Change Marketing versus Change Communications

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

In the ever-evolving landscapes of business and organizational growth, the paradigms of change management play a crucial role in steering the ship towards success. Within this realm, two concepts frequently emerge as tools to navigate turbulent waters: Change Marketing and Change Communications. At first glance, they may appear synonymous, but understanding their distinct roles and synergies is essential for orchestrating impactful transformations. As a human-centered change and innovation thought leader, I aim to dissect these terms and provide clarity on how they can be leveraged to drive meaningful change.

Understanding the Concepts

Change Communications

Change Communications is the strategic dissemination of information related to a specific change initiative within an organization. It aims to inform, educate, and engage the stakeholders by providing them with accurate, consistent, and timely information. The primary objective of Change Communications is to reduce uncertainty, clarify doubts, and streamline the transition process. A well-executed communication plan addresses the who, what, where, when, and why of the change initiative. It takes into account the different perspectives of stakeholders and ensures that messages resonate with their specific concerns and expectations.

Change Marketing

On the other hand, Change Marketing borrows principles from traditional marketing but adapts them to promulgate change initiatives within an organization. It applies marketing techniques such as segmenting, targeting, positioning, and promotion to make the change appeal to the organization’s internal audience. At its core, Change Marketing is about building buy-in, excitement, and advocacy for change among employees. It focuses on raising awareness about the benefits of the change, cultivating a positive perception, and driving behavioral commitment. By framing the change as a product or service, Change Marketing positions the change initiative into a more relatable and consumable format.

Exploring the Differences

While both Change Marketing and Change Communications aim to facilitate change, their methodologies and focus areas differ in several key ways:

1. Objective

Change Communications is largely informative. Its purpose is to keep stakeholders informed and aligned throughout the change process. Change Marketing, meanwhile, takes a sales-oriented approach, persuading stakeholders to not only understand but also actively embrace and champion the change initiative.

2. Approach

Change Communications focuses on transparency and clarity, ensuring that the message is communicated consistently and accurately. Change Marketing employs creative and emotional appeals. It seeks to create a narrative or brand around the change, appealing to the emotional and psychological drivers of the stakeholders.

3. Tools and Channels

The tools and channels used in Change Communications typically include newsletters, emails, intranet updates, and formal meetings. These are factual and structured to ensure clarity. In contrast, Change Marketing may employ more dynamic and engaging tools such as storytelling, testimonials, videos, events, and interactive workshops, often leveraged through multiple platforms to create touchpoints.

4. Stakeholder Engagement

Change Communications tends to be more authoritative, with information flowing top-down from leadership to the employees. Change Marketing, however, is more collaborative. It encourages two-way communication and feedback loops, empowering stakeholders to be co-creators of the change narrative.

Synergizing Both Approaches

Leveraging Change Marketing and Change Communications together can create a more cohesive and comprehensive change strategy, enhancing the likelihood of successful transformation. Here’s how they can be integrated:

Create a Strong Narrative

Weave a compelling narrative that not only communicates the facts but also makes the change relatable and engaging. Use Change Communications to set the foundation and establish baseline understanding, and then layer on Change Marketing to breathe life into the story, making it resonate on a personal level.

Segment and Personalize

Different stakeholders have varying needs, concerns, and levels of influence. Change Marketing enables you to segment your audience and customize messages, while Change Communications ensures that these tailored messages are coherent and aligned with overall objectives.

Foster Participation and Ownership

Encourage a participatory culture where stakeholders feel they have a voice in the change process. Use Change Communications to set up structured feedback mechanisms, and leverage Change Marketing to create invitations and spaces for dialogue and co-creation.

Measure and Adapt

Both approaches require measurement to understand effectiveness and areas for improvement. Use analytics from communications channels to evaluate engagement levels and adjust strategies; similarly, use marketing metrics to assess buy-in and adapt campaigns to enhance impact.

Conclusion

Change Marketing and Change Communications are both pivotal elements of successful change management, each offering unique contributions towards achieving a transformative vision. By understanding the distinct roles they play and harnessing their complementary strengths, organizations can navigate change with agility and finesse. This dual-approach not only smooths the transition process but also builds a resilient and engaged workforce ready to face the future.

In embracing both pathways, leaders can foster a culture of empathy, insight, and innovation, where change is not merely communicated but sold as an exciting journey toward a better tomorrow.

