If innovation (the term) is dead and we will continue to engage in innovation (the activity), how do we talk about creating meaningful change without falling back on meaningless buzzwords? The answer isn’t finding a single replacement word – it’s building a new innovation language that actually describes what we’re trying to achieve. Think of it as upgrading from a crayon to a full set of oil paints – suddenly you can create much more nuanced pictures of progress.
The Problem with One-Size-Fits-All
We’ve spent decades trying to cram every type of progress, change, and improvement into the word “innovation.” It’s like trying to describe all forms of movement with just the word “moving.” Sure, you’re moving but without the specificity of words like walking, running, jumping, bounding, and dancing, you don’t know what or how you’re moving or why.
That’s why using “innovation” to describe everything different from today doesn’t work.
Use More Precise Language for What and How
Before we throw everything out, let’s keep what actually works: Innovation means “something new that creates value.” That last bit is crucial – it’s what separates meaningful change from just doing new stuff for novelty’s sake. (Looking at you, QR code on toothpaste tutorials.)
But, just like “dancing” is a specific form of movement, we need more precise language to describe what the new value-creating thing is that we’re doing:
Core IMPROVEMENTS: Making existing things better. It’s the unglamorous but essential work of continuous refinement. Think better batteries, faster processors, smoother processes.
Adjacent EXPANSIONS: Venturing into new territory – new customers, new offerings, new revenue models, OR new processes. It’s like a restaurant adding delivery service: same food, new way of reaching customers.
Radical REINVENTION: Going all in, changing multiple dimensions at once. Think Netflix killing its own DVD business to stream content they now produce themselves. (And yes, that sound you hear is Blockbuster crying in the corner.)
Adopt More Sophisticated Words to Describe Why
Innovation collapsed because innovation became an end in and of itself. Companies invested in it to get good PR, check a shareholder box, or entertain employees with events.
We forgot that innovation is a means to an end and, as a result, got lazy about specifying what the expected end is. We need to get back to setting these expectations with words that are both clear and inspiring
Growth means ongoing evolution
Transformation means fundamental system change (not just putting QR codes on things)
Invention means creating something new without regard to its immediate usefulness
Problem Solving means finding, creating, and implementing practical solutions
Value Creation means demonstrating measurable and meaningful impact
Why This Matters
This isn’t just semantic nitpicking. Using more precise language sets better expectations, helps people choose the most appropriate tools, and enables you to measure success accurately. It’s the difference between saying “I want to move more during the day” and “I want to build enough endurance to run a 5K by June.”
What’s Next?
As we emerge from innovation’s chrysalis, maybe what we’re becoming isn’t simpler – it’s more sophisticated. And maybe that’s exactly what we need to move forward.
Drop a comment: What words do you use to describe different types of change and innovation in your organization? How do you differentiate between what you’re doing and why you’re doing it?
‘Tis the season for “year in review” and “top 10 lists.” As fun (and sometimes frightening) as it is to look back, it is just as fun (and sometimes frightening) to look ahead. After all, as innovators, that is what we naturally do. So, in anticipation of the year ahead, here are 5 Must Reads to make 2025 far more fun than frightening.
(listed in alphabetical order by author’s last name so I can’t be accused of playing favorites)
Pay Up! Unlocking Insider Secrets of Salary Negotiation by Kate Dixon
This book is for everyone, especially… people who want to earn what they deserve
This book solves the problem of…the black box that is compensation and the fear of negotiating for what you’re worth
This book creates value by… Outlining a step-by-step system to:
Understand key terms and concepts and apply them to your situation
Research the information you need to confidently and competently negotiate
Know what to say and do (and NOT say or do) in the moment
Why I love this book: Full disclosure – Kate and I are friends, so I’ve had a front-row seat to her wisdom and humor (how many compensation books invoke Beyonce?) and the jaw-dropping impact she gets for her clients. I’ve even gifted this book to others because I know it works!
Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work by Whitney Johnson
This book is for everyone, especially… people who are rethinking their careers and are ready for change
This book solves the problem of… knowing how to start redefining your career (and yourself)
This book creates value by… Turning Clayton Christensen’s Theory of Disruption into four principles for self-disruption, including:
Identifying your disruptive strengths
Stepping backward or sideways to grow
Patiently waiting for your career (and legacy) to emerge
Why I love this book: Two quotes: (1) “Disruption starts as an inside game” and (2) “Constraints can be the perfect remedy if you are having a difficult time.”
