Should We Stop Asking Employees to Innovate?

GUEST POST from Stefan Lindegaard

I recently revisited a comment from one of my older posts on how to train and educate executives on innovation. It went something like this:

“Innovation requires time and drive to explore new vistas, so it’s understandable that busy employees can’t be bothered with it. The best approach is for senior managers to assign a team, giving them the time and resources to innovate.”

While I agree that dedicated innovation teams with the right resources are crucial, the notion that “busy employees can’t be bothered” with innovation is not just dangerous, it’s short-sighted.

If leaders believe innovation is only for a select few, it signals that innovation isn’t truly a priority. And in today’s fast-evolving landscape, companies that don’t prioritize innovation throughout their ranks are setting themselves up for stagnation.

Here are a few of my thoughts on the matter:

1. Innovation isn’t just for the few, it’s for everyone – strategically.

Not every employee needs to work on breakthrough innovation, but every employee should have the opportunity to contribute. Whether through idea portals, hackathons, or innovation challenges, businesses should create accessible ways for employees to share their ideas and build on others’.

2. Innovation should happen in the day-to-day.

Often, the best innovations come from employees focused on improving their immediate environment. This type of incremental innovation – refining processes, enhancing services, or finding small but impactful efficiencies – should happen at the business unit level. Meanwhile, dedicated teams can tackle more disruptive and higher-risk projects with a long-term payoff.

3. It’s time to re-frame innovation.

The term “innovation” has become vague and overused. Consider a term like “impact” as a way to shift the focus from concepts to tangible results. Impact is measurable and reflects the outcome, not just the process. After all, what matters isn’t innovation for its own sake, but the meaningful change it brings.

Finally, corporate innovation teams should shift their roles from doers to facilitators and integrators – empowering business units to innovate while connecting internal and external resources. Collaboration, both within and outside the organization, accelerates innovation, increasing diversity of thought and speeding up results.

Scaling innovation across the company is a collective effort, not a siloed one.

What’s your take on this?

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Addressing the Veteran Mental Health Crisis

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A New Frontier in Healing for Memorial Day Weekend

Addressing the Veteran Mental Health Crisis

by Braden Kelley and Art Inteligencia

As a nation, we have an enduring obligation to the brave individuals who have served in our military. On this Memorial Day weekend, while we honor their sacrifice, we must also look toward a future where we care for the psychological wounds of war. One of the greatest challenges we face is the veteran mental health crisis, with high rates of PTSD, depression, and suicide. Emerging research suggests that psychedelic treatments could significantly alleviate these conditions, providing a new pathway to healing that we cannot afford to ignore.

Understanding the Crisis

The statistics are alarming. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), approximately 17 veterans die by suicide every day. Furthermore, the VA estimates that around 15% of Vietnam veterans, 12% of Gulf War veterans, and 11-20% of veterans who served in Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom suffer from PTSD in a given year. Traditional treatments like psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy have proven beneficial for some, but many veterans experience symptoms that persist despite these interventions.

The Promise of Psychedelics

In recent years, researchers have turned their attention to the therapeutic potential of psychedelic substances such as MDMA, psilocybin, and LSD. These substances are showing promise in treating PTSD, depression, and other mental health issues. A landmark study conducted by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) in collaboration with the VA found that 67% of participants treated with MDMA-assisted therapy no longer met the diagnostic criteria for PTSD after three sessions. This is a groundbreaking finding that cannot be ignored.

Similarly, psilocybin, the active compound in “magic mushrooms,” has shown potential in alleviating depression and anxiety symptoms in numerous studies. A study from Johns Hopkins Medicine demonstrated that psilocybin-assisted therapy resulted in rapid and sustained reductions in depression severity, with effects lasting for weeks and even months. The therapeutic mechanisms of psychedelics, which include altering neural network connectivity and promoting emotional processing, offer a new realm of possibilities for treatment.

Legal and Regulatory Challenges

Despite promising results, the legal status of these substances remains a significant barrier. Classified as Schedule I substances under the Controlled Substances Act, they are currently deemed to have “no accepted medical use.” However, as the evidence base strengthens, there is growing momentum for reevaluating this classification. States like Oregon and cities such as Denver have decriminalized psilocybin, paving the way for broader acceptance and access.

