusion

Change management tools and techniques are essential for successful projects. By taking the time to plan and implement change management tools and techniques, organizations can ensure that their projects are successful and that their employees are on board with the new changes. Examples of successful change management include Microsoft and Google, who both used a combination of communication, training, and progress tracking to successfully implement their new strategies. By employing the same change management tools and techniques, organizations can ensure that their projects are successful and that their employees are on board with the new changes.

Image credit: Unsplash

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Going Beyond the Business Model Canvas

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Going Beyond the Business Model Canvas

For decades when business people and aspiring entrepreneurs came up with an idea and became serious about commercializing it, they would, by default, create a business plan. Anyone who has ever created a business plan knows they are a LOT of work. And as any innovator knows, most ideas turn out to be garbage. As a result, the creation of most business plans ends up being a waste of time.

All of this wasted time and money in the universes of both corporate innovation and startups was definitely an area of opportunity.

This pain has been solved in part by the Business Model Canvas created by Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, the Lean Canvas created by Ash Maurya, and by minor variations created by others.

Purpose of the Business Model Canvas

The purpose of both at their core is the same. The Business Model Canvas and the Lean Canvas seek to help entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs and innovators quickly explore the desirability, feasibility and viability of their ideas in a more visual and collaborative way, while also supporting much quicker iterations and revisions to both the value proposition and its path to market.

Where a business plan may take weeks to create, a Business Model Canvas or Lean Canvas can be created in an afternoon.

Where a business plan is often created by one person and revised by others in a serial manner, a Business Model Canvas or Lean Canvas is a group activity, informed by a collection of diverse perspectives and experiences, and challenged, evolved and revised in a real-time, parallel manner.

What excites me most as someone who conducts workshops all around the world and teaches people how to use the Business Model Canvas and other innovation & change tools, is that the Business Model Canvas and Lean Canvas have helped to accelerate a transformation in not only how people are taught, but also how they are permitted to conduct business.

Creating a Business Model Canvas as a Team

The Visual and Collaborative Workplace Transformation

This transformation is a game changer because it represents a growing integration of methods into workshops and meetings that enable facilitators to engage not only auditory learners, but visual, kinesthetic and social learners as well.

This more human approach to prototyping a business helps to add a bit more structure around an idea, in a collaborative way that will more quickly surface gaps and flaws while also testing assumptions, collecting idea fragments into a more holistic value proposition and creating a vision for how to make it real.

But, as we all know, any new business or any potential innovation will create an abundance of required and necessary changes. Unfortunately, whether you are using the Business Model Canvas or the Lean Canvas, the truth and the limitation is that they are but a single tool and can’t help you walk the rest of the path to reality. To create the changes necessary to realize your vision, you will need many more tools.

“When what people do aligns with what they think and feel, then and only then, will you achieve the outcomes you’re looking for.”

The good news is that this more visual and collaborative way of working helps with two of the most important keys to success – buy-in and alignment – and also helps to align mind, body, and spirit to harness the whole brain and its three constructs:

  1. Cognitive (thinking)
  2. Conative (doing)
  3. Affective (feeling)

Outcome-Driven Change Framework by Braden Kelley

Beyond the Business Model Canvas and the Lean Canvas

Visual, collaborative tools like the Business Model Canvas, Lean Canvas, Empathy Map, Value Proposition Canvas, Experience Maps, Service Design, and even Customer Journey Maps have laid the groundwork for a more modern, more powerful way of working that leverages the whole brain of the individual, and all three learning styles of the collective.

And where these tools all represent the beginning of a visual, collaborative endeavor to create change, they are missing the tools to help plan for and execute the changes that are being proposed.

Making the Shift to Human-Centered Change

This is where the Change Planning Toolkit™ powering the Human-Centered Change methodology comes in. It has been designed with the Change Planning Canvas™ at its core to feel familiar to those already using the aforementioned tools and empower teams to take the next steps on their journey to be successful:

  1. Innovation and Intrapreneurship
  2. Startup Creation
  3. Digital Transformation
  4. Design Thinking
  5. New Product Development (NPD)
  6. Service Design
  7. Experience Design
  8. Customer Experience (CX) Improvement Efforts
  9. Projects (make sure you also get the Visual Project Charter™)
  10. Change Initiatives

Charting Change is Number OneSo, if you’re already familiar with the Business Model Canvas, Lean Canvas, Empathy Map, Value Proposition Canvas, Experience Maps, Service Design, or Customer Journey Maps then you should get a copy of my latest book Charting Change and it will show you the thinking behind the Change Planning Toolkit™, how to use it to maintain the momentum of your team and the energy behind your idea, and how to leverage both to push it forward towards reality.