Live Big! A Manifesto for a Creative Life by Rochelle Seltzer
This book is for everyone, especially… people who want to experience daily joy and creativity
This book solves the problem of…feeling stuck in the day-to-day reality of life, uncertain whit how to begin, and afraid to make big, drastic changes
This book creates value by… Offering 20 tips for:
Becoming a person who Lives Big, including slowing down, aligning to your purpose, and being patient
Acting big, including listening to your intuition, embracing change, and carrying on
Savoring the small joys of life, including the gorgeous design of the book
Why I love this book: Rochelle’s Discovery Dozen exercise is a game-changer. I learned this tool when she was my coach, and I have continued to use it for everything from naming my business, to deciding if/when/how to act on an opportunity, and writing articles.
The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Steiner
This book is for everyone, especially... busy managers who want to be better people leaders
This book solves the problem of…balancing hands-on management with team empowerment and individual development
This book creates value by… Guiding you through seven questions that help you:
Work less hard while having more impact
Break cycles of team overdependence and workplace overwhelm
Turn coaching and feedback from an occasional formal event into a daily habit
Why I love this book: A copy of the 7 questions sits just below my monitor, reminding me to be curious, dig deeper, and that every decision is a choice to do one thing and not another.
Readers Choice!
Version 1.0.0
It’s audience participation time! In the comments below, drop YOUR recommendation for a 2025 Must Read.
“We identified four opportunities for market expansion, all adjacent to our current business, and entry into any one of them is almost guaranteed to materially grow our business. But no one is doing anything.”
I wanted to be surprised. Instead, I sighed and asked the question I knew he couldn’t answer.
Short-termism: “The CFO is worried we may miss the quarter, so we’re starting to make cuts.”
Size: “We have a new President coming in who wants to put his stamp on things, so he’s cutting anything that won’t double out business in three years.”
Scarcity: “We’re implementing a new process, and this would just be one thing too many for people to handle.”
The business my client described has doubled in the past five years. After fifty years of steady, reliable, and predictable revenue, its top line suddenly became the mythical “hockey stick of growth.” The technological driver of this change is more likely to be the “new normal” than a fad, so the business is expected to double again in the next five years.
Leadership isn’t worried about delivering the next quarter, year, or five years. They know that they have the resources they need and can access more when the time is right. They’re confident that the opportunities identified are feasible and meaningful.
Yet, they will not act.
I’m not afraid. I’m biased!
Behavioral economists, psychologists, and sociologists explain situations like the above by pointing out our “cognitive biases”—the “irrational errors that are programmed into our brains.” For example, the first three horsemen could be known as Present Bias, the hard-easy effect, and Loss Aversion.
While it’s comforting to blame programming bugs beyond our awareness and control for our “irrational errors,” this approach lets us off the hook a bit too easily.
I’m not biased. I’m afraid!
Fear is at the root of most, if not all, of these biases because emotions, not programming bugs in our brains, drive our decisions.
The study of how our emotions impact decision-making didn’t take off until the early 2000s. It really accelerated in 2015 when professors from Harvard, UC Riverside, Claremont McKenna College, and Carnegie Mellon published a meta-study on the topic and declared:
The research reveals that emotions constitute potent, pervasive, predictable, sometimes harmful and sometimes beneficial drivers of decision making. Across different domains, important regularities appear in the mechanisms through which emotions influence judgments and choices.
Bottom line – we decide with our hearts and justify with our heads.
Our hearts are afraid that we’ll lose the respect of our peers and loved ones, the reputations we’ve worked decades to build, the physical goods and intangible experiences that project our societal status, or the financial safety of a regular paycheck.
And, as my brilliant and kind sister told me, “These feelings we feel, these feelings are real.”
I’m afraid and biased and brave!
Next time you see someone (maybe you?) do something “irrational,” get curious and ask:
What cognitive bias are they falling prey to?
What is the fear that’s driving that bias?
How can you help them to be brave, live with the fear, and move forward?
I’m curious…when was the last time you were afraid, biased, and brave?
Corporate offsites – the phrase conjures images of everything from “mandatory fun” with colleagues to long and exhausting days debating strategy with peers. Rarely are the images something that entice people to sit up and shout, “YEA!” But what if the reality could be something YEA! worthy?