Building a Comprehensive Support System

To address the veteran mental health crisis effectively, we must take a multi-faceted approach:

Policy Revision and Advocacy: It is crucial for policymakers to prioritize the revision of regulations surrounding psychedelics. We need comprehensive legislative efforts to reclassify these substances, allowing for more extensive research and greater accessibility.
Research and Training: Increased funding for research into psychedelic-assisted therapies is essential. Universities, independent research organizations, and the VA should collaborate to expand clinical trials. Alongside research, training programs for mental health professionals must be developed to ensure they are well-equipped to provide these treatments safely and effectively.
Education and Awareness: Public awareness campaigns can help destigmatize mental health and psychedelic treatments. Stories of healing and recovery should be shared, and educational resources must be made available to veterans, their families, and the general public.
Holistic Care Models: Veteran care must incorporate holistic and integrative approaches, including mindfulness, nutrition, and community support, alongside psychedelic treatments. These support systems are vital for sustaining mental health and can multiply the therapeutic effects of psychedelics.
Veteran-Centric Programs: Programs tailored specifically to veterans’ unique experiences and needs should be developed. Peer support systems, where veterans can share their experiences and support one another through healing, can enhance recovery outcomes.

The Role of Community

Community plays a pivotal role in healing. As a nation, we must foster environments that not only support veterans but actively engage them in the healing process. Community centers focused on veteran well-being, alongside integration programs that help veterans transition back into civilian life with purpose and support, can be transformative.

The Moral Imperative

As we commemorate Memorial Day, we must also reflect on our moral duty to those who have served. The veteran mental health crisis is a call to action—an opportunity not only to acknowledge the sacrifices of our military personnel but to invest in their healing and well-being. Psychedelic treatments represent a beacon of hope, backed by rigorous science and positive outcomes. It is essential for us to come together as a society, to push for changes that reflect our commitment to caring for veterans in the most effective and compassionate ways possible.

Conclusion

The journey to mental health recovery for veterans is not an easy one, but it is a journey we must undertake collectively. By embracing innovation and fostering an environment of openness and support, we can lead the way in addressing the mental health crisis that afflicts our veterans. The time to act is now. With courage, compassion, and collaboration, we can chart a course toward healing and honor the legacy of those who have served with dignity and responsibility.

In the spirit of unity and progress, let us stand together to advocate for effective solutions and a brighter future for all veterans. Their healing is our mission. Let us not falter in this duty.

Accelerate your change and transformation success

Image Credit: Microsoft CoPilot

Content Authenticity Statement: Most of the paragraphs in the article were created with the help of OpenAI Playground.

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What Will Happen if You Disappear?

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What Will Happen if You Disappear?

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

If you were out of the office for a month and did not check email or check in, how would things go?

Your Team – Would your team curl up into a ball under the pressure, or would they use their judgement when things don’t go as planned? I think the answer depends on how you interacted with them over the last year. If you created an environment where it’s a genius and a thousand helpers, they won’t make any decisions because you made it clear that it’s your responsibility to make decisions and it’s their responsibility to listen. But if over the last year you demanded that they use their judgement, they’ll use it when you’re gone. Which would they do? How sure are you? And, how do you feel about that?

Other Teams – Would other teams reach out to your team for help, or would they wait until you get back to ask for help? If they wait it’s because they know you make all the decisions and your team is voice actuated – you talk and they act. But if other teams reach out directly to your team, it’s because over the last years you demonstrated to your team that you expect them to use their good judgement and make good decisions. Would other teams reach out for help or would they wait for you to get back? How do you feel about that?

Your Boss – Would your boss dive into the details of the team’s work or leave the work to the team? I think it depends on whether you were transparent with your boss over the last years about the team’s capability. If in your interactions you took credit for all the good work and blamed your team for the work that went poorly, your boss will dig into the details with your team. Your boss trusts you to do good work and not your team, and since you’re not there, your boss will think the work is in jeopardy and will set up meetings with your team to make sure the work goes well. But if over the last years you gave credit to the team and communicated the strengths and weaknesses of the team, your boss will let the team do the work. Would your boss set up the meetings or leave your team to their work? How sure are you?

To celebrate my son’s graduation from engineering school, I am taking a month off from work to ride motorcycles with him. I’m not sure how it will go with my team, the other teams and my boss, but over the last several years I’ve been getting everyone ready for just this type of thing.

Image credit: Pexels

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Better Customer Experiences Without Customer Feedback

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Learning from Customer Complaints – Even When They Don’t Tell You

Better Customer Experiences Without Customer Feedback

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

How would you like to know what made a customer angry or sad, leading them to leave a negative review? You might say, “I’ll just ask them,” and that’s a great answer. Direct feedback is a gift. But maybe there’s another way.

I had a sit-down with Michael Podolsky, the CEO of PissedConsumer.com, a sounding board for consumers to leave comments and reviews when they can’t get the customer service they want or deserve. In our Amazing Business Radio interview, he suggested that a proactive approach to handling complaints is more than just meeting with your team to discuss what you’re hearing from customers or what you think makes them unhappy. Take the guesswork out of it. Short of direct feedback, which in my opinion is still the best way to learn if your customers love you (or not), read competitor reviews on their websites or in the B2B world and partake in industry forums to find out what customers are saying about the companies they do business with.

