Rise of the Chief Trust Officer

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Rise of the Chief Trust Officer

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Do your customers trust you?

Are you sure?

According to PwC’s 2022 Consumer Intelligence Series Survey on Trust, 87% of executives think customers highly trust their companies, but only about 30% of customers do. That’s a 57% gap!

The PwC survey also found 71% of consumers say they’re unlikely to buy if a company loses their trust, and 71% of employees say they’re likely to leave if they lose trust. The lack of trust can result in huge problems.

Deloitte reports that of more than 260 C-suite executives surveyed, 61% claimed their organizations would work to improve trust with customers and employees. However, just 19% have a leader in the C-suite to oversee the effort, and less than 14% have a way to track trust. Ashley Reichheld, principal and trust leader at Deloitte Consulting LLP, says, “Building trust is among the most powerful ways brands can earn loyalty, drive differentiation and create competitive advantage.”

According to David Horsager, global authority on trust, “A lack of trust is your biggest expense in business.” His research has found that when a leader is untrusted, both employee and customer satisfaction decreases. Conversely, if a brand is trusted, revenue and employee retention increase.

The goal is to narrow the trust gap. Ideally, you want to eliminate the gap altogether. Here are ten ways to make that happen:

  1. Be Transparent – Being open and honest about your policies, delivery times, processes and more builds trust and confidence with your customers. You want them to know you and how you operate.

  2. Do What You Say You Will Do – Deliver on whatever you promise. There are many ways to lose a customer’s trust, but the fastest may be to break a promise. In short, a broken promise is a lie.

  3. Provide Excellent Customer Service – Our customer experience research found that 84% of consumers trust a company or brand more if it provides an excellent customer service experience.

  4. Protect Your Customer’s Privacy – Data protection is a hot topic. With all the data breaches, customers need to know you make a great effort to protect any information they share with you.

  5. Don’t Abuse Your Customer’s Data – This goes right along with protecting your customer’s privacy. If they are willing to give you information about themselves, even if it is just payment information and an email address, don’t abuse it by spamming the customer or selling the information to others.

  6. Be Reliable – A customer expects that what they buy from a company does what it is supposed to do. Products must be reliable and dependable. In addition, they also expect the company to stand behind what it sells with the right level of customer service.

  7. Fast Response – Customers have different tolerances for how long they will wait on hold, wait for a return phone call, an email response, etc. When it comes to customer service, fast means meeting a customer’s expectations.

  8. Be Accessible – Start with being easy to reach. Easy-to-find contact information on a website is important. Hours of operation, at least for customer service, must also meet your customer’s needs and expectations.

  9. Act on Customer Feedback – It’s one thing to gather feedback. It’s another to act on it. And once you act on the feedback, let the customers know they were heard. Always thank customers for their feedback, and follow up if it is appropriate to do so.

Create a Chief Trust Officer Role (or Something Similar) – This goes back to the finding from Deloitte at the beginning of this article. Just 19% of companies have a leader in the C-suite to oversee the effort of creating trust with customers.

Now that we understand more about the importance of trust, we might say those companies with a dedicated “trust officer” are a step ahead, taking advantage of a somewhat overlooked aspect of customer service. Seems like a great opportunity for any company to step up and focus on building trust—and the business that is sure to follow.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com.

Image Credit: Pixabay

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Kickstart Change with Reclaimed Focus and Attention

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Kickstart Change with Reclaimed Focus and Attention

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

In 2019 we experienced the shock and the pain that resulted from the globally disruptive global Covid 19 pandemic. To both survive and thrive in the new decade of uncertainty, many people still need help and guidance to connect to, understand and manage their anxieties, fears, inertia, and confusion about the future to effectively ride the waves of disruptive change. Yet, according to Johann Hari, in his best-selling book – Stolen Focus, all over the world, our focus and attention have been stolen, and our ability to pay attention is collapsing, and we need to be intentional in reclaiming it.

He describes the wide range of consequences this has on our lives, which are further impacted by pervasive and addicting technology we are being forced to use in our virtual world, exasperated by the pandemic and the need to work virtually, from home. He reveals how our dwindling attention spans predate the internet, and how its decline is accelerating at an alarming rate.

He suggests that if we want to get back our ability to focus, stop multitasking and practice paying attention. Also, if we want to kickstart change and help people feel confident in their readiness, competence, and capacity to change and innovate in a world of unknowns, it all starts with improving our ability to pay deep attention to what is really going on.

Yet, in the thesaurus there are 286 synonyms, antonyms, and words related to paying attention, such as: listen, and giving heed, so what might be the key first steps to take in reclaiming your focus and attention?

Power of focus and attention

  • Energy flows where attention goes

Placing our focus and attention activates our energy, and our energy flows where our attention goes.

So, if you have been feeling tired and lethargic, or overwhelmed and burned out, then take a moment to consider how you might score yourself on an attentive-distractive continuum and consider how similar, or different you are to US college students who can now focus on one task for only 65 seconds, and where office workers on average manage only three minutes?

  • Being intentional

Involves getting clear upfront about what you want to achieve, by setting an intention to achieve a specific outcome or result in the future that is important to you.  In a world of unknowns, paying deep attention and being intentional are the key foundations for recovery, rebalance, and transformation.

Limiting ways of seeing, being, and acting in the world  

Many people are still experiencing unconscious intrinsic, or reactive responses to their pandemic-induced work situations and are suffering from stress overload, overwhelm, and burnout.

This is because our autonomic nervous systems, which control our cardiovascular, respiratory, digestive, urinary, and reproductive functions, and responses to stress, operate outside of our conscious control in two different and co-dependent and often competing systems.