Offsites May Be the Answer to the WFH vs. RTO Debate
Offsites aren’t new but they’ve taken on a new role and new significance as companies grapple with how to manage Work from Home (WFH) and Return To Office (RTO) policies.
As with most things in life, the pendulum swings from one extreme to another until eventually, finally, landing in a stable and neutral midpoint. When the pandemic hit, we swung from every day in the office to every day at home. Then society opened back up and corporate landlords came calling for rent, whether or not people were in the offices, so we swung back to Return to Office mandates.
Offsites, the authors suggest, may be the happy medium between the two extremes because offsites:
“give people opportunities for interactions that otherwise might not happen. Offsites create unique opportunities for employees to connect in person, forming new relationships and strengthening existing ones. As a result, offsites help people learn about others’ knowledge and build interpersonal trust, which are both critical ingredients for effective collaboration.”
Offsite Connections Lead to Collaborations that Generate ROI
After analyzing eight years of data from a global firm’s offsites and 350,000 “instances of formal working relationships” for 750 employees, the authors found that intentionally designed offsites (more on that in a moment) yield surprisingly measurable and lasting results:
24% more incoming requests for collaboration amongst attendees post vs. pre-offsite (silos busted!)
17% of new connections were still active two years after the offsite (lasting change!)
$180,000 in net new revenue from collaborations within the first two months post offsite (real results!)
The benefits event extended to non-attendees because they “seemed to get the message that collaboration is important and wanted to demonstrate their commitment to being collaborative team players” and “likely identified new collaborators after the offsite through referrals.”
How to Design Offsites That Get Results
Four key strategies emerged from the authors’ research and work with over 100 other organizations:
Design for the people in the audience, not the people on stage. Poll attendees to understand their specific needs and goals, then design collaborative activities, not management monologues.
Design for the new hires, not the tenured execs. Create opportunities for new hires to meet, connect with, and work alongside more experienced colleagues.
Set and communicate clear goals and expectations. Once the offsite is designed and before it happens, tell people what to expect (the agenda) and why to expect it (your design intentions and goals). Also, tell them how to make the most of the offsite opportunities by thinking about the skill and network gaps they want to fill.
Track activities to measure ROI. The connections, collaborations, and commitments that start at the offsite need to continue after it in the form of ongoing communication, greater collaboration, and talent engagement. Yes, conduct a post-event survey immediately after the event but keep measuring every 2-3 months until the next offsite. The data will reveal how well you performed against your goals and how to do even better the next time.
Offsites can be a powerful tool to build an organization’s culture and revenue, but only if they are thoughtfully designed to go beyond swanky settings, sermons from the stage, and dust-collecting swag and build the connections and collaborations that only start when people are together, in-person, outside of the office.
How many times a day do you ask someone to do something? If you total all the requests you make of coworkers, family members, friends, people at restaurants and shops, and even strangers, the total is somewhere between 100 and 1 bazillion. Now, what if I told you that by including just one word in your request, the odds of receiving a positive response increase by 50%?
And no, that word is not “please.”
The real magic word
Harvard 1978. Decades before everyone had access to computer labs, home computers, and personal printers, students had to line up at the copy machine to make copies. You could easily spend hours in line, even if you only had a few copies to make. It was an inefficient and infuriating problem for students.
It was also a perfect research opportunity for Ellen Langer, a professor in Harvard’s Psychology Department.
Prof. Langer and her colleagues asked students to break into the line using one of three phrases:
“Excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the xerox machine?”
“Excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the xerox machine, because I have to make copies?”
“Excuse me, I have 5 pages. May I use the xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?”
The results were definitive and surprising. Students who used the first phrase were successful 60% of the time, but those who used the phrases with “because” were successful 93% and 94% of the time.
“Because” matters. The reason does not.
Note that in phrases 2 and 3, the reason the student is asking to cut in line isn’t very good. You can practically hear the snarky responses, “Of course, you have to make copies; why else would you be at the copy machine?” or “We’re all in a rush,” and the request is denied.
But that didn’t happen.
Instead, the research (and hundreds of subsequent studies) showed that when the ask is simple or familiar, people tend to follow instructions or respond positively to requests without paying attention to what’s said, even if the instructions don’t make sense or the request disadvantages them in some way. Essentially, people hear “because,” assume it’s followed by a good reason and comply.
“Because” matters. How you use it matters more.