Shep Hyken Customer Complaints Cartoon

In addition to looking at competitors’ websites and industry forums, monitor social channels for mentions of your competitors. While most companies practice “social listening” for their own brands, paying attention to social mentions about your competition gives you a broader insight into what’s happening in your industry.

Based on what you learn, create a Complaint Prevention Checklist. For example, if customers frequently complain about long hold times when calling your competition’s customer support, examine your company’s response time. If customers are frustrated by your competition’s complicated return policies, make sure you aren’t guilty of the same.

This isn’t a “do it once” exercise. Take time each quarter – maybe even each month – to examine this type of feedback. Share insights with your team and use them to stay customer-focused and ahead of your competition. Recognize that there are two areas in which you want to compete: providing a better customer experience and having fewer complaints. In a perfect world, you would have no complaints.

In my book, I’ll Be Back: How to Get Customers to Come Back Again and Again, one of the six strategies I cover in the final chapter is to find out what your competition does well and adapt it to your company. Don’t copy, but use their ideas for inspiration to make it your own. And if you pay attention to Podolsky’s advice, you’ll also want to find out what your competition isn’t doing well. Of course, you’ll want to determine if your organization is guilty of the same behaviors or operational snafus and proactively seek to eliminate or mitigate the problems.

Image Credit: Unsplash

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Benchmarking Innovation Performance

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Closing the Gap Between Aspiration and Execution

Benchmarking Innovation Performance

GUEST POST from Noel Sobelman

In today’s volatile, technology-driven world, where the pace of change continues to accelerate, most executive teams agree on one thing: innovation, whether incremental, adjacent, or transformative, is critical. What’s far less clear is how to measure whether their innovation efforts are working or how to systematically improve them. That’s where benchmarking comes in.

Benchmarking isn’t just a diagnostic tool, it’s a strategic accelerator. It provides clarity where there’s ambiguity, reveals blind spots that internal reviews often miss, and equips leadership teams with hard data to make smarter, faster, and more confident decisions about innovation investments and process improvements.

This article explores benchmarking as a strategic capability for quantifying the gap between current innovation performance and best-in-class execution. It also outlines how companies can use benchmarking to unlock more reliable, scalable, and profitable innovation outcomes.

From Insight to Action: Why Benchmark Innovation?

Innovation is inherently risky with outcomes that are hard to predict, but the processes that support it don’t have to be. Effective innovation systems are structured, repeatable, measurable, and continuously improving. Benchmarking enables companies to see those systems clearly and objectively. It replaces assumptions with insight and turns performance anecdotes into verifiable data.

Used strategically, benchmarking helps executive teams build a compelling case for change grounded in facts rather than opinions. It offers a concrete way to quantify gaps between current and desired performance, helping to expose where process inefficiencies or capability gaps are holding the organization back. Benchmarking also supports leadership in identifying maturity levels across critical innovation capabilities, from governance and investment decision-making to resource management and project execution.

Importantly, it links development capabilities directly to measurable business outcomes. That means innovation isn’t just about creativity or culture, it’s about performance that can be tracked, improved, and scaled. By grounding decisions in comparative data, benchmarking makes it easier to align managers around realistic year-over-year improvement targets that are both ambitious and realistic.

Defining Performance: What Benchmarking Measures

For benchmarking to drive real improvement, it must look at the right dimensions of performance. At Accel, we use a multi-dimensional benchmarking model that examines four distinct categories of innovation performance: innovation effectiveness, project performance, process application, and portfolio management.

Innovation effectiveness reflects senior leadership’s ability to guide success across the full innovation spectrum, from product line extensions to transformative new ventures. This includes new product vitality, the percentage of revenue generated by recent launches, as well as return on R&D investment and the proportion of spend lost due to delayed or ineffective decision-making (aka, wasted development spending). When measuring leadership effectiveness in creating new sources of growth beyond the core business, we include leading indicators like evidence-based portfolio metrics, progress metrics, and scaling metrics such as user engagement, retention rate, and referral rate.

Innovation project performance reflects how well teams execute against their objectives. It includes metrics such as time-to-market, time-to-profitability, and schedule predictability, alongside actual-to-planned measures of product cost, profitability, and quality. These indicators help determine whether teams are executing effectively while meeting the business and customer needs they set out to address. New venture project performance measures include validated assumptions and cumulative evidence strength across solution desirability, business viability, and technical feasibility dimensions.

Innovation process application focuses on how consistently and effectively innovation methodologies are applied. Here, we assess actual versus estimated project cycle times across development phases as well as the accuracy of development cost forecasts. We also examine the frequency of project re-scoping, exception reviews, team turnover, and the reuse of design or code elements, all of which serve as indicators of process health. For transformative innovation processes, we also assess learning velocity, experimentation rigor, evidence-based decision-making, metered funding practices, core business leverage, and engagement with external ecosystems.

