What do these shifts mean for organizational culture, teams, and retention? What is the impact on social interaction? The new book “The Social Brain: The Psychology of Successful Groups” by Tracey Camilleri, Samantha Rockey, and Robin Dunbar looks at how our work lives are influenced by our inherited biology and how our team, leadership, and social structures can be better utilized.

Vivaldi spoke with Tracey Camilleri, Associate Fellow at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, former Director of the Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme and co-founder of leadership and organizational development consultancy, Thompson Harrison, about building functional team sizes, the challenges for leadership, and the rising needs of Gen Z.

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Vivaldi: Can you share a bit about the origins of this book and how it relates to your work running the Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme?

Tracey Camilleri: I’ve known Robin Dunbar for about 10 years, and I had always been interested in his research. I spent over 10 years as the director of the Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme and my challenge always was, how do you get a group of really smart, friendly strangers, inside of a week, to open up to each other, and create a sense of a tribe? I started to experiment, and increasingly I realized that the immersive experiential side of learning was actually what made people go back and change what they do. I met Robin and I went into his study and there – amazing! –  he’d done all my research.  There it was, reams of research on the value of  things like walking together, synchrony, creating social endorphins, shared experience. Our other co-author, Sam, had been working in a huge global company, thinking about the same sorts of things, how do you make a group function as more than the sum of its parts? How do you create the right environment for it? We came together and interviewed around 50 leaders as case studies and stories for the book about how this works in all kinds of different environments from government ministries to sports teams.

Emerging from the pandemic it seems like people are re-thinking teams and their structures — are there optimal group sizes for different group functions?

In short, yes. A high-functioning small team of about five can move very fast in a kind of synchronous flow. They don’t need a leader, and that size is great for crisis teams, creative teams. The small size means that each is capable of holding the mindstate of the other (called mentalizing) which is heavy cognitive work and becomes too onerous at bigger group sizes.. Twelve to fifteen is a great group size for decision making. If you need to make a complex decision, you need different perspectives, you need time to make good decisions, and you need facilitative leadership. Too many leaders are not taught how to facilitate, mediate, empower, listen, structure conversations and so they waste the value of the diversity in the room.

I think we’re in a moment now where companies need to rethink  the skills that their future leaders are being taught. The broadcast skills of speaking in public, giving good presentations, etc. need to play second fiddle to more reciprocal relational skills. In addition, leaders need to bring the same rigor and application that they’ve been giving to developing their financial, digital or global strategies to developing social strategies for their businesses. Human connections aren’t just happening serendipitously in this hybrid world.

Trust, social capital, discretionary effort, friendship, all those things are so important and part of leadership in 2023 is to create environments within which that relational wealth can be built.

Fifty is a particularly interesting number for startups and entrepreneurs. It’s the number at which you really start to need structured leadership and begin to need subgroups. Once you get to 150, the so called “Dunbar Number,” beyond which we can’t actually have real relationships (due to the size of our neo cortex, the time constraints we live within and the way that information moves around the system), leadership there becomes more symbolic. Followers, due to the size of the group, project upon the leader their hopes and their fears as a substitute for real relationship. Thinking about the scale of teams and conceiving of an organization as a series of fractals or clusters, rather than a pyramid or a machine requires you to think differently about how you communicate, how you lead, and how you think about the future in quite a different way.

The book says that “the future is the territory of leadership” — for people to lead their teams into the future, is there a mindset shift that has to occur?

As a human species we have a unique intellectual ability to actually inhabit multiple futures. We have imaginations, we can think conceptually – and yet a lot of our organizational way of working actually militates against us using those skills. We are too often head down, task focused, time poor. We say that the territory of leadership is the future and so it needs those who are curious and can adopt different ways of looking at things. Who do we need in the room to think about the future together? It may be the most junior coder, it may be somebody from another industry or another discipline. Convening – and convening the right people – not the same-old, same-old group who meets every week, is another underrated part of leadership.

Tracey Camilleri

Is there a way to leverage or better leverage technology?

I think there is absolutely. But the other side of the coin is that if I run a program, I make it as analog as I can because there is something about the human need to come together with other human beings, the sensory side of it, the bonding side of it that is lost when we are mediated by screens. Technology is hugely our friend, but it is not a substitute for friendship, shared humor or experience. Most of us work  almost half our waking lives and we need to be able to thrive, to be our most human, not playing catch up with machines.