  • Parasympathetic fight or flight system

Put very simply, our sympathetic nervous systems get overloaded by heightened stress levels, which ignite our protective fight or flight system, which normally allows our bodies to function under stress and danger, and, as a result, impacts significantly on our levels of tiredness, exhaustion, and burnt-out emotional, mental and physical states.  This exasperates our inherent, unconscious needs to self-preserve (gut), feelings of isolation and loneliness (heat), and having the limited presence of mind (head) and reverts many of us into survival mode, and shift out of alignment, where we become physiologically incoherent (out of balance).

Which is not conducive to knowing and activating what we can truly, really, and actually influence and control in our lives, which requires us to effectively balance chaos with order.

  • Reduced capacity

When operating in survival mode, we are unable (like the US College students) to take the sacred pauses we need to make the space to attend and observe, through retreat, and reflection.

We are no longer able to access our inner knowing, play in the space of possibility, create a normalized state of equilibrium and calm, and be coherent and congruent in our daily lives.

Our overall capacity to set clear goals, make smart decisions, creatively solve problems, courageously take the right actions, harness our intuition, compassionately cultivate understanding and perception, develop good relationships, learn and develop, and finally, our health and well-being, are significantly reduced.

Initiate reclaiming focus and attention

Because we don’t know if companies will ever return to their pre-pandemic-like worlds, and become future-fit, people need to be reskilled in how to focus, how to observe, how to deeply focus and attend, and how to be intentional.

Developing daily habits to be focused and productive

  1. Being intentional about breathing

 To help balance and initiate harmonizing our autonomic nervous systems, develop physiological coherence, to respond optimally to the world, starts with developing focus and attention on your breath.

Doing this helps your neurology to relax, reduce stress and anxiety, increase calmness, and reconnect to the self.

Sounds simple, yet in my global coaching practice, clients would often turn up feeling overwhelmed and incoherent, so we would begin the session with a “box breathing” exercise. This involves breathing while you slowly count to four for a total of four times – four counts of breathing in, four counts of holding your breath, four counts of exhaling, and four more counts of holding after your exhale. We could both be grounded, and coherent, to partner and connect in high-impact and productive sessions.

  1. Being intentional in stepping away from your screens

According to one 2019 survey of 1,057 U.S. office workers, 87 percent of professionals spend most of their workday staring at screens: an average of seven hours a day. Closing your laptop and taking a quick walk outside, in nature allows your brain to recharge for your next task, and enables your autonomic nervous system to take a well-deserved break and calm down.

Sounds simple, yet in my global coaching practice, clients found this very difficult to do, this might involve no TV screens in bedrooms, leaving phones outside bedrooms, turning phones off at 8.00 pm, buying an alarm clock, setting and sticking to a dedicated start and finish work times, taking regular lunch breaks outside in nature and coffee breaks with friends. Be playful and allow your mind to enjoy wandering into wondering.

  1. Working in focused intervals

A recent article in Inc stated that –  “In addition to the seven or eight hours of adequate sleep that so many entrepreneurs and CEOs neglect, taking smart breaks during your workday, and having longer periods of downtime are keys to being more productive”.

Sounds simple, again in my global coaching practice I had to negotiate with clients to be intentionally disciplined and methodical in planning their days, weeks, and months. This involved scheduling time to initiate or sustain a mindfulness or meditation practice, engage in a regular exercise program, go shopping to buy and eat healthy foods (eliminating desk-side snacks), being clear on key deliverables and breaking down key tasks into bite-size bits, and saying no to meetings that don’t contribute towards achieving these.

When we change the way we attend, a different world can come forth, for ourselves, others we are interacting with, and the environment we are operating within. When we know how to really, truly, and deeply attend, and observe, we can go to our place of deeper knowing, rethink and then act swiftly and inflow to effect the transformational breakthroughs that change the world as we know it.

Find out more about our work at ImagineNation™

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

Image Credit: Pixabay

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Struggling to Innovate? Try This Instead

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Struggling to Innovate? Try This Instead

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Everyone is an innovator on January 1.

That’s the day when each of us resolves to do something new that creates value.

  • Start working out so I lose weight, look better, and feel healthier.
  • Stop smoking, so I live longer.
  • Turn off my computer and phone at 6:00 pm so I focus on family.

Only 20% of people are innovators on February 1. The rest of us gave up our resolutions and decided to keep doing the same things that create (good enough) value.

Your business is no different.

At the start of the fiscal year, you resolve to innovate!

  • Explore new offerings, customers, and business models
  • Experiment with new ways to get things done
  • Enter new markets

Then something goes wrong, and you divert some people (not everyone!) from innovating to fixing an operational problem.

Then the first quarter starts coming in below expectations, and you cut budgets to stay on track to deliver the bottom line.

Then something else happens, and something else, and something else, and soon it’s “February 1,” and, for excellent and logical reasons, you give up your resolution to innovate and focus all your resources on operating and hitting your KPIs.

Resolve to Revive.

Innovation is something NEW that creates value.

New is hard. It’s difficult to start something new, and it’s challenging to continue doing it when things inevitably go awry. Investing in something uncertain is risky, primarily when more “certain” investment opportunities exist. It’s why New Year’s resolutions and Innovation strategies don’t stick.

Revival is the creation of new value from OLD.

When you work on Revival, you go back to the old things, the things you explored, tried, implemented, or even launched years ago that didn’t work then but could create more value than anything you’re doing today.

Your business is filled with Revival opportunities.

How to Reveal Revivals

Ask, “What did we do before…?”

Everything we do now – research, development, marketing, sales, communication, M&A – was done before smartphones, laptops, desktops, and even mainframes. Often new technology makes our work easier or more efficient. But sometimes, it just creates work and bad habits.

If you are trying to make Zoom/Teams calls less exhausting and more productive, try to remember meetings before Zoom/Teams. They were conference calls. So, next time you need to meet, revive and schedule a phone conference (or a cameras-off Zoom/Teams call).

Find the failures

Most companies are highly skilled at hiding any evidence of failure. But the memories and stories live on in the people who worked on them. Talk to them, and you may discover a blockbuster idea that failed for reasons you can quickly address.

