How Do You Know If Your Idea is Novel?

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GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

When your idea is novel, no one will steal it. No NDA required.

If your idea is truly novel, no one will value it. And that’s how you’ll know it’s novel.

When your idea is novel, no one will adopt it. This isn’t much of a stretch as, due to not-invented-here (NIH), no one will adopt anyone else’s idea – novel or not.

When your idea is novel, it will be misunderstood, even by you.

When your idea is novel, it will evolve into something else and then something else. And then it might be ready for Prime Time.

Novel ideas are like orchids – they need love beyond the worth of their blossom.

If your idea hasn’t failed three times, it’s not worth a damn.

The gestation period for novel ideas is long; if it comes together quickly, it’s not novel.

The best way to understand your novel idea is to make a prototype. And then another one.

Your first novel idea won’t work, but it will inform the next iteration. And that one won’t work either, and the cycle continues. But that’s how it goes with novel ideas.

If everyone likes your novel idea, it isn’t novel.

If no one likes your novel idea, you may be on to something.

If you’re not misunderstood, you’re doing it wrong.

If your dog likes your idea, you can’t say much because he loves you unconditionally and will always tell you what you want to hear.

If you think your novel idea will create a whole new product line in two years, your timeline is off by a factor of three, or five.

If your most successful business unit tries to squash your novel idea it’s because it threatens them. Stomp on the accelerator.

When you are known to give air cover to novel ideas, the best people want to work for you.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Can You Become the Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company?

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Can You Become the Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company?

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

If I asked 10 people who they thought could be planet Earth’s most customer-centric company, I bet a majority would have the same answer. I’ll share that company’s name at the end of this article. For now, you can guess.

Cindy, from my office, had a customer service issue. Here are the steps she took to resolve the problem:

  1. She went to the company’s website and clicked on customer support.
  2. She answered a few questions, and once the technology identified her problem, a chatbot popped up.
  3. After interacting with the chatbot briefly, the bot wrote, “Let me transfer you to an agent,” moving from a chatbot to live chat.
  4. At some point, the agent suggested getting on the phone, and rather than have Cindy call, she asked for Cindy’s number. Once Cindy shared it, the phone rang almost instantly.
  5. From there, the agent carried out a conversation that eventually resolved Cindy’s problem.

I asked Cindy how she liked that experience, and she quickly answered, “Amazing!”

Just a few minutes later, Cindy received a short survey asking for her feedback with the message:

Your feedback is helping us build Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company.

With that in mind, let’s look at some lessons we can learn from the company that aspires to be the most customer-centric company on the planet:

  1. Digital First – The company made it easy to start the customer support process with a digital self-service solution. While there was a live agent option, it wasn’t presented until later. Cindy had to answer a few questions and click a few boxes before moving on. And this part is important. The process was easy and intuitive. She was digitally “hand-held” through the process, which included the chatbot.
  2. The Human Backup – The chatbot was programmed to understand when it wasn’t getting Cindy’s answer, and it immediately transferred her to a live chat with a customer support agent. Eventually, the live online chat turned into a phone call when the agent wanted more details and knew it would be easier to talk than text. Rather than Cindy calling the company, she simply had to enter her phone number into the chat, and within seconds, the phone rang, and she was talking to the customer support agent.
  3. A Seamless Omni-Channel Experience – The definition of an omni-channel experience is a continuous conversation moving from one form of communication to the next. Cindy went from answering questions on the website to a chatbot, to live chat, and then to the phone. All was seamless, and the “conversation” continued rather than forcing Cindy to tell her story repeatedly. The agent on the phone picked up where the chat ended and quickly solved her problem. This is the way omni-channel is supposed to work.

This is a perfect example of the modern customer support experience. And did you guess what company this article is about? If you said Amazon, you’re absolutely right!

Image Credits: Shep Hyken, Pexels

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How well do you know your customers?

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How well do you know your customers?

GUEST POST from Howard Tiersky

Early in my career, I had the chance to lead a product development team in creating a new kind of internal communication platform for large accounting firms. Our target users were auditors and tax consultants. We worked with those types of people often, so we felt we knew what they needed.

We “checked the box” that we knew our customers, got creative and came up with the idea that we loved. It was innovative, creative, exciting. It still brings a smile to my face, remembering how awesome an idea it was. We worked eighteen hours a day for months on that idea. We were inspired and committed to the product fulfilling its potential. We were on a mission.

So, what happened when the product launched?