This is a quite shocking moment in terms of mental health, around $50 billion a year is being spent on mental health support at work. Most of this effort is focused on individuals.  Back in the 1950s, The World Health Organization defined wellbeing as “mental, physical, and social health.”

Not so much attention has been paid to the social side of wellbeing, loneliness and the importance of friendship at work, not just for the sake of mental health, but also for the sake of productivity, performance, innovation and impact.

As so much time is spent hybrid-working, when people do actually come together, in person it needs to matter and that requires care, design and forethought. So that’s why we’ve been thinking and working with leaders to design social strategies for their organizations.

It seems like there’s a sentiment that people in hybrid situations might feel like they are more productive, but there’s less social engagement — is that true, and how much of a tradeoff is that?

They may complete more tasks, spend less time commuting, etc. The problem is, however, that you’re in danger of mortgaging the future. If things go badly or you need to innovate, to grow and expand, you find you don’t have the bank of social capital and trust that you need to draw on. You also may be creating a future retention and belonging issue because people need to come together in person. We are relational creatures. So it depends, if you’re just head-down, getting through the tasks, possibly working from home is more productive. But how do you think coherently together? How do you learn from each other? How do you build trust? Make friends?

Younger workers, Gen Z, are changing jobs more frequently — how does that relate to the social side of things — is there less of a feeling of social connection? Are there generational differences?

We’re doing some research on Gen Z – the ones who’ve just transitioned into work. I personally think there is some psychological re-contracting that needs to be done between employers and that generation. They were hit particularly hard socially and educationally by covid and now the nature of work is being renegotiated on their watch. How do they build groups of work friends, or get the incidental learning that comes simply from sitting next to someone more experienced? On the other side, I spoke to a group of entrepreneurs recently and I got a bit of pushback from them, saying, actually we’re finding it really hard to motivate our youngest employees, they are kind of “quiet quitting,” they’re out there somewhere behind the screen, but we don’t quite know what they’re doing. I was quite surprised. There’s something that needs to be faced together about the experience this generation has had. I’m interested to learn from organizations who are being inventive here. This is a generation that also expects more, and quite rightly. Certainly in the UK they are not getting more at the moment.

Tracey Camilleri is an Associate Fellow at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, former Director of the Oxford Strategic Leadership Programme, and co-founder of leadership and organizational development consultancy, Thompson Harrison. She is the co-author of “The Social Brain: The Psychology of Successful Groups.” 

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Vivaldi strongly believes in WIN’s mission to close the gender gap in innovation. Vivaldians are on the global leadership and chapter leadership teams and have even been ambassadors of WIN.

Vivaldi spoke with Shakeir about advocating for women’s careers, the expectations of Gen Z, and how we define innovation.

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How would you explain the mission of Women in Innovation?

Women in Innovation was founded to close the gender gap of the representation of women in the innovation space. If you look at innovation firms, only 25% of top firms are actually led by women. If you look at innovation best-sellers (books and written content), only 16% are written by women. In Fortune 100 companies, only 25% Chief Innovation Officers are women. Obviously, there’s a gender disparity that we need to not only monitor closely in terms of data and how we’re moving the needle, but also to think of outside-the-box ways by which to close these gaps.

What key focus areas do you think are vital for creating equity in the innovation space?

Looking back at my own career and the interviews I’ve done for my own research around this area, there’s a lack of executive leadership sponsorship. Only about 56% of junior level women report having a senior leader who actually advocates for them. Mentorship is one thing, but someone who is willing to put their neck out there when it comes to decision-making and say, “I want this person to lead,” that’s a different story. Around 49% believe it’s more challenging for them to reach senior management positions than it is for men. If you don’t have somebody who is advocating for you, with intentionality, it’s very difficult.

If people think there’s only one spot, there may be more of a perception around competition, rather than an idea that we can build larger networks to help each other in a different way.

Absolutely. One of the main challenges women feel impede their advancement is a lack of opportunity to broaden their skill sets. Creating those spaces where you’re tapped into networks or thought leadership that’s constantly giving you previews of trends.

Another piece is peer to peer support networks. This is often where women are more hesitant than men to ask a connection for a favor or advice out of a fear of being perceived as opportunistic or weak. I think there’s room for us to really strengthen each other by creating those spaces for networking, which is one of the mandates of WIN. The last piece is a lack of female dominated inner circles. Around 75% of high-ranking women have really strong ties to female circles, which led to job placement level, and it’s 2.5 times greater than women with small networks or male dominated inner circles.