Like Post-It Notes.

While some parts of the Post-Its story are true – the adhesive was discovered by accident and first used to bookmark pages in a hymnal, most people don’t know that 10 YEARS passed between hymnal use and market success. In that decade, the project was shelved twice, failed in a test market, and given away as free samples before it became successful.

Resurrect the Dead

The decision to exit a market or discontinue a product is never easy or done lightly. And once management makes the decision, people operate under the assumption that the company should never consider returning. But that belief can sometimes be wrong.

Consider Yuengling, America’s oldest brewery and one of its old ice cream shops.

In 1829, David G. Yuengling founded Eagle Brewing in Pottsville, PA. The business did well until, you guessed it, Prohibition. In 1920, D.G. Yuengling & Sons (formerly Eagle Brewing) built a plant across the street from their brewery and began producing ice cream. When Prohibition ends, brewing restarts, and ice cream production continues. Until 1985, when a new generation takes the helm at Yuengling and, under the guise of operational efficiency and business optimization, shut down the ice cream business to focus on beer. TWENTY-NINE YEARS later, executives looking for growth opportunities remembered the ice cream business and re-launched the product to overwhelming customer demand.

Just because you need growth doesn’t mean you need New.

Innovation is something new that creates value. But it doesn’t have to be new to the world.

Tremendous value can be created and captured by doing old things in new ways, markets, or eras.

After all, everything old is new again.

Image credit: Pexels

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Globalization and Technology Have Failed Us

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Globalization and Technology Have Failed Us

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

In November 1989, there were two watershed events that would change the course of world history. The fall of the Berlin Wall would end the Cold War and open up markets across the world. That very same month, Tim Berners-Lee would create the World Wide Web and usher in a new technological era of networked computing.

It was a time of great optimism. Books like Francis Fukayama’s The End of History predicted a capitalist, democratic utopia, while pundits gushed over the seemingly neverending parade of “killer apps,” from email and e-commerce to social media and the mobile web. The onward march of history seemed unstoppable.

Today, 30 years on, it’s time to take stock and the picture is somewhat bleak. Instead of a global technological utopia, there are a number of worrying signs ranging from income inequality to the rise of popular authoritarianism. The fact is that technology and globalization have failed us. It’s time to address some very real problems.

Where’s the Productivity?

Think back, if you’re old enough, to before this all started. Life before 1989 was certainly less modern prior to 1989, we didn’t have mobile phones or the Internet, but for the most part it was fairly similar to today. We rode in cars and airplanes, watched TV and movies, and enjoyed the benefits of home appliances and air conditioners.

Now try to imagine what life was like in 1900, before electricity and internal combustion gained wide adoption. Even doing a simple task like cooking a meal or cleaning the house took hours of backbreaking labor to haul wood and water. While going back to living in the 1980s would involve some inconvenience, we would struggle to survive before 1920.

The productivity numbers bear out this simple observation. The widespread adoption of electricity and internal combustion led to a 50-year boom in productivity between 1920 and 1970. The digital revolution, on the other hand, created only an 8-year blip between 1996 and 2004. Even today, with artificial intelligence on the rise, productivity remains depressed.

At this point, we have to conclude that despite all the happy talk and grand promises of “changing the world,” the digital revolution has been a huge disappointment. While Silicon Valley has minted billionaires at record rates, digital technology has not made most of us measurably better off economically.

Winners Taking All

The increase of globalization and the rise of digital commerce was supposed to be a democratizing force, increasing competition and breaking the institutional monopoly on power. Yet just the opposite seems to have happened, with a relatively small global elite grabbing more money and more power.

Consider market consolidation. An analysis published in the Harvard Business Review showed that from airlines to hospitals to beer, market share is increasingly concentrated in just a handful of firms. As more expansive study of 900 industries conducted by The Economist found that two thirds have become more dominated by larger players.

Perhaps not surprisingly, we see the same trends in households as we do with businesses. The OECD reports that income inequality is at its highest level in over 50 years. Even in emerging markets, where millions have been lifted out of poverty, most of the benefits have gone to a small few.

The consequences of growing inequality are concrete and stark. Social mobility has been declining in America for decades, transforming the “land of opportunity” into what is increasingly a caste system. Anxiety and depression are rising to epidemic levels. Life expectancy for the white working class is actually declining, mostly due to “deaths of despair” due to drugs, alcohol and suicide. The overall picture is dim and seemingly getting worse.

The Failure Of Freedom

Probably the biggest source of optimism in the 1990s was the end of the Cold War. Capitalism was triumphant and many of the corrupt, authoritarian societies of the former Soviet Union began embracing democracy and markets. Expansion of NATO and the EU brought new hope to more than a hundred million people. China began to truly embrace markets as well.

I moved to Eastern Europe in the late 1990s and was able to observe this amazing transformation for myself. Living in Poland, it seemed like the entire country was advancing through a lens of time-lapse photography. Old, gray concrete building gave way to modern offices and apartment buildings. A prosperous middle class began to emerge.

Yet here as well things now seem to be going the other way. Anti-democratic regimes are winning elections across Europe while rising resentment against immigrant populations take hold throughout the western world. In America, we are increasingly mired in a growing constitutional crisis.

What is perhaps most surprising about the retreat of democracy is that it is happening not in the midst of some sort of global depression, but during a period of relative prosperity and low unemployment. Nevertheless, positive economic data cannot mask the basic truth that a significant portion of the population feels that the system doesn’t work for them.

It’s Time To Start Taking Responsibility For A Messy World

Looking back, it’s hard to see how an era that began with such promise turned out so badly. Yes, we’ve got cooler gadgets and streaming video. There have also been impressive gains in the developing world. Yet in so-called advanced economies, we seem to be worse off. It didn’t have to turn out this way. Our current predicament is the result of choices that we made.

