Thinking Differently About Leadership and Innovation

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

We live in a world, with less stability, certainty, simplicity, and predictability, where regional conflicts, societal divisions, and civil unrest have increased globally. Simultaneously, technological-induced disruptive innovations and the climate crisis impact every aspect of our daily lives. This means that we live in an age of overwhelm and a world of unknowns, requiring us all to know how to uncover and eliminate our individual and collective blind spots, to be adaptive and innovative. By thinking and acting differently about leadership and innovation, we can all grow, survive, and thrive within it.

This a moment in time that calls for leaders to boldly and courageously, step up, shift out of any myopic, reactive, cost, and short-term focus, and develop their leadership consciousness. By taking personal responsibility, and being accountable for owning and shifting their interior state or inner being, to eliminate flaws, maximize core strengths, and build confidence, capacity, and competence to adapt, innovate, and grow through disruption.

To refocus on developing future-fit systemic and innovative solutions, that add real value in ways that serve and sustain people, profit, and the planet, differently.

Leadership is in crisis

We are experiencing a global leadership crisis.

Many leaders, in the corporate sector, and national and international institutions have become increasingly reactive. In ways that are passively or aggressively defensive, egotistic, and often self-serving. By vacillating between political correctness, denial, justification, and avoidance – and between attacking, shaming, and blaming groups, individuals, and nations for the current state of social unrest, political chaos, cultural divisions, and regional and religious conflicts.

Hitting a pause button

The missing key element is the leadership consciousness required in taking the time to pause, retreat (step back), reflect, and explore the deep causes, current implications, and nature of challenging, complex, and systemic problems.

Leaders are obliged to step out of their habitual comfort zones and boost their ability to bravely make sense of what is going on – and develop the foresight skills to risk mitigate and identify the most intelligent actions that will deliver high-value and high-impact outcomes that serve people, profits, and the planet.

To uncover the repetitive mindsets and behaviors that keep on producing results that no one wants, by bravely exposing and eliminating their leadership blind spots.

Leadership blind spots

We know that most of the innovative solutions to the complex challenges we face already exist.

To unleash these desirable, value-adding, and innovative solutions, we need to empower, enable, and equip leaders to bravely and safely expose and eliminate their largely, unconscious and unknown leadership blind spots. These exist in our individual and collective leadership, they also exist in our everyday team and social interactions.

Because most leaders are smart and know what to do, and how to do it, identifying and eliminating any leadership blind spots will enable them to do it better.

Yet, despite, in many cases, years of leadership training they are at risk of being perpetually reactive, unfocused, overcome with “busyness” and addicted to the tasks involved in “getting stuff” (usually the urgent “small stuff” and not always the “important stuff”) the done.

As defined by Dr. Karen Blakeley in “Leadership Blind Spots and What to Do about Them,” a blind spot is “a regular tendency to repress, distort, dismiss or fail to notice information, views or ideas in a particular area that results in an individual failing to learn, change or grow in response to changes in that area.”

Source of leadership blind spots

The majority of leaders are mostly blind to the Source from which they operate. This is often because many do not have the self-awareness and emotional intelligence to manage and self-regulate any of their unconscious un-resourceful emotional states, mindsets, and behaviors.

Leadership Consciousness

“An ordered distinction between self and environment, simple wakefulness, one’s sense of self-hood or soul explored by “looking within”; being a metaphorical “stream” of contents, or being a mental state, mental event or mental process of the brain”.

Igniting the brain

Leadership blind spots are typically contained in our neurology and can be exposed and eliminated by:

Paying attention to their three core neurological levels and being intentional in cultivating their leadership consciousness.

When engaged in a coaching partnership, a leader can learn how to shift, self-regulate, and self-manage at all three levels to effectively eliminate their flaws, and learn how to think and act differently in delivering successful transformation and change initiatives.

Power of Coaching Intervention

A coach is an external disruptor who seeks to bring out the best in a leader, tap into and maximize their potential, and adds value by facilitating deep, insight-based learning processes, that shifts mindsets and result in sustainable behavior change.

Coaching helps smart people be and think beyond who they are being and beyond what they are thinking now. In ways that can empower, enable, and equip leaders to adapt, innovate, and grow, cultivate their imagination and creativity, to think and act differently in an unstable world.

This enables them to develop and implement systemic and innovative solutions in a timely way and at scale.

Noticing, disrupting, disputing, and deviating

Coaches partner with leaders to enable them to notice, disrupt, dispute, and deviate by accessing and harnessing resourceful emotional states, and mindsets. Coaches safely explore the “boxes”, thinking, or the “stories” a leader may have been unconsciously living within, and constricted by.

Because we can’t solve the problem with the same thinking that created it in the first instance.

Especially in a 21st-century world where developing leadership consciousness enables us to adapt, innovate, and grow by:

Reducing our brain’s ability to hijack us when doing its best to constantly keep us safe from danger,
Letting go of old pervasive Industrial Age mental models and perspectives, especially around cost and efficiency,
Relearning new future-fit ways of being, thinking, and acting differently.

And increases our ability to be agile, centered, and focused in thinking faster in the Disruption Age, where technology is accelerating faster than our human brains are.

Upskilling our brains!

A coaching partnership will create a safe and collective holding space to help leaders deep dive into the unknown develop strategies and develop their leadership consciousness in ways that:

Opens their minds, ignites their imagination, curiosity, and creativity, shifts their perspective, makes sense of things develops a whole systems perspective, and think differently,
Opens their hearts to become connected with self, others, systems, and with Source, and be empathic and compassionate,
Opens their will to let go of the need for control, and allows them to deal with paradox and the new to emerge, which can be designed, iterated, and pivoted, in ways that enable them to act differently, in designing and implementing systemic and innovative solutions.

Closing leadership blind spots to adapt, innovate and grow

A coach empowers, enables, and equips a leader’s capacity, confidence, and competence, to identify and close their leadership blind spots, be in charge of their minds, and think and act differently, to adapt, innovate, and grow in times of great uncertainty.

To convincingly work with, and flow with both their peoples overwhelm, and with the constraints in the external environment by:

Developing an awareness of their neurological RIGIDITY which exists within their emotional, cognitive, and visceral states, in turn, impacts their ability to mobilise, focus, and engage their efforts.