The Change Planning Toolkit™ will help you beat the 70% change failure rate, create more efficient and effective change initiatives (and even projects), and accelerate your pace of successful change in order to keep up with the accelerating pace of change all around us and to be more nimble, agile, and responsive than your competition.

Three Steps to Human-Centered Change Success

There is a simple three step process for people who want to start saving time and get the jump on their competition today by familiarizing themselves with the Human-Centered Change methodology:

  1. 10 free tools available to download now
  2. 26 free tools when you buy the book
  3. 70+ tools when you license the toolkit

I’ve invested more than $1 million into the Change Planning Toolkit™ so you don’t have to, and so you can leverage this investment to gain all of the benefits above while also saving yourself thousands or millions of dollars in consulting fees – every year.

And for a limited time, there are some exciting FREE training opportunities available to a handful of organizations who contact me.


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Top 10 Benefits of the Change Planning Toolkit™

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Top 10 Benefits of the Change Planning Toolkit™

Some of the smartest people and organizations in the world are learning how to use the Change Planning Toolkit™ to change how they plan and execute change and to undertake the transformation work necessary to thrive in the experience economy. Who wouldn’t want to beat the 70% change failure rate?

It’s super easy to get started with the Change Planning Toolkit™.

But, before I tell you WHERE to start, let’s start with WHY…

Top 10 Benefits of the Change Planning Toolkit™

  1. Transparency
  2. Alignment
  3. Engagement
  4. Collaboration
  5. Accountability
  6. Speed
  7. Agility
  8. Adoption
  9. On-Time Delivery
  10. On-Budget Delivery

There are lots of great ways to get started with the Change Planning Toolkit™. Personally I would start by getting a copy of my latest book Charting Change because it was written the toolkit in mind AND because book buyers can get access to 26 of the 50+ tools in the toolkit when they contact me. This includes the powerful Change Planning Canvas™, the keystone designed to sit at the center of all of the other tools and keep everything on track.

Not ready to commit to reading the book?

Then, go ahead and get comfortable for free with some of the frameworks, tools and this more visual, collaborative and kinesthetic way of working by downloading the 10 free change tools, which include a combination of frameworks from the book and powerful tools like:

  1. The Visual Project Charter
  2. The Eleven Change Roles™
  3. A visualization of the ACMP Standard for Change Management®

I’ve invested decades and millions of dollars worth of time into putting this toolkit together for you (this is my 10,000 hour project for those Gladwell fans out there). The crazy part is that your annual investment in the Change Planning Toolkit™ will be less than the cost of hiring a change consultant for even 30 minutes.

You can learn more about the Change Planning Toolkit™ by checking out this short 25-minute introductory webinar.

I hope you’ll consider thinking differently about change, and I encourage you to consider about joining the change revolution at whatever starting point above that feels comfortable for you.

Get started with the Change Planning Toolkit™ here


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Introduction to the Change Planning Toolkit™

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Introduction to the Change Planning Toolkit

The business world is showing an increasing interest in the people side of change, and there is a very real reason for this…

Companies are spending an increasing amount of their budget on technology and working to transform their operations to be more digital in order to provide a better experience for customers, employees, partners and suppliers while simultaneously creating a more efficient and effective business.

Everyone knows that a lot of technology projects fail to achieve their intended objectives, timings, and budgets. This fact and the increasing investment levels are causing more executives to look for ways to de-risk these technology investments in digitizing the business.

That’s why we’re seeing an uptick in the hiring and certification of change management professionals, which is great, but companies are still thinking about the relationship between project management and change management backwards.

In most cases change management is brought to bear as an afterthought, a bolt on to project management when the reverse should be true. Managing a change is a bigger endeavor than managing a project, and in fact you could say that because every project changes something, that every project is a change initiative.