Put simply, we have the problems we have today because they are the problems we have chosen not to solve. While the achievements of technology and globalization are real, they have also left far too many behind. We focused on simple metrics like GDP and shareholder value, but unfortunately the world is not so elegant. It’s a messy place and doesn’t yield so easily to reductionist measures and strategies.

There has, however, been some progress. The Business Roundtable, an influential group of almost 200 CEOs of America’s largest companies, in 2019 issued a statement that discarded the old notion that the sole purpose of a business is to provide value to shareholders. There are also a number of efforts underway to come up with broader measures of well being to replace GDP.

Yet we still need to learn an important lesson: technology alone will not save us. To solve complex challenges like inequality, climate change and the rise of authoritarianism we need to take a complex, network based approach. We need to build ecosystems of talent, technology and information. That won’t happen by itself, we have to make better choices.

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

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How to Lead Innovation and Embrace Innovative Leadership

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How to Lead Innovation and Embrace Innovative Leadership

GUEST POST from Diana Porumboiu

Leaders are bombarded from all directions with advice on how to behave as leaders. It seems like we all know what it takes to lead innovation, at least in theory, yet the attention is mostly focused on famous innovators who oftentimes are the exceptions, rather than the rule.

What’s more, we tend to forget that the greatest, most famous innovators, with all their qualities and contributions to the world, are not necessarily the best of leaders. Great leaders who rarely make the headlines, if they ever do, are usually less controversial.

However, their lack of fame doesn’t diminish their innovativeness. That’s why this article wants to provide some insights into what it takes to lead innovation with the practices, methods, behaviors, and mindsets of successful innovation leaders.

As our previous article focused on nurturing innovative behaviors in employees, this time we’re down to some practical aspects of leading innovation at an organizational level.

Innovative leadership and commitment

A McKinsey research sheds some light on what successful innovators get right, and how their organizations become high performing by committing to a set of essential practices.

In short, their survey revealed that the bar is rising among innovators, and during the past five years they have become more successful at innovation as they committed to a larger array of operating models. In 2016 high performing innovators focused mostly on vision and strategy. But In 2021 they pulled further away from competitors by extending their focus to new business models and to scaling their innovations faster and more effectively.

These are all interesting insights into how innovation practices support the growth of organizations. But what are they telling us about specific abilities and behaviors required to lead innovation? To better understand this, let’s look into some of the research conducted by Linda A. Hill, top expert on leadership, change and innovation, who paints a clearer picture of the specific qualities.

  • Adaptability

In times filled with ambiguity and uncertainty, it’s becoming more difficult to make decisions and guide others on the right path. Adaptability might come natural to some people, but others need to cultivate it through practice, exposure to different circumstances and activities. Developing adaptive behavior helps in taking bolder decisions, an essential aspect for innovation.

We’ve seen in other cases how innovators with strong convictions on their vision or new ideas are not very open to new data. This is tough to balance: maintaining your confidence and showing the way for the team, while remaining adaptable.

Practical tip: Instead of building a detailed project plan for an innovation project, try building a plan based around clear goals and time framed milestones, but leave room for the team to figure out the path to get to them.

  • Comfort with ambiguity

This is closely linked to the previous point because to become comfortable with ambiguity you also have to adapt and operate in a somehow hazy and confusing reality. This is very important especially in the early beginnings of innovation, when the fuzzy front-end stage of the innovation process creates a lot of ambiguity.

But as you might know, innovation means to dive in the unknown from time to time. As a leader you need to navigate the tough road of visualizing the goals for the team while admitting that you might not always know the way. At the same time, you want to get the team on the same journey and help them feel comfortable with that ambiguity.

Practical tip: Managing innovation is one way of becoming more comfortable with ambiguity. We created a free, in-depth guide on how to manage innovation which you might find useful. This is a comprehensive toolkit that can help you plan your strategy, build your processes, and drive more innovation in the oganization. You can find it here.

  • Curiosity

Curiosity pushes innovators to new discoveries. It’s also what fuels learning and change. As a leader you need to be able to learn and prepare for the future. Sure, curiosity, even more than adaptability can’t be easily measured or taught. But curious leaders should always ask questions, and not just any questions.

The best innovators understand things deeply and address root problems, not just surface level symptoms.

Practical tip: Whether you are naturally curious or trying to boost curiosity in the team, the five whys is an effective technique for getting to the root of underlying problems. The idea behind this technique is to ask “why” five times in a row, whether you think you previously received a good answer or not.

Viima Five Whys

  • Creativity

Creativity plays an important role in innovation, whether it fosters novel ideas or ingenious solutions. However, being creative is not enough to make innovation happen. Many leaders consider creativity an important skill for leading innovation. This begs the question: should leaders be the most creative ones, or should they work to enable creativity in others?

The answer lies somewhere in the middle, as creative leadership is essential in bringing clarity and purpose to the team. A creative leader can change perceptions and show the way. However, the strength of leaders who lead for innovation lies in managing for creativity. So as a leader you don’t have to be the source of all genius ideas but engage people at the right time to do the creative work.

To sum this up, there is a role for leaders in creative work, but not in the traditional sense of generating ideas and asking others to implement them.

Practical tip: If you want to spur creativity in your team try setting constraints and challenge the team to come up with solutions despite perceived challenges. Inevitably, the environment in which you operate will come with some constraints, whether those are operational, financial, legal or of a different nature.

Don’t look at constraints as negative things. Research shows that innovators usually succeed because of constraints, not despite of them. Brian Chesky, Airbnb co-founder & CEO believes “constraints create creativity” and without some of those he probably wouldn’t have done half the creative decisions that would lay the foundations for Airbnb’s remarkable success.

Practical steps to lead innovation

If leading innovation were that simple, we’d have more leaders and organizations excelling at it. However, as difficult as it might sound it’s not impossible and luckily, we have plenty of examples to learn from.

A survey conducted by Forbes among 100 innovation leaders revealed that their success lies in actively trying to build and shape their organization for the future. This means that they actively challenge the status quo, experiment, ask questions, are keen observers and engage in conversations with people who are very different from them.