To talk specifically about the innovation piece — do you have a preferred working definition for “innovation”?

Innovation has been one of those terms that could be anything and everything. I favor the definition that innovation is a process of making changes, large and small, radical and incremental, to products, processes, and services that result in the introduction of something new for the organization that adds value to customers and contributes to the knowledge store of the organization and is profitable.

Dr. Reima Shakeir, CEO, Women in Innovation

There are so many ways that people can work in innovation-related spaces. With your background as a professor, what are students looking for when it comes to career opportunities around innovation, business reinvention, and technology?

I get to talk about my favorite topic: Gen Z. Let’s start by saying that the one certainty today is uncertainty. Over these past few years, with the global pandemic, rocketing inflation, climate disasters, Russia’s war on Ukraine — Gen Z is really growing up and navigating a very complex and uncertain world, along with the rest of us. They are re-thinking foundational elements of day to day life, be it building decentralized networks of emotional support to advocating for greater responsibility from companies and brands, and questioning the world they want to live in. Gen Z is truly beyond the binary in every single sense of the word. And like many of their peers, perhaps similar to millennials, they want to put their efforts into and work in companies that they can feel good about. The three pillars that have historically been relevant to my students have been sustainability, equity and integrity. These are what they look for in companies when they are joining.

One of the other things we’ve heard about people entering the career world is that they are looking for companies that have practices that reflect their values with regard to DEI. Is that something you’re seeing people evaluate more?

Gen Z is one of the most diverse generations of its time. Gen Z is a generation of inclusivity and belonging. So, the question becomes, how are you actually creating a culture of belonging in your organizations? Only 76% of companies admit that they do not have diversity and inclusion roles to begin with, so to lead into the future, leadership is going to be tasked with understanding and taking action to reflect the cultural landscape of this workforce and building an organization that reflects those values from the ground up. It’s not a choice anymore, it’s an expectation. That’s why Gen Z-ers have no problem job-hopping if they don’t find that the company is hitting those targets. Their world view is organically one of inclusivity and fairness, and they really have the expectation of organizations that they work for to reflect those values.

Are there any organizations or companies that are doing a good job of fostering belonging and inclusion in a better way?

When we see someone like Larry Fink, from Black Rock, writing an open letter that says we’re not going to do business with folks who don’t care about ESG, who don’t care about diversity, that’s a huge statement. It gets people thinking. I would say the trend is now moving more toward how we can be more intentional in our diversity efforts; let’s stop making a business case out of diversity, and try to be a bit more authentic in how we are engaging because it’s the right thing to do. Wharton just launched an MBA focused on DEI. If you’ve got a leading business school in the world dedicating a whole MBA to it because more and more leadership from corporate spaces are asking for it, I think that’s very telling.

You’ve worked in the nonprofit and philanthropy worlds – what is the approach there to innovation?

This is extremely complicated. When you think of innovation, inherently there’s risk involved. In the nonprofit and philanthropy space, there’s an accountability to donors, and so they tend to be risk averse. I think innovation has many nuances and interpretations in the business community and the same is true of philanthropy. What’s important is that foundations understand what they mean by the word and apply creativity in looking at how we’re solving for problems.

What’s happening next for WIN?

We have an exciting year unfolding for our community. Keep an eye on some of the initiatives we have coming up, the programming that we have, and how we’re aligning on our mission and sharing out our progress to our communities. Stay tuned and check us out at womenininnovation.co.

Dr. Reima Shakeir is an international scholar, author, and CEO of Women in Innovation. She previously served as COO at the Edmond de Rothschild foundations, and teaches at the MBA level at the NYU Stern School of Business and The Wharton School of Business.

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An organizational psychologist, PhD, founder and CEO of Ellavate Solutions, and professor at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, Ella F. Washington is an expert in this space. She recently published “The Necessary Journey: Making Real Progress on Equity and Inclusion,” which details the DEI journeys of companies including Slack, PwC, Best Buy, Infosys, and others.

Vivaldi spoke with Washington about how business leaders can frame and take action on their goals, where companies may encounter roadblocks, and how DEI might be a form of disruption.

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Over the past few years, have you seen changes in company leaders’ understanding of the business case for incorporating more DEI practices?

