Women Start-up Entrepreneurs Battle Against Gender Stereotypes and Ageism

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Women Start-up Entrepreneurs Battle Against Gender Stereotypes and Ageism

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

It’s been thirty-five years since I exited my life as a top retail corporate executive, and become a serial female entrepreneur. It’s been an awesome roller-coaster ride, which includes ten years as one of many adventurous, brave, global women start-up entrepreneurs. Its also been a very challenging, rewarding, and fulfilling learning journey, where I have been both privileged and humbled to have impacted thousands of men and women positively, and globally through my consulting, learning, mentoring, and coaching practice.

Yet, I can’t help wondering how my journey could have been significantly less challenging, and possibly even more profoundly impactful, had gender stereotypes and later, ageism not been so pervasive. Where the “Gender Stereotypes and Their Impact on Women Entrepreneurs” by the Cherie Blair Foundation qualify this further by providing evidence of gender stereotyping impacting women’s journeys to and through entrepreneurship. Which then affects their “aspirations, sources of support, opportunities, access to resources, perceptions, and the wider entrepreneurial ecosystem”.

What is the impact of gender stereotypes on women start-up entrepreneurs?

Some of the key findings revealed by this report include:

  • 70% of women entrepreneurs surveyed said that gender stereotypes have negatively affected their work as an entrepreneur.
  • More than six in ten of those surveyed (61%) believe that gender stereotypes impact their business growth and almost half (49%) say they affect profitability.
  • Stereotypes start early, shape women’s journeys to entrepreneurship, and can have a lasting impact on aspirations, confidence, and behavior.
  • Over half of the women entrepreneurs surveyed (56%) said that social approval or disapproval of different careers played a role in their choice of career.
  • The majority of women entrepreneurs surveyed (70%) also reported knowing a woman entrepreneur when they were children, suggesting the powerful influence of role models on children and young women.

What is the impact of gender stereotyping on women start-up entrepreneurs raising venture capital?

When I attended a recent webinar “Coaching for Success – How Can Investors Support Start-up Founders” held by EMCC Asia Pacific I checked out the percentage of women start-up entrepreneurs who had actually received venture capitalist’s funds. I was shocked, yet not surprised to see TechCrunch report that in the US “women-founded start-ups raised 1.9% of all VC funds in 2022, a drop from 2021.”

Here in Australia, as reported by the Women’s Agenda just 3%  of total VC capital went to all-women-founded start-ups in 2022, while just 10 percent went to those with at least one woman in their co-founding teams. This report also reveals that “83 percent of women believe their gender has impacted their ability to raise external capital, compared with 14 percent of men”.

What is the impact of gender stereotyping on women start-up entrepreneurs’ ability to impact globally?

The new Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) 2021/2022 Women’s Entrepreneurship Report showed that “start-up rates for women dropped by 15% from 2019 to 2020, and held constant in 2021. Women also experienced sharper declines than men in their intentions to start a business within three years and overall start-up rates in 2020, but not in upper-middle income countries”. Where “Women represent two out of every five early-stage entrepreneurs”.

This means that almost half of the world’s potential entrepreneurs have been handicapped, and are still being restrained and held back from adding value to the quality of people’s lives and making the difference they want to, and can make in the world.

What are some of the key challenges women start-up entrepreneurs face?

Referring to my own personal experience with founding ImagineNation™ as an Israeli Australian start-up 10 years ago, I am able to share a range of key frustrations and challenges which confronted me. This was catalyzed by a recent article featured in Business News Daily which shares the range of core challenges and how other women start-up entrepreneurs might possibly choose to deal with, resolve and overcome them.

Hopefully, other women start-up entrepreneurs might find some inspiration, motivation, and encouragement to be steadfast in pursuing their dreams courageously, with a bit of healthy self-compassion to creatively execute their vision for a better world, from my story.

  1. Defying social expectations

As a relatively new arrival to the Israeli start-up scene, I was repeatedly told that as an “outsider” I could not know “how we do things around here” despite my 25 years of culture and change management consulting experience. I attended weekly start-up events in Tel Aviv, and often stood, as a lone woman, alongside diverse groups of young men, usually drinking beer and dressed in black. I also found that being older than the average start-up entrepreneur, despite my 25 years of experience in mentoring women in business, I also faced the dreaded “ageism bias” and as a result, I was largely ignored at many of these crucial networking events. Because in Israel “if you don’t network, you don’t work!”