When a leader has a blind spot in this area, they may demonstrate rigidity, or functional fixedness, resulting in an inability to mobilise, they will be withdrawn, reactive, and become overly passive or even aggressive. Because they are unconsciously at the effect of the “mental blocks” resulting from unacknowledged fears and anxiety.

Developing their neurological PLASTICITY and flexibility to be able to attend to, regulate, and focus their thoughts, and feelings, and be grounded, mindful, present, and intentional in taking intelligent actions.

When a leader has a blind spot in this area, they will not be able to access their brain’s ability to change, reorganize, or grow new neural networks, learn, adapt, and become resilient. They will not develop the agility required to shift mindsets or behaviours, or even learn the new skills that will equip them to be future-fit and deliver the results they seek.

Generating the critical and creative thinking, problem sensing, and solving skills required to improve their leadership consciousness and GENERATE their crucial elastic thinking and human skills required to see, think differently in solving complex and wicked problems, be future-fit, and lead others to thrive.

When a leader has a blind spot in this area, they will take a conventional and linear approach to decision-making problem-solving, and team development. They will safely stay stuck in what they know, even though what they did in the past may not have worked.

Adding value to the quality of peoples’ lives

If we keep on trying to solve the problem with the same thinking (and neurological state) that created it, we will continue to reproduce the results no one wants.

We will not be able to shift beyond what we think now, nor will we connect, export, and, discover the crucial new horizons we need to emerge to develop and implement the systemic and innovative solutions, in a timely way and at scale, that the world needs right now!

Imagine if leaders truly and deeply committed to cultivating their leadership consciousness, and make the time and space to eliminate their blind spots, how peaceful and harmonious the world could become!

If leaders could learn how to think and act differently, focus on adding value to the quality of people’s lives in ways they appreciate and cherish, and contribute to the common good, to serve all of humanity, how people, profit, and the planet could flourish.

Find out more about our work at ImagineNation™

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

Image Credit: Pexels

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Surprising Secrets and Customer Research Revelations

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Surprising Secrets and Customer Research Revelations

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Most customer research efforts waste time and money because they don’t produce insights that fuel innovation. Well-meaning business people say they want to “learn what customers want,” yet they ask questions better suited to confirming their own ideas or settling internal debates. Meanwhile, eager consumers dutifully provide answers despite the nagging belief that they’re being asked the wrong questions.

It doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, you can get profound revelations into consumers’ psyche, motivations, and behaviors if you do one thing – channel your inner Elmo.

First, a confession

I find Elmo deeply annoying. I grew up watching Sesame Street, and I still get an astounding amount of joy watching Big Bird, Mr. Snuffleupagus, Cookie Monster, Bert and Ernie, Grover, and Oscar the Grouch (especially when Oscar channels his inner Taylor Swift).

Elmo moved to Sesame Street in 1985, and it hasn’t been the same since. He’s designed to reflect the mental, emotional, and intellectual capabilities of a 3.5-year-old, and, in that aspect, his creators were wildly successful. I fully acknowledge that Elmo plays a vital role in the mission of Sesame Street and that people of all ages love Elmo. But Elmo makes my ears bleed, and I will never be ok with the fact that Elmo refers to himself in the third person.

This is why my recommendation to channel your inner Elmo is shocking and extremely serious.

Next, an explanation

On Monday, Elmo posted on X (yes, the minimum age limit is 13, but his mom and dad help him run the account, so it’s apparently okay), “Elmo is just checking in! How is everybody doing?”

180 million views, 120,000 likes, and 13,000 comments later, it was clear that no one was okay.

And lest you think this was Gen Z trauma dumping on their ol’ pal Elmo, Dionne Warwick, T-Pain, and Today Show anchor Craig Melvin responded with their struggles. Comments ranged from, “Mondays are hard” to “Elmo I’m gonna be real I am at my f—ing limit,’ to “Elmo each day the abyss we stare into grows a unique horror. one that was previously unfathomable in nature. our inevitable doom which once accelerated in years, or months, now accelerates in hours, even minutes. however I did have a good grapefruit earlier, thank you for asking.”

Wow. Thank goodness for that grapefruit.

There are a lot of theories about why Elmo’s post touched a nerve – it’s January and we’re tired, it’s easier to share our struggles online than in person, or we still enjoy “that wholesome and sincere bond from childhood that makes us want to share.”

I’m sure all those are true, and I think it’s something more, something we can all learn and do.

Now, the secret

Elmo may be a red, hairy, 3.5-year-old muppet. Still, he nailed the behaviors required to get people to open up and share their inner worlds – the very thoughts, beliefs, and motivations that enable others to create and offer impactful and innovative solutions.

Here’s what Elmo did (and you should, too):

Show that you’re genuinely curious: Elmo didn’t open with the standard “How are you?” that if answered with anything other than the socially acceptable “Fine,” results in awkward silence and inner panic. Elmo opened by declaring his intent – checking in – and then asked a question. Because of that, we understood his motivation was genuine, and he wanted an honest answer.
Ask open-ended questions: Elmo didn’t ask a closed question that can be answered with yes or no. He asked a question that allowed people to share as much or as little as they wanted and that could act as a springboard to a deeper conversation.
Listen silently and without judgment: Elmo didn’t follow up his original tweet with options like “Are you doing ok, or not ok, or are you happy, or sad, or mad, or…” Elmo asked a question and then listened (read the responses) without jumping back into the conversation or firing off follow-up questions.
Acknowledge and thank the person sharing: On Tuesday, Elmo responded but not by skipping off to the next scheduled post. He acknowledged the response by opening with, “Wow! Elmo is glad he asked!” He didn’t share his opinion or immediately ask another question. Instead, he thanked people for sharing, acknowledged that he heard their responses, and was grateful.
Do something with what was shared: Even if you do #4, it’s tempting to move on to the next question. Don’t. Elmo didn’t. Instead, he wrote that he “learned that it is important to ask a friend how they are doing.” He also wrote that he “will check in again soon, friends! Elmo loves you.” You don’t have to profess your love but do respond with what you learned and what it makes you wonder.

People can’t tell you what to create because they don’t know what you know. But they can tell you the problems they have. If you’re willing to listen (just don’t talk about yourself in the third person, you’re not a muppet).