It is thinking about managing projects in this way that I sat down to begin managing a new project several years ago and like many project managers, I found myself sitting at my computer by myself starting at an empty Microsoft Word template for a project charter knowing the uphill battle I’m going to face trying to route this document around via email and succeeding at both getting any responses at all and at getting meaningful input and a diversity of perspectives to make my project charter a really strong document that anyone will actually look at after week two of the project. I also found myself thinking that there has to be a better to plan and execute change initiatives and projects.

ACMP Standard Visualization

And sure people like pull ADKAR (a modified version of AIDA from the marketing world) and the ACMP Standard for Change Management (see the visualization I created above and download it for free here) and John Kotter’s change leadership approach, but they all fall short of making the planning and execution of change initiatives and projects a more visual and collaborative process, so I found myself starting to create new tools to help people (intended to link up with the PMBOK and ACMP Standard for Change Management).

These tools started to collect until they formed a comprehensive and new visual, collaborative approach to planning and executing change initiatives, and yes projects. This collection of tools became known as the Change Planning Toolkit™ and was first introduced in my latest book Charting Change which pairs nicely with my first book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire. Both are designed to pack more insights into each chapter than most books contain in the entirety of their pages. Two of the most important frameworks introduced in the book are the Five Keys to Successful Change:

Five Keys to Successful Change 550

And the Architecting the Organization for Change framework:

Architecting the Organization for Change

Both frameworks are designed to help people challenge the way they think about organizational change. They are designed to help people think about more than change management and to think differently about how organizations are transformed and how change management and project management relate to each other.

To help people begin their participation in changing change I’ve made ten free tools available for download from the 50+ tools in the Change Planning Toolkit™, and people who buy a copy of Charting Change get access to 26 of the 50+ tools (including the Visual Project Charter™ and the Change Planning Canvas™). The book does a great job of helping to explain the philosophy behind the toolkit and how to get started with the tools, but people who purchase access to all 50+ tools (including tools to help people think through their Digital Transformation) also get a QuickStart Guide to explain each tool.

But if we are going to truly work together to change how change is planned and executed I thought it would make sense to give people a more in depth sneak preview into what’s inside the toolkit and so I’ve created the following Introduction to the Change Planning Toolkit™ webinar recording:



I encourage you to reflect upon your own experiences planning and executing both projects and change initiatives and what you’ve found lacking in the tools you call upon from ProSci, PMI, ACMP or others and then check out the book and the webinar and then let me know if there are any tools that you feel are still missing – and if it makes sense, I’ll create them!

My goal in creating all of these tools for you after all is to help you beat the 70% change failure rate, so let’s work together at changing change so our organizations are capable with more capably transforming themselves as the environment changes around them.

You can let me know if there are any change tools that you still need (or if you’d like me to come show you and your team personally how to use them) via the contact form.

Let’s change change together!

Change Planning Toolkit Million Dollar Value

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Outcome-Driven Change (ODC)

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Outcome-Driven Change (ODC)

When it comes to business, many people would say it is outcomes that truly matter, especially investors on wall street. Investors don’t care what kind of software you’re running or what your stack looks like, or how you do what you do, as long as you deliver the financial outcomes they are looking for in order to earn a return on their investment.

Doctors also focus on outcomes and insurance companies are becoming obsessed with them, forcing doctors and customers into Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). In healthcare, the outcomes obsession is called Outcomes-Based Management or Outcomes-Based Healthcare. In education, the outcomes obsession has led to an obsession with standardized testing and a practice called Outcomes-Based Education (OBE).

And in the innovation space, Tony Ulwick and Strategyn created Outcomes-Driven Innovation (ODI). In the innovation space this approach can be very beneficial as it helps companies move away from asking questions like “What can this technology do?” to questions that create better outcomes and more value, questions like “What is the customer trying to do?” or “What is the job to be done (JTBD)?”

Whether it is healthcare, education, business, or innovation, a focus on outcomes can be very helpful, but in these contexts we are looking at managing to a certain set of outcomes, or improving a certain set of outcomes, at a fixed point in time.