This discovery work of observing, learning, and experimenting leads to better decision making on less risky ideas with higher impact.

Start with the big picture…

The best innovation leaders aren’t just visionaries, who set big goals that show the way to the future. They also enable people to work through the challenges by removing barriers and empowering them to hop on the same boat towards that future.

  • Start with the strategy because any innovation program should be anchored to an organization-wide strategy. Just with the vision and without a tangible business case you don’t really have innovation.
  • Come up with a plan that stirs everyone in the same direction.

Many innovators, especially those who disrupt their industry, are not the best executors and sometimes they don’t have to be, if they have the right people on the job. To this end, collaboration and co-creation are essential, just as it is the empowerment of those who are knowledgeable to make important decisions to get to those goals.

A high-level plan which serves as a good example of how innovators set clear, ambitious goals is Elon Musk’s series of Master Plans, from 2006, 2016 and the 2022 one, to be released soon. These plans played an important role in Tesla’s success, giving a clear direction for the future illustrating how they are actually going to move towards fulfilling their mission of accelerating world’s transition to sustainable energy.

Tesla Unsplash

Of course, there’s more to a plan than an ambitious statement, but people need to be inspired, to feel that through their work they can change the world around them. That being said, an ambitious plan still needs to be flexible to some degree to allow for different ways of achieving it.

The cleverness of these master plans lies in their simplicity which makes them easy to understand and remember. They capture the big picture but still leave room for the team to find the best way of accomplishing them.

…then zoom in on the details

  • To achieve those ambitious goals, leaders need innovative teams, and to nurture internal talent.

With internal scouting systems organizations can develop the skills of existing teams. As is the case with innovation, if you can’t buy something, you have to build it yourself.

It’s beyond the scope of this article to talk about the winning strategies in the war for talent, but there should be a stronger focus on nurturing existing talent and creating the capabilities to innovate through talent development programs, learning opportunities, and a positive employee experience.

Innovation can come from various areas of the organization, and it all comes down to how employees are led to innovate. Former Volkswagen CMO, Luca de Meo managed to unify VW’s branding by discovering and nurturing the mutual sense of purpose of the employees.

He achieved this by involving employees in the creation of a centralized brand. For example, one brainstorming workshop was organized as a design lab to prototype, test, analyze and openly discuss ideas with employees from different departments and areas of expertise.

Engaging employees in innovation work can unlock the wealth of knowledge in an organization. Empowering them to innovate it’s even more powerful, as employees become innovators themselves. As Linda Hill also observes, people’s talents are not used to their fullest, but when it eventually happens, the results show up as well. In Volkswagen’s case, de Meo’s approach was fruitful, the brand moving up the global ranks from 55th to 39th.

…and take one step at a time towards that goal

The last piece to the puzzle, and maybe the most important is to take things one at a time while keeping your options open. There’s a lot of emphasis on the bigger picture, planning and strategy, but these won’t eliminate ambiguity.

So, the best way forward is to keep that vision in mind and help the organization move towards it. You don’t need to know each step in your path in advance, as long as you keep up a good pace and keep moving in the right direction, one step at a time.

Like with all innovative work, you’ll encounter challenges and things won’t ever go as planned, so be prepared to alter the initial plan. That’s why it’s not advised to put all your eggs in one basket. As John Carter explains, you need two interlinked systems that can help you select and grow the best products or ideas.

  • An annual, systematic portfolio planning process, tied to budgeting, and
  • An ongoing, agile, portfolio management process

Another thing to consider is the modular approach, which helps speed up learning. As Rita McGrath explains in this recent article, making your offerings modular you can begin to generate benefits early in the projects’ life. Put together, these two approaches are very helpful in building capabilities that provide economies of scale while still remaining flexible.

Leading innovation by example

In the following section we didn’t go for single success stories of leaders because systematic innovation doesn’t come down to one person. Instead, we’ll show at a higher level how leadership models enabled everyone in the organization to turn innovation into an everyday habit.

Netflix

Even though Netflix might go through a rough patch, we can’t deny its leading position as an innovator in the entertainment industry. From a DVD sales and rental company to a global streaming service, the current organizational structure at Netflix provides plenty of freedom and responsibility to its employees.

Netflix is divided in three main divisions and is maintaining the principles of total quality management: the functional team (CEO, legal, content communication etc.), geographical teams (in charge of local and international streaming) and the product teams who ensures the effectiveness of operations. This unitary form, the corporate headquarters direct strategies implemented in geographical divisions.

Viima Netflix Org Structure

  • The first division, the functional one, is led by Reed Hastings, CEO and Ted Sarandos, Co-CEO. They meet regularly with the R-staff, the group made of Netflix veterans and the general counsel.
  • The next in line is the E-staff group, made of executives who oversee different teams within the company. They each have a different area of focus, like platform engineering, regional marketing and content.
  • There is also a group of directors, below the vice presidents, who meet to review the current state of the company.

The flat organizational structure at Netflix encourages a culture of independent decision making, openness, high effectiveness, and flexibility. This approach to leadership is based on their business need of staying ahead of the curve by making decisions fast.

Apple

Apple is to this day one of the most innovative companies, and much of its success is attributed to Steve Jobs. However, in this case we won’t focus on his leadership skills, which are rather controversial, but on his legacy and how the company’s structure has evolved over the years.

What makes Apple unique is that it’s organized around expertise, rather than the traditional business units.

This requires open mindedness from senior leaders, to inspire, and influence colleagues to contribute towards the goals. Ultimately, decisions are made in a coordinated manner by the most qualified people. There are no general managers at Apple. Instead, there are expert leaders who need to have 3 main characteristics.

  • Deep expertise.

It’s easier to train an expert to be a manager than to train a manager to be an expert. So, at Apple experts lead experts. They have over 600 experts working on camera hardware technology, and they are led by Graham Townsend (a camera expert himself).