The business case vs. the moral case is an age-old argument and many scholars and leaders feel strongly about one side or the other. I am of the camp that you need both; one without the other doesn’t work in the long term. History has shown us that without the business case, it’s hard for these efforts to be sustained, especially when there’s economic downturn or changes in leadership or, quite frankly, when everyone isn’t bought in to the moral case. The strongest companies have worked to actually make a tight connection to their business and what’s important to them, and I think that’s something that’s still missing from most organizations.

In the book you explain that companies can get stuck in approaching DEI because they’re afraid of getting diversity management wrong – when a company is in that state, what can they do to push forward?

I specifically outline three areas of focus that organizations and leaders themselves can be looking toward: purpose, pitfalls, and progress. One thing I ask organizations to do is really zone in on what their purpose is as an organization and how that connects with DEI. That often helps leaders to understand that yes, DEI is the right thing to do, not only from the humanity side, but also from the business side.

The pitfalls are really important, and the best next step is to think okay, we have these goals, we’ve figured out what our purpose is, but now we have to be honest about what’s held us back. Maybe it’s policies that are leaning toward inequities that we haven’t been honest about, maybe our leadership team hasn’t been committed throughout the organization. There can be a myriad of reasons, but holding that mirror up is critically important.

The third step is progress. What does progress look like for us? When organizations define what progress looks like, both short term and long term, set goals and define the steps to get to those goals, they are much more likely to be successful.

From the employee side, over the past couple of years people have reevaluated how work fits into the rest of our lives. They may be looking for workplaces that better reflect their values or have greater missions. How have you seen an impact caused by that reevaluation?

What I think is interesting is, the research on millennials, that came out mid-2010s, shows that millennials as a working generation were much more concerned about mission and purpose than generations before. That shift started to happen well before the pandemic. What happened during the pandemic is that people started to think about not only what they wanted out of their workplace, but what they wanted out of their lives.

I do think that people are looking at their jobs with more scrutiny, but I don’t think it’s just about what their company stands for, it’s also “how do I feel working in this company?” It goes beyond mission and purpose, it’s, “is this aligned with who I am as a person and the life that I want to live?” That’s the dynamic shift that we saw before and after the pandemic, but the trend was already in motion.

Are there one or two questions that it’s important for companies to regularly ask their employees to assess how they are feeling, with regard to where they belong in the organization?

A question that I often have my graduate students reflect on is: what does a well-lived life look like for me? When you’re 85 years old and you’re looking back over your life, what are the things that will signal that you lived a well-lived life. Oftentimes the answer to that question and the answer to “what does success mean to me?” are different. People value their family, and the impact they had on people. That’s not often the same as valuing career success, yet career success is important to many people just not as important when they think about their overall lives.

When organizations ask their employees, “what does a well-lived life look like for you,” and then follow it up with “how does the work you do every day connect with that” or “how can we better connect the work that you do every day with that definition of what a well-lived life means,” that’s how you get employees to stay for the long term.

In the book you lay out five stages of the DEI journey — how can companies who may be in earlier stages in their journeys start thinking about building structures or pipelines around DEI? Or is that something that has to come at a later stage?

A little bit of both. You can’t skip the first stage of awareness and really understand the purpose, because then you start to do things that don’t actually have an impact and are not sustainable. Once you have the foundation, it’s important to understand if you have strong direction from the top of the organization and that everyone in the organization, regardless of level, knows how they fit into the strategy. What often happens is that leadership teams get together with their chief of human resources or a DEI officer, and they make big plans with three-pronged approaches and great goals, but they don’t bring the managers along to help them understand how they fit into the larger plan. They don’t bring those grassroots parts of the organization of frontline employees, employee resource groups, and other entities along, and so there’s often a mismatch. And the reverse can also happen. A key is both top-down and bottom-up approaches; people need to really understand how they each play a role in the larger picture.

Ella F. Washington

You work with companies to do DEI audits – can you give an overview of how it works? How do you get buy-in from stakeholders that a DEI audit is an important thing to do?

Getting buy-in from stakeholders is a critical part of the success. When we think about an audit, we really think about understanding the baseline — where are we as a company, what are our current state metrics and what is our culture? Yet an audit by itself will not lead to meaningful change unless the leadership team is involved. I often pair the audit process with getting stakeholder alignment through stakeholder interviews and leadership visioning sessions. Once you have the audit, you have to know what you’re going to do with the information. Then you can say, we want to be here and our report shows we’re there, how do we close that gap? If you want to see change you have to have both metrics and stakeholder alignment to how we are going to change.