Finally, innovation portfolio management metrics reveal how well an organization aligns its innovation resources with its strategy. We evaluate factors such as strategic alignment, investment allocation, resource utilization, and portfolio value realization. When these are off-target, companies often see a mismatch between growth ambition and investment mix, poor development throughput, or low return on their innovation spend.

Accel Management Group innovation performance benchmark metrics

Figure 1. Innovation Performance Benchmark Metrics

Together, these four categories offer a comprehensive view of performance and their connection to business outcomes, and more importantly, a roadmap for targeted, results-driven improvement.

How It Works: Accel’s Benchmarking Approach

The benchmarking process begins by establishing a clear, accurate picture of the company’s current state. This involves gathering available performance data, then evaluating it for consistency and comparability across sources. We reconcile discrepancies and normalize contextual factors like company size, product line complexity, regulatory classification, innovation type, and development methodology.

AI accelerates this process by enabling faster data harmonization, natural language processing to analyze qualitative inputs (such as project postmortems or customer feedback), and machine learning algorithms that detect hidden drivers of performance variance across projects, teams, or business units.

Once we’ve built this baseline, we assess capability maturity across several critical dimensions. These include innovation process structure, governance and decision-making frameworks, execution models (such as gated, Agile, or transformative approaches), and portfolio management practices. We also analyze resource management, discovery and ideation, new venture incubation efforts, alignment with business strategy, culture, and organizational mechanisms such as incentives and reward systems.

From there, we compare the organization’s practices and outcomes against peer companies, industry leaders, and Accel’s leading practice reference model. The output isn’t just a list of issues; it’s a prioritized set of capability gaps linked directly to performance impact. We then work with executive teams to develop action plans and change roadmaps, aligning leadership around where to invest, where to restructure, and where to accelerate change.

Noel Sobelman benchmarking approach

Figure 2. Benchmarking Approach

What Benchmarking Reveals: A Snapshot from the Field

We’ve seen across multiple clients and industries how benchmarking can uncover hidden obstacles to innovation performance. Consider the example of one of our clients, a MedTech manufacturer that decided to benchmark their capabilities after struggling with missed launch dates and underwhelming innovation returns. Their leadership team believed that product complexity and regulatory challenges were the root cause. But when we dug into the data, a different picture emerged.

The company was not consistently tracking core new product development performance metrics, making it difficult to identify root issues or assess improvement opportunities. Sample project data revealed that early-phase development cycles, specifically Concept and Planning Phases, were taking two to three times longer than industry benchmarks. Moreover, the company was investing heavily in detailed design before evaluating technical feasibility or validating customer requirements, which led to protracted development timelines, late-stage surprises, compliance-driven rework, and chronic cost overruns.

Our assessment also uncovered a lack of system-level architecture discipline and siloed project planning without proper integration to balance customer needs against technical, market window, schedule, and resource considerations. In short, while the organization believed it had a process problem, benchmarking revealed a deeper issue: a maturity gap in early-phase project planning, risk management, and system design.

By framing these insights within industry benchmarks and leading practices, the company was able to galvanize leadership support for a targeted transformation. The result was a realigned innovation and portfolio management process focused on early project de-risking, customer need validation, and robust front-end planning, leading to faster cycle times, fewer late-stage surprises, and improved innovation throughput.

Why It Matters: The Strategic Case for Benchmarking

Benchmarking delivers more than operational insights, it unlocks real business value. Companies that benchmark and act on the findings tend to outperform peers in key areas. For instance, best-in-class organizations generate over 45 percent of their revenue from new products. Their time-to-market is over 40 percent faster, and their R&D resources are more efficiently allocated toward high-impact initiatives like platform innovation and next-generation solutions.

In contrast, companies that don’t benchmark often lack visibility into why projects fail, where delays originate, or how resources are being utilized. This results in lower returns on innovation investment, lower project success rates, and internal misalignment on where and how to improve. We’ve seen cases where products missed their mark not because the core idea was flawed, but because teams moved too quickly into development without validating customer needs or failed to adapt to shifting customer expectations. The result: products that launched late, didn’t resonate with customers, or had to be reworked at a significant cost.

When benchmarking is integrated into an ongoing performance management system, it serves as a feedback loop, continuously guiding decision-making and capability development. That’s why it’s not just a one-time diagnostic, but a strategic discipline that supports innovation as a competitive advantage. AI technologies enhance this feedback loop by transforming benchmarking into a dynamic, continuous process, automatically updating benchmarks as internal and external data sources evolve, and alerting teams to emerging gaps or opportunities in real time.