In closing, I encourage all change leaders and enthusiasts to continuously pursue learning and adaptation. Engage with new methodologies, share your stories, and remain open to experimentation. The future of change management rests in our ability to be both innovative and empathetic facilitators of transformation. One great place to start is to get a copy of Braden’s best-selling book Charting Change, which is now in its Second Edition with several new chapters!

And, if you need help marketing your change, please let me know.

Image credit: Pixabay

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We Need a New Language for Change

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We Need a New Language for Change

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

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

The Problem with One-Size-Fits-All

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

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

Use More Precise Language for What and How

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

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

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

Adopt More Sophisticated Words to Describe Why

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

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

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

Why This Matters

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

What’s Next?

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

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

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Picking Your Future

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Picking Your Future

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

Understanding the Spectrum of Futures

In the ever-evolving landscape of business, the ability to envision and navigate the future is increasingly a competitive advantage. Yet, the future is not a singular path but a spectrum of possibilities, each varying in probability, desirability, and preventability. To lead effectively, it is crucial for executives and innovators to understand these different futures: possible, probable, preferable, and preventable.

Possible Futures

The universe of possible futures encompasses everything that could happen, no matter how improbable. This is the realm of the imaginable, constrained only by the laws of physics and the boundaries of creativity. Within the context of business, possible futures include every potential evolution of markets, technologies, consumer preferences, and competitive landscapes.

Fostering a culture of innovation demands a deliberate dive into the pool of possible futures. By encouraging ‘what if’ scenarios, companies can identify seeds of new opportunities before they become obvious. This exploration is akin to maintaining a portfolio of diverse ideas, some of which may become instrumental in leading tomorrow’s markets.

Probable Futures

Probable futures are those that are likely to occur based on current trends, data, and trajectory analysis. They represent the linear extension of the present, framed by existing dynamics in the environment. These futures are extrapolations of known variables and are often the focus of traditional strategic planning.

Businesses often default to planning for probable futures as they seem the most tangible and secure. Metrics, trends analyses, and forecasts become key tools. However, being solely grounded in probable futures can lead to a kind of strategic myopia where emerging disruptions are overlooked. The challenge lies in balancing attention to prevalent trends while scanning the horizon for outliers and black swans.

Preferable Futures

Preferable futures are those that are aligned with an organization’s goals, values, and vision. They harness aspirations and ideals, focusing on what stakeholders desire to achieve rather than solely on what seems likely or possible. Building a preferable future involves intentional strategy making and often requires significant change and innovation.

Designing a preferable future necessitates a comprehensive understanding of organizational strengths, stakeholder aspirations, and societal impact. It involves setting ambitious goals and reverse-engineering the steps needed to achieve these aspirations. Cultivating a mindset oriented towards preferable futures requires organizations to embed vision-driven leadership and to empower employees to innovate in alignment with their collective goals.

Preventable Futures

Preventable futures are those undesirable outcomes that an organization seeks to avoid. These futures could stem from risk factors such as technological obsolescence, reputational damage, regulatory changes, or shifts in consumer sentiment. Identifying and mitigating preventable futures involves risk management and robust contingency planning.

A proactive approach to preventable futures requires resilience-building across the organization. Companies need to cultivate a deep understanding of potential threats, build adaptive strategies, and institute flexible processes to pivot rapidly when necessary. Scenario planning and regular stress-testing of systems and strategies become essential practices in this effort.

The Interplay of Futures in Business Strategy

While these classes of futures can be analyzed individually, the true power of foresight in business emerges from understanding their interplay. Strategic foresight involves dynamically engaging with all four types of futures, continually shifting focus according to the context and strategic needs of the organization.

Analysis of Possible Futures: Encourages broad ideation, innovation, and discovery of novel opportunities and threats.
Focus on Probable Futures: Provides a foundation for realistic planning and sets benchmarks and expectations.
Establishment of Preferable Futures: Aligns strategy with vision and values, guiding purposeful action and innovation.
Mitigation of Preventable Futures: Ensures preparedness, resilience, and sustainability by addressing potential risks and challenges.

As a human-centered change and innovation thought leader, I advocate for organizations to embrace all forms of futures thinking as an integral component of strategic planning. By doing so, they can cultivate adaptive resilience and align their trajectory with both pragmatic and bold aspirations.

