When you feel the force of change running through the organization, you tend to have that same sensation, to resist the force with all your energy.

It is often really hard to let go, the environment was something you had become used to, you accepted and become resigned to its weaknesses and constantly exploited its possibilities or even possibly the other way round.

Ignoring the power of choice within change is dangerous

Constructing a climate for any transformation is hard. Our cultures are deep-rooted; we resist those winds blowing into us “full-on,” well beyond being reasonable or smart enough to avoid them before they confront us. The Chinese proverb below gives us a clear choice: “to build walls or build windmills”


When an organization decides to change its culture, set about constructing a different climate or environment so innovation can thrive. But there are so many steps to work through, so many obstacles to overcome, bridges to burn, habits to undo as well as construct the path of understanding, of recognition and providing the building blocks to this.

So often the top organizations keep delivering their message from the top, they so often fail to listen to the message from the bottom. Change is often resisted simply because the organization never takes the time to really listen to the views of the very people they expect to simply change..

Context is the vital ingredient often never told for innovation.

Often we hear “location, location, location” as the mantra for the real-state property. What should the mantra be for innovation? For me, it is “people, people, people” followed by “context, context and context”. We have often heard (and it is totally right) that innovation only happens through people. Everything else – systems, processes, structures, incentives and investments, sets the context that defines how people approach their jobs.

Context not only sets the stage, it gives us the reason to go and find the tools to get the job done but it is ‘our’ people who need to be motivated to go find them and apply them.

The power of context also refers to the conditions and circumstances of time and place for combining new ways to make a shift, a new understanding, perhaps to make the organization more sensitive to the need for innovation, to help fully support the people to innovate.

Context is powerful but only in the hands of knowledgeable people.

So to make the change we need context – the understanding of why we need to change and what we need to do with it. Then we can begin to think of the climate and eventual culture we want to have so as to achieve the change.

These actions shape behaviours that alter perceptions, establish themselves within the larger social group that change is directed towards, it alters the ‘norm’, opens up new possibilities and pushes the established boundaries.

Innovation is very fluid; we build systems that often impede it.

I kept a reference but I can’t recall who wrote it:

“An idea tends to be very fluid, and without context may be hard to evaluate or even consider. Certainly, any culture that discourages ideas will produce few, that rewards people for complying will not promote challenges and make the necessary breakthroughs business require today in new and different thinking. Having systems that minimize risk will also minimize innovation and risk-taking. Structures built to control only impede the very interactions that innovation thrives off of and restricting the movement of ideas will completely undercut the capacity for innovation”.

So companies need to put a great amount of attention on the context that will allow people to work clearly and effectively and provide the vital enablers that contribute to making this happen.

This power of context is something we are extremely alert or sensitive to, and when these change and we don’t understand why, we often just stop innovating, or being productive and often become disinclined to be creative. So making change for reasons that are seen as not clear to those involved stops people from doing their job of making innovation happen.

Context may be the arbitrator of success but people are first and foremost, hence why my two mantras are both critical “people followed by context” that are inexplicably linked for successful innovation but these should always be placed in the right order and recognition; people come first, context follows, innovation flows from the combination and you have the best chance to bring about positive change.

Actually making change for innovation is a lot harder.

Let me explain: Innovation, however, doesn’t work in many of our normal processes and procedures. Yes, we constantly attempt to squeeze all our innovation activity into a well-designed process but so many of those more radical innovations just cannot fit and we are then forced to ‘kill them off’ as the system rejects them.

We block any chance of making a radical change if we remain slaves to the pursuit of structured innovation alone. We should find ways to become flexible, more agile, and more ready to work with ambiguity and find the ways and means to challenge the consistent process for innovation.

Transactional processes have their context embedded in them, they are often just repeatable. Innovation, on the other hand, needs to attach context to every idea or concept, it needs to be moulded, shaped and aligned to the greater purpose, it is constantly unique and challenges the mindsets looking for simply efficiency and effectiveness.

A lot of innovation is actually not repeatable as it relies on creativity, discovery and intuition to overcome specific obstacles, all we can try to do is make them as efficient and effective as we can.

Encouraging change has one very powerful empowering step

If you encourage a certain readiness, willingness and ability to want to transform – then you must devolve power down to the individual to experiment, create, develop, to test, and then they will want to innovate.

They need to engage and identify, innovation derives from a concept in someone’s mind, who puts this into a context that others can relate to and out of this beginning comes the wish to develop and deliver this idea or concept into a final innovative product or service.

It is not the mechanical systems or processes that innovation often requires, it is the intellectual effort from the people wanting to engage in what it changes for them and those that benefit from something better and different.

Encouraging the forces, let them run free

Let those winds blow but do be ready to seek out all those within your team to harness the full forces of this change, to fill the sails that give you that momentum to move forward and pick up speed. If you lack the coordination of effort, when it is needed, and show poor commitment and enthusiasm, you create a real drag on performance.

You can often anchor and constrain the initiatives, you subject ‘forces of real negative tension’ that pulls in the opposite direction, holding everything and everybody back and eventually those full forces break free and run wild, ending up being totally out of control and all the creative energies are dissipated and going in all directions.

Remember we all need the provision of tools, encouragement, the time and space to adjust to change, to experiment and adjust, to become more comfortable, to validate a better course of action or way. We should always give liberally out the tools to do the job, but explain their purpose. We need to create the time to experiment and get used to what this means, keep adjusting and learning from the experience.

Focus constantly on the training and support always needed, you will surely lift any performance.

Finally innovation needs ‘team performance’ it struggles in isolation, it needs framing, context and dialogues to spark and evolve, and yes, always give praise and encouragement on any journey of change, lots of it. It soothes the pain of uncertainty, it strengthens the resolve to make the efforts.