Conclusion: A Tool for Strategic Transformation

In a world where innovation separates leaders from followers, benchmarking is more than a diagnostic, it’s a tool for strategic transformation. By providing hard data on where you stand and where to focus, it turns vague aspirations into actionable priorities and ensures that innovation efforts are aligned with measurable business outcomes.

But benchmarking only delivers value when it’s integrated into the broader innovation system, driving continuous improvement and sharper execution over time. That’s where its real power lies, as an ongoing discipline that builds organizational maturity and long-term advantage.

For executive teams looking to sharpen their innovation capability, a few critical questions should guide the next steps:

Do we have an objective understanding of how our innovation performance stacks up against peers?
Are our development processes delivering the speed, quality, predictability, and customer impact we need?
Can we clearly measure how innovation contributes to growth and profitability?
Most importantly, are we investing in the right capabilities to win in the future?

You can’t improve what you don’t measure, and you can’t lead if you don’t know where you stand.

Image credits: Accel Management Group, Noel Sobelman, Pexels

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Transform Your Innovation Approach with One Word

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Transform Your Innovation Approach with One Word

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Have you heard any of these sentences recently?

“We don’t have time”

“Our people don’t have the skills”

“We don’t have the budget”

“That’s not what we do”

I hear them all the time.

Sometimes they’re said when a company is starting to invest in building their innovation capabilities, sometimes during one-on-one stakeholder interviews when people feel freer to share their honest opinions, and sometimes well after investments are made.

Every single time, they are the beginning of the end for innovation.

But one word that can change that.

“We don’t have time – yet.”

“Our people don’t have the skills – yet.”

“We don’t have the budget – yet.”

“That’s not what we do – yet.”

Yet.

Yet creates space for change. It acknowledges that you’re in the middle of a journey, not the end. It encourages conversation.

“We don’t have time – yet.”

“OK, I know the team is busy and that what they’re working on is important. Let’s look at what people are working on and see if there are things we can delay or stop to create room for this.”

“Our people don’t have the skills – yet.”

“Understand, we’re all building new skills when it comes to innovation. Good news, skills can be learned. Let’s discuss what we need to teach people and the best way to do that.”

“We don’t have the budget – yet.”

“I get it. Things are tight. We know this is a priority so let’s look at the budget and see if there’s a way to free up some cash. If there’s not, then we’ll go back to leadership and ask for guidance.”

“That’s not what we do – yet.”

“I know. Remember, we’re not doing this on a whim, we’re doing this because (fill in reason), and we have a right to do it because of (fill in past success, current strength, or competitive advantage.”

You need to introduce the Yet.

It is very rare for people to add “yet” to their statements. But you can.

When someone utters an innovation-killing statement, respond with “Yet.” Maybe smile mischievously and then repeat their statement with “yet” added to the end.

After all, you’re not disagreeing with them. You’re simply qualifying what they’re saying. Their statement is true now, but that doesn’t mean it will be true forever. By restating their assertion and adding “yet,” you’re inviting them to be part of the change, to take an active role in creating the new future state.

There’s a tremendous amount of research about the massive impact of this little word. It helps underperforming students overachieve and is closely associated with Dr. Carol Dweck’s research into fixed and learning mindsets.

The bottom line is that “yet” works.

Put Yet to work for you, your organization, and your efforts to innovate and grow.

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Revolutions Never Begin with a Slogan

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Revolutions Never Begin with a Slogan

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenski has been compared to great orators like Winston Churchill. He vowed to the English House of Commons to fight “in the forests, in the fields, on the shores, in the streets.” In a speech to the US Congress he told President Biden, “Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.”

While new to politics, Zelensky is no neophyte when it comes to delivering a line. A longtime actor and comic who was the voice of “Paddington” in the Ukrainian adaptations of the hit movie, his production company Kvartal 95 produced a series of hits. It would be easy to boil his effectiveness down to his communication skills.

That would be a mistake. Zelenski’s eloquence derives its power from the plight of his people, their passion for freedom and their unwillingness to return to an often troubled past. One reason why change so often fails is that we spend so much time focusing on wordsmithing that we neglect why the need for change arose in the first place. That is where we must start.

Gandhi’s Satyagraha

As a young man, Mohandis Gandhi wasn’t the type of person you would notice. Impulsive and undisciplined, he was also so shy as a young lawyer that he could hardly bring himself to speak in open court. With his law career failing, he accepted an offer to represent the cousin of a wealthy muslim merchant in South Africa.

Upon his arrival, Gandhi was subjected to humiliation on a train and it changed him. His sense of dignity offended, he decided to fight back. Yet he would do so not by attacking his enemies, but by targeting his own weaknesses. The aim, as he put it, was “the vindication of truth not by affliction of suffering on the opponent, but on one’s self.”