Right. A way to make things actionable and put it into practice.

Data is interesting and great and helpful, but only if you’re going to do something with it.

Many companies say they want to be “disruptors,” but maybe their hiring and promotion practices are just perpetuating a cycle of bringing in mostly white men. Is there a way to think about DEI as its own form of disruption?

Absolutely, I think you can have DEI be its own form of disruption, but you still have to have the goal in mind. Back in 2017, when P&G put out the commercial “The Talk,” which really addressed racial issues in a unique way for the first time, especially from a consumer brand company, they were disruptors because people didn’t expect P&G to be putting out a commercial like that. It’s not a commercial where there’s strong product placement throughout. They said we want to be innovative in terms of forwarding the conversation that we know a lot of our consumers are having, and so they were really specific about how they wanted to be disruptive. You can’t just have a lofty goal and not be clear on what change or impact that you’re trying to make.

Making that connection with what’s impactful from your end consumer’s perspective.

Do you want to be disruptive in terms of how your consumers see you? Do you want to be disruptive in terms of how people who want to work for your organization see you? Not that those things aren’t connected, but especially if you’re just starting off, you can’t do everything at the same time overnight. Resources, money, time are not unlimited, so you have to be pretty specific around where you’re trying to focus with this first particular initiative.

One of the questions you ask people is what a “workplace utopia” would look like. Has anything surprised you when you’ve asked that question?

What is fascinating to me about when I ask that question is that the answer is different for every single person. And I love that. To me that shows that we’re each really unique and what our utopias are look a little bit different for everyone. The beauty of that is that there isn’t just one workplace utopia that will work for everyone, of course, but the more that we understand what is ideal to each of us as individuals, the more organizations can work toward making a better place for everyone. The work of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is really tough work, and having that north star to work toward really helps not only to motivate me, but other people in the effort to make changes in these spaces.

Dr. Ella F. Washington is an organizational psychologist, DEI expert, and Founder & CEO of Ellavate Solutions. She is a Professor of Practice at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. Her book “The Necessary Journey: Making Real Progress on Equity and Inclusion” was published by Harvard Business Review Press.

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Here are some key principles from Beth Comstock: 

1. There is great power in learning to adapt to the change. Getting accustomed to and making progress during periods of change requires a mindset shift that must happen on both a personal and cultural level. There is a common notion among bigger organizations in assuming they have the answers and the readiness that will allow them to bend change to their will. This is false and can hamper growth.
   

   “Covid-19 has been a great teacher. It has helped us realize that we are not in control and we never really were, which has cultivated a thinking that allows greater willingness to try new things.” – Beth Comstock

2.  Best leaders in times of change are ambidextrous leaders. Beth says the secret to unlocking success during times of crisis is to have your company operate at two speeds. She draws a distinction between them as the ‘now lane’ and the ‘what’s next’ lane, also known as the ‘imagination lane.’ While the ‘now lane’ focuses on the current climate and trends, which is more predictable for bigger public companies, the ‘what’s next lane’ guides the future.  

“It takes courage in supporting something for which you’re not exactly sure what the profitability model is, but you know there’s a hunger and you want to take it to the next level” – Beth Comstock

A good leader understands that they must operate both ways. They must allocate the time, people, and money while also evaluating what they learned, what they need to do more of, and how to put a halt on things that aren’t serving the company anymore.  

3. Innovative companies help customers get to what’s next. Beth cites Nike as an example of an innovative and prescient company. Nike is constantly focused on listening to their customer and being passionate about delivering for them. They accomplish this by staying ahead of their customer, instead of waiting for them to tell them what they need. In most cases, customers often expect brands to know their needs before they do. Beth also attributes an ecosystem approach and strong integration of physical and digital to stay attuned to customer needs. 

“To really be a platform company, it is recognizing that interconnectedness and knowing how to navigate it and digital forces you to do that. If a company was slow in digital, they’re not going to come out of Covid-19 and succeed being slow. Digital is just the way you have to operate.” – Beth Comstock

Here are the three simple steps to become a better marketer and innovator: 

• In order to make a breakthrough innovation that you live to see tomorrow, you must be curious and open your aperture. The notion of discovery and making that a part of your practice is critical not only for your team but also for yourself.
• Mastering the art of storytelling is imperative in order to translate your vision to your team. Storytelling and strategy go hand in hand and your team should be able to discern that there is room for them in the company’s vision to be a part of it. Having a strong future vision entails being able to communicate to your team and audience both ‘the why,’ and ‘the why us.’
• To be a good marketer, one must live in the market. Beth recommends getting into the practice of maintaining a notebook or making notes on your phone to collate interesting ideas when out and about. This allows you to adopt the mindset of a marketer and develop a knack for pattern recognition.