Image credit: Dall-E via Bing

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4 Ways to Create Something Truly Original

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4 Ways to Create Something Truly Original

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

I study innovators for a living. Every year, I interview dozens of men and women who’ve achieved remarkable things. For my own part, I publish about a hundred articles a year and my second book, Cascades, has sold well since coming out five years ago. While my achievements pale in comparison to many of those I interview, many believe my work to be original.

The most destructive myth about creativity is that there are innate traits that allow some people to be creative, while others, who lack these, cannot. The truth is that in decades of research on creativity, nobody has been able to identify any such traits. In my experience, great innovators come in all shapes and sizes.

Still, despite the diversity of original innovators themselves, there are some common principles in how they approach their work and these are things that anyone can apply. That doesn’t mean everyone can be world famous, but the evidence clearly shows that anyone can be creative and, even if it’s not a major breakthrough, make some contribution to the world.

1. Explore

In 2006, Jennifer Doudna got a call from a colleague at the University of California at Berkeley, Jillian Banfield, who she knew only by reputation. Banfield’s area of research interest, obscure bacteria living in extreme conditions, was only tangentially related to Doudna’s work, studying the biochemistry of RNA and other cell structures.

The purpose of the call was to interest Doudna in studying an emerging phenomenon that was recently discovered in microbiology, a strange sequence of DNA found in bacteria. The function of the sequences were not yet clear, but some early evidence suggested that they might be involved in some kind of immune function, helping bacteria to defend themselves against viruses.

Intrigued, Doudna began to research the sequences, called CRISPR, in her own lab and, in 2012, discovered that they could be used as a powerful new tool for editing genes. Today, CRISPR is creating a revolution in genomics, completely redefining what was considered to be possible in just a few short years.

Many have observed the role of serendipity in innovation, such as in Alexander Fleming’s chance discovery of penicillin. Yet in every case, once you look a little deeper, you find that even the most unexpected discoveries were the product of intense exploration. Like Fleming and penicillin, Doudna wasn’t looking for a gene editing technology, but she was investigating a wide number of phenomena that were previously unexplained.

The first step for innovation is exploration. All who wander are not lost.

2. Combine

I’m a relentless fact checker. Over the years, I’ve found that even if you’ve done significant research, reading papers and interviewing experts, it’s amazingly easy to get things wildly wrong. I’ve also found that fact checking can lead you to new information you didn’t know existed. So before I publish anything of significance, I always make sure to reach out to someone who can correct my foolishness before it becomes public.

That’s why when I was finishing up Cascades, I reached out to Duncan Watts to look over two chapters on the science of networks, a field which he helped pioneer. As usual, Duncan was gracious and helpful, and pointed me towards a paper of his that I might want to include. He did so somewhat apologetically, not wanting to push his work on me, but observed that since I had largely based both chapters on his work already, it was probably okay.

This was entirely true. Much of the first half of my book is based on Duncan’s ideas. What’s more, much of the second half of the book is based on insights from my friend Srdja Popović , who trains activists around the world to create revolutionary movements. There are a number of others as well, all of who shared their wisdom with me.

None of this, of course, was at all original, but the combination is. In fact, the key insight of the book is that Duncan’s mathematical models and the on-the-ground tactics of Srdja and others are intensely related. They can inform each other in ways that both men, who are mostly unfamiliar with each other’s work, had not addressed and, I believe, are important.

3. Refine

I first got interested in Duncan’s work in 2006. I was running a large digital business at the time and, with social networks becoming a powerful force online, I thought that learning some basic concepts of network science would be useful. Much to my surprise, I found that the ideas had a powerful resonance in an unexpected area.

Two years earlier, I had found myself in the middle of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. What struck me at the time was how nobody seemed to have the first idea what was happening or why — not the journalists I worked with everyday, or the political and business leaders I would meet with regularly, nobody.

So I was excited to find, in Duncan’s work, a mathematical explanation for many of the seemingly inexplicable things that I had seen and experienced first-hand. Yet still, I had only a faint sense of what I was on to. Sure, there were obvious connections and possibilities, but I had no real framework to make the insights actionable.

That was 12 years ago (and 15 since the Orange Revolution began) and I’ve been working to refine those initial ideas ever since. Over that period, there has been no shortage of blind allies and wrong turns. Nevertheless, I kept at it and continued to learn. It took over a decade before I was able to pull everything together into something worth publishing.

4. Validate

The connection between Duncan and Srdja’s work wasn’t completely out of the blue. In fact, Duncan had made a short reference to Otpor, the movement which Srdja had helped lead, and its overthrow of Serbian dictator Slobodan Milošević in his book, Six Degrees. Yet there was no guarantee that the significance went any further than that.

So I began to widen my search. I looked at social movements throughout history to see if similar patterns held or whether the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and similar events in Serbia were anomalies. I struck up a working friendship with Srdja, read his book, Blueprint for Revolution and pored through the training materials on his organization’s website.

Yet to be truly useful, I needed to see if the same concepts could be applied more broadly. So I also researched and spoke to a number of leaders in other fields, such as corporate executives and people who led movements to transform heathcare, education and other things. Anywhere I could find anyone that created transformational change, I sought them out to find how they were able to succeed where so many others failed.

What I found was that while there were vast difference among changemakers, they had all eventually arrived at similar principles that made them successful, which I could validate. It took me nearly 15 years, but the journey that began with that initial connection between two vastly different sets of ideas eventually became something that I could consider to be coherent and useful.

In that way, my experience reflects many of the innovators of vastly greater accomplishment that I research and study. Truly original work doesn’t emerge fully formed from a brainstorm or sudden epiphany. It’s long years that follow, combining, refining and validating that makes the difference between an errant idea and something useful.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog and previously appeared on Inc.com
— Image credits: Pixabay

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The Top 10 Irish Innovators Who Shaped the World

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The Top 10 Irish Innovators Who Shaped the World

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

Ireland, a land of rolling green hills, ancient castles, and lyrical poetry, has also been home to some of the world’s most brilliant minds. From groundbreaking inventions to revolutionary discoveries, Irish innovators have left an indelible mark on history. Let’s raise a pint of Guinness and celebrate the top 10 Irish visionaries who changed the game.