The features we thought were so fantastic were of marginal importance to our users, and we had overlooked some of their critical needs. Also, the product had some major usability problems, because we didn’t fully understand all the circumstances under which the product would be used. It was a disaster; our sponsors pulled the plug. We couldn’t believe it! We had cared so much! We had tried so hard! But truthfully, it was entirely predictable.

We fell in love with our idea, instead of falling in love with our users. We wanted our product to fulfill its potential, instead of thinking about how to help our customers fulfill their potential.

These mistakes are not uncommon. According to Nielsen, 85% of new products fail, no doubt for multiple reasons.

Imagine this: your next product has a set of features that solved a huge problem for your customers. Those features were communicated in a way they found easy to understand, and the product was available at a price they were ready to pay. Do you think that product would have an 85% chance of failure?

How well do you know your customer? What does it even mean to “know” your customer?

The Front End of Innovation conference (FEI) asked me to speak at once of their conferences about the five key challenges large enterprises face around innovation. Lack of true customer insight is second on that list. Here are a few quick tactics to help you incorporate the “Voice of the Customer” into your product development process:

1. Humility

Have you ever bought something expensive, that you totally intended to use, but once you bought it, you only used it once, and then barely ever again? Or you committed to a gym membership, and then never went?

The reality is, we don’t even know ourselves all that well! Acknowledge that it’s no small feat to understand someone else well enough to predict their future behavior.

2. Get Specific

What do you need to know about your potential customers or users of your product that would really make a difference?

  • Why do they do business with you?
  • What are their unmet needs?
  • How is their world changing?
  • Who else is courting them?
  • What do they like least about your product/service?
  • There’s something that, if you could do, would make them pay double: what is it?

3. Involvement

It’s not enough to have one market research person who supposedly understands the customer. Ideally, you want everyone on the team to have a tangible understanding of your product’s user. Just reading someone else’s PowerPoint overview really doesn’t give you the kind of gut understanding. I like to have everyone on our product design team spend at least a couple of days trailing customers and watching them in their native habitats. This allows the team to really understand the customers’ world and their current reality. Team members always come back from that type of personal experience full of ideas.

4. Iteration

The world is changing fast, and so are your customers. You have to keep studying them and learn how their needs are changing. As your product moves from an idea to a prototype, to beta, take every opportunity you can to study how users react.

5. 4D Listening

Lastly, when you’re studying your customers, try to see past the surface of what they’re telling you they need to what they actually need. Henry Ford once said, “If I asked my customers what they wanted, they would say ‘faster horses.’” Which is exactly it! Your customers may not be able to envision the kind of solutions your product team can conceive. So listen past their stated requests, to fully understand their underlying concerns and needs. Your customers want to go faster, and hopefully, you can come up with a far more practical solution than trying to breed faster horses.

Which of these is most important in your experience?

This article originally appeared on the Howard Tiersky blog
Image Credit: Pexels

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Does Saying Innovation Make You Sound Stupid?

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Does Saying Innovation Make You Sound Stupid?

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

“You sound stupid when you use the word ‘_____________’ because you’re trying to sound smart.”Mark Cuban

What goes in the blank?

For Mark Cuban, it’s “cohort” because “there’s no reason to ever use the word ‘cohort’ when you could use the word ‘group.’  A cohort is a group of people.  Say ‘group.’ Always use the simpler word.”

For one of my former bosses, it was “breakthrough.”  He would throw you out of the room if you used that word.  Not physically throw you out, but he was a big guy and could if you didn’t exit on your own.

For me, it’s “disrupt” (and all its forms) because applies (as originally intended by Clayton Christensen) in only about 0.1% of the instances in which it’s used.

There are other candidates.

Lots of other candidates.

In fact, I would go so far as to propose the biggest buzzword of them all: INNOVATION.

“Innovation” does not make you sound smart.

Here is a very short list of the most commonly heard statements about innovation.

  • Innovation is a priority.
  • Innovation is key to our growth.
  • We need to be more innovative.
  • We want to build/are committed to building a culture of innovation
  • Let’s innovate!

What do these statements even mean?

  • It’s great that innovation is a priority and key to our growth.  Hasn’t that always been the case?  What is changing? How is that translating into action? What do you expect from me?
  • Agree we should be more innovative.  How? What does “more innovative” look like?
  • Definitely want to be part of a culture of innovation.  What does that mean?  How is that different than our current culture?  What changes? How do we make sure the changes stick?
  • Sigh. Eye roll.