Conclusion: Crafting a Futures-Ready Organization

In a world characterized by rapid change, the foresight discipline of distinguishing between possible, probable, preferable, and preventable futures is invaluable. This holistic approach to the future enables businesses to anticipate change, harness opportunities, and avoid pitfalls with agility and wisdom.

Ultimately, the goal is to craft an organization that is futures-ready—equipped to leverage the creativity of possible futures, grounded in the realism of probable futures, driven by the vision of preferable futures, and protected against the hazards of preventable futures. In achieving this balance, businesses can chart a path towards sustained success and meaningful impact in a world that never stands still.

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

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The Changemaker Mindset

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The Changemaker Mindset

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

Every time I speak to a group of executives, they complain that their organizations desperately need to change, but that the bosses are hostile to it. And every time I speak to a group of leaders, they say that change is their highest priority, but can’t seem to align the rank-and-file behind transformational initiatives.

The truth is that everybody loves their own brand of change, it’s other people’s ideas and initiatives that they don’t like. We all have things that we want to be different. But the status quo has inertia on its side and never yields its power gracefully. To want change is one thing, but to change ourselves, well… that’s another story.

What I’ve found in both my research and my practice is that people who bring about transformational, even historic, change start out no differently than anyone else. In fact, early versions of them are often decidedly unimpressive. The difference between them and everyone else is that somewhere along the way they learn to adopt a changemaker mindset.

A Problem They Couldn’t Look Away From

As a young man, Mohandis Gandhi wasn’t the type of person anyone 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. He found his voice, built the almost superhuman discipline he became famous for and successfully campaigned for the rights of Indians in South Africa. He returned to India 21 years later as the “Mahatma,” or “holy man.”

The truth is that revolutions don’t begin with a slogan, they begin with a cause. Martin Luther King Jr., as eloquent as he was, didn’t start with words. It was his personal experiences with racism that helped him find his words. It was his devotion to the cause that gave those words meaning, not the other way around.

Steve Jobs didn’t look for ideas, he looked for products that sucked. Computers sucked. Music players sucked. Mobile phones sucked. His passion was to make them “insanely great.” Every breakthrough product or invention, a laser printer, a quantum computer or even a life-saving cure like cancer immunotherapy, always starts out with a problem someone couldn’t look away from.

Identifying A Keystone Change

Every change effort, if it is to be successful, needs to identify a Keystone Change to bridge the gap between the initial grievance about the world as it is and the vision for how the world could be. You can’t get there in a single step. This is a lesson that even a legendary changemaker like Gandhi had to learn the hard way.

In 1919, five years after his return to India, Gandhi called for a nationwide series of strikes and boycotts in response to the Rowlatt Acts, which restricted Indian rights. These protests were successful at first, but soon spun wildly out of control and eventually led to the massacre at Amritsar, in which British soldiers left hundreds dead and more than a thousand wounded.

A decade later, when the Indian National Congress asked Gandhi to design a campaign of civil disobedience in support of independence, he proceeded more cautiously. Rather than rashly calling for national action, he set out with 70 or 80 of his closest disciples to protest unjust salt laws. Their nonviolent discipline inspired the nation and the world.

Today, the Salt March is known as Gandhi’s greatest triumph. It was the first time that the British was forced to negotiate with the Indians and, because it demonstrated that the Raj could be defied, helped lead to Indian independence in 1947. Yet without that earlier failure, which Gandhi would call his Himalayan miscalculation, it would not have been possible.

Gandhi is, of course, a legendary historical figure. But other, more pedestrian, changemakers learned the same thing. A lean manufacturing transformation at Wyeth Pharmaceutical started with a single change with a single team, but quickly spread to 17,000 employees. A healthcare revolution began with just six quality practices. When the CIO of Experian set out to move his organization to the cloud, he began with internal API’s and just a few teams.

To make change real, you need to get out of the business of selling an idea and into the business of selling a success. You do that with a Keystone Change.

Empowering A Movement

We revere legendary change leaders like Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela and others not just for their ideas, but because of how they empowered others to take ownership of their cause. Those who followed them did so not in their names, but for themselves. The struggle was collective, not one of subservience.

