The Conversation Factory

Innovation. We love to talk about it, everyone wants it. Innovation is critical for people and organizations to grow. But we all mean different things when we say it. Today I have a conversation about how innovation is a conversation with Brian Ardinger. He's the director of Innovation at Nenet (which owns my student debt! Hi Nelnet!) and the host of InsideOutside.io, a community for innovators and entrepreneurs that produces a great podcast and a conference that brings together startup and enterprise organizations to talk innovation. There are three key conversations worth designing that we discuss and I want you to have your ears perked up for each as you listen to this episode. Each conversation can help you navigate the innovation process inside or outside your organization. These three are the pre-conversation, the conversation about where to look for innovation and the conversation about patience. Brian specializes in a unique perspective on where to look for innovation. More on that in a moment. The Pre-Innovation Conversation Before you even start to talk about ideas or technology, it's essential to start with the end in mind. What kind of innovation is the company really looking for? Skip the pre-conversation and you have no idea of where you're heading. As Brian points out "without having that definition, then it's sometimes hard to know if you're playing the right game to begin with...the process itself of level setting... I don't think it takes a long time." Brian and I didn't dive into tools to help with that conversation, so I put a few into the show notes. Mapping the innovation conversation can be done in lots of ways. One is thinking about evolutionary vs revolutionary change, another is about tangible vs intangible change, like rethinking policies or business models vs remaking product or space design. I *just* did a webinar on this topic with my partner in the Innovation Leadership Accelerator, Jay Melone, hosted by the amazing people at Mural. Templates of the two innovation leadership frameworks we outlined are there in Mural for you to download and use, along with the webinar video to help you along. Also check out Mapping Innovation, by Greg Satell. You can download his playbook free in the show notes. Where to look for innovation Brian's Inside/outside perspective is that innovation can be a conversation between the inside of a company and the outside world. Some innovation will happen internally, and some innovation can be brought from the outside in: the exchange and acquisition of ideas and technology from outside your organization is an important conversation for enterprise organizations to be having. When you're trying to innovate, it can be tempting to look in familiar places. If you're a financial technology firm, it can be tempting to look to fintech startups for what's next and to try to innovate through acquisition. But you'll also be looking were your competitors will be looking. Try an innovation approach based on Horizontal Evolution - look to the sides and edges of the landscape. Brian describes this approach as "playing a different ball game". The conversation about patience Innovation does not happen overnight. Real change takes time and that takes real patience. Brian also points out that organizations need to be having a bigger conversation, about what else needs to change to make real innovation flourish inside the organization. Hint: it's generally more than you bargained for. As he says "Corporations are doing exactly what they should be doing...They figured out a business model that works and they're executing and optimizing that particular business model...And to radically change that, the people, the resources, the compensation, all of that stuff has to kind of morph or change to play in a different environment. And so I think that's where the challenge really begins." Often people think innovation is about the idea, but it's a much, much longer conversation. That is, in fact, the first "Myth of Innovation" from Scott Berkun's excellent book: The Myth that innovation is about an epiphany, not hard work. It was a real treat to have a conversation with Brian about some of these key issues...I hope you enjoy the episode and happy innovating! Brian on the Web: https://insideoutside.io/ https://twitter.com/ardinger https://www.nxxt.co/ Innovation Leadership Models from the Mural Webinar https://blog.mural.co/innovation-leadership Mapping Innovation by Greg Satell https://www.amazon.com/Mapping-Innovation-Playbook-Navigating-Disruptive/dp/1259862259 Download the Playbook for Free: https://www.gregsatell.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Mapping-Innovation-Playbook.pdf Horizontal Evolution https://evolutionnews.org/2015/08/horizontal_gene/ An amazing summary from Scott Berkun about his solid book, Myths of Innovation: https://scottberkun.com/2013/ten-myths-of-innnovation/ A few more gems from Greg Satell on the Rules and questions central to innovation: https://medium.c