Saying what you mean makes you sound smart.

Always use the simpler word, and, in the case of innovation, there is always a simpler word or phrase.  Consider:

  • Grow revenue from our existing businesses
  • Create new revenue streams
  • Grow profit in our existing businesses
  • Grow profit by launching new high-profit businesses
  • Stay ahead of the competition
  • Create a new category
  • Launch a new product
  • Better serve our current customers
  • Serve new customers
  • Update/extend our current products
  • Increase the effectiveness of our marketing spend
  • Revise our business model to reflect changing consumer and customer expectations
  • Launch a low-cost and good-enough offering that appeals to non-consumers

You sound smart when you use the word(s) that most clearly, concisely, and unambiguously communicate your idea or intention.  “Innovation” does not do that.

Saying “innovation” AND what you mean makes you sound wicked smaht

“Innovation” on its own is lazy.  Simpler words and phrases aren’t nearly as sexy (I can’t imagine Fast Company coming out with “The World’s Best Companies at Creating New Revenue Streams” list).

But when you put them together – smart and sexy:

  • Innovation is a priority.  As a result, we are committing a minimum of $50M a year for the next five years to…
  • Innovation is key to growth.  As a result, we are doubling our investment in…
  • We need to be more innovative.  To achieve this, we are changing how we measure and incentivize executive performance to encourage long-term investments.
  • We want to build a culture of innovation.  As a first step in this process, we are making Kickbox available to any interested employee.
  • Let’s Innovate (Nope, don’t say this.  It’s too cheesy)

Say what you mean. 

If you don’t, people will think you don’t mean what you say.

What other words would you add to this rant?

Image credit: unsplash

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Powering the Google Innovation Machine with the World’s Top Minds

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Powering the Google Innovation Machine with the World's Top Minds

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

It’s no secret that Google is one of the most innovative companies on the planet. Besides pioneering and then dominating the search industry, it has also become a leader in developing futuristic technologies such as artificial intelligence, driverless cars and quantum computing. It has even launched a life science company.

What makes Google so successful is not one particular process, but how it integrates multiple strategies into a seamless whole. For example, Google Brain started out as a 20% time project, then migrated out to its “X” Division to accelerate development and finally came back to the mothership, where it now collaborates closely with engineering teams to build new products.

Yet perhaps its most important strategy, in fact the one that makes much of the rest possible, is how it partners with top scientists in the academic world. This is no “quick hit,” but a well thought out, long-term game plan designed to establish deep relationships based on cutting edge science and embed that knowledge deeply into just about everything Google does.

Building Deep Relationships to the Academic Community

“We design a variety programs that widen and deepen our relationships with academic scientists,” Maggie Johnson, who heads up University Relations at Google, told me. In fact, there are three distinct ways that Google engages directly with scientists beyond the typical research partnerships with universities.

The first is its Faculty Research Awards program, which are small one-year grants, usually to graduate students or postdocs whose work may be of interest to Google. These are unrestricted gifts, although recipients are highly encouraged to publish their work publicly, that allow the company to develop relationships with young talent at the beginning of their careers.

While anybody can apply for a Faculty Research Award, Focused Research Awards are only available by invitation. Typically, these are awarded to more senior researchers that Google has already had some contact with and last two to three years. However, they are also unrestricted grants that researchers can use as they see fit.

The third way that Google engages with scientists to to proactively engage leaders in a particular field of interest. Geoffrey Hinton, for example, is a pioneer in neural networks and widely considered one of the top AI experts in the world. He splits his time between his faculty position at the University of Toronto and working on Google Brain.

“Spinning In” World Class Scientists

The academic research programs provide many benefits to Google as a company. They give access to the most promising students for recruiting, allow it to help shape university curriculums and keep it connected to breakthrough research in important fields. However, the most direct benefits probably come inviting researchers to spend a sabbatical year at Google, which it calls its Visiting Faculty Program.

For example, Andrew Ng, a top AI researcher, decided to spend a year working at Google and quickly formed a close working relationship with two of the company’s brightest minds, Greg Corrado and Jeff Dean, who were interested in what was then a new brand of artificial intelligence called deep learning. Their collaboration became the Google Brain project.

The Visiting Faculty Program touches on everything Google does. Recently they’ve had people visiting the company like John Canny at UC Berkeley, who helped with the development of TPU’s, chips specialized to run Google’s AI algorithms and Michael Rabin, a Turing Award winning mathematician who was working on auction algorithms. For every Google priority, at least one of the world’s top minds is working with the company on it.

