Building Trust for High Performing Teams

GUEST POST from David Burkus

Trust is the bedrock upon which successful teams are built. High-performing teams are characterized by an elevated level of trust. This trust in high performing teams manifests in four distinct ways: teams trust each other to deliver, they trust that they can share new ideas, they trust that they can disagree, and they trust that they can make mistakes. Each of these aspects of trust contributes to the overall success and productivity of the team.

As a leader, it is your responsibility to set the tone and model trust within your team. This involves creating an environment where team members feel safe to share their ideas, voice their disagreements, and admit their mistakes. By doing so, you can foster a culture of trust that drives your team towards high performance.

In this article, we’ll review each type of trust in high performing teams and offer ways leaders can build each.

Teams Trust Each Other To Deliver

Trust in a team begins with the belief that each member will deliver on their commitments. This trust is built on clarity and understanding of each person’s role within the team. When team members understand how their work contributes to the overall team goals, they are more likely to feel accountable and deliver on their commitments. Lack of trust can manifest when people don’t know how their work fits into the team. This can lead to confusion, miscommunication, and ultimately, a failure to meet team objectives.

Regular team huddles can improve clarity and accountability, thereby fostering trust in the team’s ability to deliver. In huddles, the team meets at regular intervals to review progress, set new priorities, and discuss any potential roadblocks. Doing so as a team not only keeps everyone on the same page, over time it can instill a belief in each person that their teammates can deliver on their promises (assuming, of course, the teammates are actually delivering on their promises).

Teams Trust They Can Share New Ideas

High-performing teams are often characterized by their ability to generate and welcome new ideas. This requires a culture of trust where team members feel safe to share their out-of-the-box thinking. Diversity of experiences and perspectives can lead to innovative ideas that drive the team forward. But only if team members feel safe enough to share the innovative ideas that stem from their diverse perspectives.

Leaders play a crucial role in fostering this culture of trust. By modeling active listening and creating an environment where new ideas are considered and valued, leaders can encourage their team members to share their thoughts and contribute to the team’s innovation. When leaders demonstrate how to respect the new ideas of others, hearing them out fully, and discuss them, they not only teach the team how to do so but they send a message to everyone that “crazy” ideas are welcome here.

Teams Trust That They Can Disagree

Disagreements are a natural part of any team’s dynamics. As teammates from different backgrounds, perspectives or experiences discuss their problems or plan out critical tasks, they’re going to disagree on the best way forward. In low-performing teams, this conflict is often avoided, and ideas suppressed. However, in high-performing teams, disagreements are viewed as opportunities for growth and improvement. Team members trust that they can voice their disagreements and have their ideas challenged in a respectful and constructive manner.

Leaders can foster this trust by setting the tone for disagreements. When teammates speak up to disagree with a leader, it’s an opportunity to model respectful dissent and discussion. When teammates disagree with each other, it’s an opportunity for the leader to “referee” the conflict and establish ground rules for keeping conflict task focused. By welcoming disagreements and ensuring that everyone feels heard, leaders can create a safe space for constructive conflict and continuous improvement.

Teams Trust They Can Make Mistakes

Mistakes are inevitable in any team. Teams will make assumptions about the environment or get hit with unexpected changes. Failure on a team is unavoidable even on the highest-performing teams. In low-performing teams, failures quickly turn into blame sessions, which each member trying to save their own skin. However, in high-performing teams, mistakes are viewed as learning opportunities rather than failures. This requires a culture of trust where team members feel safe to admit their mistakes and learn from them.

In dysfunctional teams, people often hide their failures due to fear of judgment or exploitation. Leaders can counteract this by modeling vulnerability and admitting their own mistakes. This can help to build trust and create a safe environment for team members to learn and grow. When a team witnesses a leader taking responsibility for failure or admitting a shortcoming, they’re more likely to trust that leader in the future—and to trust each other.

Trust is the cornerstone of high-performing teams. It manifests in the team’s ability to deliver, share new ideas, disagree constructively, and admit mistakes. As a leader, it is your responsibility to foster this trust within your team. By setting the tone and modeling trust, you can create an environment where your team can thrive and do its best work ever.

Image credit: Pixabay

Originally published on DavidBurkus.com on October 30, 2023

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Uncertainty Isn’t Always Bad

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Uncertainty Isn't Always Bad

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

If you think you understand what your customers want, you don’t.

If you’re developing a new product for new customers, you know less.

If you’re developing a new technology for a new product for new customers, you know even less.

If you think you know how much growth a new product will deliver, you don’t.

If that new product will serve new customers, you know less.

If that new product will require a new technology, you know even less.

If you have to choose between project A and B, you’ll choose the one that’s most like what you did last time.

If project A will change the game and B will grow sales by 5%, you’ll play the game you played last time.

If project A and B will serve new customers, you’ll change one of them to serve existing customers and do that one.

If you think you know how the market will respond to a new product, it won’t make much of a difference.

If you don’t know how the market will respond, you may be onto something.