I chose to detach from this, by refusing to conform to what appeared to be men’s ideas of what a start-up entrepreneur should look, be and act like. Instead, I chose to learn as much as I could from my range of experiences, enabling me to adapt, innovate and grow, as do many other women start-up entrepreneurs when faced with these challenges, to accelerate my innovation solution.

  1. Accessing funding

With no family or relatives locally, or the ability to get a financial guarantor, I had no access to source funds externally, despite meeting a number of local venture capitalists. Who, I noticed, tended to focus mostly on investing in a “quick win” or in growth-stage start-ups. When attending a government-sponsored meeting in Sydney, to qualify for an Australian Government Entrepreneurship Grant, I was confronted by a panel of three aggressive and oppositional male VC consultants who mercilessly tore my start-up invention and myself apart. Telling me it was not worth investing in and would be replicated by others within six months. To date, it still hasn’t been copied.

I eventually recovered my composure, confidence, and courage and made the decision to bootstrap, self-fund, and pay my own way forwards, which took longer, and yet was the best decision.

  1. Struggling to be taken seriously

Even when I applied my then 25 years of consulting, learning, and development knowledge, skills, and corporate experience to research, model, and replicate the “secret sauce” behind the Israeli start-up system, it was hard for me to be taken seriously. Finding that some people, in both Israel and Australia, found defensive ways to negate and minimize my 10-year immersion in an innovation culture when I was designing, iterating, pivoting, and marketing my unique innovation learning and coaching curriculum.

I focused on continuing to develop my self-efficacy, on finding my tribe, and on researching, and building a global reputation as a thought leader on the people side of innovation, by experimenting with blogging and presenting webinars.

  1. Owning your accomplishments

In the first 9 years, I presented more than 6 free innovation webinars, and 10 blog posts a year, generously sharing my IP and knowledge, without really recognizing and acknowledging the value of my own creative ideas and inventions. Whilst this helped me find my collaborators, build an ecosystem, and added to my reputation-building efforts, I gave away far too much without getting sound financial commitments from potential clients.

I now truly value and esteem my knowledge and IP at a deeper, and still share free webinars and 10 blog posts a year.  I now focus on only presenting 2 learning and coaching programs a year where I charge participants more than double, compared to what I initially charged.

  1. Building a support network

Interestingly, this has been very challenging, due to having lived in a patriarchal culture in Israel and a “boys club” and the “old boys’ network” here in Australia which permeates every level of our organizational culture and civil society. In my experience, I have also sadly discovered that the majority of women in the consulting, learning, and development sectors prefer to compete, rather than collaborate.

I find that I am still constantly challenged by people’s ageism bias, and manage this by mostly working globally, and online, mentoring and coaching both men and women who are seeking to fulfill their potential, adapt, innovate, and grow to effect positive change in their worlds.

I also focused on developing the “friendlies” included in my global Coach for Innovators, Leaders, and Teams alumni and network, my Linked In tribe, and my International Coaching Federation (ICF) colleagues to draw upon, and support when needed.

  1. Balancing business and family life

Having recovered from a significant burnout experience more than 25 years ago, I have been able to achieve and sustain a reasonable work-life balance. By managing, developing, and leading my business effectively, being both self-disciplined, and methodical, and being curious and creative, even when my old habitual task holism threatens to take over.

It takes focused attention and deep intention, being passionately purposeful to ensure that I stay on track with doing the “one thing” I am creating, inventing, and innovating whilst on the roller-coaster ride.

  1. Coping with fear of failure

Self-doubt, perfectionism, imposter syndrome, risk adversity, and rejection are the key neurological perils confronting many women (and men) start-up entrepreneurs. This creates opportunities for women start-up entrepreneurs to learn how to bravely and boldly be, think and act differently in articulating their passionate purpose and achieving their vision in an uncertain and constantly changing world.

I experienced a number of significant failures, which deeply hurt me viscerally, emotionally, and cognitively, as well as resulted in serious financial losses.

I focussed on using these as “teachable moments” to learn how to take smart risks, manage my self-talk and not self-depreciate my inherent self-worth. To seek feedback and help when I froze as a result of my mistakes, losses, and failure, which ultimately enabled me to develop the deep courage, healthy self-compassion, and GRIT to stay in the start-up entrepreneurship game.

This enables me to role model, mentor, teach and coach other women start-up entrepreneurs, develop embodied presence, and be congruent in walking my talk.

How can you take action to eliminate gender (and age) stereotypes as a women start-up entrepreneur?