What makes the sabbatical program unusual is how deeply it is integrated into everyday work at the company. “In most cases, these scientists have already been working with our teams through one of our other programs, so the groundwork for a productive relationship has already been laid,” Maggie Johnson told me.

Developing “Win-Win” Relationships

One of the things that makes Google’s outreach to researchers work so well is that it is truly a win-win arrangement. Yes, the company gets top experts in important fields to work on its problems, but the researchers themselves get to work with unparalleled tools and data sets. They also get a much better sense of what problems are considered important in a commercial environment.

Katya Scheinberg, a Professor at Lehigh University who focuses on optimization problems, found working at Google to be a logical extension of her earlier collaboration with the company. “I had been working on large-scale machine learning problems and had some connections with Google scientists. So spending part of my sabbatical year at the company seemed fairly natural. I learned a lot about the practical problems that private sector researchers are working on,” she told me.

Since leaving Google, she’s found that her time at the company has shifted the focus of her research. “Working at Google got me interested in some different problems and alerted me to the possibility of applying some approaches I had worked on before to different fields of application.”

Sometimes scholars stay for longer and can have a transformative impact on the company. As noted above, Andrew Ng spent several years at the company. Andrew Moore, a renowned computer scientist and a former Dean of Carnegie Mellon’s computer program, took a leave of absence from his university to set up Google’s Research Center in Pittsburgh. Lasting relationships like these are rare in industry, but incredibly valuable.

Connecting to Discovery Is Something Anyone Can Do, But You Have to Make the Effort

Clearly, Google is an unusual company. There’s not many places that can attract the type of talent that it can. However, just about any business can, for example, support the work of a young graduate student or postdoc at a local university. In much the same way, inviting even a senior researcher to come for a short time is not prohibitively expensive.

Innovation is never a single event, but a process of discovery, engineering and transformation. It is by connecting to discovery that businesses can truly see into the future and develop the next generation of breakthrough products. Unfortunately, few businesses realize the importance of connecting with the academic world.

Make no mistake, if you don’t discover, you won’t invent and if you don’t invent you will be disrupted eventually. It’s just a matter of time. However, you can’t just show up one day and decide you want to work with the world’s greatest minds. Even Google, with all its resources and acumen, has had to work really hard at it.

It’s made these investments in time, focus and resources because it understands that the search business, as great as it is, won’t deliver outsized profits forever. Today, we no longer have the luxury to manage for stability, but must prepare for disruption.

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

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What Differentiates High Performing Teams

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What Differentiates High Performing Teams

GUEST POST from David Burkus

How do you build a high performing team?

If you think like most people, you will start with acquisition. You will start by thinking about how you can convince higher performing people to join the team. But the truth is that the so called “War For Talent” this acquisition mindset kicked off wasn’t worth the cost. It’s not that there’s no such thing as high performing individuals, it’s that high performance is highly dependent on team dynamics. Research from Boris Groysberg and others found that most of individual performance was actually explained by the team dynamics, company resources, and a few other factors outside of the individual’s control.

In other words, talent doesn’t make the team. The team makes the talent.

And when you examine the inner workings of high performing teams, you start to see just how powerful team dynamics truly are. High performing teams do just about everything differently.

And in this article, we’ll outline four specific behaviors high performing teams do differently, as well as the research that supports these behaviors, in order to help you transform the dynamics of your team.

Watch the full video or keep scrolling to read.

Bursty Communication

The first behavior that high performing teams do differently is that they communicate in bursts. You may think that successful teams are in constant communication with each other, or you may tell yourself that as you find yet another meeting added to your calendar. But research from Anita Williams Wooley and Christoph Reidl suggests that high performing teams have calendars marked by long periods of alone time. That’s not to say they don’t communicate, but rather they’ve mastered how to come together quickly, communicate necessary information, and then break apart in order to execute.

If you want to communicate in bursts, consider copying the format of the daily standup or “scrum” from the Agile software development method. In a scrum, team members circle up quickly and give status updates (What did I just complete? What am I focused on next? What’s blocking my progress) before adjourning to focus on work. It doesn’t have to be daily, but a regular burst of status updates that allows teammates to know what’s going on and how they can help would likely achieve everything a 2-hour weekly all-hands does and leaves a lot more time for real work to get done.