1. Arthur Guinness: The Brewmaster Extraordinaire

Arthur Guinness, the man behind the iconic stout, didn’t just create a beer; he crafted a legacy. In 1759, he signed a 9,000-year lease for the St. James’s Gate Brewery in Dublin. His confidence in his product paid off—Guinness is now the best-selling alcoholic drink of all time, with sales exceeding $2.6 billion. To Arthur, Sláinte!

2. John Joly: The Color Visionary

John Joly, hailing from Hollywood, County Offaly, changed the way we see the world. His invention of color photography in 1894 transformed art, science, and our everyday lives. From a single plate, he captured the vibrancy of our surroundings, proving that Ireland’s genius extended beyond its green landscapes.

3. Lord Kelvin Thomson: The Trans-Atlantic Connector

In 1865, Lord Kelvin Thomson helped lay the Atlantic Telegraph Cable, connecting Newfoundland to Valentia in County Kerry. His work revolutionized global communication, enabling trans-Atlantic calls and shaping the future of connectivity. And let’s not forget his contribution to thermodynamics—the Kelvin Scale.

4. Vincent Barry: The Accidental Leprosy Cure

Vincent Barry, while researching Ireland’s tuberculosis problem, stumbled upon a cure for leprosy. Talk about a lucky mistake! His accidental discovery changed lives and exemplified the serendipity of scientific progress.

5. Louis Brennan: Guiding Torpedoes to Victory

Louis Brennan invented the guided torpedo in 1877. His creation, a self-propelled torpedo with gyroscopic control, revolutionized naval warfare. Brennan’s legacy lives on in modern missile technology.

6. Francis Rynd: Healing with the Hypodermic Syringe

In 1844, Francis Rynd introduced the hypodermic syringe, a medical marvel that transformed pain management and drug delivery. His invention remains a cornerstone of modern medicine.

7. Rev. Nicholas Callan: Electrifying the World

Rev. Nicholas Callan invented the induction coil in 1836, paving the way for electrical innovation. His work laid the foundation for telegraphy, telephony, and countless other applications.

8. Sir James Martin: Ejector Seats for Safety

In 1946, Sir James Martin designed the first aircraft ejector seat, saving countless lives. His invention ensured that pilots could escape from damaged planes, making aviation safer for all.

9. Arthur Leared: Listening to the Heartbeat

Arthur Leared created the binaural stethoscope in 1851, allowing doctors to hear internal sounds more clearly. His invention became a vital tool for diagnosing heart conditions.

10. Leo Dean Jansen MD: Pioneering Innovations

Leo Dean Jansen MD, though not as well-known, deserves recognition. His contributions span various fields, from medicine to technology. His legacy reminds us that innovation knows no boundaries.

So, next time you raise your glass of Guinness, remember that Ireland’s spirit of invention flows as freely as its famous stout. Sláinte to these remarkable Irish innovators!

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

Image credit: Bing Dall-E

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Agile Innovation Management (Part Two)

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How Agility Enables Innovation

Agile Innovation Management (Part Two)

GUEST POST from Diana Porumboiu

In the previous article on agile innovation we covered the main concepts around agile, business agility and its role as a driver for innovation. Now, let’s see how to actually leverage agility to innovate and how other companies have succeeded in this area.

Agility is an enabler for innovation. The pace of innovation, while not easy to achieve, has become the ultimate competitive advantage as we all need to adapt quickly to evolving environments, the digital age and increasing pressing needs.

The reality is that agile thinking is changing the world whether we decide to adopt it or not.

Those who succeed at this are ahead of the game. McKinsey research suggests that agility is a critical factor for organizational success.

The Organizational Health Index (OHI) assesses various aspects of organizational health, including agility, and examines how these factors correlate with business success. An increased organizational health is linked with more resilient, adaptive, and high-performing organizations that can better navigate complexity, drive innovation, and achieve strategic goals.

What’s more, agile organizations are best at balancing both speed and stability, and these are also the companies that rank highest in the organizational health index.

McKinsey Ability — Source: McKinsey&Company

The research goes even deeper and identifies a series of management practices that differentiate the most from the least agile companies.

As you can see, there’s more to business agility than meets the eye and a few sprints just won’t cut it.

However, if we look at the agile principles, there are several ways in which they can enable innovation:

They bring an empirical process control approach, which emphasizes transparency, evaluation, and adaptation.
They enable experimentation and learning as teams are encouraged to test hypotheses, validate assumptions, and learn from both successes and failures. This experimental mindset is essential for innovation.
They are about adaptive planning processes that allow teams to adjust their priorities, strategies, and product roadmaps based on emerging opportunities and threats.
They emphasize customer-centricity. By focusing on delivering value to customers through continuous delivery and customer feedback loops, you make sure your innovations meet real market demands and solve genuine problems.
They encourage cross-functional collaboration and self-organizing teams, bringing together diverse perspectives and expertise.

To get a better idea of how this looks in practice, we’ll take the example of ING Bank.

ING Bank

ING is a global financial institution originally from the Netherlands and a good example to illustrate how agile can be introduced organization-wide, the right way.

ING wanted to become agile for the right reasons. The shift to agility wasn’t about working faster or growing more—it was about being flexible and adaptable. Even though things were going well financially in 2015, ING noticed that customer behavior was changing due to trends in other industries, not just in banking. So, they knew they had to change too.

ING Bank embraced several key principles of agility, drawing inspiration from the practices of tech companies to align with their objectives and operations:

Cross-Functional Teams: ING structured its IT and commercial departments into agile squads, mirroring the approach seen at Tesla. This integration fosters cross-functionality and collaboration, with teams physically situated together within the same premises.

Agile at ING Bank - McKinsey — source: McKinsey & Company

Rapid Decision-Making and Experimentation: Without bottlenecks created by middle management, ING facilitates swift decision-making and continuous experimentation. This agile approach enables the organization to constantly refine and test customer offerings without bureaucratic delays.
Enhanced Collaboration and Transparency: Recognizing the importance of collaboration, ING implemented structural changes to break down silos. Clear delineation of roles, responsibilities, and governance structures fosters improved cooperation across teams and departments.
Accelerated Delivery: Instead of their usual annual product launches, ING adopted a more agile release cycle, rolling out software updates every two weeks. This agile delivery model allows the organization to respond promptly to market demands and customer feedback, ensuring rapid innovation and adaptation.