Conclusion 

Change is inevitable. It can be difficult to predict and always be prepared, but the willingness and swiftness to adapt to the change are crucial. In order to pave a successful future path, companies must look ahead of the moment and their current processes to optimize productivity. These often result in a gap of imagination and failure to envision what could disrupt them. It is necessary to outgrow mind blocks and see beyond the now to ultimately imagine a way forward.   

Watch the full event here:

06:58: How to adapt to change

08:31: How to overcome the gap in imagination

11:17: Importance of curiosity and discovery

15:15: What we can learn from Walmart and Nike

20:42: Role of a good leader

23:23: What makes a good marketer

29:38: What is in Beth’s notebook

36:20: Brand’s role in positioning and scaling subcategories

40:43: The tension between branding and innovation

This segment was part of The Interaction Field Series of our LinkedIn Live Events. Please connect with us on our LinkedIn page to stay updated with our upcoming conversations.

The post Beth Comstock on Leading with Imagination in Uncertain Times appeared first on Vivaldi.

Here are some key principles from Melissa Schilling:

1. Crisis is a great catalyst for change. A crisis allows people to become less rigid and consider new alternatives. People are willing to try new things and be more accepting of change because they are aware that the norm has already been broken. The pandemic urged people to try video conferencing, experimenting with new forms of education and new business models for running a company and employing people. Referencing history, Melissa recalls how the oil crisis led to huge innovations in solar, thermal, and wind power.

“If you are not innovating during times of crisis, you are missing a huge opportunity. When things are already disrupted, that’s a great time for disruptive innovation.” – Melissa Schilling

Breaking into consumers’ attention span was a lot harder before, as opposed to the current climate where they want to see what the potential solutions are and are willing to try innovative recommendations. That is not to say, that the innovations are limited to the pandemic alone, but a lot of those innovations are going to be long-lasting and outlive the crisis.

2. A platform business model is a propitious approach for disruption and innovation. The reason for that is because a platform business model enables a large number of small players who otherwise might not have access to or gain traction into the market to now have a way to get levered into it. To illustrate, Melissa cites Apple as an example. Apple’s App Store has enabled small companies to sell a product to a big market and while they don’t all succeed, many are successful and getting access to the market in a way that they could have never had access to before.

 “Almost all of these ecosystems arose because they allow you to solve some consumer value proposition or create user value proposition, that could not be as easily solved by integrated firms that were totally independent from each other.”  – Melissa Schilling

3. In the long run, you must distribute value in an equitable way. How firms allocate value is critical, as allocating value fairly will motivate providers to enter. An exception to this is cases where organizations have managed to capture the market so well that it is difficult for other players to enter.

“In other markets switching costs and the barriers to entry are not so high, which is why in the long run you’re going to have to distribute value in a way that makes all your provider’s happy or they’ll leave you for another ecosystem.” – Melissa Schilling

Here are the three simple steps to adopt the mindset of an innovator:

• Great innovators like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and Marie Curie shared a common trait of incredibly high self-efficacy. Building a strong sense of self-efficacy, which means, a person’s belief in their capabilities to overcome any obstacle to achieve their goals, determines what the goals are that we choose to pursue and how we go about accomplishing them. People who exhibit high self-efficacy don’t perceive risk the same way because of their faith in their capacity to succeed.
• Persistence, a subset of efficacy, is a very defining trait behind every great innovator. Adopting a can-do attitude, and consistently applying yourself to a problem despite facing failure and obstacles is a big factor to help you achieve success.
• An important element that enables persistence and self-efficacy is idealism. All innovators share keen idealism, where they set a grand goal, which takes precedence over peripheral accomplishments like money, fame, and reputation. If you have a goal or a solution to a problem, then you must be willing to relinquish your pride.

Conclusion:

While the COVID-19 pandemic altered how companies interact with their customers and how customers interact with them, the current climate also unlocked a room of opportunities and a glut of data into consumer behavior for innovation and disruption. Prioritizing innovation, in addition to a shared and equitable value system, will be the key to unlocking post-crisis growth.