If we want to ensure that almost half of the world’s potential women start-up entrepreneurs are empowered, and enabled to add value to the quality of people’s lives and make the difference they want to, and can make in the world, make sure to take personal responsibility in:

  • Supporting women in their efforts to make a difference and contribute to the common good, despite age or gender differences, gives women start-up entrepreneurs greater chances of long-term growth and impactful success.
  • Eliminating from your locus of control and influence, any gender stereotyping and ageism biases.

We can then maximize the benefits gender and age differences and diversity bring, and collectively make the world a fairer, more inclusive, equitable, and balanced place in all domains that contribute to the common good, and a planet that balances and includes all people equally, with profits.

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, starts October 3, 2023. It can be customised as a bespoke corporate learning program.

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

Image Credit: Pixabay

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An Introduction to Journey Maps

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For Mapping Customer, Employee, Patient and Other Journeys

An Introduction to Journey Maps

by Braden Kelley

Journey maps are a key part of visualizing the experience of a defined group of people. Customers may be the most typically selected group, but many other stakeholder groups are equally valid, including employees, patients, students and partners, to name just a few. This is why it is important to keep the term ‘journey maps’ as generic as possible.

They are incredibly useful for aligning project teams — and even the broader organization — around a shared vision of the journey a critical group of people go through from an agreed starting point to a common ending point. Journey maps also help to identify potential areas of improvement in the pursuit of an increasingly exceptional experience.

A journey map breaks down a journey into a handful of phases (typically 5-9), the steps the target group goes through in each phase and the touchpoints that occur at each step in the journey. Journey maps are the prerequisites for the powerful insight generation and analysis that comes next as you dig into the touchpoints and the relevant pain points and experience improvement opportunities within your working group.

Continue reading the rest of this article on HCLTech’s blog

Image credits: Pixabay

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Why You Must Define Innovation

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(Hint: It’s All About Efficiency)

Why You Must Define Innovation

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

As the world around you becomes more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA), you know that you need to build skills to navigate it and inspire others to follow your path.

But what if you are the source of ambiguity? 

Because you are. Every time you speak.

The words we use always have clear meaning and intent to us but may not (and often don’t) have the same meaning and intent to others. 

That’s why one of the first and most essential things a company can do when starting its innovation journey is to decide what “innovation” means. It may seem like an academic exercise, but it becomes very practical when you discover that one person thinks it means something new to the world, another thinks it’s a new product, and a third thinks it means anything commercialized.

Ambiguity = Efficiency?

“Innovation” isn’t the only word that is distractingly ambiguous. Language, in general, evolved to be ambiguous because ambiguity makes it more efficient. In 2012, cognitive scientists at MIT found the ambiguity–efficiency link, noting “words with fewer syllables and easier pronunciation can be ‘reused,’ avoiding the need for a vast and increasingly complex vocabulary.” 

You read that right. In language, ambiguity leads to efficiency.

Every time you speak, you’re ambiguous. You’re also efficient.

The RIGHT level of Ambiguity = Efficiency!

In 2014, researchers at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona found that language’s ambiguity is critical to communicating complex ideas,

“the researchers argue that the level of ambiguity we have in language is at just the right level to make it easy to speak and be understood. If every single object and concept had its own unique word, then language is completely unambiguous – but the vocabulary is huge. The listener doesn’t have to do any guessing about what the speaker is saying, but the speaker has to say a lot. For example, “Come here” might have to be something like “I want you to come to where I am standing.” At the other extreme, if the same word is used for everything, that makes it easy for the speaker, but the listener can’t tell if she is being told about the weather or a rampaging bear.”

.

Either way, communication is hard. But Sole and Seoane argue that with just the right amount of ambiguity, the two can find a good trade-off.”

A certain level of ambiguity is efficient. Too much or too little is inefficient.

How to find the RIGHT level of Ambiguity for “Innovation”

In everyday life, it’s ok for everyone to have a slightly different definition of innovation because we all generally agree it means “something new.”  Sure, there will be differences of opinion on some things (is a new car an “innovation” if it just improved on the previous model?). Still, overall, we can exist in this world and interact with each other despite, or maybe because of, the ambiguity.

Work is a different story. If you are responsible for, working on, or even associated with innovation, you better be very clear on what “innovation” means because its definition determines expectations and success for what you do. If it means one thing to you and a different thing to your boss, and a third thing to her boss, you’re in for a world of disappointment and pain.

Let’s avoid that.  Instead:

  1. Define the word
  2. Get everyone to agree on the definition
  3. Use the word and immediately follow it with, “And by that, I mean (definition)”

Gently correct people when they use the word to mean something other than the agreed-upon definition. Once everyone uses the word correctly, you can stop defining it every time because its meaning has taken root.