In the area of organizational change however, the focus often is not on outcomes, but on behaviors. Far too much of the literature and practice focuses on behavior change, which could also be described as “what people do.” And this focus on behaviors instead of aligning thoughts, feelings, behaviors and outcomes is part of why up to 70% of change efforts fail.

Too many people are jumping in head first and not approaching organizational change holistically, having the tough conversations around not only around how behaviors (doing) need to change but also how the how the outcomes need to change, along with how people’s thoughts and feelings need to change.

And when it comes to organizational change, we are not trying to achieve a certain set of outcomes or optimize a certain set of outcomes, but instead to ascertain what the relevant outcomes are in the current state and what we want them to become in the future state.

To help change leaders work though these incredibly necessary conversations and to help change managers achieve alignment within the organization around how all four components need to change (outcomes, thinking, feeling, doing) as part of a planned and coordinated effort, I have created the Outcome-Driven Change (ODC) Framework and worksheet to add to the Change Planning Toolkit™ v7 for existing subscribers and new subscribers alike.

Change is Possible

Thinking, feeling, doing…

People have been linking these terms together since at least 1895 when E.W. Scripture released an interesting book titled Thinking, Feeling, Doing on how scientists conduct research affecting these three parts of our humanity. Many people have added to the conversation since then speaking about how we are of three minds (Merriam-Webster dictionary definitions below), which are the:

1. Cognitive

Of, relating to, being, or involving conscious intellectual activity (such as thinking, reasoning, or remembering)

2. Affective

Relating to, arising from, or influencing feelings or emotions

3. Conative

An inclination (such as an instinct, a drive, a wish, or a craving) to act purposefully

Not coincidentally, these match up with the three domains of learning, defined as early as 1956 by educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom.

Others like to ascribe these three elements of humanity into Mind, Body, and Soul.

The key thing to remember from all of this discussion is that we are speaking about three very distinct things:

  1. Thinking
  2. Feeling
  3. Doing

IT IS possible, and happens with surprising frequency, that all three are not in agreement when you are dealing with human beings. Which the obvious truth of course is that in any change effort, or project for that matter, you are. People are fully capable of thinking one thing, feeling another, and end up doing something totally incongruent with either OR both whatever they are thinking and feeling. Confused yet?

Author F. Scott Fitzgerald once famously said:

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

This is one reason why change of any kind, organizational or personal, is so hard. Because, in order to be successful you must achieve alignment between all three elements of human reaction to the change in order to achieve the outcomes you seek.

Hopefully I’ve captured all of this in this single image of the Outcome-Driven Change Framework and this single quote from it:

“When what people do aligns with what they think and feel, then and only then, will you achieve the outcomes you’re looking for.”

Outcome-Driven Change Framework by Braden Kelley

In the Change Planning Toolkit™ v7 paying subscribers will find 11″x17″versions of this framework and the Outcome-Driven Change™ Worksheet to help your change planning team guide the conversations with change leaders that will help you surface the outcomes you’re currently achieving and what people in the organization are thinking, feeling, and doing to create the current outcomes and what members of the organization will need to think, feel, and do in order to achieve the new set of outcomes that you determine are necessary for the change to be successful.

People purchasing a commercial license and organizations or governments purchasing a site license or city/state/country license will get access to a poster size version (35″x56″) of the Outcome-Driven Change Worksheet.

This is just a taste of the kinds of frameworks, worksheets, and other tools you will find in the Change Planning Toolkit™ that I introduced in my latest book Charting Change along with a lot of great case studies and other next practices shared by some of the leading minds in the areas of organizational change and innovation.

So what are you waiting for?

  1. Get started using the Outcome-Driven Change Framework to spark dialogue among your change planning and leadership teams
  2. Download the 10 free tools from the Change Planning Toolkit™
  3. Grab your copy of Charting Change and get access to even more tools for free from the Change Planning Toolkit™ (including the Change Planning Canvas™)
  4. And then when you’re ready, get a license to all the rest of the 50+ frameworks, worksheets and other tools, and beat the 70% change failure rate!

Still have questions about how the Change Planning Toolkit™ can help your organization get better at change?

Then please contact me!

Or check out the Introduction to the Change Planning Toolkit™ webinar below:




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Free Change Planning Toolkit™ Access for All*

2 Replies

3 Free Change Planning Toolkit™ Site Licenses*According to multiple sources, including McKinsey, 70% of change efforts fail. The reason many change efforts fail is that they often lack a clear plan.