Respectful Conflict

The second behavior that high performing teams do differently is that they harness respectful conflict. Successful teams have just as much conflict as lower performing teams, but that conflict feels different—because it is different. A lack of conflict on a team is more often a liability than a strength. Lack of conflict is either a signal that there’s not original thinking on the team, or that there is but those teammates don’t feel psychologically safe enough to express their original thinking.

Respectful conflict means that high performing teams embrace these differences of opinion and debate them in a way that ensures the best solutions are found. Research from Charlan Namath found that teams who used respectful conflict when generating ideas created 25 percent more ideas and generated higher quality ideas as well. Think about that the next time your team must solve a problem. Anytime people actually “think outside the box,” there is going to be conflict. The difference is how leaders, and the whole team, respond to that conflict. You can frame competing ideas as something to push against, or as something that pushes the team to better solutions.

Authentic Connection

The third behavior high performing teams do differently is that they build authentic connections. They work toward a collective understanding that goes beyond knowing each other’s roles and responsibilities, and even beyond knowing each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Instead, successful teams build connection with each other around non-work topics as well. Researcher Jessica Methot calls these connections “multiplex ties” after the multitude of contexts built between different people.

Building multiplex ties means you build commonalities with teammates about multiple facets of their lives. And Methot’s research suggests that the result is higher performance, longer tenure, greater social support, and a host of other benefits. In addition, her research suggests that building authentic connections isn’t about elaborate team-building rituals, instead, it’s about small talk. Those unstructured moments before and after meetings, or the evening after conferences or company events, those are the moments when people self-disclose the multiple facets of their lives and, in doing so, build multiplex ties.

Generous Appreciation

The last behavior that high performing teams do differently is that they offer generous appreciation. There is a constant clement of praise and appreciation running through their discussions—bursty or not. Research from Ron Friedman and his team suggests that individuals on high-performing teams were 44 percent more likely to compliment or give praise to their colleagues and show appreciation for the work their colleagues do on any given day. This is more than just offering a quick round of praise at the monthly meeting or putting compliments on either end of constructive criticism. Instead, generous appreciation comes from a genuine place of appreciating that one’s ability to perform is dependent on others, and that means every individual success is a team-wide win.

How do you build a culture of generous appreciation on your team? You model the way. You praise people regularly and randomly. You catch them doing something right and you praise it publicly. And you even publicly praise when you catch them praising each other as well. The more you praise the right behavior, the more of it you get.

Leading by Example

In fact, modeling the way as a leader is a constant throughout these four behaviors. Because bursty communication requires a team leader who will model the way by structuring (and reducing) meetings to allow for it. Likewise, when conflict arises, teams are looking to the team leader to model the way in responding respectfully. And teams that build authentic connections have leaders who model the way by being authentically interested in the lives of their people. You could say that high performing teams do things differently, because they have leaders who do things differently. And in doing so, those leaders help the team do their best work ever.

Image credit: Pixabay

Originally published at https://davidburkus.com on January 17, 2022

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What’s Your Problem?

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What's Your Problem?

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

If it’s your problem, fix it. If it’s not your problem, let someone else fix it.

If you fix someone else’s problem, you prevent the organization from fixing the root cause.

If you see a problem, say something.

If you see a problem, you have an obligation to do something, but not an obligation to fix it.

If someone tries to give you their stinky problem and you don’t accept it, it’s still theirs.

If you think the problem is a symptom of a bigger problem, fixing the small problem doesn’t fix anything.

If someone isn’t solving their problem, maybe they don’t know they have a problem.

If someone you care about has a problem, help them.

If someone you don’t care about has a problem, help them, too.

If you don’t have a problem, there can be no progress.

If you make progress, you likely solved a problem.

If you create the right problem the right way, you presuppose the right solution.

If you create the right problem in the right way, the right people will have to solve it.

If you want to create a compelling solution, shine a light on a compelling problem.

If there’s a big problem but no one wants to admit it, do the work that makes it look like the car crash it is.

If you shine a light on a big problem, the owner of the problem won’t like it.

If you shine a light on a big problem, make sure you’re in a position to help the problem owner.

If you’re not willing to contribute to solving the problem, you have no right to shine a light on it.

If you can’t solve the problem, it’s because you’ve defined it poorly.

Problem definition is problem-solving.

If you don’t have a problem, there’s no problem.

And if there’s no problem, there can be no solution. And that’s a big problem.

If you don’t have a problem, how can you have a solution?

If you want to create the right problem, create one that tugs on the ego.

If you want to shine a light on an ego-threatening problem, make it as compelling as a car crash – skid marks and all.