If you don’t know which market the product will serve, there’s a chance to create a whole new one.

If you know how the market will respond, do something else.

When we have a choice between certainty and upside, the choice is certain.

When we choose certainty over upside, we forget that the up-starts will choose differently.

When we have a lot to lose, we chose certainty.

And once it’s lost, we start over and choose uncertainty.

Image credits: Pexels

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Creating A Connected Human Experience

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Empathy Meets Technology

Creating A Connected Human Experience

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Because of AI, so much has changed in the way companies do business. The technology hit a tipping point when ChatGPT and other generative AI solutions moved from behind the scenes to public awareness in November 2022. Even if the public didn’t know exactly what ChatGPT-type products were, they had an idea. This created both excitement and fear. For companies and brands, it created opportunities to employ more powerful technology at a lower price. It also created confusion about which technology to choose, how to implement it quickly and whether to implement something as new as this at all.

One company that quickly adapted and transformed itself is C1, a technology solutions provider that serves nearly half of the Fortune 500 (and many others) and partners with more than 140 technology vendors that they help match to their clients’ needs. I had a chance to sit down with Jeffrey Russell, formerly a “transformation leader” and president of Accenture Canada, and now the CEO of C1, who shared how he is leading his company to grow through acquisition and meeting the company’s and its customers’ ever-changing goals.

In our interview on Amazing Business Radio, Russell shared, “In a financial restructuring, you really need to have your story right from the outset.” His formula is simple.

Know what you’re really good at—your company’s superpowers.
Know how you want the organization to change and how you plan to get there. Clarity is essential to getting an ownership group and other stakeholders to support your plan.
Everyone on the team must tell the same story and communicate it clearly. You can’t afford miscommunication. You want to communicate the company’s vision and its long-term value and demonstrate confidence in the company’s future success.
Finally, you must have patience. Over-communicate throughout the process to keep everyone aligned as you move forward.

Russell states, “In the end, leading a change like this is about taking control of your destiny so you can come out on the other end as a financially stronger organization in a better market position to innovate, deliver value to customers and sustain growth.”

While leading C1’s growth and transformation in the era of the AI technology boom, Russell never took his eye off what was most important to a company: the human experience. In addition to taking us through that overview, he also shared how to create a powerful connected human experience for both customers and employees, which is the focus of what follows. Below are his ideas (in bold) followed by my commentary:

Two words that aren’t typically found in the same sentence are technology and empathy. Russell says, “Technology is stark. It’s cold, and often a barrier between the company and its customers.” The easiest way to explain this is that companies must find a balance between technology and the human-to-human (H2H) experience. While technology expands capabilities, you can’t afford to do it at the cost of the relationship. The concept of empathy means understanding what matters to customers. People must be the No. 1 consideration in a plan to acquire and implement new technology.
Ensure technology serves human needs. As you seek a balance between tech and H2H, consider how the technology helps people. Does it make life easier for both customers and employees? And, to emphasize Russell’s concern about the overuse of tech, will it enable better connections?
Use human experience to add new levels of business value. Without technology, what would the experience look like? Then, after implementing the technology, be sure it supports rather than disrupts the experience.
Walk in the shoes of your customer! As “cool” as technology can be, pretend you’re the customer who isn’t quite as savvy with technology as you are. What’s the experience like? It must be easy, intuitive and almost human-like.

As we came to the end of the interview, Russell shared three A’s people should consider when referring to AI:

Authentic Intelligence: Even if it is artificial, does the solution promote an authentic experience? Or will the technology come across to the customer as cold or stark?
Augmented Intelligence: Think of augmented reality and how it enhances the virtual experience. AI augments intelligence. It may or may not work by itself, but when combined with the H2H experience, it supports and makes it easier for employees to help customers with their questions and problems.
Actionable Intelligence: When you activate artificial intelligence, the implementation process should begin with what happens to the customer experience when it is applied. Just having something new or cool isn’t the reason to implement it. This concept takes us back to how the best companies seem to master the balancing act between technology and the H2H experience.

Rapid advances in AI technology bring both opportunities and challenges for businesses. As companies and brands explore, experiment and make their choices for what works best, Russell emphasizes never losing focus on creating a meaningful and connected experience. By balancing technology with empathy and understanding, businesses can not only survive but thrive in this new era.

Image Credits: Pixabay

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com

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A Toolbox for High-Performance Teams

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Building, Leading and Scaling

A Toolbox for High-Performance Teams

GUEST POST from Stefan Lindegaard

Together with a client, we are developing a toolbox for building, leading, and scaling high-performance teams. We are about to begin the implementation phase and will share case stories in a few months, as there are valuable learnings in this process.

For now, you are welcome to use this toolbox. See the introduction and images below, and if you see a match, get in touch with your feedback and questions about utilization and implementation within your teams and organization.