  • Deep immersion in the details.

In Apple’s case leaders should know the details of their organization 3 levels down and be able to push, probe and smell an issue and know which issue is important and where to focus attention. For example, they are very particular with the shape of the corners of their devices. Apple leaders insist on continuous curves, a small difference but executing it demands that they commit to precise manufacturing.

This relentless pursuit of perfection is what differentiates some companies. Even though overdoing it can lead to micromanagement and make feel employees like they are not trusted, you need to strike a balance between the two.

  • Willingness to collaboratively debate.

Having so many teams of experts requires a lot of back and forth and debate. An overly polite culture can hinder creativity, as people might not speak up because they don’t want to upset someone. So, creative abrasion is very important in collaborative work.

To develop the dual lens camera portrait mode, Apple had 40 teams of specialists working together and they disagreed, pushed back, promoted or rejected ideas and build on top of each other’s ideas.

At the same time, leaders should be able to make decisions even when there’s no data available. For this, they first have to listen to everyone. It might be that there is no agreement or reliable information that can help in the decision making, but that’s where good leaders excel and what Jobs did at Apple as well. He used his own judgment to make decisions, even though not everyone was happy about those. Otherwise, debates could go on forever, become bottlenecks or compromises that lead to substandard results.

Apple Unsplash

However, there are also challenges that come with Apple’s managerial structure, which is not very common in other companies. When organizations grow, their leadership also needs to adapt and scale accordingly.

For example, while the number of employees grew eight times, the number of VPs reporting to executives only doubled. To handle all the new responsibilities, they could no longer be immersed in the details. So, they decided to focus on a few core activities that bring most value and those that require less attention are pushed down to people who are trained to handle them. That being said, leadership models need to be flexible in any innovative, growing organization.

Conclusion

With the right leadership, processes and structures in place, innovation can thrive in your organization. As leaders is important to set ambitious goals which can inspire and show the way for your team.

Innovation can seem like an insurmountable task. Even though the details matter and aspiring to excellence is important, you always have to keep focused on the end goal and take one step at a time towards that. At the same time, keep an open mind, stay curious and inspire others to follow suit.

In the end, leading innovation also means building the capabilities, processes and environment that foster innovation and encourage others to become innovators.

This article was originally published in Viima’s blog.

Image credits: Viima, Unsplash, Pexels

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Apple Watch Must Die

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At least temporarily, because it’s proven bad for innovation

Apple Watch Must Die

by Braden Kelley

I came across an article in The Hill, titled ‘Apple flexes lobbying power as Apple Watch ban comes before Biden next week‘ that highlighted how Apple has been found guilty by the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) of infringing upon the intellectual property of startup AliveCor to provide its wearable electrocardiogram features in its Apple Watch.

Apple is now trying to get President Biden to veto the ruling (I didn’t know that was a thing) so that they can keep selling Apple Watches. In my opinion this is a matter for the courts and yet another example of how big tech (and big companies in general) far too often brazenly misappropriate the intellectual property of the little guys. So much so in Apple’s case that over the last 30+ years a popular term has emerged for it called ‘Sherlocking’.

According to the new Microsoft Bing (with ChatGPT):

Sherlocking is a term that refers to Apple’s practice of copying features from third-party apps and integrating them into its own software¹². The term originated from a search tool named Sherlock that Apple developed in the late 90s and later updated to include features from a similar app named Watson²³.

President Biden must let the courts do their job and not intervene if innovation is to thrive in America.

Apple has been found guilty by the ITC and should be forced to stop selling Apple Watches if that is what the court has decided. They should pay damages and redesign their product to design out the intellectual property theft. And, if they feel they are innocent, then they have an avenue of appeal and should exercise it.

But, bottom line, turning a blind eye to intellectual property theft is bad for innovation. We must encourage and protect entrepreneurship for innovation to thrive.

I’ll leave you with this clip from the movie Tucker to ponder on the way out:

And a trailer from probably the best movie on the subject of the struggle of the innovator against big business, based on the real life story of the inventor of the intermittent wiper – Dr. Robert Kearns, it’s called ‘Flash of Genius’:

Hopefully President Biden will stay out of it and let the courts decide based on the evidence.

Keep innovating!

SPECIAL UPDATE: On February 21, 2023 the Biden Administration elected NOT to veto the ITC ruling, leaving the courts to decide whether Apple is innocent or guilty.

Source: Conversation with Bing, 2/18/2023
(1) Apple ‘Sherlocking’ Highlighted in Antitrust Probe—Google Also …. https://www.itechpost.com/articles/105413/20210422/apple-sherlocking-highlighted-antitrust-probe-google-questioned-over-firewall.htm Accessed 2/18/2023.
(2) What Does It Mean When Apple “Sherlocks” an App? – How-To Geek. https://www.howtogeek.com/297651/what-does-it-mean-when-a-company-sherlocks-an-app/ Accessed 2/18/2023.
(3) Sherlock (software) – Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_(software) Accessed 2/18/2023.
(4) All the things Apple Sherlocked at WWDC 2022 – TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/13/all-the-things-apple-sherlocked-at-wwdc-2022/ Accessed 2/18/2023.

Image credit: Pexels

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Both Sides of the Story

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Both Sides of the Story

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

When you tell the truth and someone reacts negatively, their negativity is a surrogate for significance.

When you withhold the truth because someone will react negatively, you do everyone a disservice.

When you know what to do, let someone else do it.

When you’re absolutely sure what to do, maybe you’ve been doing it too long.

When you’re in a situation of complete uncertainty, try something. There’s no other way.

When you’re told it’s a bad idea, it’s probably a good one, but for a whole different reason.

When you’re told it’s a good idea, it’s time to come up with a less conventional idea.

When you’re afraid to speak up, your fear is a surrogate for importance.

When you’re afraid to speak up and you don’t, you do your company a disservice.