So, the next time someone rolls their eyes and comments on the “theoretical” or “academic” (i.e., not at all practical, useful, or actionable) exercise of defining innovation, smile and explain that this is an exercise in efficiency.

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The Digital Revolution Has Been A Giant Disappointment

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The Digital Revolution Has Been A Giant Disappointment

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

One of the most often repeated episodes in the history of technology is when Steve Jobs was recruiting John Sculley from his lofty position as CEO at Pepsi to come to Apple. “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life,”Jobs asked, “or do you want to come with me and change the world?”

It’s a strange conceit of digital denizens that their businesses are something nobler than other industries. While it is true that technology can do some wonderful things, if the aim of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs was truly to change the world, why wouldn’t they apply their formidable talents to something like curing cancer or feeding the hungry?

The reality, as economist Robert Gordon explains in the The Rise and Fall of American Growth, is that the measurable impact has been relatively meager. According to the IMF, except for a relatively short burst in growth between 1996 and 2004, productivity has been depressed since the 1970s. We need to rethink how technology impacts our world.

The Old Productivity Paradox

In the 1970s and 80s, business investment in computer technology was increasing by more than 20% per year. Strangely though, productivity growth had decreased during the same period. Economists found this turn of events so strange that they called it the productivity paradox to underline their confusion.

The productivity paradox dumbfounded economists because it violated a basic principle of how a free market economy is supposed to work. If profit seeking businesses continue to make substantial investments, you expect to see a return. Yet with IT investment in the 70s and 80s, firms continued to increase their investment with negligible measurable benefit.

A paper by researchers at the University of Sheffield sheds some light on what happened. First, productivity measures were largely developed for an industrial economy, not an information economy. Second, the value of those investments, while substantial, were a small portion of total capital investment. Third, businesses weren’t necessarily investing to improve productivity, but to survive in a more demanding marketplace.

Yet by the late 1990s, increased computing power combined with the Internet to create a new productivity boom. Many economists hailed the digital age as a “new economy” of increasing returns, in which the old rules no longer applied and a small initial advantage would lead to market dominance. The mystery of the productivity paradox, it seemed, had been solved. We just needed to wait for the technology to hit critical mass.

The New Productivity Paradox

By 2004, the law of increasing returns was there for everyone to see. Google already dominated search, Amazon ruled e-commerce, Apple would go on to dominate mobile computing and Facebook would rule social media. Yet as the dominance of the tech giants grew, productivity would once again fall to depressed levels.

Yet today, more than a decade later, we’re in the midst of a second productivity paradox, just as mysterious as the first one. New technologies like mobile computing and artificial intelligence are there for everyone to see, but they have done little, if anything, to boost productivity.

At the same time the power of digital technology is diminishing. Moore’s law, the decades old paradigm of continuous doubling in the power of computer processing is slowing down and soon will end completely. Without advancement in the underlying technology, it is hard to see how digital technology will ever power another productivity boom.

Considering the optimistic predictions of digital entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, this is incredibly disappointing. Compare the meager eight years of elevated productivity that digital technology produced with the 50-year boom in productivity created in the wake of electricity and internal combustion and it’s clear that digital technology simply doesn’t measure up.

The Baumol Effect, The Clothesline Paradox and Other Headwinds

Much like the first productivity paradox, it’s hard to determine exactly why the technological advancement over the last 15 years has amounted to so little. Most likely, it is not one factor in particular, but the confluence of a number of them. Increasing productivity growth in an advanced economy is no simple thing.

One possibility for the lack of progress is the Baumol effect, the principle that some sectors of the economy are resistant to productivity growth. For example, despite the incredible efficiency that Jeff Bezos has produced at Amazon, his barber still only cuts one head of hair at a time. In a similar way, sectors like healthcare and education, which require a large amount of labor inputs that resist automation, will act as a drag on productivity growth.

Another factor is the Clothesline paradox, which gets its name from the fact that when you dry your clothes in a machine, it figures into GDP data, but when you hang them on a clothesline, no measurable output is produced. In much the same way, when you use a smartphone to take pictures or to give you directions, there is considerable benefit that doesn’t result in any financial transactions. In fact, because you use less gas and don’t develop film, GDP decreases somewhat.

Additionally, the economist Robert Gordon, mentioned above, notes six headwinds to economic growth, including aging populations, limits to increasing education, income inequality, outsourcing, environmental costs due to climate change and rising household and government debt. It’s hard to see how digital technology will make a dent in any of these problems.