Here’s a short overview of the toolbox. The attached images also provide a glimpse (let me know if I should send you an image deck with all of this combined):

Capability Gap Map

The Capability Gap Map tool helps identify and understand the current status, future desired position, and gaps that need to be filled across different focus areas. The key elements are 7-12 indicators that are prioritized, assessed today, and considered for the future position.

Steps for Using the Capability Gap Map:

Identify Indicators: Select 7-12 key indicators relevant to the focus area.
Prioritize Indicators: Rank the indicators based on their importance and impact.
Rate Current State: Assess the current state for each indicator.
Assess Future State: Define the desired future state for each indicator.
Develop Action Plans: Create a one-pager outlining short, mid, and long-term actions to bridge the gaps.

SEBL (Stop, Enhance, Borrow, Learn)

SEBL is a tool to help leaders and their teams understand what to Stop, Enhance, Borrow, and Learn based on the Capability Gap Map. This tool can spur reflections and help drive specific actions.

Steps for Using SEBL:

Stop: Identify and eliminate ineffective practices to free up resources and provide clarity.
Enhance: Improve what’s already working well, capitalizing on strengths.
Borrow: Look outward for inspiration and adapt successful practices from other sources.
Learn: Push boundaries, innovate, and introduce entirely new concepts or skills.

Action Overviews

The Action Overview is a short document for leaders and their teams to create an overview of their upcoming actions. It can be used for individuals as well as teams and is useful for sharing the current focus with team members and stakeholders to get feedback and leverage networks.

Steps for Action Overviews:

Focus & Description: Define your key action and relate it to your team’s objectives.
Expected Outcomes & Metrics/KPIs: Detail what you aim to achieve and the metrics to measure these outcomes.
Resources & Team Collaboration: Identify needed resources and potential for cross-functional collaboration.
Stakeholders: Identify relevant internal and external stakeholders and their attitudes toward the action.
Milestones/Deadline: Break down the action into manageable milestones, each with its own deadline.

Additional Tools

This toolbox is still in the early phases, and we are starting to implement it while developing other tools. If you are curious, we can also develop tailored Team Dynamics Cards, exercises, assessments, and other insights to support the above actions. You can access my library with over 250 images, 50+ cards on Team Dynamics and Leadership Growth, and more than 30 exercises. Custom materials can also be created for your teams or organization.

Feel free to use and share these tools. I look forward to your feedback and questions on implementing them within your teams and organization. If you’d like a complete image deck or more details, just let me know!

Image Credits: Unsplash, Stefan Lindegaard

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The Twelve Killers of Innovation

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A Corporate Carol About Why You’re Not Getting Results

The Twelve Killers of Innovation

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Last week, InnoLead published a collection of eleven articles describing the root causes and remedies for killers of innovation in large organizations. Every single article is worth a read as they’re all written by experts and practitioners whose work I admire.

I was also inspired.

In the spirit of the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, I gave into temptation, added my own failure mode, and decided to have a bit of fun.

The Twelve Killers of Innovation

(Inspired by the Twelve Days of Christmas yet relevant year-round)

On the twelfth day of innovating, management gave to me:

Twelve leaders short-term planning

Eleven long projects dragging

Ten cultures resisting

Nine decisions made too quickly

Eight competing visions

Seven goals left unclear

Six startups mistrusted

Five poorly defined risks

Four rigid structures

Three funding black holes

Two teams under-staffed

And a bureaucracy too entrenched to change

Want to write a happier song?

Each of the innovation killers can be fended off with enough planning, collaboration, and commitment. To learn how, check out the articles:

Twelve leaders short-term planning – 3 Examples of Why Innovation is a Leadership Problem by Robyn Bolton, MileZero

Eleven long projects dragging – Failing Slow by Clay Maxwell, Peer Insight

Ten cultures resisting – How to Innovate When Resistance is Everywhere by Trevor Anulewicz, NTT DATA

Nine decisions made too quickly – Red Light, Green Light by Doug Williams, SmartOrg Inc.

Eight competing visions – The Five Most Common Innovation Failure Modes by Parker Lee, Territory Global

Seven goals left unclear – Mitigating Common Failure Modes by Jim Bodio, BRI Associates

Six startups mistrusted – Developing a New Corporate Innovation Model by Satish Rao, Newlab

Five poorly defined risks – Strategic Innovation is too Scary by Gina O’Connor, Babson College

Four rigid structures – Corporate Innovation is Dead by Ryan Larcom, High Alpha Innovation

Three funding black holes – Failure Modes by Jake Miller, The Engineered Innovation Group

Two teams under-staffed – Why Innovation Teams Fail by Jacob Dutton, Future Foundry

And a bureaucracy too entrenched to change – Building Resilient Teams by Frank Henningsen, HYPE Innovation

How are you going to make sure that you receive gifts and not coal this year for all your innovation work?

Image credit: Pexels

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Profiting From Fear and Mistrust

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Profiting From Fear and Mistrust

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

When I lived and worked in Ukraine, it was commonplace to see men in camouflage fatigues and Uzi’s in the waiting rooms of offices around town. They weren’t there as security, or to rob the place, but to help transfer money between businesses. It was cumbersome and inefficient, but in an atmosphere of mistrust, it was a necessity.