So, what’s a company struggling to keep up with the accelerating pace of change to do?

Why not revolutionize your ability to change faster than the competition using the Change Planning Toolkit™?

Change Planning Wall

The Change Planning Toolkit™ allows you to:

  1. Quickly visualize, plan and execute on your change initiative (from simple projects to complicated mergers or acquisitions)
  2. Deliver projects and change efforts on time
  3. Accelerate implementation and adoption
  4. Get a lot of valuable tools for a much lower cost than lesser offerings

Change Planning Toolkit Valuable Tools

I believe so much in the power of the Change Planning Toolkit™ that I am willing to offer a free* site license to the next three (3) firms to purchase a Change Planning Toolkit™ training session (which includes train-the-trainer).

For large companies like IBM, Accenture, Amazon, GE, Wells Fargo, Cognizant, HP Enterprise, Convergys, Oracle, or Microsoft, a free* site license represents a savings of up to $830,000 on tools with a value of nearly $500 million for a nominal investment in one day of training.

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Book a Training Session and get a free* site license
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The Change Planning Toolkit™ will help you increase:

  • Alignment
  • Collaboration
  • Engagement
  • Buy-In
  • Visibility
  • Transparency
  • Agility
  • Speed
  • Adoption

Change Planning Toolkit Benefits

While decreasing:

  • Project Risk
  • Failure
  • Cost Overruns
  • Late Deliveries
  • Surprises
  • Confusion
  • Resistance
  • In-Fighting
  • Staff Turnover

In addition, consulting firms will be able to increase their revenue and customer lifetime values using the Change Planning Toolkit™ and earn extra revenue as a reseller.

Change Planning Toolkit Benefits for Consulting Firms

Meanwhile, after the training, the QuickStart Guide and my book Charting Change (which training participants will receive**) will keep you (and your clients) on track and reinforce your learning.

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Book a Training Session and get a free* site license
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People can also get the Change Planning Toolkit™ for individual educational use for only $99.99/year (or $999.99 for a lifetime license).

* The site license is free for the first year. After 365 days it can be renewed for a very affordable $2/employee per year. Each employee gets access to tools that other companies might charge up to $20,000 for a single user to access.

** Depending on the country, book will be provided in either hardcover or digital form to training participants, but not both

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Book a Training Session and get a free* site license
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Change Planning Toolkit™ Ask Me Anything Transcript

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Change Planning Toolkit™ Ask Me Anything Transcript

On Thursday, June 8th I took all questions about the Change Planning Toolkit™ on TWITTER via hashtag #cptoolkit and my contact form. Here were the questions and the answers:

1. I bought your insightful book Charting Change – How can I get the supplementary materials (26 of 50 Change Planning Toolkit™ tools) that go with the book?

Charting Change book buyers can contact me using my contact form here and get me their proof of purchase. Then I will send out the Change Planning Toolkit™ Basic License to them as an 11″x17″ scalable pdf download.

Book buyers can upgrade from the Basic License to the Bronze License or get their organization on the path to success with a site license at any time.

2. Who is the Change Planning Toolkit™ designed for?

The Change Planning Toolkit™ was designed for change leaders, project managers, and program managers to make it easier to successfully plan and execute projects, programs, change initiatives, business transformations, and digital transformations.

Change Planning Canvas

3. I’ve heard amazing things about the Change Planning Canvas™ – How can I get a copy of it? Is there a poster size?

Buy a copy of my latest book Charting Change, contact me with proof of purchase and I’ll send out the 11″x17″ of the Change Planning Canvas™ along with 25 other great tools!

Or, purchase a basic individual educational license and you’ll get instant access to these same 26 of 50+ tools along with a digital copy of the book (hardcover option in certain geographies).

Or, purchase a bronze individual educational license for the Change Planning Toolkit™ and you’ll get all 50+ tools, including the Change Planning Canvas™ in a scalable 11″x17″ pdf PLUS a Quickstart Guide PLUS several discounts.

There is a 35″x56″ poster size version of the Change Planning Canvas™ available for commercial site licensees. Consulting and training companies looking to grow their business, or organizations looking to increase their organizational agility and beat the 70% change failure rate should contact me about site licenses starting at $2/yr per employee.