Technology is Never Enough to Change the World

Perhaps the biggest reason that the digital revolution has been such a big disappointment is because we expected the technology to largely do the work for us. While there is no doubt that computers are powerful tools, we still need to put them to good use and we have clearly missed opportunities in that regard.

Think about what life was like in 1900, when the typical American family didn’t have access to running water, electricity or gas powered machines such as tractors or automobiles. Even something simply like cooking a meal took hours of backbreaking labor. Yet investments in infrastructure and education combined with technology to produce prosperity.

Today, however, there is no comparable effort to invest in education and healthcare for those who cannot afford it, to limit the effects of climate change, to reduce debt or to do anything of anything of significance to mitigate the headwinds we face. We are awash in nifty gadgets, but in many ways we are no better off than we were 30 years ago.

None of this was inevitable, but the somewhat the results of choices that we have made. We can, if we really want to, make different choices in the days and years ahead. What I hope we have learned from our digital disappointments is that technology itself is never enough. We are truly the masters of our fate, for better or worse.

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

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3 Flavors of Product-Service Shift

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Which One is Yours?

3 Flavors of Product-Service Shift

GUEST POST from Geoffrey A. Moore

The most profound change in enterprise computing in this century to date has been the shift in value delivery modality from product to service and the corresponding rise is XaaS or Everything-as-a-Service. The current bull market leaders in the tech sector take this for granted, and the prior generation of incumbents are still scrambling to get themselves onto the new model. For consumers this is an all-upside proposition; for enterprises, it is a balancing act of open fluidity versus secure compliance. But everyone seems to know their place in the new order—or do they?

As the product-service shift unfolds, it can manifest itself at three very different levels of value delivery, each of which has its own priorities. When you are looking to help your organization navigate the transition, it would be good to get clear as to which path you are on:

1. Infrastructure Model Transformation

This is the easiest to absorb, the impact for the most part contained on the vendor side within Finance and Legal and on the customer side within the IT organization itself. Basically, all you are doing is changing the contract from a license to a service level agreement, and staging a series of leasing payments out of op ex instead a one-time purchase out of cap ex. For clarity sake, think of this as a move to subscription, not yet to For most people in the organization, it is a non-event.

2. Operating Model Transformation

This move has the most impact on incumbent vendors and their installed base. As Todd Hewlin and J B Wood described in Consumption Economics, the shift is based on a change from the customer to the vendor as the one who must absorb goal attainment risk. In a product model, once the customer has bought and paid for it, the customer owns virtually all the risk. That can readily lead to a lot of drive-by selling, the sort of thing that built out empires of shelfware in the late 1990s. In a service model, by contrast, the vendor can never stop owning the success of the offering, not if they want to protect against their installed base churning out from underneath them. This is the true product-service shift, and even now it is sufficiently novel that both customers and vendors are still sorting out the implications for what staffing and expertise is needed on both sides of this relationship.

3. Business Model Transformation

This is the most impactful for venture-backed start-ups and the incumbent franchises they are looking to disrupt. Typically the former are re-architecting an established but aging value chain by substituting digital services for physical-world interactions. The biggest disruptions we have seen thus far are in retail, print media, financial services, transportation, hospitality, and communications, with lots more to come. They all represent daggers pointed at the heart of established enterprises because even when the latter can find ways to re-engineer their own offers to match the new paradigm, it is still painfully hard to bring the rest of their ecosystems up to speed to deliver the whole product. And to a lesser extent, the same goes for their customer bases. That is why disruption usually starts with targeting customers who have been disenfranchised by the old solution. It is only over time that the Innovator’s Dilemma bill comes to for the established vendors, but when it does, it hits with a wallop.

For most companies, the path you want to double-click on is the Operating Model Transformation, and in the next post, I want to dig in a lot deeper there.

That’s what I think. What do you think?

Image Credit: Pixabay

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The Real Problem with Problems

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The Real Problem with Problems

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

If you don’t know what the problem is, that’s your first problem.

A problem can’t be a problem unless there’s a solution. If there’s no possible solution, don’t try to solve it, because it’s not a problem.

If there’s no problem, you have a big problem.

If you’re trying to solve a problem, but the solution is outside your sphere of influence, you’re taking on someone else’s problem.

If someone tries to give you a gift but you don’t accept it, it’s still theirs. It’s like that with problems.

If you want someone to do the right thing, create a problem for them that, when solved, the right thing gets done.

Problems are good motivators and bad caretakers.

A problem is between two things, e.g., a hammer and your thumb. Your job is to figure out the right two things.

When someone tries to give you their problem, keep your hands in your pockets.