In most countries, we’re still a long way from armed couriers as a daily routine, but according to Edelman’s recent Trust Barometer, we’re headed in that direction. Entitled “Innovation in Peril,” it details an overall collapse of confidence, finding that roughly two thirds believe that journalists, government leaders, and business executives, are “purposely trying to mislead.”

That’s a problem for all of us. Mistrust is corrosive to the norms that help our society run efficiently and the costs are very real. Our lack of trust in government prevents us from making needed investments. Suspicions about law enforcement undermine public safety. Mistrust in the workplace undermines performance. We desperately need to rebuild trust.

The Value Of Trust

Trust isn’t our natural state. Economists have developed a number of models to show how fragile it can be. For example, in a prisoner’s dilemma, two suspects are brought in for questioning. If they both stay true to each other, they get the best collective outcome, but if each follows his or her own self-interest, both will confess and get the worst overall outcome.

Related concepts are the tragedy of the commons, in which everybody has access to a common field to graze their livestock, depleting the resource so that everybody’s herd suffers, and the free rider problem which often occurs with respect to public goods. These situations are known as Nash equilibriums because nobody can change their preference without making themselves worse off.

When you take a moment to think, it’s kind of amazing that we operate with as much trust as we do. Local businesses faithfully serve communities for years, even decades. Corporations spend billions to build brands and governments work to earn legitimacy. That is what allows us to easily transact business throughout the day. When trust collapses, we get Uzis in waiting rooms.

Yet it doesn’t have to be that dramatic. Research by Accenture found that “trust events” cost businesses billions of dollars every year. For example, a consumer-focused company that had a sustainability-oriented publicity event backfire lost an estimated $400 million in future revenues. Another company that was named in a money laundering scandal lost $1 billion.

Profiting From Our Mistrust

Our brains are geared for mistrust in a number of ways. The first is a bias for loss aversion. We will do more to avoid a loss than we will for an equivalent gain. That makes trust hard to build and easy to lose, which is why the “trust events,” like those cited in the Accenture study, are so costly.

Another contributing factor is availability bias, our tendency to overweight easily accessible examples, such as a specific trust event, and ignore vague concepts, like years of good service. Once we accept a belief, our confirmation bias will lead us to seek out information that supports our prior beliefs and reject contrary evidence.

These effects are multiplied by tribal tendencies. We form group identities easily, and groups tend to develop into echo chambers, which amplify common beliefs and minimize contrary information. We also tend to share more actively with people who agree with us and, with little fear of rebuke, we are less likely to check that information for accuracy.

That, essentially, is the economics of disinformation. Fear breeds mistrust, which makes us feel insecure and leads us to seek out people we identify with to reinforce our beliefs. Research suggests media companies, especially social media companies, profit from the passions that the most polarizing information unleash in the form of greater engagement with their platforms.

Facts, Identity and Fear

We tend to think of truth as a simple matter of knowledge and understanding. We see the world as a set number of facts and believe that any disagreements arise from a lack of clarity about what the true facts are. In this view, mistrust can be corrected by better access to good information. Once people are informed, how could there be any disagreement?

Unfortunately, the world doesn’t work that way. In fact, a study at Ohio State found that, when confronted with scientific evidence that conflicted with their views, people would question the objectivity of the science. Another thing to consider is that, as Sam Arbesman explained in The Half-Life of Facts, our ideas about what’s true changes over time.

We can’t rigorously test every proposition, which is why we adopt the views of those around us, a phenomenon that psychologists call social proof. What makes the effect even more insidious, is that the relationship is reciprocal. We internalize the ideas of the tribes we join and then propagate those same ideas to others, intensifying the echo chamber.

Our beliefs are far more than mere acceptance of sets of facts, but become inherently part of our identity. Wars are not fought over ideologies because people disagree about empirical evidence, but because they see their sense of selves under attack. If truth is a force for good, then those who refuse to accept our version of it are, in the most basic sense of the word, evil.

From Victimization To Empowerment Through Purpose

Our ability to trust others is, to a great extent, a function of how we see ourselves and our situation. If we see ourselves as secure and in tune with our environment, it’s relatively easy for us to build bonds of trust. If we feel those around us share our values, it’s easier to feel a shared sense of identity and purpose.

However, if we see our surroundings as hostile, we will take steps to protect ourselves and that, to a great extent, is where we are at today. First the Internet, and then social media have tended to promote and juxtapose the most extreme elements, creating an atmosphere of heightened conflict among tribes, which further undermines our sense of security and trust.

This is what Marshall McLuhan meant when he wrote that the global village would result in a “release of human power and aggressive violence” greater than ever in human history. When we are confronted with ideas and values that are different from our own, it can feel more more like an assault and an affront than a refreshing interaction with the variety of life.

