by Robyn Bolton | Mar 19, 2025 | Innovation, Leadership, Tips, Tricks, & Tools
Risk management is critical in uncertain times. But traditional approaches don’t always help when volatility, ambiguity, and complexity are off the charts.
What many leaders overlook in their rush to safety is that many of the most effective tools for managing risk come from an unexpected place: innovation.
The Counterintuitive Truth About Risk Management
Risk Management’s purpose isn’t to eliminate risks. It’s to proactively identify, plan for, and minimize risk. Innovation is inherently uncertain, so its tools are purpose-built to proactively identify, plan for, and minimize risk. They also help you gain clarity and act decisively—even in the most chaotic environments.
Here are just three of the many tools that successful companies use to find clarity in chaos.
Find the Root Cause
When performance dips, most leaders jump to fix symptoms. True risk management means digging deeper. Root cause analysis—particularly the “5 Whys”—helps uncover what’s really going on.
Toyota made this famous. In one case, a machine stopped working. The first “why” pointed to a blown fuse. The fifth “why” revealed a lack of maintenance systems. Solving that root issue prevented future breakdowns.
IBM reportedly used a similar approach to reduce customer churn. Pricing and product quality weren’t the problem—friction during onboarding was. After redesigning that experience, retention rose by 20%.
Focus on What You Can Actually Control
Trying to manage everything is a recipe for burnout. Better risk management starts by separating what you can control, what you can influence, and what you can only monitor. Then, allocate resources accordingly.
After 9/11, most airlines focused on uncontrollable external threats. Southwest Airlines doubled down on what they could control: operational efficiency, customer loyalty, and employee morale. They avoided layoffs and emerged stronger.
Unilever used a similar approach during the global supply chain crisis. Instead of obsessing over global shipping delays, they diversified suppliers and localized sourcing—reducing risk without driving up costs.
Attack Your “Deal Killer” Assumptions
Every plan is based on assumptions. Great risk management means identifying the ones that could sink your strategy—and testing them before you invest too much time or money.
Dropbox did this early on. Instead of building a full product, they made a simple video to test whether people wanted file-syncing software. They validated demand, secured funding, and avoided wasted development.
GE applied this logic in its FastWorks program. One product team tested their idea with a quick prototype. Customer feedback revealed a completely different need—saving the company millions in misdirected R&D.
Risk Management Needs Innovation’s Tools for a VUCA World
The best risk managers don’t just react to uncertainty—they prepare for it. These tools aren’t just for innovation—they’re practical, proven ways to reduce risk, respond faster, and make smarter decisions when the future feels murky.
What tools or strategies have helped you manage risk during uncertain times? I’d love to hear in the comments.
by Robyn Bolton | Feb 18, 2025 | Innovation, Leadership, Metrics, Tips, Tricks, & Tools
Innovation is undergoing a metamorphosis, and while it may seem like the current goo-stage is the hard part (it’s certainly not easy!), our greatest challenge is still ahead. Because while we may emerge as beautiful butterflies, we still need to get buy-in for change from a colony of skeptical caterpillars who’ve grown weary of transformation talk.
The Old Playbook Is Dead, Too
Picture this: A butterfly lands, armed with PowerPoint slides about “The Future of Leaf-Eating” and projections showing “10x Nectar Collection Potential.” The caterpillars stare blankly, having seen this show before.
The old approach – big presentations, executive sponsorship, and promises of massive returns within 24 months – isn’t just ineffective. It’s harmful. Each failed transformation makes the next one harder, turning your caterpillars more cynical and more determined to cling to their leaves.
The Secret Most Change Experts Miss
Butterflies don’t convince caterpillars to transform by showing off their wings. They create conditions where transformation feels possible, necessary, and safe. Your job isn’t to sell the end state – it’s to help others see their own potential for change.
Here’s how:
Start With the Hungriest Caterpillars
Find those who feel the limitations of their current state most acutely. They’re not satisfied with their current leaf, and they’re curious about what lies beyond. These early adopters become your first chrysalis cohort.
Make it About Their Problems, Not Your Vision
Instead of talking about transformation, focus on specific pain points. “Wouldn’t it be easier to reach that juicy leaf if you could fly?” is more compelling than “Flying represents a paradigm shift in leaf acquisition strategy.”
Build a Network of Proof
Every successful mini-transformation creates evidence that change is possible. When one caterpillar successfully navigates their chrysalis phase, others pay attention. Let your transformed allies tell their stories.
Set Realistic Expectations
Metamorphosis takes time and isn’t always pretty. Be honest about the goo phase – that messy middle where things fall apart before they come together. This builds trust and prepares people for the real journey, not the sanitized version.
Where to Start
- Identify your first chrysalis cohort – the people already feeling the limits of their current state
- Focus on solving immediate problems that showcase the benefits of change
- Document and share small victories, letting others tell their transformation stories
- Create realistic timelines that acknowledge both quick wins and longer-term metamorphosis
What’s your experience? Have you successfully guided a transformation without relying on buzzwords and fancy presentations? Drop your stories in the comments.
After all, we’re all just caterpillars and butterflies helping each other find our wings.
by Robyn Bolton | Feb 3, 2025 | Innovation, Tips, Tricks, & Tools
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?
by Robyn Bolton | Nov 19, 2024 | Innovation, Leadership, Tips, Tricks, & Tools
“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.
“What are your colleagues afraid of?”
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Most of the time, when opportunities are clear, but action is absent, it’s because one of the first three horsemen of the innovation apocalypse appeared:
- 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.
As of 2024, over 150 cognitive biases have been identified.
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?
by Robyn Bolton | Nov 6, 2024 | Leadership, Tips, Tricks, & Tools
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?
That’s exactly what the authors of the recent HBR article, “Why Offsites Work – and How to Get the Most Out of Them,” describe and offer a guide to accomplish.
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.