4. What exactly is the Change Planning Toolkit™?

The Change Planning Toolkit is collection of 50+ tools to make change planning more visual, collaborative, and fun!

It is designed to be used by PMP’s in project management as well, and dovetails nicely with the ACMP Change Standard for change management professionals. In fact you can get a nice ACMP Standard Visualization in the ten free downloads.

5. What do people get when they purchase the Change Planning Toolkit™ Bronze License?

People who purchase the individual educational license of the Change Planning Toolkit™ Bronze License $1,200 worth of items for the extremely low price of $99.99/year (or $999.99 for a lifetime license) that will fundamentally transform how you plan and execute ALL of your projects and change initiatives, from this point forward, greatly increasing:

  • Project success rates
  • Organizational agility
  • Ability to beat the competition
  • Collaboration levels inside the organization
  • The innovation capacity of the organization
  • Employee retention
  • And more!

I answered most of the specifics in question three, but just to recap in a simpler way, if you purchase the bronze license, you get access to:

  • 11″x17″ scalable pdf version of all 50+ tools (including the Change Planning Canvas™)
  • QuickStart Guide
  • Use of the tools for individual educational use unless a commercial site license is purchased (starting at $2/yr per employee + small setup fee)
  • 35″x56″ poster size scalable downloads for key tools (COMMERCIAL SITE LICENSES ONLY)

6. What differentiates the Change Planning Toolkit™ from the competition?

First of all, I created the Change Planning Toolkit™ because so much of what project managers and change practitioners need to be successful didn’t exist!

So, it has been designed to play well with the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) from the Project Management Institute (PMI), the Change Standard from the Association of Change Management Professionals (ACMP), and ADKAR from ProSci. But, the Change Planning Toolkit™ delivers value for project managers and change practitioners that those can’t.

In fact, I created a Visual Project Charter™ and a visualization of the ACMP Change Standard as free downloads to help ACMP and PMP practitioners be more successful within their existing frameworks.

So, no matter what project management or change management methodology you like to use, the Change Planning Toolkit™ will feel familiar, and will increase your ability to achieve success with the kinds of projects and change initiatives you’re already running!

7. What’s your view on change management versus project management?

Most people talk about change management as if it is a subset of project management, but that’s so not true!

People need to change this thinking because it’s a big reason why so many projects fail.

Instead what we need to do is to flip this thinking on its head and start seeing project management as a subset of change management. One of the 50+ tools in the toolkit (and in the book) visualizes what such a world can and SHOULD look like. It’s called Architecting the Organization for Change:

Architecting the Organization for Change

You’ll notice that all five of the Five Keys to Change Success are all represented here. 🙂

What’s next?

Look for more AMA (Ask Me Anything) sessions on the Change Planning Toolkit™ and The Experiment Canvas™ in future weeks!

FYI – On Twitter I am @innovate if you aren’t already following me.


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What’s Next – The Human-Centered Innovation Toolkit™

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What's Next - The Human-Centered Innovation Toolkit™… and a new Innovation Intervention service.

People have been asking me recently – What’s next?

I think managers and leaders are wondering now that I’ve written two popular books (Charting Change and Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire) and a chapter in a third (A Guide to Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing), if I’ll ever write another book.

But, they’re also curious given all the great tools in the Change Planning Toolkit™ that can fundamentally transform how we plan our projects and change initiatives, helping individuals and organizations move beyond theory to practice, whether I’ll ever create anything similar to help companies increase their innovation success.

The answer to both questions is a resounding YES!

I am pursuing, in parallel, the Define, Design, and Develop phases on a number of different tools to form the basis of a Human-Centered Innovation Toolkit™ for organizations to leverage in pursuit of my evolution of value innovation.

If you’ve attended one of my innovation keynotes or workshops you’ve seen how my innovation viewpoint (Innovation is All About Value) leads to all types of innovation, including disruptive innovation, and how it links to LEAN methodologies so that organizations can organize and execute across the entire spectrum of improvement and innovation possibilities.

Some of my most recent clients, including The Bank of Montreal and OSF Healthcare, have received an advance preview of some of the early components of the upcoming Human-Centered Innovation Toolkit™.