Here Ukraine offers a lesson. Over the past decade it has built a new identity and found a new purpose. Today most Ukrainians, especially the younger generations, feel a stronger affinity for European values than for their post-Soviet past. In fact, they have so internalized their European ambitions that they are willing to risk a war to maintain them.

We have a similar challenge before us. If a common identity is forged from shared values and shared purpose, on what foundation will we build our future? To what common project can we devote our energies? What are our ambitions and how best might we fulfill them? These are the questions that we need to answer if we are ever to rebuild the bonds of trust.

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

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Don’t Slow Roll Your Transformation

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Don't Slow Roll Your Transformation

GUEST POST from Geoffrey A. Moore

Business pundits love to talk about transformation, and consultants drool at the opportunity to tap into a limitless budget, but the truth is, transformations suck.

At minimum, transformation consists of re-engineering your operating model while continuing to operate, with even greater disruption involved if you are revamping your business model at the same time. Now, if you are a privately held enterprise, you might be able to sell this to your board as a “pivot,” and indeed, in the venture world, there is some accommodation built in for such moves. Not so, however, for companies whose shares are publicly held. If this describes you, fasten your seatbelt and read on.

Transformations come with “J curves”—financial projections that have you swimming underwater for some considerable period before you emerge reborn on the other side. Public investors hate J curves. They also worry prospective customers, as well as ecosystem partners, not to mention your own employees. Only a VC loves a J curve, but their attention is on a younger generation.

Nonetheless, everyone understands there are situations where transformation is warranted. For public companies, the most common cause is when the entire franchise is under existential threat. A new technology paradigm is going to categorically obsolete the core franchise, as digital photography did to Kodak, as digital media did to BusinessWeek, as wireless telephony is doing to wireline. It was an existential threat that caused Microsoft to displace its back office software business with Azure’s cloud services, even though the gross margins of the latter were negative while the net margins of the former were stupendous. It was an existential threat that drove Lou Gerstner to reengineer IBM’s hardware-centric business model to focus on services and software. Failure to transform means dissolution of the enterprise. If you are to survive, there are times when you simply have to bite the bullet.

That said, you still have to confront the issue of time. Everyone understands that a transformation will take more than one year, but no one is willing to tolerate it taking three. That is, by the end of the second year you have to be verifiably emerging from the J curve, head out of water, able to breathe positive cash flow, or else you are likely to be written off. That means transformational initiatives should be planned to complete in seven quarters, plus or minus one. That’s the amount of time you can be in the ICU before you risk getting transferred to hospice care.

So, if a transformation is in your future, and you really cannot work around it, then start your planning with the end in mind and calendar that end for seven quarters out. Now, work backward to determine where you will have to be by each of the intervening quarters in order to meet your completion date. When you get back to the current quarter, expect to see you are already two or three quarters behind schedule (not fair, I know, but I already told you that transformations suck). Suppress panic, conduct triage, and start both your engines and the clock.

Final point: given the lack of time and the amount of risk involved, there is only one sensible way to approach a transformation. Prioritize it above everything else, and keep everyone focused on making the intermediate milestones until you are well and truly out of danger. Transformations are no joking matter. Most companies lose their way. Don’t let that be true of you and yours.

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

Image Credit: Pixabay

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Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2024

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After a week of torrid voting and much passionate support, along with a lot of gut-wrenching consideration and jostling during the judging round, I am proud to announce your Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2024:

Greg Satell
Greg Satell is a popular speaker and consultant. His first book, Mapping Innovation: A Playbook for Navigating a Disruptive Age, was selected as one of the best business books in 2017. Follow his blog at Digital Tonto or on Twitter @Digital Tonto.

Janet Sernack
Janet Sernack is the Founder and CEO of ImagineNation™ which provides innovation consulting services to help organizations adapt, innovate and grow through disruption by challenging businesses to be, think and act differently to co-create a world where people matter & innovation is the norm.

Mike Shipulski
Mike Shipulski brings together people, culture, and tools to change engineering behavior. He writes daily on Twitter as @MikeShipulski and weekly on his blog Shipulski On Design.

Robyn Bolton
Robyn M. Bolton works with leaders of mid and large sized companies to use innovation to repeatably and sustainably grow their businesses.
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Pete Foley
A twenty-five year Procter & Gamble veteran, Pete has spent the last 8+ years applying insights from psychology and behavioral science to innovation, product design, and brand communication. He spent 17 years as a serial innovator, creating novel products, perfume delivery systems, cleaning technologies, devices and many other consumer-centric innovations, resulting in well over 100 granted or published patents. Find him at pete.mindmatters@gmail.com

Geoffrey A. Moore
Geoffrey A. Moore is an author, speaker and business advisor to many of the leading companies in the high-tech sector, including Cisco, Cognizant, Compuware, HP, Microsoft, SAP, and Yahoo! Best known for Crossing the Chasm and Zone to Win with the latest book being The Infinite Staircase. Partner at Wildcat Venture Partners. Chairman Emeritus Chasm Group & Chasm Institute

Shep Hyken
Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, keynote speaker, and New York Times, bestselling business author. For information on The Customer Focus™ customer service training programs, go to www.thecustomerfocus.com. Follow on Twitter: @Hyken

David Burkus
Dr. David Burkus is an organizational psychologist and best-selling author. Recognized as one of the world’s leading business thinkers, his forward-thinking ideas and books are helping leaders and teams do their best work ever. David is the author of five books about business and leadership and he’s been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, CNN, the BBC, NPR, and more. A former business school professor turned sought-after international speaker, he’s worked with organizations of all sizes and across all industries.