If shining a light on a problem will make someone look bad, give them an opportunity to own it, and then turn on the lights.

If shining a light on a problem will make someone look bad, so be it.

If it’s not your problem, keep your hands in your pockets or it will become your problem.

But no one can give you their problem without your consent.

If you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t, the problem at hand isn’t your biggest problem.

If you see a problem but it’s not yours to fix, you’re not obliged to fix it, but you are obliged to shine a light on it.

When it comes to problems, when you see something, say something.

But, if shining a light on a big problem is a problem, well, you have a bigger problem.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Is it Free or Unlimited?

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Is it Free or Unlimited?

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

My friend Norman Beck sends me interesting articles and newsworthy information regularly. This one is worth talking about here. A grocery store chain had a sign in front of its entrance that read:

Free Delivery – $99 a Year!

I had to smile – even laugh out loud – thinking of how many people would roll their eyes when they read that sign. It’s not free if you have to pay $99 for it! But some brilliant marketers must think the public won’t know the difference. Perhaps a better sign would have read:

Unlimited Delivery – $99 a year!

I’ve shared similar information about this in the past. How often are we told a company offers free delivery, free returns, free refills on soda … you get the idea. It’s not really free. It’s in the price you pay.

I’m okay with that, and it’s actually a pretty good marketing strategy that works. As an example, if I order a soda at a restaurant, I like the idea of refills. But are they free refills? Or are they unlimited refills? Either way, I’m happy. It’s just that one is a more accurate description of the value provided.

So, consider this simple concept. For any business to make money, it has to charge for whatever it sells. By giving too much away, it would lose money. But if the company leaders know how much they can give away without losing money and incorporate it into a competitive price, they may have a value proposition that gets and keeps customers.

Southwest Airlines is the perfect example of this. It markets the heck out of Two Bags Fly Free®. Southwest knows that when other airlines charge for something that they don’t, it can be perceived as free. By keeping operating expenses low, they can charge a competitive price for an airline ticket that doesn’t require the customer to pay extra for checked baggage.

After reading this, some of you may think I’m against free. On the contrary, I’m a huge fan of free. Even if I have to pay for it, if the perceived value is that it’s free, that works for me. I just think that we should be careful about putting a sign in front of a store that basically says you have to pay $99 for “free” delivery.

And, while I’m talking about free, there is one other form of free that I love, and that’s hassle-free, something I know your customers will love too.

Image Credits: Shep Hyken

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Implementing Successful Transformation Initiatives for 2024

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Implementing Successful Transformation Initiatives for 2024

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

Transformation and change initiatives are usually designed as strategic interventions, intending to advance an organization’s growth, deliver increased shareholder value, build competitive advantage, or improve speed and agility to respond to fast-changing industries.  These initiatives typically focus on improving efficiency, and productivity, resolving IT legacy and technological issues, encouraging innovation, or developing high-performance organizational cultures. Yet, according to research conducted over fifteen years by McKinsey & Co., shared in a recent article “Losing from day one: Why even successful transformations fall short” – Organizations have realized only 67 percent of the maximum financial benefits that their transformations could have achieved. By contrast, respondents at all other companies say they captured an average of only 37 percent of the potential benefit, and it’s all due to a lack of human skills, and their inability to adapt, innovate, and thrive in a decade of disruption.

Differences between success and failure

The survey results confirm that “there are no short­cuts to successful transformation and change initiatives. The main differentiator between success and failure was not whether an organization followed a specific subset of actions but rather how many actions it took throughout an organizational transformation’s life cycle” and actions taken by the people involved.

Capacity, confidence, and competence – human skills

What stands out is that thirty-five percent of the value lost occurs in the implementation phase, which involves the unproductive actions taken by the people involved.

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) supports this in a recent article “How to Create a Transformation That Lasts” – “Transformations are inherently difficult, filled with compressed deadlines and limited resources. Executing them typically requires big changes in processes, product offerings, governance, structure, the operating model itself, and human behavior.”

Reinforcing the need for organizations to invest in developing the deep human skills that embed transformation disciplines into business-as-usual structures, processes, and systems, and help shift the culture. Which depends on enhancing people’s capacity, confidence, and competence to implement the “annual business-planning processes and review cycles, from executive-level weekly briefings and monthly or quarterly reviews to individual performance dialogue” that delivers and embeds the desired changes, especially the cultural enablers.