At the same time, I am also finishing efforts to define a new Innovation Intervention service offering to help organizations who have started an innovation effort or built an innovation program, only to see it go off the rails. I will work with organizations in an Innovation Intervention to help them get back on track towards success and build a foundation capable of sustaining continuous innovation. Forward-thinking organizations that haven’t begun an innovation program or a focus on innovation and want to get off to a strong start will be able to leverage this upcoming Innovation Intervention service too.

Finally, when I do write a third book, it will probably dig deeper into how to build an organization wired for continuous change, including successfully executing a digital transformation and sustaining full spectrum innovation and improvement excellence.

So, this is what’s next.

If you’d like to find out more about my Innovation Intervention or Human-Centered Innovation Toolkit™ in advance of their launch, in order to get a jump on your competition, please contact me.

Stay tuned for more information on these efforts soon!

Innovation Audit from Braden Kelley

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What is your level of Innovation Maturity?

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Innovation Maturity Introduction

When it comes to innovation, no two companies are likely to be pursuing innovation in the same way, and they are also likely to be at different stages of innovation maturity. Because of this, even if you found out what your competitor’s innovation strategy was, it would be of no use to you. It is necessary for an innovation strategy to be tailored to your organization’s level of innovation maturity, your corporate strategy, and your innovation vision.

Free Innovation Maturity AssessmentAn organization’s innovation maturity level is important because you must first master a certain set of basic innovation capabilities before implementing more advanced innovation approaches into your strategy. For example, an organization just getting started on their innovation journey would be foolish to try and implement open innovation in their organization. Every organization should get their idea generation (including evolution), idea evaluation, and idea commercialization policies and processes working well with their employees first before opening themselves up to the outside world. Your organization’s innovation strategy must be appropriate to your level of innovation maturity for your innovation efforts to be successful.

I developed the graphic below to explain the different levels of innovation maturity based on some thinking from Wharton professors Christian Terwiesch and Karl T. Ulrich, and I think it allows executives to determine at a glance where their organization is across the spectrum. I hope you find it useful.

Free Innovation Maturity Assessment

Special OfferTo help people evaluate their level of innovation maturity against the above graphic, I am sharing the 50 question innovation maturity assessment I use with clients. The assessment is most powerful when answers are gathered at multiple levels of the organization across several groups and several sites, but you can also fill it out yourself and get instant feedback – for FREE.

To get even more out of the innovation maturity assessment, for a nominal fee, I can help you organize a multiple group and/or multiple physical location survey of people in the organization to capture not just your level of innovation maturity, but also to provide preliminary innovation diagnostics on the areas of innovation challenge and opportunity in your organization.

I can set up a research study to capture a baseline innovation maturity level and analyze the data to unlock insights about the relative health of your innovation efforts. For a limited time, I will provide this service for the special introductory price of $499.99.

Click here to purchase the innovation diagnostic service
(Get help using the innovation maturity assessment across multiple sites and job functions and analyzing the results)

Innovation Maturity Model

Innovation Maturity Assessment Scoring Key (showing level of maturity)

Point totals are translated to the innovation maturity model as follows:

  • 000-100 = Level 1 – Reactive
  • 101-130 = Level 2 – Structured
  • 131-150 = Level 3 – In Control
  • 151-180 = Level 4 – Internalized
  • 181-200 = Level 5 – Continuously Improving

Click here to access the Innovation Maturity Assessment

Innovation Maturity Assessment Instructions

1. Read each statement and determine how much you agree with each one, using this scale:

  • 0 – None
  • 1 – A Little
  • 2 – Partially
  • 3 – Often
  • 4 – Fully

2. Select the answer for each question that is most appropriate.

The form will score the innovation maturity assessment and return a result to you via email along with the SCORING KEY and the Innovation Maturity Model graphic. Store the result as a baseline and come back annually and re-take the assessment to measure your progress!

Click here to access the Innovation Maturity Assessment

Click here to purchase the innovation diagnostic service
(Get help using the innovation maturity assessment across multiple sites and job functions and analyzing the results)

* Graphic adapted from the book Innovation Tournaments by Christian Terwiesch and Karl Ulrich

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