John Bessant
John Bessant has been active in research, teaching, and consulting in technology and innovation management for over 25 years. Today, he is Chair in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and Research Director, at Exeter University. In 2003, he was awarded a Fellowship with the Advanced Institute for Management Research and was also elected a Fellow of the British Academy of Management. He has acted as advisor to various national governments and international bodies including the United Nations, The World Bank, and the OECD. John has authored many books including Managing innovation and High Involvement Innovation (Wiley). Follow @johnbessant

Braden Kelley
Braden Kelley is a Human-Centered Experience, Innovation and Transformation consultant at HCL Technologies, a popular innovation speaker, workshop leader, and creator of the Human-Centered Change™ methodology. He is the author of Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire from John Wiley & Sons and Charting Change from Palgrave Macmillan. Follow him on Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

Howard Tiersky
Howard Tiersky is an inspiring and passionate speaker, the Founder and CEO of FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency, innovation consultant, serial entrepreneur, and the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote to Irrelevance. IDG named him one of the “10 Digital Transformation Influencers to Follow Today”, and Enterprise Management 360 named Howard “One of the Top 10 Digital Transformation Influencers That Will Change Your World.”

Stefan Lindegaard
Stefan Lindegaard is an author, speaker and strategic advisor. His work focuses on corporate transformation based on disruption, digitalization and innovation in large corporations, government organizations and smaller companies. Stefan believes that business today requires an open and global perspective, and his work takes him to Europe, North and South America, Africa and Asia.

Dainora Jociute
Dainora (a.k.a. Dee) creates customer-centric content at Viima. Viima is the most widely used and highest rated innovation management software in the world. Passionate about environmental issues, Dee writes about sustainable innovation hoping to save the world – one article at the time.

Teresa Spangler
Teresa Spangler is the CEO of PlazaBridge Group has been a driving force behind innovation and growth for more than 30 years. Today, she wears multiple hats as a social entrepreneur, innovation expert, growth strategist, author and speaker (not to mention mother, wife, band-leader and so much more). She is especially passionate about helping CEOs understand and value the role human capital plays in innovation, and the impact that innovation has on humanity; in our ever-increasing artificial/cyber world.

Soren Kaplan
Soren Kaplan is the bestselling and award-winning author of Leapfrogging and The Invisible Advantage, an affiliated professor at USC’s Center for Effective Organizations, a former corporate executive, and a co-founder of UpBOARD. He has been recognized by the Thinkers50 as one of the world’s top keynote speakers and thought leaders in business strategy and innovation.

Diana Porumboiu
Diana heads marketing at Viima, the most widely used and highest rated innovation management software in the world, and has a passion for innovation, and for genuine, valuable content that creates long-lasting impact. Her combination of creativity, strategic thinking and curiosity has helped organisations grow their online presence through strategic campaigns, community management and engaging content.

Steve Blank
Steve Blank is an Adjunct Professor at Stanford and Senior Fellow for Innovation at Columbia University. He has been described as the Father of Modern Entrepreneurship, credited with launching the Lean Startup movement that changed how startups are built; how entrepreneurship is taught; how science is commercialized, and how companies and the government innovate.

Jesse Nieminen
Jesse Nieminen is the Co-founder and Chairman at Viima, the best way to collect and develop ideas. Viima’s innovation management software is already loved by thousands of organizations all the way to the Global Fortune 500. He’s passionate about helping leaders drive innovation in their organizations and frequently writes on the topic, usually in Viima’s blog.

Robert B Tucker
Robert B. Tucker is the President of The Innovation Resource Consulting Group. He is a speaker, seminar leader and an expert in the management of innovation and assisting companies in accelerating ideas to market.

Dennis Stauffer
Dennis Stauffer is an author, independent researcher, and expert on personal innovativeness. He is the founder of Innovator Mindset LLC which helps individuals, teams, and organizations enhance and accelerate innovation success. by shifting mindset. Follow @DennisStauffer

Arlen Meyers
Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is an emeritus professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, an instructor at the University of Colorado-Denver Business School and cofounding President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs at www.sopenet.org. Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ameyers/

Ayelet Baron
Ayelet Baron is a pioneering futurist reminding us we are powerful creators through award winning books, daily blog and thinking of what is possible. Former global tech executive who sees trust, relationships and community as our building blocks to a healthy world.

