How to Drive Organizational Change With Everyday Innovation

Change Paralysis: Breaking Through "We've Always Done It This Way". How Tech Leaders Mold Modern Mindsets Ever rolled out a shiny new tool, only to find it gathering dust while everyone clings to their old ways? "We've always done it this way" is more than resistance—it's a mindset that tech leaders need to crack wide open. As a veteran CTO with years of experience driving digital transformation, I've developed strategies to overcome this challenge. Here's how to break through and drive true change: 1. Make Staying the Same Uncomfortable Change doesn't happen until the status quo hurts more than change. ↳ Quantify the Cost: Show what staying in comfort is costing—time, money, opportunities. ↳ Call It Out: Address the resistance openly; sometimes naming it is the first step to breaking it. ↳ Create a Crisis: If there isn't a burning platform, create one. Change is survival. 2. Banish the Buzzwords Change fails when wrapped in corporate jargon no one cares about. ↳ Speak Their Language: Drop buzzwords; connect with everyday reality. ↳ Use Stories, Not Slides: Show how change makes life easier, more productive, and rewarding. ↳ Be Brutally Honest: Change is hard. Acknowledge it, show why it's worth it. Honesty earns trust. 3. Leverage Change Champions Forget the usual suspects at the top—change comes from within. ↳ Identify Passion, Not Titles: Find excited people and give them influence. ↳ Make Them Visible: Let champions lead demos, share wins. Peers listen to peers. ↳ Reward Adoption: Recognize those who embrace change; create a ripple effect. 4. Take off the Training Wheels Old habits die hard if there's a safety net. ↳ Cut off the Old Way: Set a hard cutoff date for old tools and stick to it. ↳ Learn by Doing: Create real scenarios where the new way is the only way. ↳ Fail Fast, Learn Faster: Let people fail safely and learn; normalize early mistakes. 5. Make Change a Habit Change isn't an event—it's ongoing. ↳ Micro-Wins: Break change into small wins; celebrate each step forward. ↳ Normalize Iteration: Tweak, adjust, improve—make change a constant. ↳ Challenge the Default: Regularly ask, "What needs to evolve?" Keep change top-of-mind. Change paralysis is tough but beatable. Make the cost of inaction clear, get real, leverage champions, cut the safety nets, and make change a habit. For example, when I implemented a new project management system at a large global organization, we faced significant resistance. By quantifying the hours wasted on inefficient processes and showcasing early adopters' success stories, we achieved 95% adoption within three months. How do you overcome change paralysis? Share your thoughts below! 👇 Need help moving from resistance to readiness? DM me to talk about tailoring these strategies to your organization.

Most people say they’ve transformed culture. Few actually have. I was once told that in large organizations, culture change is like turning an aircraft carrier: slow, painful, and barely perceptible. That might be true if you settle for surface-level change. But I didn’t have that luxury. At a healthcare company with 80,000 employees, I wasn’t hired to run HR. I was brought in to reimagine it - as Chief People Innovation Officer, tasked with transforming how people experienced their work across hundreds of locations, acquired entities, and entrenched silos. And we did it. Not with strategy decks or slogans. We started with people. 1. Real research, not just surveys We didn’t open a “best practices” playbook. We had thousands of real conversations. We asked: What connects you to your work? What breaks your spirit? From that, we found the common thread: the drive to deliver extraordinary care. That insight became our EVP, not a brand line, but a rally cry. 2. Our Employee Value Prop became the operating system Most companies treat EVP as a marketing tool. We used it to rewire decisions across the employee lifecycle. We hired for values, not just skills. Rebuilt onboarding to connect every hire to purpose. Challenged policies that didn’t reflect who we said we were. The EVP wasn’t a campaign. It was our blueprint. 3. Innovation, everywhere To build a culture of innovation, we democratized it. We launched: A company-wide Innovation Challenge to surface bold ideas from the frontlines. An “Everyday Innovation” platform to spotlight small wins. A design-thinking toolkit for managers so innovation lived in every unit, not just HQ. 4. Results that mattered Cost-per-hire dropped. Quality of hire rose. Trust and purpose scores spiked, so did patient satisfaction. Retention improved. The biggest win? Leaders stopped asking if culture mattered. They started asking how to scale it. 5. The right partners push you beyond the expected We didn’t just hire consultants. We brought in provocateurs. Thinkers from outside healthcare who challenged our assumptions. One of them now runs their own venture, Fauna. That’s the ripple effect of great thinking. Here’s the truth: Real culture change doesn’t come from town halls or t-shirts. It comes from aligning strategy to people, and people to purpose. It’s hard, messy, nonlinear work. But when done right, it redefines what’s possible. Not just for the organization, but for everyone inside it. If your EVP is buried in a slide deck, you’re leaving transformation on the table. Want to bring it to life? DM me so I can share more of the story, or better yet, reach out to the folks at Fauna. They were with me every step of the way. Maybe its time you tried something new.

Did you know that 65% of initiatives fail because they require behavioral changes? The challenge isn’t just introducing change; it’s embedding it into the fabric of your organization. Here’s how to make change last: + Define the Why: Be crystal clear on your objectives so your team understands the purpose behind the change. + Reinforce the Shift: Change isn’t one-and-done. Communicate consistently, celebrate wins, and keep the momentum alive. + Lead by Example: The best leaders visibly commit to the change. Your actions must build trust and show it’s a priority for the future. + Create Accountability: Assign ownership and track progress to stay on course. + Integrate into Daily Routines: Embed change into everyday habits to avoid distractions and ensure consistency. In a recent carve-out, we faced the challenge of shifting from a legacy culture to an agile mindset. By aligning everyone with a new way of thinking, we turned potential roadblocks into growth opportunities. The real hurdle is the commitment to making changes stick. Focus on these fundamentals, and you’ll transform fleeting adjustments into lasting improvements.