That’s what makes building a movement different from traditional change models they often teach in business schools. A snazzy internal communication program and a training regimen may help an organization adopt new software or gear up to support a new product line, but it won’t change how people fundamentally think or act.

Movement leaders focus on empowerment, not persuasion. Gandhi didn’t need to convince his countrymen about the daily humiliations and injustices suffered under the British Raj. King did not have to explain to black Americans that racism was wrong. Mandela did not have to persuade black South Africans about the evils of Apartheid. They empowered them to make a difference. That’s what makes movements so compelling and effective.

Changemakers of all kinds can do the same. At Experian, the CIO set up an “API Center of Excellence” to help product managers who wanted to build out cloud-based features. To power the quality movement in healthcare, activists created “change kits” to guide hospital staff who were on board and wanted to bring their colleagues along. Change can only succeed if you equip those who believe in it to drive it forward.

Building Empathy, Even For Your Enemies

People who believe in change want to believe that if everyone understood it, they’d want it to happen. That’s why “change management” gurus focus on communication and persuasion. They think that if you explain your idea for change in just the right way, others will see the light. For many change consultants, transformation is primarily a messaging problem.

Yet anyone who has ever been married or had kids knows how hard it can be to convince even a single person of something. Persuading hundreds, if not thousands—or even an entire society—that they should drop what they’re thinking and doing to adopt your idea and help drive it forward is a tall order. The simple truth is that no one is really that charming.

Make no mistake. If your idea is important, if it has real potential to affect how people think and how they act, there will always be those who will hate it and they will work to undermine it in ways that are dishonest, underhanded and deceptive. That’s just a simple fact of life that every potential changemaker needs to learn to internalize and accept.

Yet adopting a changemaker mindset means that you understand that change is always built on common ground and that you need to build empathy, even for your most ardent adversaries, because that is how you identify shared values and move things forward. It is by listening to your opposition and internalizing its logic that you can learn how to discredit it, or even better, inspire those hostile to change to discredit themselves.

That is the changemaker mindset: To understand that change is hard, even unlikely, but to remain clear-eyed, hard-nosed and opportunity focused. To know that through shared values and shared purpose, radical, transformational change is not only possible, but ultimately inevitable.

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

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Rise of the Change Marketing Agency

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Rise of the Change Marketing Agency

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

In today’s fast-paced business landscape, where technological innovation and rapidly evolving consumer expectations are the norm, organizations need to manage change more adeptly than ever before. Introducing unique products or transforming internal processes is not just about logistics anymore; it’s also about aligning emotional, perceptual, and experiential shifts among stakeholders. This is where the nascent concept of a “Change Marketing Agency” comes into play — a specialized entity that bridges the gap between traditional change management and strategic marketing.

Understanding Change Marketing

Traditionally, change management has focused on the frameworks and toolsets that help an organization steer through the tumultuous waters of transformation. However, the human-centered aspect of change often takes a back seat. Enter change marketing — a philosophy and practice that utilizes marketing principles to enable effective change by addressing the emotional and behavioral aspects of the transformation journey.

Change marketing is not about selling a product, but about securing buy-in and engagement for transformative initiatives from stakeholders. It’s about narrating a compelling story that aligns vision, communicates benefits, and inspires action. As such, a Change Marketing Agency can play a decisive role in ensuring that change resonates with the inherent values and expectations of both internal and external stakeholders.

Difference Between Change Marketing and Change Communications

While change marketing and change communications are related, they serve different purposes and utilize different strategies. Here’s a breakdown of the key differences:

Objective:
- Change Communications focuses on the dissemination of information necessary for awareness and understanding.
- Change Marketing aims to build desire, alignment, and engagement, often by tapping into emotional and psychological triggers.
Approach:
- Change Communications typically involves one-way communication to inform and instruct stakeholders.
- Change Marketing uses a multi-channel, interactive strategy designed to engage stakeholders through storytelling and experiential campaigns.
Key Tools:
- Change Communications may employ memos, emails, FAQs, and newsletters to share updates.
- Change Marketing leverages branding, narrative development, workshops, multimedia content, and feedback loops.
End Goal:
- Change Communications strives for clarity and understanding among stakeholders.
- Change Marketing is focused on creating advocates and fostering a shared sense of purpose around the change initiative.