Leo Chan
Leo is the founder of Abound Innovation Inc. He’s a people and heart-first entrepreneur who believes everyone can be an innovator. An innovator himself, with 55 US patents and over 20 years of experience, Leo has come alongside organizations like Chick-fil-A and guided them to unleash the innovative potential of their employees by transforming them into confident innovators.

Rachel Audige
Rachel Audige is an Innovation Architect who helps organisations embed inventive thinking as well as a certified Systematic Inventive Thinking Facilitator, based in Melbourne.

Art Inteligencia
Art Inteligencia is the lead futurist at Inteligencia Ltd. He is passionate about content creation and thinks about it as more science than art. Art travels the world at the speed of light, over mountains and under oceans. His favorite numbers are one and zero.

Paul Sloane
Paul Sloane writes, speaks and leads workshops on creativity, innovation and leadership. He is the author of The Innovative Leader and editor of A Guide to Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing, both published by Kogan-Page.

Phil McKinney
Phil McKinney is the Author of “Beyond The Obvious”, Host of the Killer Innovations Podcast and Syndicated Radio Show, a Keynote Speaker, President & CEO CableLabs and an Innovation Mentor and Coach.

Ralph Christian Ohr
Dr. Ralph-Christian Ohr has extensive experience in product/innovation management for international technology-based companies. His particular interest is targeted at the intersection of organizational and human innovation capabilities. You can follow him on Twitter @Ralph_Ohr.

Jeffrey Phillips
Jeffrey Phillips has over 15 years of experience leading innovation in Fortune 500 companies, federal government agencies and non-profits. He is experienced in innovation strategy, defining and implementing front end processes, tools and teams and leading innovation projects. He is the author of Relentless Innovation and OutManeuver. Jeffrey writes the popular Innovate on Purpose blog. Follow him @ovoinnovation

Dean and Linda Anderson
Dr. Dean Anderson and Dr. Linda Ackerman Anderson lead BeingFirst, a consultancy focused on educating the marketplace about what’s possible in personal, organizational and community transformation and how to achieve them. Each has been advising clients and training professionals for more than 40 years.

Shilpi Kumar
Shilpi Kumar an inquisitive researcher, designer, strategist and an educator with over 15 years of experience, who truly believes that we can design a better world by understanding human behavior. I work with organizations to identify strategic opportunities and offer user-centric solutions.

Scott Anthony
Scott Anthony is a strategic advisor, writer and speaker on topics of growth and innovation. He has been based in Singapore since 2010, and currently serves at the Managing Director of Innosight’s Asia-Pacific operations.

Anthony Mills
Anthony Mills is the Founder & CEO of Legacy Innovation Group (www.legacyinnova.com), a world-leading strategic innovation consulting firm working with organizations all over the world. Anthony is also the Executive Director of GInI – Global Innovation Institute (www.gini.org), the world’s foremost certification, accreditation, and membership organization in the field of innovation. Anthony has advised leaders from around the world on how to successfully drive long-term growth and resilience through new innovation. Learn more at www.anthonymills.com. Anthony can be reached directly at anthony@anthonymills.com.

Paul Hobcraft
Paul Hobcraft runs Agility Innovation, an advisory business that stimulates sound innovation practice, researches topics that relate to innovation for the future, as well as aligning innovation to organizations core capabilities. Follow @paul4innovating

Jorge Barba
Jorge Barba is a strategist and entrepreneur, who helps companies build new puzzles using human skills. He is a global Innovation Insurgent and author of the innovation blog www.Game-Changer.net

Chateau G Pato
Chateau G Pato is a senior futurist at Inteligencia Ltd. She is passionate about content creation and thinks about it as more science than art. Chateau travels the world at the speed of light, over mountains and under oceans. Her favorite numbers are one and zero.

Douglas Ferguson
Douglas Ferguson is an entrepreneur and human-centered technologist. He is the founder and president of Voltage Control, an Austin-based change agency that helps enterprises spark, accelerate, and sustain innovation. He specializes in helping teams work better together through participatory decision making and design inspired facilitation techniques.

Alain Thys
As an experience architect, Alain helps leaders craft customer, employee and shareholder experiences for profit, reinvention and transformation. He does this through his personal consultancy Alain Thys & Co as well as the transformative venture studio Agents of A.W.E. Together with his teams, Alain has influenced the experience of over 500 million customers and 350,000 employees. Follow his blog or connect on Linkedin.

Bruce Fairley
Bruce Fairley is the CEO and Founder of The Narrative Group, a firm dedicated to helping C-Suite executives build enterprise value. Through smart, human-powered digital transformation, Bruce optimizes the business-technology relationship. His innovative profit over pitfalls approach and customized programs are part of Bruce’s mission to build sustainable ‘best-future’ outcomes for visionary leaders. Having spearheaded large scale change initiatives across four continents, he and his skilled, diverse team elevate process, culture, and the bottom line for medium to large firms worldwide.