Complex and difficult to navigate – key challenges

As a result of the impact of our VUCA/BANI world, coupled with the global pandemic, current global instability, and geopolitics, many people have had their focus stolen, and are still experiencing dissonance cognitively, emotionally, and viscerally.

This impacts their ability to take intelligent actions and the range of symptoms includes emotional overwhelm, cognitive overload, and change fatigue.

It seems that many people lack the capacity, confidence, and competence, to underpin their balance, well-being, and resilience, which resources their ability and GRIT to engage fully in transformation and change initiatives.

The new normal – restoring our humanity

At ImagineNation™ for the past four years, in our coaching and mentoring practice, we have spent more than 1000 hours partnering with leaders and managers around the world to support them in recovering and re-emerging from a range of uncomfortable, disabling, and disempowering feelings.

Some of these unresourceful states include loneliness, disconnection, a lack of belonging, and varying degrees of burnout, and have caused them to withdraw and, in some cases, even resist returning to the office, or to work generally.

It appears that this is the new normal we all have to deal with, knowing there is no playbook, to take us there because it involves restoring the essence of our humanity and deepening our human skills.

Taking a whole-person approach – develop human skills

By embracing a whole-person approach, in all transformation and change initiatives, that focuses on building people’s capacity, confidence, and competence, and that cultivates their well-being and resilience to:

  • Engage, empower, and enable them to collaborate in setting the targets, business plans, implementation, and follow-up necessary to ensure a successful transformation and change initiative.
  • Safely partner with them through their discomfort, anxiety, fear, and reactive responses.
  • Learn resourceful emotional states, traits, mindsets, behaviors, and human skills to embody, enact and execute the desired changes strategically and systemically.

By then slowing down, to pause, retreat and reflect, and choose to operate systemically and holistically, and cultivate the “deliberate calm” required to operate at the three different human levels outlined in the illustration below:

The Neurological Level – which most transformation and change initiatives fail to comprehend, connect to, and work with. Because people lack the focus, intention, and skills to help people collapse any unconscious RIGIDITY existing in their emotional, cognitive, and visceral states, which means they may be frozen, distracted, withdrawn, or aggressive as a result of their fears and anxiety.

You can build your capacity, confidence, and competence to operate at this level by accepting “what is”:

  • Paying attention and being present with whatever people are experiencing neurologically by attending, allowing, accepting, naming, and acknowledging whatever is going on for them, and by supporting and enabling them to rest, revitalize and recover in their unique way.
  • Operating from an open mind and an open heart and by being empathic and compassionate, in line with their fragility and vulnerability, being kind, appreciative, and considerate of their individual needs.
  • Being intentional in enabling them to become grounded, mindful conscious, and truly connected to what is really going on for them, and rebuild their positivity, optimism, and hope for the future.
  • Creating a collective holding space or container that gives them permission, safety, and trust to pull them towards the benefits and rewards of not knowing, unlearning, and being open to relearning new mental models.
  • Evoking new and multiple perspectives that will help them navigate uncertainty and complexity.

The Emotional Cognition Levels – which most transformation and change initiatives fail to take into account because people need to develop their PLASTICITY and flexibility in regulating and focusing their thoughts, feelings, and actions to adapt and be agile in a world of unknowns, and deliver the outcomes and results they want to have.

You can build your capacity, confidence, and competence to operate at this level by supporting them to open their hearts and minds:

  • Igniting their curiosity, imagination, and playfulness, introducing novel ideas, and allowing play and improvisation into their thinking processes, to allow time out to mind wander and wonder into new and unexplored territories.
  • Exposing, disrupting, and re-framing negative beliefs, ruminations, overthinking and catastrophizing patterns, imposter syndromes, fears of failure, and feelings of hopelessness and helplessness.
  • Evoking mindset shifts, embracing positivity and an optimistic focus on what might be a future possibility and opportunity.
  • Being empathic, compassionate, and appreciative, and engaging in self-care activities and well-being practices.

The Generative Level – which most transformation and change initiatives ignore, because they fail to develop the critical and creative thinking, and problem sensing and solving skills that are required to GENERATE the crucial elastic thinking and human skills that result in change, and innovation.

You can build your capacity, confidence, and competence to operate at this level by:

  • Creating a safe space to help people reason and make sense of the things occurring within, around, and outside of them.
  • Cultivating their emotional and cognitive agility, creative, critical, and associative thinking skills to challenge the status quo and think differently.
  • Developing behavioral flexibility to collaborate, being inclusive to maximize differences and diversity, and safe experimentation to close their knowing-doing gaps.
  • Taking small bets, giving people permission and safety to fail fast to learn quickly, be courageous, be both strategic and systemic in taking smart risks and intelligent actions.