When you speak up and are met with laughter, congratulations, your idea is novel.

When you get angry, that says nothing about the thing you’re angry about and everything about you.

When someone makes you angry, that someone is always you.

When you’re afraid, be afraid and do it anyway.

When you’re not afraid, try harder.

When you’re understood the first time you bring up a new idea, it’s not new enough.

When you’re misunderstood, you could be onto something. Double down.

When you’re comfortable, stop what you’re doing and do something that makes you uncomfortable.

It’s time to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Image credit: “mirror image pickup” by jasoneppink is licensed under CC BY 2.0

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Radical Transparency is One Key to a Better Customer Experience

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Radical Transparency is One Key to a Better Customer Experience

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Most customer-focused businesses work very hard to streamline their encounters and interactions with potential clients, curating the experience to the smallest detail so every step of the process can be managed and controlled. It all starts with a customer journey map that optimizes the process. When the process is consistent and predictable, you start to build trust with your customers. And, there’s a way to take that trust to another level, and that’s with transparency.

Darryl “The Hammer” Isaacs, a Kentucky-based attorney, has built a profitable career by being surprisingly straightforward — another word for transparent — with his clients. He has the process down, which means he knows the law and how to litigate. But just as important as winning a lawsuit is how his clients are treated.

Since it opened in 1993, his firm, Isaacs & Isaacs Personal Injury Lawyers, has helped thousands of people recover over $2 billion from insurers. He is a celebrity in the three states where he operates (Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio), with plenty of TV ads and billboards lining the highways. But Isaacs will tell you that his secret goes beyond exposure from a big ad budget. And it isn’t about knowing the law and winning. For him, it’s just as important to build a reputation by being transparent. And he takes the concept to an even higher level by being radically transparent.

I had a chance to learn from Isaacs’ success and his thought process, which he says is based on three concepts: being humble and embracing adversity, providing easy access and trusting the public with your pain.

1. Embrace Humble Beginnings and Adversity

Isaacs’ journey to becoming a lawyer wasn’t easy. It began at age six when he watched his father’s legal swearing-in ceremony. That inspired him to want to practice law, but inspiration wasn’t enough. He failed the bar exam the first two times he took it. No one would blame Isaacs for keeping that information from the public. After all, in the competitive legal field, lawyers like to let clients know about their prestigious law schools, industry awards and big wins. Isaacs recognized the importance of that, but also chose to embrace his “humble beginnings” as a possible advantage. He believed people could relate to his struggle. This transparency makes him real and approachable to his clients. He also has an incredible work ethic. Isaacs says, “I’m not smarter than other lawyers, I just work harder.” His clients may not know about the legal world’s awards and top schools, but they understand and appreciate hard work.

2. Provide Unexpected Access

Have you ever tried to reach the CEO or owner of a successful company? Typically, the bigger and more prosperous the company, the more challenging it is to get through to the business owner or high-level execs. Isaacs is not only successful, but his advertisements and reputation have given him celebrity status in his market. His firm has more than 55 employees, many of whom could act as a “first line” of defense for deflecting calls, emails, letters, etc. But Isaacs embraces the concept of approachability. He happily shares his direct line and cell number with his clients. Text him, and he responds. Call him, and he returns the call. Isaac believes, “If you provide unexpected direct access, clients feel valued and appreciated.”

3. Trust the Public with Your Pain

Similar to the way Isaacs embraces his humble beginnings, he embraces the transparency of results. In an age of social media, it’s nearly impossible to hide any negative news affecting a high-profile business. Issacs says, “The best option is to get comfortable and let the public in.” In other words, embrace the negative and view it as an opportunity to be authentic and transparent. And it goes beyond social media reviews and comments. Isaacs took this concept to a personal level in 2015 when he was hit by a speeding car while riding his bicycle. His neck was broken in two places, and he sustained a traumatic brain injury. The face of a successful company was now in the hospital in a near-death situation. That could have been the beginning of the end for the firm. He might not ever be back. And what if people found out about this? Well, rather than try to keep the news out of the press, Isaacs did a phone interview from the hospital. First, he wanted to let the world know he wasn’t dead and would be back. Second, he was now experiencing a similar condition to many of his clients. Isaacs knew transparency—and even vulnerability—at this level would make him more approachable. The result was an even higher level of trust.

Isaacs uses the word radical, meaning extreme or intense, to demonstrate just how important it is for him and his firm to be transparent. But are his three concepts really that radical or extreme? Maybe, because customers aren’t used to this level of transparency, but isn’t this what customers want? Isaacs’ three concepts could easily form a foundation of transparency that would help any company or brand, big or small, build trust, create confidence and connect emotionally with customers.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com.

Image Credit: Shep Hyken

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A Guide to Harnessing the Power of Foresight

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Unlock Your Company’s Full Potential

A Guide to Harnessing the Power of Foresight

GUEST POST from Teresa Spangler

Foresight is the superpower of the 21st century business world, allowing companies to see beyond the horizon and seize opportunities before they become trends.

Innovation has always been the driving force behind progress and growth in the business world. However, in today’s rapidly changing landscape, it has become even more essential to stay ahead of the curve and uncover major shifts and hidden opportunities to remain competitive. Companies that can harness the power of foresight and innovate in response to changing market conditions will be well-positioned to succeed in the years ahead.

So, what exactly is foresight, and how can it be leveraged to drive innovation? Simply put, foresight is the ability to anticipate and prepare for future trends and developments. It involves a deep understanding of the current landscape and an awareness of emerging technologies, consumer preferences, and macroeconomic forces. By staying attuned to these trends and developments, companies can stay ahead of the curve and take advantage of new opportunities.