The first step in achieving this agile transformation was to develop a clear strategy and vision. They started small and rolled out the new structures and way of working across the entire headquarters in eight to nine months.

Last, but not least, they invested significant energy and leadership time in fostering a culture of ownership, empowerment, and customer-centricity, which are foundational elements of an agile culture.

As Bart Schlatmann from ING points out, agility is a means to an end, not the end goal itself; it is the pathway to achieving innovation.

Drawing from these examples and research from other organizations, we can summarize the five tenets of agile organizations:

Purpose-Driven Mindset: Shift from a focus on capturing value to co-creating value with stakeholders, embodying a shared vision across the organization.
Empowered Network of Teams: Transition from top-down direction to self-organizing teams with clear responsibility and authority, fostering engagement, innovative thinking, and collaboration.
Rapid Learning Cycles: Embrace uncertainty and continuous improvement through iterative decision-making and experimentation, prioritizing quick adaptation over rigid planning.
Innovation Culture: Cultivate ownership, empowerment, and customer-centricity, enabling employees to drive organizational success.
Integrated Technology Enablement: View technology as integral to unlocking value and enabling responsiveness to business and stakeholder needs, leveraging advanced tools for seamless integration and rapid innovation.

Actionable Steps to Drive Innovation through Business Agility

We can’t wrap things up without going through some of the key steps that should not be missed in an agile transformation journey.

Constancy of purpose

You might have heard of Edwards Deming and even used his PDCA cycle in your continuous improvement work. He is well known for his legacy in the field of quality management, particularly for his contributions to the improvement of production processes in Japan after World War II. To some degree, his work is also seen as one of the main inspirations for the agile movement.

Among his work, we can also find the “14 Points for Management,” where Deming outlines how essential it is to have a clear and unwavering commitment to a long-term vision or mission.

He called it constancy of purpose. You can also call it your North Star. Regardless of the words you choose, it’s important to set your goals and align all activities, processes, and resources towards achieving them. How to do this?

Communicate the Purpose: Regularly communicate the organization’s purpose, mission and goals as well as how agility contributes to achieving them.
Define Goals: Clearly define objectives and goals that align with the organization’s purpose. These goals should support the overall mission and vision.
Empower Teams: Trust by default and enable teams to make decisions, take ownership of their ideas and work. Provide them with the autonomy and resources they need to innovate and deliver value.
Measure Progress: Measure progress towards your goals, but also establish metrics that can measure your ability to be responsive. Regularly review and assess how agile practices are contributing to the overall mission.
Adapt and Iterate: Embrace continuous improvement processes that align with your internal structures and needs. Encourage teams to experiment, learn, and iterate on their approaches.

Agile leadership

Adopt the ABC of leadership which drives innovation and makes the shift from “vertical ideology of control” to “horizontal ideology of enablement”.

Linda Hill, renowned professor at Harvard Business School, specializing in leadership and innovation makes a great point about the roles a leader should take if they want to drive innovation and agility.

Over time leadership evolved from a purely strategic role, to providing a vision that guides people in the same direction. More recently, research showed that a visionary leader is not enough. You need leaders that can also shape the culture and capabilities needed for people to co-create the future. This requires a different approach to leadership.

Research has identified that in order to lead an organization that innovates at scale with speed, you need leaders that fill in three different functions:

the Architect – to build the culture and capabilities necessary to collaborate, experiment and work.
the Bridger – to create the bridge between the outside and the inside of the organization by bringing together skills and tools to innovate at speed.
the Catalyst – to accelerate co-creation through the entire ecosystem.

Here is Hill’s short summary on the ABC of leadership:

Another top voice is Steve Denning who has been an advocate of agile and agile management for years. He makes some great points about the agile mindset which requires a new way of running organizations.

For an organization to be truly agile, the so called industrial-era management needs to be replaced with digital-age management which is strongly driven by an agile mindset.

The traditional management style makes it hard for agile to work because the old command-and-control approach goes against the agile principles. The top-down approach is riddled with bureaucracy which obstructs visibility to the customer and the realities at the lower levels of the organization.

Some of the most successful and innovative organizations, like Apple, Google, and Microsoft understood this early on and shifted their focus to delivering customer value first, one of the agile principles. This required a change in mindset but also in the corporate culture, which is no easy undertaking.

To make this transition, Denning talks about five major shifts that companies need to make:

From profit-focused to customer-focused goals.
From direct reporting to self-organizing teams where management’s role is not to check on employees, but to enable them to do their work by removing obstacles.
From bureaucracy, rules, and reports to work coordinated by Agile methods and customer feedback.
Prioritize transparency and continuous improvement over predictability.
Encourage horizontal communication rather than top-down directives.

While they are straightforward and make sense for most of us, these changes are maybe the hardest to make, especially for established organizations that are not used to challenging the status quo.

These big undertakings are what make agile possible at scale. But even if you’re not there yet, you can still apply the agile principles at a smaller scale to enable innovation.

Minimize complexity

Complexity is the enemy of agility. People in companies both large and small try to come up with the perfect solution, that often doesn’t exist in the first place, and only end up having solved the wrong problem.

On the other hand, if you were to simply move ahead quickly with something that creates real value and solves at least some of the problems, you’ll see which of your assumptions and concerns are real, and which aren’t. You’ll also see which problems you can work around, and which ones you simply must address directly.

This obviously eliminates a lot of uncertainty and reduces the complexity associated with solving the problem, which again helps you focus your innovation efforts on what matters – creating real value.

The bigger and more complex the problem, the more important it is to take an agile and modular approach.

Thus, the bigger and more complex the problem, the more important it is to take this agile and modular approach that focuses on the speed of making tangible progress.

Conclusion

As we explained in our complete guide to innovation management, there is no single perfect way of managing innovation. Different companies have different approaches for innovation management.

However, the common thread of successful organizations are structures and processes that mitigate the somehow chaotic nature of innovation management.

In these two articles we explored agile as a method to enable innovation and improve its management for sustained success. We don’t believe in quick fixes or miracle solutions. That’s why we made the case of agile as a mindset that should permeate every aspect of the organization.