Reigniting our humanity – unlocking human potential  

At the end of the day, we all know that we can’t solve the problem with the same thinking that created it. Yet, so many of us keep on trying to do that, by unconsciously defaulting into a business-as-usual linear thinking process when involved in setting up and implementing a transformation or change initiative.

Ai can only take us so far, because the defining trait of our species, is our human creativity, which is at the heart of all creative problem-solving endeavors, where innovation can be the engine of change, transformation, and growth, no matter what the context. According to Fei-Fei Li, Sequoia Professor of Computer Science at Stanford, and co-director of AI4All, a non-profit organization promoting diversity and inclusion in the field of AI.

“There’s nothing artificial about AI. It’s inspired by people, created by people, and most importantly it has an impact on people”.

  • Develop the human skills

When we have the capacity, confidence, and competence to reignite our humanity, we will unlock human potential, and stop producing results no one wants. By developing human skills that enable people to adapt, be resilient, agile, creative, and innovate, they will grow through disruption in ways that add value to the quality of people’s lives, that are appreciated and cherished, we can truly serve people, deliver profits and perhaps save the planet.

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: Pixabay

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5 Job Titles That Break the Mold and Fuel an Innovation Culture

1 Reply

5 Job Titles That Break the Mold and Fuel an Innovation Culture

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Fabric & Home Care Marketing

That is the job title on my very first business card.  I remember holding the card in my hands, staring at it for entirely too long, and thinking, “This is sooooo boring.  Even my parents won’t be impressed.”

To be fair to P&G, that was the job title on the business card of everyone in marketing in the business units.  The company didn’t put job titles on the card for security reasons (or at least that’s what my boss told me when I politely asked why my title wasn’t on the card).

I am older now and should have the maturity to accept the bland and nondescript title on my first business card.  But I’m not.  It’s still boring, and it shouldn’t be because we were working on innovation projects with code names and outfoxing corporate spies in the airport (another story for another post).  We were doing cool stuff and should have cool titles to show for it!

So, to right the wrong inflicted upon me and the countless others stuck with boring job titles despite doing brave, bold, and daring things, today is Make Your Own Title Day (business cards not included)

Intrapreneur

PRO: Short and sweet with a great original definition – “dreamers who do”

CON: Everyone will think you misspelled Entrepreneur

Pirates in the Navy

PRO: Title of a book by one of the foremost thinkers in the field of corporate innovation and a phrase inspired by Steve Jobs’ statement that it’s better to be a pirate than be in the Navy.  It also creates the excuse to wear an eyepatch, talk like a pirate, and keep a parrot in the office.

CON: People are afraid of pirates.  You don’t want people to be scared of you.

Rebel Smuggler

PRO: Also the basis of a book with the benefit of being a cool title that doesn’t scare people.  Plus, who wanted this to describe them:

Whether you’re are a Rebel in a functional company or a Smuggler in a dysfunctional company, you are the essential part of any transition.  You are the catalyst that transforms the caterpillar into a butterfly.  You disrupt the status quo and create opportunities for growth,

You are not the caterpillar nor the butterfly.  You are the magic that prompts the transition.”Natalie Neelan, Rebel At Work: How to Innovate and Drive Results When You Aren’t the Boss

CON: Legal and Corporate Security may not love the “Smuggler” part of the title

Tempered Radical

PRO: A more “professional” version of Rebel Smuggler, and it’s a term used in HBR, so you know it’s legit.  Here’s how they’re described:

They all see things a bit differently from the “norm.” But despite feeling at odds with aspects of the prevailing culture, they genuinely like their jobs and want to continue to succeed in them, to effectively use their differences as the impetus for constructive change. They believe that direct, angry confrontation will get them nowhere, but they don’t sit by and allow frustration to fester. Rather, they work quietly to challenge prevailing wisdom and gently provoke their organizational cultures to adapt. I call such change agents tempered radicals because they work to effect significant changes in moderate ways.Debra Meyerson, “Radical Change, the Quiet Way” in HBR (October 2001)

CON: Sometimes working quietly doesn’t work.  Sometimes, you need to make a ruckus. 

[YOUR TITLE HERE]

What title do you want to give yourself and other innovators?

Drop your suggestion in the comments (and feel free to print up new business cards)!

Image credit: Pexels

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