Tom Stafford
Tom Stafford studies learning and decision making. His main focus is the movement system – the idea being that if we can understand the intelligence of simple actions we will have an excellent handle on intelligence more generally. His research looks at simple decision making, and simple skill learning, using measures of behaviour informed by the computational, robotics and neuroscience work done in the wider group.

If your favorite didn’t make the list, then next year try to rally more votes for them or convince them to increase the quality and quantity of their contributions.

Our lists from the ten previous years have been tremendously popular, including:

Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2015
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2016
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2017
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2018
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2019
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2020
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2021
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2022
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2023

Download PDF versions of the Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 lists here:

. . .

. . .

Happy New Year everyone!

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Elon Musk’s Leadership Style Will Make or Break DOGE

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Elon Musk's Leadership Style Will Make or Break DOGE

GUEST POST from Robert B. Tucker

The newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by tech billionaire Elon Musk and businessman Vivek Ramaswami, has the potential to revolutionize how the United States government functions.

As a futurist and innovation expert who’s participated in numerous corporate and government innovation initiatives, I commend this effort to deliver more for less to Americans at a time when belief in government is at a low ebb. However, achieving success in this new endeavor could prove to be as complex as colonizing Mars.

According to research by McKinsey, 70-90% of complex, large-scale corporate and government change initiatives fail to reach their stated goals. Yet, if anyone can pull this off, it’s likely to be outsiders with a proven track record of success at doing difficult things. As I wrote previously in Forbes, Musk has been able to disrupt every industry he’s entered: money transfer with PayPal, renewable energy with SolarCity, electric vehicles and batteries with Tesla, and space entrepreneurship with SpaceX. But these are all for-profit businesses, not government agencies.

Below are five leadership suggestions for making DOGE a moonshot success:

1. Realize this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to serve. According to McKinsey, the biggest reason large-scale initiatives go awry is the failure to set fact-based high aspirations. With DOGE, the stated goals are clear: to dismantle bureaucracy, cut regulations, restructure agencies, and save taxpayers a whopping $2 trillion! My advice to Musk: You can make a lasting impact if you take the high road and adjust your approach. The abrasive leadership style you used to lower costs at Twitter (firing 6,000 employees) will backfire here. DOGE is a unique opportunity to transform an organization that doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to all of us.

2. Do your own thinking, and don’t let others rule you. To succeed, Musk must resist the tendency to “stick it to the bureaucracy” or punish agencies such as the EPA and SEC that prosecuted him in the past. Also, to forget about clearing out the so-called “Deep State,” which doesn’t exist. Everyone is watching to see if Musk will succumb to partisan paradigms or Silicon Valley groupthink, which assumes that technology is the answer to every problem. As someone who researches the habits of leading innovators, I admire the way Musk does voluminous research, challenges conventional thinking, learns from failure, and experiments constantly while taking calculated risks. My advice to Musk: Form your own opinions and make decisions with an open mind, in short, be your own man. Don’t abandon the habits and best practices that got you where you are. Be willing to adjust your leadership style and adapt them to serving the government. If you pull this off, the appreciation and love will be worth it in the end.

3. Seek out innovators in government. Having served as an innovation coach to organizations as varied as the Army Corp of Engineers, DARPA, and VA Hospitals, my experience is that there are talented, dedicated, out-of-the-box-thinkers and doers within our government. The problem is they are not always heard. They may have practical ideas about how to do things better, cheaper, and faster, but there is no incentive to take the initiative for the hard work of innovation. My advice: Musk needs to acknowledge that the federal government does function: air traffic controllers keep planes flying, polluters get punished, Medicare checks go out, warfighters get trained and armed, FEMA workers show up at disasters, and taxes get collected. Instead of denigrating them, figure out ways to inspire and empower them instead. Find ways to lift them up, while challenging them to do better. My advice: make everyone in government a hero. Challenge them to join you in this once-in-a-lifetime endeavor to upgrade and revitalize the federal government.

4. Crowdsource for winning ideas. Idea crowdsourcing is the process of engaging employees, customers, suppliers, or other relevant audiences to contribute ideas to help an organization improve its products, services, or processes. Crowdsourcing ideas and creating a process for selecting and prioritizing those ideas will be critical to DOGE’s success. Outdated rules, like agencies being required to spend all allocated funds by year-end, drive wasteful spending and need changing. Modernizing antiquated data systems will enhance decision-making, accountability, and efficiency. Federal agencies need to be encouraged to identify efficiencies to improve outcomes, not just cut budgets. Federal employees need to be equipped with modern tools and strategies. Private-sector principles to improve citizen experience must be applied. The focus needs to be on shared goals and avoidance of partisanship.

In sum, Elon, this is your defining moment. Not just to modernize government but to inspire it to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Future generations will remember what you accomplished. If only you will lean in to serving America’s citizens in this time of need.

This article originally appeared in Forbes
Image credit: Pixabay

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Elon Musk’s Leadership Style Will Make or Break DOGE