His method of Satyagraha was not passive resistance as commonly understood, which he considered a “weapon of the weak.” In fact, it was extremely strategic. Its aim was to undermine his opponents legitimacy and, in doing so, their freedom of action. He sought to back them into a corner in which both action and inaction would yield essentially the same result —an upending of the existing order.

At its core, Satyagraha is intended to be a quest for truth. The aim is to get your opponents to confront themselves. As the South African leader Jan Smuts would put it. “It was my fate to be the antagonist of a man for whom even then I had the highest respect… For me — the defender of law and order — there was the usual trying situation, the odium of carrying out the law, which had not strong popular support.”

Stalin’s Gift That Just Kept Giving

One of the first things a visitor to Warsaw will notice is the Palace of Culture. When arrived in the country in 1997, it dominated the skyline. A replica of the Seven Sisters buildings in Moscow, it was forced upon the Polish people by Stalin in 1955 and for decades it served as a reminder of Soviet domination.

I remember attending a business meeting there where my host pointed out that it had the best view in Warsaw, because it was the only place where you couldn’t see the Palace of Culture. Its tower had the feel of Sauron, the evil force in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series. It was more than just a foreign presence at the heart of the capital city. It was an all-watching eye, a reminder that Poles’ lives were not fully their own.

We remember the Solidarity movement in Poland as a struggle for labor against communism and economics were certainly part of it. But the larger grievance was encapsulated in the Palace of Culture, the feeling of being completely subjugated by another nation. Poles felt it deeply and never truly accepted Soviet rule.

Much like Gandhi on the train, it was that emotional sense of injury that pushed the Polish people to be passionate about change and it is similar forces that propel the Ukrainians now. Vladimir Putin, much like Stalin before him, has unwittingly empowered his own opposition by failing to recognize their identity and attempting to subjugate their identity,

Today, the Palace of Culture still stands, albeit enfeebled by the modern skyscrapers bustling with commercial activity, that surround and obscure it.

Steve Jobs and the Products That Sucked

Steve Jobs didn’t believe in market research. He once explained, “Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, ‘If I’d ask customers what they wanted, they would’ve told me a faster horse.’ People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” That’s why he didn’t start out with a product idea, but something that “sucked”

Computers sucked. They were ugly and hard to use. That’s what drove him to create the Macintosh. Music players sucked. He wanted something that would put 1000 songs in his pocket. That’s what drove him to create the iPod. Phones sucked. That’s what drove him to create the iPhone. Much like Gandhi’s humiliation and the Palace of culture, these things offended his sensibilities.

If you want to create change in this world, you need to identify a grievance that people care about. Because if people don’t see a problem, they’re not going to care about your solution. It doesn’t matter if it’s in your team, your organization, your industry or throughout society as a whole. Change isn’t about ideas, it’s about solving meaningful problems.

When we begin to work with a leadership team on a transformational initiative, we always start out asking about what problem they are trying to solve. Often, they don’t know. There are so many wonderful things to adopt that it’s easy to fall into the trap of identifying a solution before you’ve actually defined a problem.

Don’t Let Talking About Change Undermine Your Ability to Achieve It

Every leader wants to be seen at the vanguard of change. The truth is, it’s relatively easy to announce a change initiative, hire vendors to implement new technologies and then bring in change consultants to hone messaging and arrange training, but these things are unlikely to bring about successful transformation.

In fact, evidence suggests that all of the talk about change may be undermining our ability to achieve it. One survey found that 44% of employees say they don’t understand the change they’re being asked to make, and 38% say they don’t agree with it. A clear majority, 65% of respondents complained of “change fatigue.”

Change doesn’t begin with an idea. It starts with identifying a meaningful problem. That’s why it’s so important that before you start an initiative you ask questions like, ask questions like, “What problem are we trying to solve? Is there a general consensus that it’s a problem we need to solve? How would solving it impact our business?

When we look at transformational leaders who achieved great things, the first thing we tend to notice is their words, not the cause that compelled them to act. The words are easy to replicate. Anyone can speak them. But If you want to create change in this world, you need to identify a grievance that people care about. Because if people don’t see a problem, they’re not going to care about your solution.

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

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The Real Reason Your Team Isn’t Speaking to You

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The Real Reason Your Team Isn't Speaking to You

GUEST POST from David Burkus

It’s a common issue in many organizations – teams not voicing obstacles or issues in their work. If you’ve been a leader for a while, you’ve probably experienced it firsthand. Maybe you and your team had a check-in meeting with everyone, and everything was positive. Everyone gives a status update. And no one is asking for help. So, the meeting ended, and everyone went about their business.

But you were suspicious. Your team was saying it was all good. But then they started missing deadlines, or the project came in over budget, or it didn’t come in at all.

