Transformation

Innovation is a powerful force that can drive organizations forward and make a meaningful impact in the world. But it is not a one-size-fits-all concept. Every organization must define innovation within its unique context and aspirations. Understanding the multi-faceted nature of innovation can provide a framework for organizations to define and pursue innovation in a purposeful and strategic manner. By defining innovation beyond mere technology and patents, and embracing an innovation mindset everywhere, organizations can embrace a broader perspective that encompasses problem-solving and value creation.

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Tracing the origin and evolution of Product management to understand how we got here and what's next to continue to drve business impact.

Companies not hitting their targets or attempting to achieve some type of transformation, such as cultural, digital, or agile, are all potential reasons for reorganizing portions of the company. Whatever the reason, the method is often NOT geared towards achieving the desired outcomes. The reality is that the re-org of today tend to focus on cost-cutting and “efficiency” instead of asking the more serious question: “what structure will facilitate and incentivize the behavior we need?”

It should be seen as a chance to re-think and re-align the company’s structure, culture, and mission. In this way, it makes for an amazing work environment where people will be happy to contribute, leading to increased retention and more engaged employees. which in turn will generate the results the organization is hoping for.

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In this uncertain economy, businesses planning for the year ahead, will very likely include re-orgs. While re-organizing parts of the business might improve some efficiencies, it’s often disguising leadership problems rather than real productivity issues.

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The end result is a bias toward making people work harder, not smarter. If you’re looking for a true solution to more efficient workflow, then re-orgs should be thought of from the bottom-up, not top-down. Empower the bottom, so your organization can react to changes to its environment, which generally occur at the edge, not the center. Agile teams define work needed. New information is relayed to the top. Leadership alters strategy, communicates plans, and allocates resources.

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The trap that many corporations fall into is the belief that digital transformation is mostly a technological thing. This couldn’t be further from the truth, as there’s a human side to digital transformation. And while technology is disruptive to the business, it is not disruptive innovation. Disruptive innovation is a purposeful re-imagining of how you structure and manage your work. It's recognizing that the real disruptions are external to the company, mostly in the form of pandemics, war, ransomware attacks, supply shocks, energy grid collapses, etc.

So the question becomes: how do you drive disruptive innovation? Start exploring within the core?

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What does it mean to be agile and how do you scale it within your organization? In a truly agile environment, individual performance must be tied to team performance relative to its mission. Of course, the devil is in the details. What is a mission?

Brant Cooper, NYT bestselling author and founder of Moves The Needle dives into all of this and more.

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Wars, technological advances, the pandemic, social, and political turmoil have led to businesses facing disruption on an ongoing basis. As technology innovation has moved to the edge, technical risk is less problematic than market risk. The risk to business is less “can we build the product” than “should we?” Customer insights represent an important and vastly under-appreciated intellectual capital versus, say, patents. Businesses must be closer to the customer; understand them deeper. They must be able to respond to change. Overall, companies must be nimble and move fast.

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In this episode, Jocelyn Mangan, CEO of Him for Her, joins us to discuss how her social impact enterprise is building the boardroom of the future by addressing the gender gap in for-profit boardrooms to increase diversity. Him for Her’s unique approach overcomes the networking gap responsible for the sparsity of women in the boardroom by engaging business luminaries such as Stacy Brown-Philpot, Reid Hoffman, Jeff Weiner, Eric Yuan, and many more to connect the world’s most talented “hers” to board service.

In today’s episode, we are really excited to host our guest, Kyle Nel. Kyle is the Executive Director of Lowe's Innovation Labs and has a very unique approach toward innovation which was fun to explore in this episode. They leverage a narrative-driven approach that uses story (and comics) as a strategic tool to map out the future for Lowe’s that they are working to bring to life. They then work backward to build that future, rapidly testing technology prototypes to solve everyday problems.

When trying to transform organizations to become more innovative, it’s easy to forget about the interpersonal side and get caught up in the process.

In today’s episode we dive into just that: how can you better understand your colleagues’ preferred styles of communication and leadership, so you can work together in a way that they’ll be most receptive.

In this episode we interview Simon at Spotify and cover how Spotify manages “bets," strategic decision making and execution with Spotify Rhythm
and more! He also shares how The Library Corporation coped with the disruption of library’s, how The Library Corporation introduced Lean Startup into their organization, and why the part time initiative model isn’t conducive to innovation
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