Too many organizations treat transformation as something to be done to their people. Rather than something their people are part of. This subtle difference matters a lot. In my experience, the most powerful shift comes when people start feeling like they belong to the change. How do you get there? → Clearly communicate the why behind every shift. People need purpose, not just direction. → Give teams a genuine voice. Let them shape the path, not just follow it. → Build ownership at every level. Empower leaders and frontline teams alike to champion and steer the change. When change is co-created, people become ambassadors, not obstacles. They feel seen. Heard. Included. That’s how you turn a top-down mandate into a shared movement.

CONTEXT MATTERS. I've spent my career studying what makes people different—how to motivate them, develop them, and change their behavior. With scientific and technological advancements, we now have powerful tools to intervene at the individual level. But here's what I've learned: if we stop there, we miss out on much of our leverage for change. A fascinating 2024 study examining 170 organizations confirmed what I've long suspected: people consistently dislike effortful tasks regardless of culture or personality. This insight exposes the fundamental flaw in traditional organizational change: 👉 We design initiatives that demand sustained cognitive effort from individuals (training programs, leadership development) while ignoring the systems and structures in which people operate. As researcher Ruth Schmidt puts it: Inattention to broader conditions may not only limit the effectiveness of behavioral solutions but also miss opportunities to deliberately design underlying 'plumbing' in a way that improves overall system efficacy. The more promising approach? Creating what Schmidt calls "choice infrastructure" -- designing environments where desired behaviors become the path of least resistance. This means: - Examining the standards that guide expectations - Redesigning processes to remove friction points - Building accountability systems that reinforce positive behaviors - Shaping organizational culture to support desired outcomes - Creating feedback loops that help the system adapt At Fractional Insights, we've consistently seen how this systems approach creates more sustainable change than individual interventions alone. When work environments align with human psychology and make the right behaviors obvious and easy, people don't need willpower to maintain them. What's been your experience? Have you seen change initiatives fail because they focused too much on individuals but neglected the systems? What environmental shifts made the biggest difference in your organization? #SystemsThinking #WorkCulture #OrganizationalChange #FractionalInsights

Early in my career, someone told me that innovation only comes from the top. Years of leading transformations across Fortune 100 companies have taught me otherwise: ➡️ true innovation emerges when we create an environment of trust where every voice matters. I was reminded of this during a recent work dinner discussing LEGO's remarkable turnaround. In 2004, when Jorgen Vig Knudstorp became LEGO's first non-family CEO, the company was losing nearly $1 million daily. What fascinated me wasn't just the financial transformation, but how he achieved it: by fostering a culture of "two-way trust." Three key lessons stand out that I've seen proven time and again: 1. Create psychological safety for continuous learning. When people feel safe to experiment and even fail, innovation flourishes. 2. Break down silos to encourage cross-pollination of ideas. Some of the most powerful solutions come from unexpected collaborations. 3. Build an idea-rich environment where testing and learning is celebrated, not just tolerated. These principles aren't just theory - they're fundamental to sustainable transformation. At Humana, I've seen firsthand how creating space for diverse perspectives and encouraging calculated risk-taking leads to breakthrough solutions in healthcare delivery. Organizations don't transform - people do. And people only transform when they feel valued, heard, and safe to innovate. https://lnkd.in/eMR92bWf

Recently, in one of our meetings, someone pitched an incredibly innovative idea. It was bold, creative, and backed by the latest tech. We were all impressed. But as the conversation evolved, it became clear that while the idea was brilliant, it didn’t solve any real problem. This isn’t rare. In the world of tech, we often get caught up in building cool. What we really need is to build useful. The real challenge isn’t just creating advanced technology, it’s ensuring that the people it’s built for can actually use it to drive outcomes. This is the gap between building and using, Between production and consumption . At MathCo, we’ve learned (sometimes the hard way) that success lies not just in building powerful solutions, but in making sure they are adopted, understood, and embedded into everyday decisions. So how do we bridge this gap? * Start with the decision, not the data. Understand how decisions are made before building anything. * Define value in business terms. Establish specific business metrics that demonstrate value upfront. * Think about the whole solution. Build the technology, processes, and change management as one integrated system. * Build adoption into the analytics. Make it easy to use. Create solutions that fit into how people already work. * Design for iteration. Create feedback mechanisms that improve both the analytics and its application over time. It’s not the features, but the fit that matters most. What's your experience? Has your organization successfully bridged this gap between analytics and adoption? #TechThatWorks #InnovationWithPurpose #OwnYourIntelligence #EnterpriseAI #AdoptionFirst

Most leaders kill innovation without realizing it. The wrong metaphor is the reason: When I was head of Satya Nadella’s innovation team, I faced this challenge every day: How do you make space for innovation today not just “someday”? If your mental model is horizons, you put innovation into the future. And the future never comes. If your mental model is tracks, you can run the business and change the business in parallel. That’s how I won CEOs over to a model of continuous innovation. This is what transformation leaders know that others don't: – Track #1 (Run the Business): sustaining innovation = ~10% growth at best – Track #2 (Change the Business): disruptive innovation = ~70% cumulative growth (HBR) Once leaders see this, it clicks: Innovation isn’t a side lab, a fringe bet, or something “out there.” It must be built into the rhythm and rhyme of the business. Continuous innovation is the backbone of new value creation. Instead of deferring new ideas, bring them into today: – Run small business experiments now. – Validate value early and often. – Talk about new business models alongside the current one. The smartest thing Satya asked me to do: Bring him new business models — today, not tomorrow. That’s what gave our leaders a fighting chance for the future. Metaphors matter. What metaphor is shaping how you lead innovation? Follow for battle-tested lessons on innovation, leadership, and growth.