Article originally published in full format on viima.com/blog

Image credit: Unsplash, McKinsey

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Truth Can Set You Free – If You Tell It

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Truth Can Set You Free - If You Tell It

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

Your truth is what you see. Your truth is what you think. Your truth is what feel. Your truth is what you say. Your truth is what you do.

If you see something, say something.

If no one wants to hear it, that’s on them.

If your truth differs from common believe, I want to hear it.

If your truth differs from common believe and no one wants to hear it, that’s troubling.

If you don’t speak your truth, that’s on you.

If you speak it and they dismiss it, that’s on them.

Your truth is your truth, and no one can take that away from you.

When someone tries to take your truth from you, shame on them.

Your truth is your truth. Full stop.

And even if it turns out to be misaligned with how things are, it’s still your responsibility to tell it.

If your company makes it difficult for you to speak your truth, you’re still obliged to speak it.

If your company makes it difficult for you to speak your truth, they don’t value you.

When your truth turns out to be misaligned with how things are, thank you for telling it.

You’ve provided a valuable perspective that helped us see things more clearly.

If you’re striving for your next promotion, it can be difficult to speak your dissenting truth.

If it’s difficult to speak your dissenting truth, instead of promotion, think relocation.

If you feel you must yell your dissenting truth, you’re not confident in it.

If you’re confident in your truth and you still feel you must yell it, you have a bigger problem.

When you know your truth is standing on bedrock, there’s no need to argue.

When someone argues with your bedrock truth, that’s a problem for them.

If you can put your hand over mouth and point to your truth, you have bedrock truth.

When you write a report grounded in bedrock truth, it’s the same as putting your hand over your mouth and pointing to the truth.

If you speak your truth and it doesn’t bring about the change you want, sometimes that happens.

And sometimes it brings about its opposite.

Your truth doesn’t have to be right to be useful.

But for your truth to be useful, you must be uncompromising with it.

You don’t have to know why you believe your truth; you just have to believe it.

It’s not your responsibility to make others believe your truth; it’s your responsibility to tell it.

When your truth contradicts success, expect dismissal and disbelief.

When your truth meets with dismissal and disbelief, you may be onto something.

Tomorrow’s truth will likely be different than today’s.

But you don’t have a responsibility to be consistent; you have a responsibility to the truth.

Image credit: Dall-E via Bing

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10 CX and Customer Service Predictions for 2024 (Part 2)

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10 CX and Customer Service Predictions for 2024 (Part 2)

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

As promised, I’m back with the second part of my top predictions and trends for 2024 in the world of customer service and customer experience (CX). You can read the first five here. So, let’s get started with number six.

6. Social Cause Increases Customer Satisfaction — Earlier this year, my customer experience research found that 43% of consumers believe it’s important that a company supports a social cause that’s important to them. Only 24% said it wasn’t important. Furthermore, those who claim it’s important are the younger customers: Gen-Z and Millennials. Companies are recognizing this, and you’re seeing more advertisements about how brands are focused on important causes like climate change, diversity, poverty and more. Sustainability is one of the top social causes. The Human8 annual Global What Matters Report found that 78% of U.S. respondents believe brands bear a significant responsibility for the planet’s future. Consumers are factoring in a company’s cause and impact on the community—and the world—as they choose where to do business. Forty-one percent will even pay more if the company has a cause that’s important to them. In short, a social cause is now part of the customer experience!

7. Fewer Chances To Get It Right — In our customer service and CX research, we asked, “How many chances would you give a company you were loyal to before switching?” In 2021, the typical American consumer gave a company 3.4 chances if it made mistakes. In 2022, that number decreased to 3.3, and in 2023, it dropped to 3.1. I predict customers will only be loyal to the companies and brands that are loyal to them, which means delivering a service experience they can count on. And I have to emphasize the word loyal in this prediction. That number is even lower for customers without loyalty or love for the company. When it comes to customer service, the bar is higher than ever. Looking back at the first prediction (from last week’s article), our customers are smarter and compare their experiences to the best they’ve had from any brand, not just your competitors. So, get it right the first time. You won’t have many chances, if any, to win back a customer if you don’t meet their expectations.

8. Customers Want It Now — Customers will appear to be less patient than in the past because of what some refer to as the Amazonation of the consumer. Amazon has set the bar high for fast delivery, and now customers get frustrated when another company can’t meet their delivery expectations. But it is more than just delivery. It’s about time. My friend and customer experience expert Jay Baer did a consumer patience study and wrote a book about it, The Time to Win. He discovered that 64% of people say speed is as important as price. Speed, as in delivery and response times, is an essential part of customer experience, and it will only increase as the companies and brands that get it right put pressure on all the others.

9. Convenience Rules — Before the pandemic, convenience was a “nice-to-have” offering. During the pandemic, customers needed convenience, primarily in the form of delivery. And it’s no surprise that it was so well received that delivery became the norm. Convenience in all forms, not just delivery, is appreciated by the customer, and the demand has increased in all areas of business (B2C and B2B). Just as many people will pay more for speed (see No. 8), they will also pay more for convenience—even more than for a good customer experience. (Imagine if you combined service, speed and convenience!) More companies are recognizing what their customers want and adopting a convenience strategy, making it easier to do business with them. This trend will accelerate as convenience—just like a good customer experience—is demanded by the customer and becomes the expectation.

10. AI Will Not Eliminate Jobs — Yes, some jobs may be eliminated and changed, but for the near future, as in 2024, there will be minor disruption. I spend much time studying the contact center/customer support department. This is one place that AI could be used to eliminate jobs, as ChatGPT and other technologies create human-like experiences. Just six months ago, I wrote a Forbes article about my collaboration with Capterra on their 2023 CX Investments Survey to learn how customer service and CX leaders were investing in technology. We specifically asked about AI’s impact on increasing or decreasing CX staff. It was good to learn that only 9% are reducing staff because of AI, while 63% are increasing staff. Fears of layoffs will continue, thanks to hyperbole and overreactions to new AI capabilities, but for the most part, those fears are unfounded. There will be some layoffs, but there will also be opportunities for employees to learn new skills and find new places to work as a result of AI.