A problem can be solved before it happens, while it happens, or after it happened. Each time domain has different solutions, different costs, and different consequences. Your job is to choose the most appropriate time domain.

If you have three problems, solve one at a time until you’re done.

Solving someone else’s problem is a worst practice.

If you solve the wrong problem, you consume all the resources needed to solve the right problem without any of the benefits of solving it.

Ready, fire, aim is no way to solve problems.

When it comes to problems, defining IS solving.

If you learn one element of problem-solving, learn to see when someone is trying to give you their problem.

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Simple Sells

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How Simple Can You Make Your Business?

Simple Sells - How Simple Can You Make Your Business?

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

I love good barbeque. I live in St. Louis, which is famous for some of the best BBQs in the world! Really! We have a number of restaurants that have competed in worldwide competitions and come back with the first-place trophy.

My friend Norman Beck loves BBQ, too. Living in Texas, he’s also exposed to some of the best BBQ in the world, although I’ll argue it’s second to St. Louis. He teased me the other day by sending pictures of dinners featuring brisket, ribs, sausage and delicious side dishes from award-winning Hutchins BBQ in North Texas. He also included a description of its marketing plan.

According to Beck, the marketing plan is simple:

  1. Cook the best BBQ in Texas. My comment: Always do your best. Beck said the owner has one goal, “Be a little better today than you were yesterday.” That’s a great goal. Even if you don’t hit it, trying makes a big difference.
  2. Sell it at a fair price. My comment: A fair price doesn’t mean the lowest price. When you sell a good product, the price is less relevant.
  3. Be nice to everyone. My comment: This is customer service 101. It’s the basics. If you have the best BBQ but treat people with disrespect, you won’t be nearly as successful. And when you combine friendly service with a great product, price becomes even less relevant. People will pay more for the best of both worlds!
  4. Close when you sell out. My comment: I love the law of scarcity. When people know they have to “act now,” or they may miss out, they make more of an effort to do business with you.
  5. Repeat. My comment: If it works, just keep doing it!

The other thing you’ll notice about Hutchins (and most other BBQ restaurants), is they don’t spend a lot of money on ambiance. Many BBQ “joints” have wooden tables and chairs. The restaurants are set for function. In other words, no fancy light fixtures or expensive plates. They keep the place clean, and that’s about it.

The point of all of this is simplicity. You don’t go to a BBQ restaurant unless you want BBQ. The choices are limited, and so are the quantities. The BBQ chefs know how much to prepare every day, and when they run out, they close for the night. Customers know this and don’t expect anything more.

Simple Sells Cartoon by Shep Hyken

Most likely, your business has a few more “moving parts” than a BBQ restaurant. That doesn’t mean you can’t find ways to simplify the customer experience, your internal processes, and more. Go through an exercise in simplification by asking questions like these:

  1. Is any part of the process of our customer experience (or employee experience) redundant?
  2. Is there anything in our process that is unnecessary?
  3. Is every touchpoint our customers experience with us optimized for ease and efficiency?
  4. What could we do to make it easier to do business with us?

Asking questions like these and implementing the answers will help you simplify your business.

Image Credits: Shep Hyken, Unsplash

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48-hour Flash Sale on Charting Change Hardcover

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with Free Shipping Worldwide*

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Navigating the AI Revolution

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Leveraging the Three Horizons for Tomorrow’s Triumphs

Navigating the AI Revolution - Leveraging the Three Horizons for Tomorrow's Triumphs

GUEST POST from Teresa Spangler

The future belongs to those who prepare for it today. As we stand at the dawn of the AI revolution, we must not merely adapt to change; we must anticipate it, shape it, and turn it to our advantage. Embracing the three horizons of AI is not just about technology or strategy; it’s about purpose – our purpose as leaders to guide our organizations, our people, and our society into a prosperous, equitable, and truly human future.

Teresa Spangler

As we turn the page on a year of profound transformation, the horizon of 2024 and beyond takes shape. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is steadfastly marching forward, and as leaders, the pressing call to pilot our organizations through these new frontiers couldn’t be more poignant. We must explore how executive leadership can initiate actionable measures today to harness tomorrow’s opportunities.

As the silhouette of 2024 looms ahead, we realize that maneuvering through the turbulent waters of change requires not just a reactive approach, but a meticulously charted plan. A navigational tool that can prove invaluable in this journey is the Three Horizons framework for futures planning. This framework allows us to methodically comprehend, envision, and shape our path through the cascading waves of AI development. By exploring each horizon in detail, we can create a strategic roadmap that integrates immediate actions, mid-term plans, and long-term visions. Let’s delve deeper into this process, beginning with the groundwork of understanding today’s AI landscape.