The Emerging Role of Change Marketing Agencies

The necessity for such agencies is increasingly clear as organizations recognize the limits of traditional change management methodologies. With new demands to personalize and humanize change, companies need partners adept in storytelling, audience segmentation, and behavioral psychology.

Change Marketing Agencies deliver services that range from crafting narrative-driven communication plans, creating engaging content that aligns with company culture, to analyzing stakeholder response and refining strategies dynamically. By integrating these services, they help organizations facilitate smoother transitions during times of change.

Case Study 1: The Digital Shift of a Legacy Publishing House

Imagine a traditional publishing house, steeped in decades of heritage, transitioning to a digital-first model. The challenge was not only technological but also cultural. Employees accustomed to paper-based processes were resistant, stakeholders questioned the shift’s efficacy, and long-time readers were apprehensive about abandoning the tactile experience of a physical book.

Enter the Change Marketing Agency. They embarked on a campaign that highlighted the richness of digital storytelling. Through a series of engaging multimedia experiences showcasing enhanced storytelling possible with digital tools, they shifted the narrative from a departure from tradition to an evolution of it. Internally, workshops and storytelling sessions were organized to visualize the new possibilities for employees, turning apprehension into curiosity and eventually enthusiasm.

Externally, the agency crafted a series of customer stories showcasing individuals enjoying enriched reading experiences in the digital ecosystem—aligning the change with customer lifestyles. This multi-layered narrative approach not only facilitated the transition but redefined the brand’s image, leading to a spike in digital subscriptions and an embrace of digital-first culture by resistant employees.

Case Study 2: Retail Giant’s Sustainability Transformation

Another compelling example is a major retail company, whose goal was to rebrand its image around sustainability and eco-friendliness. Despite comprehensive internal policies and sustainability initiatives, both employees and consumers were skeptical about the company’s genuine commitment to these values.

The Change Marketing Agency did not simply broadcast the changes; they nurtured a movement. They launched a transparent campaign sharing stories from every level of the company, emphasizing transparency and genuine impact. By spotlighting employee-led green initiatives and community collaborations, they personalized the brand’s sustainability narrative.

For the consumer base, they designed interactive experiences that allowed customers to see the environmental impact of their purchase decisions, fostering a sense of participation in the larger sustainability mission. As a result, the company observed not just an enhancement in public perception but tangible employee engagement, manifesting in innovative, ground-up sustainability projects internally.

Conclusion

The rise of Change Marketing Agencies highlights an evolving recognition of the power of integrated human-centered narratives in managing change. By marrying the art of marketing with the science of change management, they do not just manage transitions—they animate them. For organizations, this means deeper engagement, less friction, and transformative change that resonates on a personal level.

As we forge into an era marked by continuous change, the role of such agencies will likely expand. Their ability to humanize, narrate, and communicate complex transformations stands poised to redefine how organizations and individuals embrace the evolving future.

And, if you need help marketing your change, please let me know.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Innovating for Social Good

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GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

The Coach for Innovators Amplifiers, a small group of global business game changers, started engaging in monthly dialogue sessions in 2022. As alumni of the Coach for Innovators, Leaders, and Teams Certified Program™, we intended to apply our knowledge, skills, and experience to discover and explore how we might collaborate to support countries, organizations, and education institutions in achieving the World Economic Forum’s Seventeen Sustainable Development Goals by innovating for good.

We are a small, cohesive, committed group of corporate executives, consultants, educators, coaches, and trainers who connected and maximized the differences and diversity of our group by debating how to apply innovation as the glue to achieve sustainable change everywhere. Our mission is to amplify and catalyze innovators, organizations, and communities to stimulate and achieve sustainable development everywhere. It is based on the values of ethical practice, systems thinking, social entrepreneurship, civic change, alignment, deep learning, humanity, collective action, openness, curiosity, courage, experimentation, and well-being by innovating for good.

We set about adding value to the quality of people’s lives by engaging and influencing people to lead the transition towards co-creating societal shifts ethically, equitably and sustainably.

Our target market consists of passionate and energetic young people engaged in learning to teach the core elements of the Being side of social entrepreneurship to enable them to be ecologically resilient by innovating for good.