You’re not alone. In fact, in many organizations’ failures happen and get covered up at many levels of the organization. It’s not uncommon for senior leaders to be the least informed about what’s really happening in the organization because everyone at every level is trying to minimize failure…or trying to minimize their role in it.

No one trusts each other enough to share their setbacks, so no one knows what’s holding the team back.

But trust doesn’t automatically resolve teamwide issues. Building trust is great, but research suggests that trust alone is insufficient. Instead, teams need to feel psychological safety—a climate of mutual trust and respect that helps team members feel safe to take interpersonal risks. Risks like voicing failures or disagreements, but also risks like sharing their “crazy” ideas that just might be brilliant.

Teams with psychological safety have members who can be vulnerable and authentic with each other. They ask questions or offer ideas that may seem odd but can lead the team’s thinking in new directions. Psychological safety encourages team members to speak up when they disagree, and as a result more diverse viewpoints are shared. Psychological safety reduces failures, because when people feel that they can speak freely they’re more likely to intervene before a team makes a mistake. In fact, research from Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson, who first discovered the power of psychology safety on teams, suggests that on diverse teams, psychological safety determines whether their varied strengths are harnessed or if they perform below their potential.

In her work, Edmondson describes psychological safety as “a team climate characterized by interpersonal trust and mutual respect in which people are comfortable being themselves.”

Trust and Respect.

These may seem similar. But they have their differences. The interplay between them is what builds psychological safety. Trust is how much we feel we can share our authentic selves with others. Respect is how much we feel they accept that self. If I trust you, then I will share honestly with you. If you respect me, then you will value what I’ve shared. High-performing teams don’t need to just trust each other, they also need to learn how to respect each other’s contribution.

So how can leaders build a sense of trust and respect on a team? Here’s a few ideas:

1. Celebrate Failures

Celebrating failures on a team doesn’t mean teams throw a party every time they lose, but it doesn’t mean that every loss immediately triggers a round of “shift the blame” or that they forbid each other from talking about “the project which shall not be named.” Failures are inevitable, and often for reasons outside of a team’s control. Clients change their mind. Budgets get cut. Global pandemics disrupt the supply chain and force everyone to look at each other on video calls. To build trust on a team, the team must be comfortable with the idea that they will fail—and that they will learn from failure.

So, taking the time to celebrate what the painful experience taught the team can be a worthwhile exercise. This happens in several ways. You could draft a “failure resume” for yourself and encourage teammates to do the same, listing every job or project that didn’t turn out as hoped. As a team, you could create a “failure wall” with pictures or quotes from projects that blew up or clients you didn’t win. Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx, throws regular Oops Meetings, where she admits her own mistakes and encourages the team to do the same. One pharmaceutical company went so far as to create “Failure Wakes” to gather researchers together around a promised but failed compound. The team said their good-byes, and expressed gratitude for the lessons working on that aborted drug taught them. These types of celebrations not only focus the team on lessons learned, but they encourage future risk-taking and keep teams motivated even when those chances of failure are high.

2. Hold After-Action Reviews

One way to at least celebrate learning if not failure is the after-action review. Although unlike clapping or waving, this is a more serious ritual done after the action (hence the name). Originally a military ritual, after-action reviews work well because they force the team to discuss strengths and weaknesses and to dissect past failures (and even successes) for lessons. Just after the team finishes a project, or during an important milestone, gather them together and ask them a few questions:

What was our intended result?
What was the actual result?
Why were they different?
What will we do the same next time?
What will we do differently next time?

The purpose of the meeting is not to find someone to blame, or someone to give all the credit. The goal is to extract lessons from the project about where the team is strong and where they need improvement. When people are open and honest about their weaknesses and contributions to failure, celebrate the vulnerability they just signaled.

3. Model Active Listening

The easiest way to signal disrespect to someone is make them feel ignored. The reverse is true as well. Making people feel listened to and truly heard is one of the simplest ways to signal that you respect what they have to say. Great team cultures are marked by how well they listen to each other and take turns speaking so everyone feels heard. But our natural tendency as humans can make it difficult to show others we’re listening. We want to help people. So, when people come to us with problems, we want to jump in and help right away. For team leaders, this tendency is even stronger. People are supposed to come to us for help, right? So, we start helping…which means we start talking…which means we stop listening.

One simple trick for ensuring you listen longer and help others feel more heard is to get used to saying, “Tell me more.” When someone says something that triggers a thought in your head, and you feel your mouth starting to open so your brilliant advice can greet the world—stop. Instead of whatever you were going to say, just say “Tell me more.” If you want to take active listening even further, consider a useful acronym from communication expert Julian Treasure: RASA. When someone else is speaking, Receive their ideas by paying attention to them as they speak. Appreciate what they are saying by nodding or giving confirming feedback. Summarize what the other person said when they’re finished. Then Ask them questions to explore their idea further. Since respect is a learned behavior, as you model active listening your team will follow your example—and more members of your team will feel heard and respected.