The Groundwork: Understanding Today’s AI Landscape – Horizon 1

Diving into the fast-paced whirlwind of AI, a comprehensive grasp of today’s landscape is the cornerstone for future triumphs. Familiarity with various AI technologies, like machine learning, natural language processing, robotics, and computer vision, is now an indispensable part of the executive toolkit. However, a theory is merely the starting point.

Turning this knowledge into strategic assets necessitates that you:

  • Actively interact with AI tools like, ChatGPT, DALL-E, DeepArt and DeepDream, Stable Diffusion, Midjourney …etc. Developing even rudimentary AI models with platforms like TensorFlow or PyTorch can shed light on AI’s potential and limitations. For instance, IBM’s Project Debater showcases how AI can understand the context and form logical arguments, pushing the boundary of natural language processing.
  • Forecast AI’s immediate future is leveraging trends in AI research, market dynamics, societal needs, and regulatory shifts. Access the best industry reports and collaborate with external experts that offer invaluable insights. A recent McKinsey report, for instance, found that companies integrating AI were nearly twice as likely to be top-quartile performers in their industry.

It’s widely acknowledged that AI will significantly alter the dynamics of how our world operates. While the intricacies of this transformation can seem complex, it’s certainly not an insurmountable challenge! The Three Horizons methodology is one of many effective strategies your organization can adopt to manage this transition. By strategically navigating through these horizons with a cohesive team and a well-articulated plan, your organization will be well-positioned to embrace the AI revolution. Here are a few other methodologies you might consider:

  1. Scenario Planning: This approach involves envisioning different future states and developing strategies to succeed in each potential scenario.
  2. Backcasting: Starting with a desirable future end-state, this method works backward to identify the strategic steps required to reach that goal.
  3. Roadmapping: This technique charts out the evolution of technologies and products, helping you understand how technological progress might affect your business over time.

Choosing the right methodology will depend on your specific circumstances and objectives. Regardless of the approach, remember that the key to success lies in aligning your team and developing a clear, comprehensive plan of action.

On to Horizon 2 & 3

Navigating the Waves: Crafting the Mid-Term AI Future – Horizon 2

As part of the C-suite, your role extends beyond mere reactions to change – you’re a herald of future trends. Structuring the mid-term AI future necessitates:

  • Assimilating the implications of AI for your industry. Evaluate how job roles might evolve, identify the ethical and privacy concerns, and understand the geopolitical interplays of AI on your global strategies. For instance, AI-driven automation could reshape employment, as seen with Amazon’s warehouse robots.
  • Tailoring a 3-5 year forecast using foresight platforms like FuturePlatform to incorporate technological breakthroughs, policy changes, societal trends, and economic factors. Staying informed about AI regulations through think tanks like the AI Now Institute can help you navigate this complex terrain.

Setting the Sails: Envisioning a Decade Ahead – Horizon 3

Leadership in the AI epoch means having the courage to gaze beyond the immediate future. For the long-term horizon, consider the following:

  • Contemplating the possibilities. Quantum computing, advanced neural networks, and sophisticated AI-human interfaces might be the norm a decade from now. Consider how Microsoft’s recent advancements in quantum computing could revolutionize data processing and analysis in your industry.
  • Employing scenario planning to prepare for a multitude of futures. Use strategic planning software like Lucid chart to visualize different assumptions about technological progress, regulatory changes, and societal evolution.
  • Formulating strategic plans based on these scenarios. The essence of leadership is making today’s decisions with an eye on tomorrow’s probabilities.
  • Maximize the power of external expertise. Benefit from programs like Plazabridge Group’s Innovation Pro™, Innofusion™ Transformation, Innofusion™ Sprint, and Innofusion™ Sustainability Assessment to aid your journey. These programs offer valuable outside perspectives that can enrich your understanding and application of AI. They provide fresh insights, hands-on experience, and expert guidance in navigating the complex AI landscape. Find out more [Learn more] to embark on your AI journey.

External experts act as crucial navigators in this AI expedition. They help decode ethical challenges, demystify technological complexities, and forecast future trends, equipping executives to make well-informed, strategic decisions in the face of AI’s rapid evolution.

As we draw closer to 2024, remember that we’re not merely spectators of the emerging AI revolution – we’re the trailblazers. As leaders, we have the power to do more than respond to change; we can architect it. The ripples of our leadership will extend beyond our organizations, shaping the very fabric of our society. The future isn’t something that simply happens to us – we’re active participants in its creation. Now is the time to embrace this momentous journey, and lead with boldness and determination.