Company leaders can take several key actions to tap into the power of foresight and drive innovation in their organizations. Here are a few steps to get started:

1. Develop a culture of innovation: To truly drive innovation, creating a culture that encourages and supports creative thinking and risk-taking is essential. This can be accomplished through a variety of means, including:

  • Encouraging open and transparent communication among employees
  • Providing opportunities for employees to share their ideas and collaborate with others
  • Offering training and development programs that help employees develop new skills and knowledge
  • Encouraging a “fail fast, learn fast” mentality

2. Invest in research and development: To stay ahead of the curve and uncover new opportunities, companies must be willing to invest in research and development. This could involve dedicating resources to exploring new technologies, conducting market research, or experimenting with new business models.

  • Protect your ideas is easier now leveraging the blockchain, sign up and protect your ideas at no charge for the first three and manage the features along the sprint cycles. Link

3. Foster partnerships and collaborations: Collaboration is key to unlocking the full potential of innovation. By working with other companies, universities, and organizations, companies can access new ideas, technologies, and expertise that would be difficult to acquire on their own.

  • Your best customers want to be your most collaborative partners. How are you engaging them in foresight and planning for the future?
  • Stay connected to customers: Understanding customer needs and preferences is critical to driving innovation. Companies should regularly engage with customers and solicit feedback to stay attuned to their changing needs.

4. Embrace new technologies: Technology is driving many of the significant shifts and hidden opportunities in the business world. Companies that are able to embrace new technologies and leverage them to improve their products and services will be well-positioned to succeed. Seems so simple these days, but there are so many new technologies.

  • Bring in experts to keep you abreast of new ways technologies are integrating
  • Explore a new technology in with a different set of filters – break it down and break down how you might use it to innovation.

5. Be open to change: Finally, companies must be willing to embrace change and be flexible in their approach. The world is constantly evolving, and companies that are able to adapt and evolve in response to new trends and developments will be better positioned to succeed. Are you tired of hearing BE OPEN TO CHANGE? I imagine so, it’s fatiguing all the change we’ve been through the last 4 years however, change in the world is accelerating, keeping pace can be daunting.

  • Ensure you have people with eyes on the future
  • Create foresight team and create scenarios of your future
  • Imagine the best possible change but also imagine the downside “what ifs”

The business world is changing rapidly, and companies that can stay ahead of the curve and innovate in response to shifting market conditions will be well-positioned to succeed. By tapping into the power of foresight and taking the necessary steps to drive innovation, company leaders can unlock new opportunities and stay ahead of the competition. So why wait? Start taking action today and seize the opportunities that lie ahead.

FutureForward podcasts (and videos) are now available on your favorite Channel:

Image credit: Pixabay

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Unlock Hundreds of Ideas by Doing This One Thing

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Inspired by Hollywood

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

What happened the last time you asked your team for ideas?

A. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

B. Got some ideas but nothing new or noteworthy

C. Got lots of ideas, but very few were relevant, new, or big

D. The clouds parted. The angels sang. The Ideas forever transformed our business.

My guess is you answered A, B, or C

(If you answered D, let me know because I need to learn how you did it).

While there are dozens of reasons why D did not happen, the most common one is this:

You asked for ideas.

You said, “Hey, I want to hear your ideas.”

Or maybe you got more specific and said, “I want to hear your ideas about how we can do better.”

What your team heard was “Hey, I want to hear your ideas as long as they’re the ideas I want to hear and pertain to the topics I want to hear about, but I’m not going to tell you the topics, so share at your own risk and may the odds be ever in your favor.”

So your team stayed quiet.

Good news, you can turn the odds in your favor if you do this ONE thing:

Give them constraints.

It seems counterintuitive.

After all, shouldn’t creativity be unconstrained?

Isn’t ideation all about blue sky crazy thinking?

Doesn’t innovation require us to unshackle ourselves from what is practical and dream of what’s possible?

No. No. No.

Constraints fuel creativity

You don’t have infinite money, people, or time. *

Which means you have constraints.

Don’t run from that fact. Don’t hide from it. Don’t ignore it,

Embrace it because it is what fuels creation, innovation, and growth.

No one knew that better than Orson Welles (and he was a pretty creative guy)

“The enemy of art is the absence of limitations,” he told filmmaker Henry Jaglom. “Economically and creatively, that’s the most important advice you can be given. You have limitations; you don’t have $ 1 million to blow up that bridge, so you have to create something else on film to produce the same effect. Instead of having money to hire hundreds of extras, you have to sneak a cameraman in a wheelchair through the streets of New York City and steal the shot, which gives you a look of much greater reality.”

If constraints can create Citizen Kane, imagine what they can do for your business.

Constraints demand focus

Think about the last movie you saw that was way too long. Or the book that could have been an article. Or the meeting that should have been an email.

When you have all the money, time, or resources you need, you can do anything and try to do everything. Unfortunately, the result is usually a bloated confusing mess that leaves your customers feeling like they’ve lost more than they gained.

But when you only have 2 hours or 300 pages to tell a story, 20 minutes instead of four hours for a presentation, or $10,000 to create a new product, you get crystal clear on what you’re trying to accomplish, prioritize what you need, and leave everything else behind.

Constraints cause tension which leads to choices

In The Offer, a fantastic series about the making of The Godfather, there’s a great scene in which the studio executive demands that Francis Ford Coppola cut 45 minutes from the film (and helpfully suggests cutting all the scenes set in Sicily). The reason? So that theaters can host five showings per day instead of four.

Two hours is a constraint.

Sicily is where Michael abandons all hope of a normal life.

The tension between revenue and story, business and art, is real.

Tension requires you to make choices. Constraints shouldn’t always win. But they should always be present.

Constraints create value

The next time you ask for ideas sprinkle in some constraints.

  • “I’d like your ideas for how we can use existing assets to expand into new markets.”
  • “How can we earn more money from existing customers without raising prices?”
  • “What can we stop doing so we can focus on high-priority work and avoid burnout?”

You’ll find that adding a few constraints to your request for ideas will be an offer your team can’t refuse.

*If you do have unlimited people, money, and time, please let me know. I’d love to talk to you.

Image credit: Unsplash

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