Hey there, conversation designers! Today I'm sharing a conversation with Larissa Conte, who I connected with last year at the Responsive Conference in New York. Larissa is a transformation designer, systems coach, and executive rites of passage guide through her business, Wayfinding. Larissa specializes in facilitating aliveness and alignment across organizational scales to cultivate power that serves. In her talk, she did a physical demonstration with the conference host Robin Zander that really inspired me to connect with her and have her on the show. (Also, you can check out my conversation with Robin on asking better questions here). She and Robin did a sort of "push hands" play to show how you can push back against a force coming at you, or let it flow past you while holding your center of gravity. It was a powerful physical metaphor for dynamics we have all experienced in our relationships and work and illustrates different choices we can take in these tense situations. Larissa and I have a far-ranging conversation about power, structure and ritual in our work as consultants in team and organizational transformation. I want to draw your attention to a few interesting ideas: Rituals can be designed. Teams run on rituals, day in and day out. Week by week, patterns are followed, usually without question. Re-designing those rituals takes time and consideration, but it's worth doing. Facilitators can use ritual to create comfort for themselves and others. There are lots of patterns and exercises I use to build safety or energy for myself and others. You can create your own safe space and the more often you do, the easier it becomes. Power can be taken, given or used. You can also choose your own response to power sent your way. I like to say you can fight the power or dance with the power. Larissa makes an essential point though: there is power that is socially or culturally conferred or inferred based on stories we tell ourselves and each other. These stories are based on nothing more than what we see: skin color, gender or other body characteristics. Power that is given through these cultural stories is privilege. Power taken through these stories is oppression. One of the most powerful things we can do as change-makers is to notice and question these stories. Seeing is the first step. Larissa points out that if you can't feel the energy in the room, it's hard to do anything to shift it. If you don't see the effect these stories have on our day-to-day lives, it can be very hard to change them. Wayfinding is seeing signs and finding our way on poorly marked paths. Wayfinding has it's roots in traditional cultures: The Polynesisans could use the stars, wind and waves to find their way across tremendous ocean distances. Similarly, Native Americans used signals of all sorts to find food, shelter and sacred spaces. In her Wayfinding work, Larissa is calling our attention to these old ways of seeing and asking us to use our own senses to see the signposts in our lives and work. Inner sensing is valid. One thing I always try to convey in my facilitation masterclasses is that you are in the room and you experience what is in the room. It can be hard to know if we, ourselves, are anxious about our role as facilitators or if the room is experiencing anxiety. It's only by getting in touch with our inner sensations that we can ever tell the difference between our own experience and our experience of what's happening in the room. Larissa points out that there can be a stigma to that which is felt and that which exists "only" in our interior, beyond the reach of measuring tools. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. Larissa Conte on the web: http://www.wayfinding.io/ Larissa's talk at Responsive 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4Lf2uOzr78 The Future of Work https://www.oecd.org/employment/future-of-work/ The Teal Movement: http://www.reinventingorganizationswiki.com/Teal_Organizations for more on Self Management check out my episode with Sally Sally McCutchion on Holacracy and Self Management at all levels of organization http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2017/6/6/sally-mccutchion-on-holacracy-and-self-management-at-all-levels-of-organization Othering and Belonging: http://conference.otheringandbelonging.org/ Alan Watts on The Intelligence of the World https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZbThJg6ehU Jon Young http://8shields.org/about/ Wade Davis: The Wayfinders: https://www.amazon.com/Wayfinders-Ancient-Wisdom-Matters-Lecture/dp/0887847668 Tom Brown https://www.amazon.com/Tom-Browns-Science-Art-Tracking/dp/0425157725/ full transcript here: theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2019/7/9/post-title-power-ritual-and-wayfinding

Buckle in, ladies and gentlemen, for some straight talk about the future of work, the nature of the universe and the power of changing systems to change behavior. Today I'm sharing a deep and rambling conversation I had a few months back with Aaron Dignan, author of Brave New Work and founder of the Ready, an org transformation partner to companies like Airbnb, Edelman and charity: water. He is a cofounder of responsive.org, an amazing community of like-minded transformation professionals. If you haven't checked out their conference, it's great. I co-facilitated some sessions there last year and I can highly recommend it. You should also check out the episode I had recently on asking better questions with Robin Zander, who hosts the conference. http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2019/4/23/robin-p-zander-asking-better-questions I owe a debt of gratitude to Aaron. It was his OS Canvas, published in 2016 on Medium, that got me thinking differently about my own work in Conversation Design and led me to develop my own Conversation OS Canvas. His OS Canvas clarified and simplified a complex domain of thinking – organizational change – into (then) just nine factors. In the book it's evolved into 12 helpful prompts to provoke clear thinking and to accelerate powerful conversations about how to change the way we work – if you are willing to create the time and space for the conversation. Aaron doesn't pull any punches – as he says, "the way we work is badly broken and a century old". And he figures that "a six year old could design a good org, you just have to ask the socratic questions." His OS Canvas can help you start the conversation about changing the way you work in your org and his excellent book will help you dive deep into principles, practices and stories for each element of the OS. You'll find in the show notes some deep-dives on the two core principles of org design from the book. The first principle is being complexity