A different approach to innovation

Our approach was based on three core principles that emerged during our research and testing process:

Innovation is like drinking water; it is essential for life and belongs to all life to sustain it in all contexts.
Innovation is a duty; people have no right to pollute and destroy all life and the planet.
Innovation allows us to consciously manifest different ways of being and doing to co-create a future we want to have and sustain.

This requires people to unlearn old mental models and irrelevant perspectives in a 21st-century disrupted world and relearn and learn to adopt an innovative mindset. Which focuses on supporting sustainable and positive economic growth and de-growth and on developing circular economies to do better with less by:

Challenging people’s illusions and inertia regarding the future, confronting harsh realities, and addressing problems to enhance people’s quality of life.
Transitioning from competition to co-petition within ecosystems, fostering genuine collaboration across boundaries to co-create solutions on a global scale.
Moving away from competition towards co-petition in ecosystems, embracing collaboration across boundaries to co-create global solutions.

Meta-learning model – Innovating for good

This became the basis for developing a meta-learning model constructed on what we had encountered as the key systemic problems that largely inhibited innovation. We tested and validated it using a small, diverse target market sample of global students studying here in Australia.

We incorporated our findings into pivoting The Start-Up Game™ Boardroom Version and into the book Janet Sernack is currently writing – “Conscious Innovation – Activating the Heart, Mind and Spirit of Innovation.” Both are due for release in June 2025,

Concept/Stage	Problem/Explanation	Question
Awakening process Igniting the light of consciousness	People can shift their values, beliefs, and mindsets by applying various approaches and methodologies to develop the new perspectives required to innovate.	How might we alert people to the importance of innovation?
Letting it go Exposing the landmines	Actions speak louder than words. What activities, exercises, and challenges will mobilize people to participate in the innovation challenge?	What do you think people might need to let go of to make the space and time to innovate?
Initiating the shift Embracing new perspectives	Actions speak louder than words. What types of activities, exercises, and challenges will mobilize people to participate in the innovation challenge?	How might we best introduce and engage people with embracing new perspectives on innovation?
Communicating Shifting gears	Communication is key. People need clarity and coherent messages to understand and appreciate the importance and benefits of innovation.	What are the key messages that might resonate with you?
Sharing the story Setting the torch alight	Stories inspire us and provide evidence of success; what stories do you consider important to share to ignite people’s motivation to innovate?	What kinds of stories might inspire you to take up the innovation challenge?
Stories inspire us and provide evidence of success; what stories do you consider essential to share to ignite people’s motivation to innovate?	Actions speak louder than words. What activities, exercises, and challenges will mobilise people to participate in the innovation challenge?	Many people don’t know how to make sense of innovation and are unaware that all change and growth require innovation of some type to be effective and sustainable.

Inner development supports outer development – Innovating for good.

The Inner Development Goal Framework was initiated in 2023 by the 29k Foundation, Ekskaret Foundation, IMD Business School for Management, LUCSUS Center for Sustainability Studies | Lund University, Stockholm Resilience Center | Stockholm University, The New Division, Flourishing Network at Harvard University, World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). It has been set up as a not-for-profit initiative to address the pressing need to increase our collective abilities to face and effectively work with complex challenges. Based on the pre-supposition, “without a foundational shift in human values and leadership capacities, external solutions to our global challenges may be limited, too slow, or short-lived”.

Inner Development Goal Framework

The framework consists of five dimensions across twenty-three skills:

Being; relationship to self,
Thinking, cognitive skills,
Relating, caring for others and the world,
Collaborating, social kills,
Acting, enabling change.

This great initiative inspired our group, as it was closely aligned with ImagineNation’s™ approach that the group members had learned in The Coach for Innovators, Leaders, and Teams Certified Program when innovating for good.

Our goal was to enhance the quality of people’s lives, specifically focusing on “being the change” you wished to see in the world. We aimed to develop people’s confidence, capacity, and competence in being change-ready and responsive, accepting responsibility, and becoming emotionally energetic, agile, and adaptive.

These six elements are foundational and learnable in developing an innovation mindset to help people make mandatory, impactful, ethical changes aligned with the seventeen sustainable and five inner development goals dimensions when innovating for good.