The power of “because” isn’t about manipulation or coercion. It’s about fostering a culture of transparency, critical thinking, and effective communication.
Taking the time to think about when and how to communicate the Why behind your requests increases your odds of success and establishes you as a strategic and thoughtful leader. But building your “Because’ habit takes time, so consider starting here:
Conduct a “Because” Audit: For one day, track your use of “because.” How many times do you make a request? How many times to you explain your requests with “because?” How many times do you receive a request, and how many of those include “because?” Simply noticing when “because” is used and whether it works provides incredible insights into the impact it can have in your work.
Connect your “Becauses” As leaders, we often focus on the “what” and “how” of directives, but the “why” is equally crucial. Take your top three strategic priorities for the quarter and craft a compelling “because” statement that clearly articulates the reasoning behind it. For instance, “We’re expanding into the Asian market because it represents a $50 billion opportunity that aligns perfectly with our core competencies.” This approach not only provides clarity but also helps in rallying your team around a common purpose.
Cascade the “Because” Habit: Great leaders don’t just adopt best practices; they institutionalize them. Challenge your direct reports to incorporate “because” into their communications. When they bring you requests, ask them for the “because’ if they don’t offer it. Make it a friendly competition and celebrate people who use this technique to drive better outcomes.
Tell me how you’ll start because then you’re more likely to succeed.
How many times have you proposed a new idea and been told, “We can’t do that?” Probably quite a few. My favorite memory of being told, “We can’t do that,” happened many years ago while working with a client in the publishing industry:
Client: We can’t do that.
Me: Why?
Client: Because we already tried it, and it didn’t work.
Me: When did you try it?
Client: 1972
Me: Well, things certainly haven’t changed since 1972, so you’re right, we definitely shouldn’t try again.
I can only assume they appreciated my sarcasm as much as the idea because we eventually did try the idea, and, 30+ years later, it did work. But the client never would have enjoyed that success if my team and I had not seen through “we can’t do that” and helped them admit (confess) what they really meant.
Quick acknowledgment
Yes, sometimes “We can’t do that” is true. Laws and regulations define what can and can’t be done. But they are rarely as binary as people make them out to be. In those gray areas, the lie of “we can’t do that” obscures the truth of won’t, not able to, and don’t care.
“I won’t do it.”
When you hear “can’t,” it usually means “won’t.” Sometimes, the “won’t” is for a good reason – “I won’t do the dishes tonight because I have an urgent deadline, and if I don’t deliver, my job is at risk.” Sometimes, the “won’t” isn’t for a good reason – “I won’t do the dishes because I don’t want to.” When that’s the case, “won’t” becomes “can’t” in the hope that the person making the request backs off and finds another solution.
For my client, “We can’t do that” actually meant, “I won’t do that because it failed before and, even though that was thirty years ago, I’m afraid it will fail again, and I will be embarrassed, and it may impact my reputation and job security.”
You can’t work with “can’t.” You can work with “won’t.” When someone “won’t” do something, it’s because there’s a barrier, real or perceived. By understanding the barrier, you can work together to understand, remove, or find a way around it.
“I’m not able to do it.”
“Can’t” may also come with unspoken caveats. We can’t do that because we’ve never done it before and are scared. We can’t do that because it is outside the scope of our work. We can’t do that because we don’t know how.
Like “won’t,” you can work with “not able to” to understand the gap between where you are now and where you want to go. If it’s because you’re scared of doing something new, you can have conversations to get smarter about the topic or run small experiments to get real-world learnings. If you’re not able to do something because it’s not within your scope of work, you can expand your scope or work with people who have it in their scope. If you don’t know how, you can talk to people, take classes, and watch videos to learn how.
“I don’t care.”
As brave as it is devastating, “we can’t do that” can mean “I don’t care enough to do that.”
Executives rarely admit to not caring, but you see it in their actions. When they say that innovation and growth are important but don’t fund them or pull resources at the first sign of a wobble in the business, they don’t care. If they did care, they would try to find a way to keep investing and supporting the things they say are priorities.
Exploring options, trying, making an effort—that’s the difference between “I won’t do it” and “I don’t care.” “I won’t do that” is overcome through logic and action because the executive is intellectually and practically open to options. “I don’t care” requires someone to change their priorities, beliefs, and self-perception, changes that require major personal, societal, or economic events.
Now it’s your turn to tell the truth
Are you willing to ask the questions to find them?