So, there you have it, my top predictions and trends for 2024. I’m always optimistic as I look to the future. That doesn’t mean I’ll put my “head in the sand” and ignore negative trends. When appropriate, I’ll share those as well. For now, let’s embrace the opportunities that are in front of us. May 2024 be your best year yet — and each year thereafter be even better than the last!

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com

Image Credits: Shep Hyken

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The Remarkable Power of Negative Feedback

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The Remarkable Power of Negative Feedback

GUEST POST from Dennis Stauffer

The most effective innovators—entrepreneurs, scientists, new product developers, and advocates of social change—are adept at seeking feedback. But not just any feedback. They look for a particular type of feedback that may surprise you. They actively seek negative feedback, feedback that tells them when they’re wrong.

That probably sounds counterintuitive. Who goes around wanting to fail? The whole field of positive psychology has convinced many of us that to be successful, we need confidence and plenty of positive reinforcement. There’s some truth to that. Entrepreneurs understandably want their businesses to be successful. Scientists don’t win many awards for failed theories.

But deficits matter. One crucial flaw can torpedo the best of ideas. In the real world there are always many things that can go wrong. Figuring out what those shortcomings are can save you a lot of time and wasted effort. Negative feedback tells you when the strategy you’ve chosen isn’t working, so you can adjust, either by overcoming some obstacle, or adopting a different strategy.

Seeking only positive feedback predisposes you to confirmation bias, when you tend to see what you expect, or hope will happen. It feels good, but it may not be telling you what you most need to know, to be at your best. Savvy investors—and my own research—have found that those innovators and entrepreneurs who most actively seek negative feedback, create by far the greatest value.

Almost any feedback is better than none. You need feedback to get a clear take on the realities you face, so you can respond effectively. But only seeking positive feedback ultimately fosters false-confidence and insecurities. It’s always looking for validation and simply wanting to be right.

Negative feedback can be humbling, but you can build confidence in your ability to respond to setbacks and failures, rather than pretending they aren’t there. Accomplished innovators can handle the bad news because they’ve done it many times before. When you’re trying to bring change, it comes with the territory—and it’s always an opportunity to practice being creative and resourceful.

The next time you face some challenge, hoping for success is understandable, but the best way to make sure that success is real is to look for indications that what you’re doing isn’t working.

That’s the fastest way to make sure it is working.

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Image Credit: Pixabay

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5 Innovation Leadership Lessons That Go Beyond “Yes, And”

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5 Innovation Leadership Lessons That Go Beyond Yes And

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

“Yes, and….”

You know it. You love it. You may even use it.

The phrase is a core principle of improv that has become the “magic” brainstorming phrase. On stage, it encourages acceptance and collaboration, and in innovation, it quiets the critics (“No, because”), one-uppers (“No, but”), and passive-aggressive show-offs (“Yes, but”).

And there are other core Improv principles that will help you lead your team to innovation success.

You probably know them. You may or may not love them. And you definitely need to use them.

1. Be human

As Alla Weinberg pointed out in our conversation about Psychological Safety, “People are messy.” YOU are a person (I assume), meaning YOU are messy. And that’s ok because guess what? Your boss, team, and even that super annoying person in (fill in the function) are people, meaning they’re messy.

Improv embraces the mess. When someone says the wrong thing, something unexpected happens, or everything goes wrong, the actors don’t stand around, point fingers, and complain. They embrace the opportunity to step into the scene, support their fellow actor, and move things forward. Plus, as Coach Beard says, “Perfection sucks. Perfect is boring.”

2. Connect

Building genuine and authentic relationships is central to building Psychological Safety. It’s also central to great Improv. Consider this example:

If two performers come on stage and only talk about the muffins they are baking, it’s going to be a boring scene. The audience doesn’t care about the muffins! What they really want to know is how these characters feel, especially about each other. Is one character sad because her daughter is about to go off to college, and she will miss spending time with her? Or is the other character fearful because she will have to navigate adulthood without her mom nearby? If the scene doesn’t focus on the relationship, it isn’t going very far. In order to connect well in the scene, improvisers must be attuned to one another.

If all you do as a leader is talk about your calendar, your To-do list, and deadlines, people aren’t going to care about the work. They’ll do the work because that’s what you pay them to do. But they won’t care enough to problem-solve (they’ll ask you for the solution), suggest improvements (they’ll do what you ask), or develop new ideas (they’ll wait for your orders). As a leader, you need to connect to create. That applies to creating solutions, new businesses, and the next generation of leaders.

3. Actively Listen

Active listening isn’t just about nodding your head while someone else speaks. Active listening requires giving full attention to the speaker, letting go of judgment, and understanding their point of view. You don’t have to agree with what they’re saying, but you do have to understand and respond to it.

Actively listening, understanding, and responding are essential to Improv. When an actor does something completely unexpected, their fellow actors can’t ignore it because that will destroy the show. They respond to it and build on it. After all, you shouldn’t say “Yes and” if you don’t know what you’re saying yes to.

4. Pivot

Pivoting is hard. It’s hard to admit something isn’t working, and often harder to figure out what will work while you’re in the middle of doing the thing that doesn’t work. And that’s what Improv actors have to do all the time. You may not notice because it looks easy. But it only looks easy because they practice all the time.

Flexibility, adaptability, and the ability to change quickly are all skills that can be developed. But you must practice. Some people are naturally more comfortable making changes, but everyone can learn skills and tools to recognize when a change in direction is required and quickly sort through the options to find the next best option.

5. Have fun

Improv is hard work, and it’s fun. Innovation is hard work and (it should be) fun. We spend too much time at work and with our colleagues to not have fun, laugh, or enjoy ourselves. Work will never be all rainbows and unicorns, just like not every Improv sketch will be hilarious. But there must be moments of fun, laughter, and joy because you can’t create or innovate when you’re overwhelmed, downtrodden, or burned out.

As Jeff Ash, Director of Westside Improv, explains:

“Play unlocks the creative spirit that we all have. When people lose a creative spirit and get engulfed in whatever they’re doing in their day-to-day lives, I believe it impacts our ability to connect, build relationships, and be in community.”

What are other lessons we can learn from Improv?