We co-created a toolkit to enable us to mentor, teach and coach a tribe of doers/young people to create a movement that:

It encapsulates their dreams and inspires their hopes and optimism about the future.
It fosters a safe space for healing and for their voices to be heard.
It cultivates their potential through innovative uncertainty tolerance to co-create new forms.
It instills a sense of urgency to collectively advocate for the changes essential to shape and own the future they desire for their children and grandchildren.

Power of Agency, Development and Hope

In a recent article, “Five Global Trends in Business and Society in 2025,” Insead identified the top five global trends for 2025: climate change, geopolitical crises, income and wealth inequality and social instability, and inflation or recession. How we react to and manage these five trends by innovating for goodwill tests the resilience of our global society, economy, governments, academic institutions, corporations, and civil societies in an increasingly uncertain, unstable world.

To have any sense of agency in the face of these emerging challenges, our Coach for Innovators Amplifiers group and the Inner Development Goal group have boiled it down to a fundamental principle: “To be the change you wish to see in the world,” develop your skills and be hopeful, believing and even trusting that by innovating for good, things might eventually turn out well for everyone, everywhere.

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

Please find out more about our work at ImagineNation™.

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

It is a blended and transformational change and learning program that will give you a deep understanding of the language, principles, and applications of an ecosystem-focused, human-centric approach and emergent structure (Theory U) to innovation. It will also up-skill people and teams and develop their future fitness within your unique innovation context. Please find out more about our products and tools.

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Are You a Leader?

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Are You a Leader?

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

If you have to tell people what to do, you didn’t teach them to think for themselves.

If you know one of your team members has something to say but they don’t say it, it’s because you didn’t create an environment where they feel safe.

If your new hire doesn’t lead an important part of a project within the first week, you did them a disservice.

If the team learns the same thing three times, you should have stepped in two times ago.

If you don’t demand that your team uses their discretion, they won’t.

If the project’s definition of success doesn’t correlate with business success, you should have asked for a better definition of success before the project started.

If someone on your team tells you you’re full of sh*t, thank them for their truthfulness.

If your team asks for permission, change how you lead them.

If you can’t imagine that one of your new hires will be able to do your job in five years, you hired the wrong people.

If your team doesn’t disagree with you, it’s because you haven’t led from your authentic self.

If your team doesn’t believe in themselves, neither do you.

If your team disobeys your direct order, thank them for disobeying and apologize for giving them an order.

If you ask a new hire to lead an important part of a project and you don’t meet with them daily to help them, you did them a disservice.

If one of your team members moves to another team and their new leader calls them “unmanageable”, congratulations.

If your team knows what you’ll say before they ask you, you’ve led them from your authentic self.

If you haven’t chastised your team members for their lack of disagreement with you, you should.

If you don’t tell people they did a good job, they won’t.

Image credits: Pixabay

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Time to Stop These Ten Bad Customer Experience Habits

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Time to Stop These Ten Bad Customer Experience Habits

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Recently, Bob Newhart, a famous comedian and actor, passed away. He started his career as a stand-up comedian and eventually hit it big on television, starring in a TV series aptly named The Bob Newhart Show. His awards include three Grammy Awards, an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe, and the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. In 1960, his comedy record The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart reached No. 1 on Billboard’s pop album chart.

But enough about Newhart’s history and accolades, why is he showing up in an article about customer service and experience? The answer can be found in one of his TV specials in a funny sketch titled Stop It.

Seven years ago, I first shared a link to the Stop It video in an article I wrote titled Just Stop It. The focus was to stop doing the things that customers complain about most. To honor and remember the late Bob Newhart, I’d like to bring back the theme of Stop It, and this time, focus on stopping bad habits, systems, or policies that destroy a good customer experience. With that in mind, here are ten (10) things that, if you notice they are happening, will make you want to say, “Stop it!”