4. Recognize, And Share Credit

Leadership thinker Warren Bennis once noted that good leaders shine under the spotlight, but great leaders help others shine. Teams that share credit and take the time to recognize each other are teams where members feel more respected and more trusted. But teams that fight for credit when a project is finished (or fight over blame when it fails) diminish what little respect they had before. Great team leaders look for as many ways to share credit with their team as they can, even if they desire most of the credit. This can be as simple as taking the time to appreciate each team member’s strengths, or as big as shouting those praises throughout the company. When team members know what you appreciate about them, they know you respect their abilities and their ideas.

In addition, find small wins that can be celebrated more often—hence creating more opportunities to recognize others. Small wins have a big impact on individual and team motivation—and that impact only gets bigger when credit for the win is shared team wide.

Conclusion – The Psychological Safety Cycle

When individuals feel respected, and respectful behavior becomes the norm on a team, trust will naturally increase as well. That ensures that great ideas, and great lessons, get heard and considered. Without respect, that trust you’re building by accepting failures and embracing held-back brilliance from your team, will have a very short half-life. You can’t sleep on respect.

It’s a cycle.

You build trust on the team, which encourages people to take risks (or to risk admitting failures) and if that risk is met with respect…trust grows even more. If it doesn’t, you’re failing even faster.

It’s worth including in the conclusion, that we’re not talking about repeat failures. Psychological safety doesn’t mean there’s no accountability for consistently under-performing. It doesn’t mean that people can get away slacking off or that teams will just keep failing. But it does mean they don’t have to be afraid to ask for help or admit those occasional times when they do fail. It means that they take learning and growth so seriously that don’t hold back talking about their own struggles and their own mistakes.

And that’s why high-performing teams are psychologically safe teams.

Image credit: Pixabay

Originally published on DavidBurkus.com on January 6, 2024

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

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

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

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

Innovation or Not? – Kawasaki Corleo — by Braden Kelley
From Resistance to Reinvention — by Noel Sobelman
How Innovation Tools Help You Stay Safe — by Robyn Bolton
Should My Brand Take a Political Stand? — by Pete Foley
Innovation Truths — by Mike Shipulski
Good Management is Not Good Strategy — by Greg Satell
ChatGPT Blew My Mind with its Strategy Development — by Robyn Bolton
Five Questions Great Leaders Always Ask — by David Burkus
Why So Many Smart People Are Foolish — by Greg Satell
Beyond Continuous Improvement Culture — by Mike Shipulski

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

Four Reasons Change Resistance Exists — by Greg Satell
Focus your Emotional Energy Purposefully — by Janet Sernack
10 Business Mythstakes Some Leaders Believe — by Shep Hyken
Three Ways Teamwork Can Fail — by David Burkus
Why Talent Drives Innovation — by Stefan Lindegaard

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

Have something to contribute?

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

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

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Procrastinating with Purpose

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Procrastinating with Purpose

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

There’s a useful trick when you want to do new work. It has some of the characteristics of procrastination, but it’s different. With procrastination, the problem solver waits to start the solving until it’s almost impossible to meet the deadline. The the solver uses the unreasonable deadline to create internal pressure so they can let go of all the traditional solving approaches. With no time for traditional approaches, the solver must let go of what worked and try a new approach.

Now, the mainstream procrastinator doesn’t wait with forethought as I described, but forethought isn’t the required element. The internal pressure doesn’t care if it was forethought, it constrains out the tried-and-true, either way. Forethought or not, the results speak for themselves – unimaginable work done in far less time than reasonable.

But what if you could take the best parts of procrastination and supercharge it with purpose and process? What if you could help people achieve the results of procrastination – unimagined solutions done in an unreasonable time window – but without all the stress that comes with procrastination? What about a process for purposeful procrastination?
The IBE (Innovation Burst Event) was created to do just that – to systematize the goodness of procrastination without all the baggage that comes with it.

The heart of the IBE is the Design Challenge, where a team with diverse perspective is brought together by a facilitator to solve a problem in five minutes. The unreasonable time constraint generates all the goodness that comes with procrastination, but, because it’s a problem solving exercise, there’s no drama. And like with procrastination, the teams deliver unimaginable results within an unrealistic time constraint.

The purposefulness of the IBE comes with up-front work to create Design Challenges that investigate design space that has high potential. This can be driven by the Voice of the Customer (VOC) or Voice of the Technology (VOT). Either way, the choice of the design space is purposeful.

If you want to jump-start your innovation work, try the IBE. And who knows, if you call it purposeful procrastination you may get a lot of people to participate.

Image credit: Unsplash

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