AchieveGlobal's blog

Change is the Mother of All Innovation

By Sharon Daniels

This is the first of two posts on AchieveGlobal’s study on the differences between Change and Innovation, “Carving Yin From Yang.” Be sure to read the entire report.

The title of this blog post is only half true. The other half of it is, curiously, that Innovation is also the mother of all Change. It’s a sort of hand-in-glove-in-hand sort of relationship. Note that in the spirit of innovation, I’m steering clear of the whole chicken-and-egg metaphor.

In two recent studies on change and innovation, we took the opportunity to unpack the differences between change and innovation: terms that one often fuses into the very broad idea of transformation.

Some of the quotes that came back to us are nothing short of brilliant, and really deserve a read. One participant, for example, refers to Innovation as being a home run, and goes on to consider what might have happened if Edison had settled for “change” instead of striving for “innovation.” Because on many levels, the two terms are so tightly interwoven in our thinking, it takes a few logical moves to disentangle them.

By the end of our study though, two things became clear:

1. The first is that if an organization wants to change successfully, it takes innovation. Organizational change can become a necessary response to changing external conditions. Navigating that change effectively requires the organization to become innovative in its approach. Hand-in-glove.
   
   
2. The second – innovation, if properly done, will bring change. Organizations can’t just be superficially “innovative.” Sometimes, organizations put on the label of “being innovative” as if it were as straightforward as, well, putting on a glove. (“Okay, now we’re going to be innovative!”) Real innovation means the organization has to go through real and tangible internal changes, altering parts of the very structure of the organization. And only in that way will “being innovative” cause real change.

In a very real sense, when an organization innovates successfully, it is in effect taking up the gauntlet of change.

 

Sharon Daniels is President and CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

The Virtues of Business

By Jack McDaniel Sometimes, the deep past offers a powerful lesson for the present. In The Virtues of War, Steven Pressfield’s fantastic novel about Alexander the Great, the Persian emperor Darius III brought a supply caravan 1½ miles in length with him to the decisive Battle of Issus, fought in 333 BC in modern-day Turkey. This retinue wasn’t for Darius’s army of over 100,000 fighting men – it was his own personal household coterie. The baggage train included cooks, perfumers, hairstylists, talking macaws and panthers in cages, astrologers, butlers, and the emperor’s favorite wives – who had attendants of their own. In contrast, Alexander’s band of 50,000 Macedonians and their allies traveled light and fast, knowing that they had little time to achieve their goals before the difficulties of remaining in enemy territory hundreds of miles from home would overwhelm them. So how did this band of Macedonian upstarts defeat the mightiest army in the ancient world? By using what Pressfield calls the Virtues of War: blinding speed, superior tactics, and versatility on the battlefield. In response, the Persian army was heavy, slow… and doomed. Speed, tactics, and versatility. Aren’t these virtues the same for business? In any economy – much less today’s globally challenging one – organizations need to be nimble, able to move quickly to take advantage of changing market conditions. They must have a superior vision that serves as a guidepost in a murky landscape. And the most successful organizations incubate change leaders who aren’t afraid to try new strategies, learn from their setbacks, and set an example for their colleagues. An organization’s most valuable asset is its people. Alexander knew how to maximize his investment in this asset. Although the Battle of Issus took place over 2,300 years ago, we can learn from his example.

A 21st Century Equation for Organizational Change

By Craig Perrin To get a sense of the reappraisal now underway in change management circles, consider another reappraisal – at the dawn of modern physics, one hundred years ago. By 1900, physicists had been applying Newton’s laws of motion for 200 years to predict natural events and fuel the industrial revolution. Yet a few scientists had grown uneasy because Newton’s laws failed to explain various newly-observed phenomena. Then, in 1905, Albert Einstein reframed their notions of space and time and paved the way for some startling achievements – among them, releasing the power of the atom. Today, many change leaders feel a similar anxiety. Having seen the failure of important initiatives, these leaders now question some time-honored “laws of change.” They believe that new demands require new ways to conceive and guide their efforts. In the past, leaders counted on periods of stability, assumed that change took time, saw change as a process, saw change leadership as a special role, gained support with a clear business case, and succeeded by delivering customer value. Today, leaders face constant overlapping changes, need quick wins to build momentum, see change as the permanent landscape, see change leadership as everyone’s role, appeal to the emotions as well as the mind, and succeed by meeting threats and opportunities. Like Einstein’s relativity, these new rules may seem no rules at all. But neither Einstein’s world nor this world is anything new. In 500 BC, the Greek philosopher Heraclites said, tersely: “All is flux.” Modern change management, like modern physics, is a sharper image of the world as it is – in constant movement, with every part affecting every other part. If “all is flux,” then no one can reasonably expect to succeed solely with a standard project plan, no matter how detailed. Instead, leaders and employees must respond flexibly to dynamic conditions within and outside the organization. In contrast to a “Newtonian,” phased-based approach, modern change management has a new central task: developing change-capable people who alone can build a change-capable organization. Consider a final parallel with modern physics. To the naked eye, an object, say my desk, appears solid and permanent. At the atomic level, however, my desk is a mass of moving particles, loaded with kinetic energy. In the same way, an apparently stable organization is a mass of individuals, each a force either promoting or opposing needed change. The sum of these forces for change might be described in a kind of equation:

C = LE²

The change capability of an organization (C) equals the quality of leadership (L) times the square of the energy of all employees (E). As Einstein’s famous equation describes the enormous power of the atom, this equation describes the enormous power of the individual – if we can release it – for positive change.