Conscious. The second is being people positive. For more on complexity – dig into Cynefin (which is not spelled the way it sounds). And for more on people positivity, there's a link to Theory X vs Theory Y, a very helpful mental model in management theory. Another powerful idea that I want to highlight is Aaron's suggestion that we all have our own "system of operating" or "a way of being in the world" which is "made up of assumptions and principles and practices and norms and patterns of behavior and it's coded into the system." Aaron goes on to say that "people are chameleons and people are highly sensitive to the culture and environment they're in. And the system, the aquarium, the container tells us a lot about how we're supposed to show up. And over time it can even beat us into submission. And so we have to change the system and that's hard to do when we're reinforcing things that we ourselves didn't even create," From my own work on conversation design, it's very clear to me that communication is held in a space, or transmitted through an interface – the air, the internet, a whiteboard. The space your culture happens in is one very key component of how to shift your culture. Check out my episode with Elliot of Brightspot Strategy for more on changing conversations through changing spaces: http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2017/7/24/elliot-felix-of-brightspot-strategy-on-changing-conversations-through-changing-spaces Changing your physical space is easy compared with shifting power and distributing authority more thoughtfully in your organization. To do that, we need to shift not just our org structures, but our own OS: we need more leaders who can show up as facilitators and coaches rather than order-givers. And that takes, as Aaron points out, a brave mindset. If you want to become a more facilitative leader of innovation and change in your company, you should definitely apply before August to the first cohort of the 12-week Innovation Leadership Accelerator I'm co-hosting with Jay Melone from New Haircut, a leader in Design Sprint Training. It kicks off in NYC with a 2-day workshop in September, runs for 12 weeks of remote coaching and closes with another 2-day workshop. We'll have several amazing guest coaches during the program – a few of which have been wonderful guests on this very show: Jim Kalbach, author of Mapping Experiences and head of Customer Success at Mural and Bree Groff, Principle at SY Partners and former CEO of change consultancy NOBL. http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2018/2/5/jim-kalbach-gets-teams-to-map-experiences http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/season-three/bree-groff-grief-and-change Show Notes The OS Canvas Medium post that started it all for me: https://medium.com/the-ready/the-os-canvas-8253ac249f53 The Ready https://theready.com/ Brave New Work https://www.bravenewwork.com/ Complexity Conscious: Cynefin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_framework Being people positive: Theory X vs Theory Y https://en.wikipedia.org/

Design means change and change means loss of the old. Even if a new design is better in every way, there is no design so perfect that you can "flip a switch" and step into the new instantaneously. Change takes time. And in that space between the old and the new there is a sense of loss. I've been doing my own work around trauma and healing it, and I couldn't agree with more with Bree Groff's sentiment that "Sometimes you have to step into the darkness with people" in order to heal things. Don't fear the pain and loss, anticipate it, embrace it, design for it. Today's episode features Bree Groff, who at the time of the recording was transitioning from CEO of Nobl, an organizational change consultancy to Principal at SY Partners, a transformation agency based in NYC and SF. Our conversation focused on a few key ideas around organizational design. Design, in the end always seems to require deep empathy and co-creation for it to be a success. Bree points out that the conversation about Org design should include as many people as possible, in order to make the change process as co-creative as possible. If you haven't checked out the IAP2 spectrum, I'll link to that in the notes. Bree has identified six key types of loss to consider when designing organizational change: Loss of Control Loss of Pride Loss of Narrative Loss of Time Loss of Competence Loss of Familiarity I really love this framework to help focus our attention on the key needs of people we're designing change for. I highly recommend you also check out Krista Tippet's interview with Pauline Boss on ambiguous loss to learn more about loss and how to process it. I'll link to it in the show notes. I'm also really excited to be working with Bree on a special project: She'll be joining the Innovation Leadership Accelerator as a guest mentor. The ILA is a 12 week intensive workshop and coaching experience to help you grow as an organizational leader. I'll link to the application in the notes as well. Enjoy the show! Bree's Website br.ee finite and infinite games by James Carse https://jamescarse.com/wp/?page_id=61 "anyone who must play cannot play" The IAP2 Spectrum of Power in Collaboration https://www.iap2.org/ On feedback: Adam Connor & Adam Irizarry Designing a Culture of Critique http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2018/9/2/culture-of-critique Being Soft on the People and Hard on the Problem (in negotiations and in life) Robert Bordone on turning negotiations into conversations http://theconversationfactory.com/podcast/2017/9/27/robert-bordone-can-transform-negotiations-into-conversations Krista Tippet on Ambiguous Loss https://onbeing.org/programs/pauline-boss-the-myth-of-closure-dec2018/ The Innovation Leadership Accelerator http://theconversationfactory.com/innovation-leadership-accelerator