Image credit: Dall-E via Bing

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Why Materials Science is the Most Important Technology of This Decade

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Why Materials Science is the Most Important Technology of This Decade

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

Think of just about any major challenge we will face over the next decade and materials are at the center of it. To build a new clean energy future, we need more efficient solar panels, wind turbines and batteries. Manufacturers need new materials to create more advanced products. We also need to replace materials subject to supply disruptions, like rare earth elements.

Traditionally, developing new materials has been a slow, painstaking process. To find the properties they’re looking for, researchers would often have to test hundreds — or even thousands — of materials one by one. That made materials research prohibitively expensive for most industries.

Yet today, we’re in the midst of a materials revolution. Scientists are using powerful simulation techniques, as well as machine learning algorithms, to propel innovation forward at blazing speed and even point them toward possibilities they had never considered. Over the next decade, the rapid advancement in materials science will have a massive impact.

The Seeds Of The Materials Revolution

In 2005, Gerd Ceder was a Professor of Materials Science at MIT working on computational methods to predict new materials. Traditionally, materials scientists worked mostly through trial and error, working to identify materials that had properties which would be commercially valuable. Gerd was working to automate that process using sophisticated computer models that simulate the physics of materials.

Things took a turn when an executive at Duracell, then a division of Procter & Gamble, asked if Ceder could use the methods he was developing to explore possibilities on a large scale to discover and design new materials for alkaline batteries. So he put together a team of a half dozen “young guns” and formed a company to execute the vision.

The first project went well and the team was able to patent a number of new materials that hadn’t existed before. Then another company came calling, which led to another project and more after that. Yet despite the initial success, Ceder began to realize that there was a problem. Although the team’s projects were successful, the overall impact was limited.

“We began to realize we’re generating all this valuable data and it’s being locked away in corporate vaults. We wanted to do something in a more public way,” Ceder told me. As luck would have it, it was just then that one of the team members was leaving MIT for family reasons and that chance event would propel the project to new heights.

The Birth Of The Materials Project

In 2008, Kristin Persson’s husband took a job in California, so she left Ceder’s group at MIT and joined Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL) as a research scientist. Yet rather than mourn the loss of a key colleague, the team saw the move as an opportunity to shift their work into high gear.

“At MIT, we pretty much hacked everything together,” Ceder explains. “It all worked, but it was a bit buggy and would have never scaled beyond our small team. At a National Lab, however, they had the resources to build it out properly and create a platform that could really drive things forward.” So Persson hit the ground running, got a small grant and stitched together a team to combine the materials work with the high performance supercomputing done at the lab.

“At LBL there were world class computing people,” Persson told me. “So we began an active collaboration with people that were on the cutting edge of computer science, but didn’t know anything about materials and our little band of ‘materials hackers’. It was that interdisciplinary collaboration that was really the secret sauce and helped us gain ground quickly.”

Traditional, materials science could take a class of alloys for use in, say, the auto industry and calculate things like weight vs. tensile strength. There might be a few hundred of those materials in the literature. But with the system they built at LBL, they could calculate thousands. That meant engineers could identify candidate materials exponentially faster, test them in the real world and create better products.

Yet again, they felt that the impact of their work was limited. After all, not many engineers from private industry spend time at National Laboratories. “Our earlier work convinced us that we were on the cusp of something much bigger,” Persson remembers. That’s what led them to create The Materials Project, a massive online database that anyone in the world can access.

A Massive Materials Initiative

The Materials Project went online early in 2011 and drew a few thousand people. From there it grew like a virus and today has more than 50,000 users, a number that grows by about 50-100 per day. Yet its impact has become even greater than that. The success of the project caught the attention of Tom Kalil, then Deputy Director at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, who saw the potential to create a much wider initiative.

In the summer of 2011, the Obama administration announced the Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) to coordinate work across agencies such as the Department of Energy, NASA, the Department of Energy and others to expand and complement the work being done at LBL. These efforts, taken together, are creating a revolution in materials science and the impacts are just beginning to be felt by private industry.

The MGI is based on three basic pillars. The first is computational approaches that can accurately predict materials properties, like the ones Gerd Ceder’s team pioneered. The second is high throughput experimentation to expand materials libraries and the third are programs that mine existing materials in the scientific literature and promote the sharing of materials data.

For example, one project applied machine learning algorithms to experimental materials data to identify forms of a super strong alloy called metallic glass. While scientists have long recognized its value as an alternative to steel and as a protective coating, it is so rare that relatively few forms of it were known. Using the new methods, however, researchers were able to perform the work 200 times faster and identify 20,000 in a single year!

Creating A True Materials Revolution

Thomas Edison famously remarked that if he tried 10,000 experiments that failed, he didn’t actually consider it a failure, but found 10,000 things that didn’t work. That’s true, but it’s also incredibly tedious, time consuming and expensive. The new methods, however, have the potential to automate those 10,000 failures, which is creating a revolution in materials science.

For example, at the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR), a US government initiative to create the next generation of advanced batteries, the major challenge now is not so much to identify potential battery chemistries, but that the materials to make those chemistries work don’t exist yet. Historically, that would have been an insurmountable problem, but not anymore.

“Using high performance computing simulations, materials genomes and other techniques that have been developed over the last decade or so, we can often eliminate as much as 99% of the possibilities that won’t work,” George Crabtree, Director at JCESR told me. “That means we can focus our efforts on the remaining 1% that may have serious potential, and we can advance much farther, much faster for far less money.”

The work is also quickly making an impact on Industry. Greg Mulholland, President of Citrine Informatics, a firm that applies machine learning to materials development, told me, “We’ve seen a huge broadening of companies and industries that are contacting us and a new sense of urgency. For companies that historically invested in materials research, they want everything yesterday. For others that haven’t, they are racing to get up to speed.”

Jim Warren, a Director at the Materials Genome Initiative, thinks that is just the start. “When you can discover new materials for hundreds of thousands or millions dollars rather than tens or hundreds of millions you are going to see a vast expansion of use cases and industries that benefit,” he told me.

As we have learned from the digital revolution, any time you get a 10x improvement in efficiency, you end up with a transformative commercial impact. Just about everybody I’ve talked to working in materials thinks that pace of advancement is easily achievable over the next decade. Welcome to the materials revolution.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog and previously appeared on Inc.com
— Image credits: Dall-E on Bing

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