It does seem “creative destruction” is a central force in many of our activities. Activities where innovation is continually replacing not just in products and new services but in designing radically different business models, searching to replace less adaptive competitors in the marketplace at faster rates.

Adoption is far earlier, the pace of change is quickening and from this, the competition is responding in new ways, often surrounding the new innovation with their version, built on often a really ‘fast follower’ principle to keep in step, and throttle off any different adoption, knowing what it costs to have to win this back over time if it can at all when it switches.

The life cycle is becoming even more important to manage in all of its stages, as its traditional shape I feel, is radically altering. It is coming faster and fading away quicker unless you manage its parts very specifically.

The VUCA world is a brutal place to operate in

Some are arguing we live in a VUCA world, full of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. I remember one phrase in a great book to read “Moments of Impact” written by Chris Ertel and a wonderful associate of mine, Lisa Kay Soloman.

They regard this period of living as the VUCA world, as “one that is a  little like those thrilling rides you find in amusement parks but just not all of them are fun!”

These “change forces” are making many organizations and the leadership a little weary and wary, they seem to ‘double down’. They become risk-averse, defensive and determined to ‘weather it through’. They might be hanging on tight, simply believing but the force of change requires a very different set of beliefs and will whisk them away if they don’t adapt and change.

Shifting from accepted to adaptive – embracing new ways to innovate.

The changes that are occurring all around us are those sudden switches from the predictable markets that are creating interruptions to that constant reassuring rhythm of the one, three and five-year business plans. Suddenly this ‘process’ is getting challenged by novel, agile, adaptive concepts stealing the growth out of ‘our’ markets.

Lost increasingly is that feeling of being predictable, offering incremental improvements as the sure-fire way of running a business, year in, year out.

Innovation in the hands of a few has changed, it is so much more than incremental, it is radical and destructive and it’s coming at you earlier than ever, grabbing that early majority as it adapts, pivots and often blows away your ‘crafted’ design through combining a more radical solution, spotted and understood from real, early customer engagements.

Today we are far more on this quest for novel insights and much of what we will increasingly do will be transient. We are seeing much that was seemingly enduring is being challenged, even ripped out and replaced.

It is often an environment that has become a ‘feeding frenzy’ of the experiment, change, adapt and go back in and ‘attacking’ the assumptions of the business value proposition to find the ‘sweet spot’ of customer needs and why they see the value.

The “reassuring” generic statements are even more hollow than before

We might still hear the reassuring sound of those generic statements from the established incumbent of “focusing on our core assets”, “providing solid shareholder value”, “having clear target markets”, focusing on “reducing low yielding businesses to release value and drive up our stock” and the favourite by many “vested” C-level individuals announcing the latest “driving up our share price by a well-designed buyback program.”

All these ‘generic statements’ are often masking a deeper story in many organizations not at ease with themselves, at all. These reassuring statements make those on the outside feel some level of short-term comfort and stay invested but if you scratch the surface just a little, there is an underlying sense of panic. If you push too hard, and ask difficult questions suddenly it all becomes a little uncomfortable. Yet our large, established organizations are highly vulnerable to attack from their inability to adjust quickly to changed conditions.

These statements are just covering up the serious cracks appearing in the design process for new products. It is the failure not to embrace the changing management practices of working within far more lean principles, deepening design thinking, seeking out crowd-sourcing and collaborative networks, that push hard to fully understand customer engagement and challenging the business models to eventually end up with new value propositions that alter the existing market state.

Often the traditional practice organization is simply adrift in the water and others are circulating around them working through this new way of business thinking, avoiding old practices, thinking and approaches that really benefit the incumbent, often not the customer and their real needs.

The new leader within all of us needs to arise

Leadership when it wants to change for innovation needs to encourage a new set of principles so as to draw in everyone to the change process, so they can collectively unleash the potency to create the climate for creativity, innovation and eventual transformation, in a rapidly changing environment and culture that wants this change – it is liberating for individuals.

There is a lot of new thinking showing positive results and the ‘traditional’ management team or business needs to open up too much of this new thinking and find ways to adapt it and bring it in-house.

We must break out of our traditional thinking and ‘swim’ far more rigorously out of our dangerous holding patterns, to break away from the pack we get caught up in, simply accepting current practices and approaches is our only answer.

We must be bolder in where we go, in risks, in thinking, in our innovations, and in the actions we take.

When the wind of change does blow we must adjust

When the wind of change does blow and it is in every corner of every organization, it really does deliver a ‘punch’ of complex variables to manage, we do need to be ready to make the ‘required’ changes.

These ‘change winds’ influence the processes running through the organization as they are challenging and probing what is in place, they are looking to raise the creativity, by adjusting and changing the norms, making new activities work experimenting and learning.

Then you have to set about how to construct and design a more deliberate process kit for managing innovation, one that is more fluid, adaptive and agile to changing conditions and knowledge, and finally, the setting about addressing the environment and cultures needed to create more lasting conditions, so as to embed the change and establish the new (innovating) order.

Being alert, being adaptive, ready to break out and forge ahead

We are surrounded by all these sharks, hungry, constantly circling, looking for easy or ‘fat, complacent’ prey. If we are not alert to the dangers all around us we will certainly suffer. Are we the hunter or the hunted? We need to decide.

We must constantly adapt, wanting to make the change, even if it is uncomfortable, otherwise, we can so easily be swept away, at the mercy of others more adaptive.

There is no question we all need to keep moving but it is striking out with a far bolder plan to leave the ‘sharks’ behind. Let them look for the late majority or laggards that are not spotting real change occurring, occurring all around them, to become the new ‘feeding ground’.

You, simply go really hard after the early adopters and majority that determine the ones that thrive, knowing what it takes to survive and that is based largely on innovating like crazy