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How to Make Navigating Ambiguity a Super Power

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How to Make Navigating Ambiguity a Super Power

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

You are a leader. The boss. The person in charge.

That means you know the answer to every question, make the right decision when faced with every choice, and act confidently when others are uncertain. Right?

(Insert uproarious laughter here).

Of course not. But you act like you do because you’re the leader, the boss, the person in charge.

You are not alone. We’re all doing it.

We act like we have the answers because we’ve been told that’s what leaders do. We act like we made the right decision because that’s what leaders do in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world where we must work quickly and flexibly while doing more with less.

But what if we didn’t? 

What if we stopped pretending to have the answer or know the right choice? What if we acknowledged the ambiguity of a situation, explored its options and interpretations for just a short while, and then decided?

We’d make more informed choices. We’d be more creative and innovative. We’d inspire others.

So why do we keep pretending?

Ambiguity: Yea! Meh. Have you lost your mind?!?

Stanford’s d.School calls the ability to navigate ambiguity “the super ability” because it’s necessary for problem-finding and problem-solving. Ambiguity “involves recognizing and stewing in the discomfort of not knowing, leveraging and embracing parallel possibilities, and resolving or emerging from ambiguity as needed.”

Navigating ambiguity is essential in a VUCA world, but not all want to. They found that people tend to do one of three things when faced with ambiguity:

  • Endure ambiguity as “a moment of time that comes before a solution and is antagonistic to the objective – it must be conquered to reach the goal.”
  • Engage ambiguity as “an off-road adventure; an alternate path to a goal. It might be rewarding and helpful or dangerous and detrimental. Its value is a chosen gamble. Exhilaration and exhaustion are equally expected.”
  • Embrace ambiguity as “oceanic and ever-present. Exploration is a challenge and an opportunity. The longer you spend in it, the more likely you are to discover something new. Every direction is a possibility. Navigation isn’t simple. It requires practice and patience.

Students tend to enter the program with a resignation that ambiguity must be endured. They leave embracing it because they learn how to navigate it.

You can too.

In fact, as a leader in a VUCA world, you and your team need to.

How to Embrace (or at least Engage) Ambiguity

When you want to learn something new, the library is one of the best places to start. In this case, the Library of Ambiguity  – an incredible collection of the resources, tools, and activities that professors at Stanford’s d.School use to help their students build this super ability.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the number of resources, so here are three that I recommend:

Design Project Scoping Guide

  • What it is: A guide for selecting, framing, and communicating the intentions of a design project
  • When to use it: When you are defining an innovation project and need to align on scope, goals, and priorities
  • Why I like it: The guide offers excellent examples of helpful and unhelpful scoping documents.

Learning Zone Reflection Tool

  • What it is: A tool to help individuals better understand the tolerance of ambiguity, especially their comfort, learning, and panic zones
  • When to use it: Stanford used this as a reflection tool at the end of an introductory course, BUT I would use it at the start of the project as a leadership alignment and team-building tool:
    • Leadership alignment – Ask individual decision-makers to identify their comfort, learning, and panic zones for each element of the Project Scoping Guide (problem to be solved, target customer, context, goals, and priorities), then synthesize the results. As a group, highlight areas of agreement and resolve areas of difference.
    • Team-building – At the start of the project, ask individual team members to complete the worksheet as it applies to both the project scope and the process. Individuals share their worksheets and, as a group, identify areas of shared comfort and develop ways to help each other through areas of learning or panic.
  • Why I like it: Very similar to the Project Playground concept I use with project teams to define the scope and set constraints, it can be used individually to build empathy and support amongst team members.

Team Dashboards

  • What it is: A tool to build trust and confidence amongst a team working through an ambiguous effort
  • When to use it: At regular pre-defined intervals during a project (e.g., every team check-in, at the end of each Sprint, once a month)
  • What I like about it:
    • Individuals complete it BEFORE the meeting, so the session focuses on discussing the dashboard, not completing it
    • The dashboard focuses on the usual business things (progress against responsibilities, the biggest challenge, next steps) and the “softer” elements that tend to have the most significant impact on team experience and productivity (mood, biggest accomplishment, team balance between talking and doing)

Learn It. Do It.

The world isn’t going to get simpler, clearer, or slower. It’s on you as a leader to learn how to deal with it. When to slow it down and explore and when to speed it up and act. No one is born knowing. We all learn along the way. The Library will help. No ambiguity about that!

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