Stop putting customers on hold for too long. If you must put customers on hold, tell them how long and provide an option to be called back.
Stop transferring customers multiple times. Get them to the right person the first time!
Stop asking for feedback if you’re not going to take advantage of it. Our CX research (sponsored by RingCentral) found that 71% of U.S. customers assume the company won’t make changes based on their responses to a customer satisfaction survey.
Stop using company or technical jargon your customers might not know or understand. This makes them feel uncomfortable and may make them feel like you’re “talking above them.”
Stop making promises you don’t keep. For example, if you say you’ll call someone back in an hour, don’t be late.
Stop making it hard for customers to talk to a live person. If you have live agents to support customers, don’t make it complicated or hard to get to them.
Stop relying on too much automation. Some companies have gone 100% digital, eliminating customer service agents. Even Amazon, the most digital retailer in the world, has customer service reps to help when problems arise.
Stop blaming others for a mistake or problem, even if it is someone else’s fault. Customers don’t care who is at fault. What they care about is talking to someone who will help them. Even if it’s not your fault, it’s your opportunity to make things right. No blame is needed for that.
Stop being anything less than easy to do business with. This is a big one. Customers want friction-less, no-hassle experiences. Evaluate your processes, systems and policies to ensure they are customer-friendly.
Stop being average! Even an experience that is the tiniest bit better than average, as long as it’s consistent, will get customers to say things like, “They are always so helpful (friendly, knowledgeable, etc.).” The consistent above-average experience will make customers say, “I’ll be back!”

Shep Hyken Bad Habits Cartoon

This list of ten ideas to stop is just a start. Sit down with your team and use this list as an idea starter to discuss the issues, problems and complaints you hear about more often than others. Then, as the late Bob Newhart said, “Stop it!”

Image Credits: Shep Hyken, Pexels

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Innovation is Dead. Now What?

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Innovation is Dead. Now What?

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

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

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

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

But is innovation really dead?

Yes, Innovation is Dead

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

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

Except that it is also very much not dead.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We Don’t Know What’s Next

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

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

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

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

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

Image credit: Google Gemini

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Harnessing Human-Centered Change for Lasting Impact

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Harnessing Human-Centered Change for Lasting Impact

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

Greetings on this Global Change Management Day! Today I would like to highlight the work of Braden Kelley, an internationally-recognized thought leader and best-selling author passionately committed to advancing human-centered change and innovation. Today, I want to share insights that emphasize the importance of placing people at the heart of transformation efforts and how this approach fosters sustainable change.

Change management, at its core, is about guiding human behavior and perception. While organizational strategies, structures, and systems are critical, they mean little without addressing the human side of change. This is where human-centered change comes into play, an approach Braden Kelley has dedicated much of his career to developing and promoting.

The Essence of Human-Centered Change

Human-centered change is more than a methodology; it is a philosophy that reclaims the importance of empathy, communication, and collaboration in organizational transformation. It’s about understanding the human experience and designing change initiatives that align with the intrinsic motivations and needs of individuals.

When people feel heard and understood, they become genuine advocates of change. This approach leads to not just short-term success but long-lasting impact, turning change-resistant cultures into adaptable ecosystems thriving on innovation.

Insights from Braden’s Journey

Throughout his career, Braden has created frameworks and tools that encapsulate the essence of human-centered change. One such resource is the Change Planning Toolkit. It provides a unique visual framework to help change managers plan, implement, and sustain change initiatives with meticulous precision and empathy for those involved.

The toolkit is grounded in the principle that every change journey is unique, yet structured guidance can illuminate paths to common goals. This is reviewed in various workshops and talks where he emphasizes iteration and engagement over top-down mandates. This toolkit — and many others he has developed — aims to demystify change management by involving stakeholders from the ground up and serves to get everyone literally all on the same page for change.

Empowering Change Agents

One of Braden’s objectives with creating tools and resources is to empower change agents—those individuals within an organization who understand the importance of human-centric transformation. By equipping them with comprehensive tools, such as canvases and diagnostics, these change leaders can effectively convey and execute change efforts.

For those interested in exploring these resources, be sure and get the 10 free human-centered change tools that Braden makes available here on this web site – including a visualization of the ACMP Standard for Change Management®.

These tools serve as a starting point for embedding human-centered practices in change management projects. They are crafted to encourage dialogue, understanding, and alignment among all stakeholders.

Celebrating Progress and Looking Forward

Global Change Management Day provides an opportunity to reflect on our progress and set aspirations for the future. As we acknowledge the evolving challenges facing businesses and societies, it becomes imperative that change management professionals continue to evolve, embracing approaches that prioritize humanity.

Moving forward, the objective is to foster communities of practice where change professionals can share insights, challenges, and successes. Through collaboration and shared learning, we can enhance our understanding and implementation of change practices that honor the human spirit while achieving our organizational objectives.

Image credit: ACMP, Braden Kelley

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