Watch the full event here:

04:20 – Innovating in a crisis

07:12 – Success of platforms and digital ecosystems

12:13 – Future of transitional models

19:30 – Distributing value in a system

21:45 – Traits of a breakthrough innovator

28:48 – Reasons for Tesla’s success

33:04 – Difference between efficacy and mania

35:08- Tips for gen z innovators

37:50 – Effects of cultural norms

40:26 – Leadership for the ecosystem model

This segment was part of The Interaction Field Series of our LinkedIn Live Events. Please connect with us on our LinkedIn page to stay updated with our upcoming conversations.

The post Breakthrough Innovation with Melissa Schilling: Are you innovating in times of crisis? appeared first on Vivaldi.

Here are some key principles from Denise Lee Yohn:

1. Culture building is about ensuring your brand has clarity about its purpose and values. Developing employee experiences and designing an organization in a way to support that overarching purpose, are pivotal to help reinforce and reinterpret the company culture.

Denise believes that in order to change and transform your company culture, you need to deliberately integrate new values, thinking, and people in. You can then weave them into the fabric of your organization.

“If you want to be an innovative brand, then your cultural values need to reinforce experimentation, curiosity, learning, fast prototyping, risk-taking, and celebrating failure. All of those unique values that actually mean something to people, so that they don’t just become words on a page but actually becomes a driving force for your organization.” – Denise Lee Yohn

2. Have a purpose for your brand that is not focussed on a specific product or service. Instead of being tied to one particular business model, application or market, think about a broader purpose that talks about the impact you envision to have on the world.

To illustrate, Denise cites Apple as a brand that has seamlessly aligned and integrated its ecosystem. Having clarity in its purpose and values, Apple has successfully attracted the right participants, employers, ecosystem partners, and customers that are not only want to work with them but are a part of their value creation.

“If you are able to deliver the kinds of customer experiences, the kinds of products, services that really differentiate your brand, then your culture needs to be as unique and differentiated as your brand.” – Denise Lee Yohn

3. The way to achieve brand-culture fusion is to accept it as a leadership responsibility. There needs to be a foundation of accepting responsibility for culture building and brand building and integrating the two and ensuring that you have an overarching purpose, and a single set of core values to guide, align and drive everything you do as a brand in sync with the internal company culture. The senior leaders of the organization should believe, champion, and implement the responsibility for orchestrating the two.

Denise highlights the importance of understanding and listening to the two primary stakeholder groups—customers and employees. Bringing this vision and insight as a leader and can be highly beneficial for culture transformation.

“Culture building is not just about perks or free lunches and parties. Most business leaders settle for a baseline and generic, good culture within the organization. It’s not only possible but it’s imperative that you actually take these specific steps to build your culture.”  – Denise Lee Yohn

Here are the three simple steps towards building a robust brand culture:

• Build your brand from the inside out with integrity and coherence while being market-facing and keeping the customer informed about how is the world changing. That way you are able to continue evolving.
• You need to have one overarching purpose that motivates and aligns everyone. When you create multiple statements and values that are generic, they become meaningless and one-sided. Instead have an overarching purpose, which is your highest order ambition that speaks to all of your stakeholders.
• Design and integrate your customer and employee experience. Think about how you can expose your employees to customers. Bringing your culture to your customers and bringing insight, empathy, and understanding to your employees will be mutually beneficial.

Conclusion:

Engaging with a brand is no longer a transactional experience but is deeply revealing of the brand’s core beliefs and value sets. Integrating the external brand identity and your internal organizational culture will not only pave the way for a healthy and vital culture but will prove critical for building a sustainable organization.

Watch the full event here: 

08:27 – What is brand culture fusion

09:21 – How do you achieve brand culture fusion

10:38 –  Why brand culture fusion doesn’t happen as often

14:50 – How new companies are getting the fusion right

20:50 – Role of the brands

26:46 –  How to navigate and respond to the challenges of the pandemic

31:34 – How to overcome silo thinking

36:08 – Are companies misunderstanding the human element of culture

39:50 – Understanding your stakeholders

45:20 – How brand and culture can come together

This segment was part of The Interaction Field Series of our LinkedIn Live Events. Please connect with us on our LinkedIn page to stay updated with our upcoming conversations.

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