THE ROLE OF CHANGE MANAGEMENT IN INNOVATION. The thesis has several practical implications. Since these implications are most relevant for people who work in advertising agencies, I outline the practical implications of this thesis as a list of heuristics to make them easily applicable. As the future unfolds, most modern SMBs will be knowledge-intensive business services and project-oriented according to how they hire talents and collaborators, so the results of this research are also valuable for modern SMBs and startups. I trust the list below may be applied by advertising agency leaders and modern organization practitioners.
<aside> 🚀 Leverage a change: If you are going to invest in the work to improve your innovation culture, you are investing in change. Prepare your people for a culture change, and keep in mind some of the best practices in leading change.
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<aside> 🚀 Lean more into the art of change management than the science, making decisions at the moment about which steps and tools are needed and which aren’t.
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<aside> 🚀 Foster creativity in every part of the organization: Creativity means different things to different people. But deep down, we know that people have different passions, skills, and potential and that everyone is creative in their own way. Every company should consciously define what creativity means to them and what it does not, and this is how creativity could be fostered in every part of your organization. Establishing a fertile ground for creativity in your organization is a sustainable innovation foundation's first and most important building block.
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<aside> 🚀 Welcome management innovation initiatives and modify change initiatives, or even the change vision, to ensure the work remains relevant and will deliver value.
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<aside> 🚀 Move from hierarchy to collective wisdom: Most companies lose their talents fast instead of unlocking their potential. The fact is that most employees have more than one skill set, so it’s important to give people space to innovate. Find a way to strike a balance between what employees need to do for the organization and what they want to do for the organization. Find out what your employees are interested in and design programs that tap into other skills that don’t fit into their job descriptions.
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<aside> 🚀 Find out the curious one: In every successful company, there is a healthy tension between the entrepreneurial and executive mindsets. While the entrepreneurs in your organization might seek change, not everyone loves change or is energized by it. Find the most curious and entrepreneurial people in your organization, and engage those individuals to help drive a movement to replace fear with curiosity. The more curious an organization you can build, the more innovative it will become. One way to build organizational curiosity is by sharing stories and inspiration.
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<aside> 🚀 Adopt agile practices and a startup mindset that enable continuous coordination and evaluation of new opportunities as they surface.
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<aside> 🚀 Leverage sprints that result in minimally viable change management resources that can be tested and evolved for continued relevance.
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<aside> 🚀 Value obliquity: Obliquity is not an easy concept to come to grips with. Oblique approaches are most effective where outcomes depend on interactions with other people. However, the more unpredictable the environment and the more complex the company is, the more critical the oblique principle becomes. Everyone has a dominant innovation role at which they excel, and when correctly identified and channeled, the organization stands to maximize every individual’s innovation capacity. And when the company puts the right people in the right roles, innovation speed and capacity will increase.
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<aside> 🚀 Set up learning loops: You should at least have a learning loop for your services, one for your business model, and one for collaboration. All learning loops should include something you do, a feedback mechanism to measure the impact of what you do, and a way to go from feedback to learning. The learning loop may also include anticipatory learning and vicarious learning. Move through your learning loops quickly and often.
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<aside> 🚀 Learn something new every day: A little learning is dangerous. The broader point is that changing market environments and new technologies create uncertainties, and most companies are not coping with accelerated changes. Importantly, learning should never stop. Regardless of your past achievements and your present level of expertise, your future depends on your ability to keep learning.
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<aside> 🚀 You should blend learning styles when developing routines, roles, and rules. Anticipatory learning may allow you to detect and solve problems before they occur. Vicarious learning may allow you to identify collaboration that has been found to work elsewhere. Experimentation and learning will enable you to test whether that collaboration mechanism works for you. Trial-and-error learning allows you to enhance collaboration over time and discover new ways of working.
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<aside> 🚀 Make innovation stick: Motivation is particularly important for change and innovation. Employees are individuals who respond uniquely to their work. The leader’s job is to be thoughtful about getting the most out of people, enabling and encouraging their discretionary effort. For creativity and agility to thrive, companies should revisit these new ways of thinking year after year, and although they may reiterate projects, the innovative spirit should remain undiluted.
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<aside> 🚀 Achieve stellar results despite uncertain times: It's time to rethink key assumptions and have courage, agility, and patience; be positive and create meaning; mobilize intelligence – collaborate, innovate, and use knowledge effectively.
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My doctoral dissertation on change management and innovation clarified how to solve the problem of change management in a multistage life. This research enriched my knowledge as a practitioner and led me to the startup endeavor of building a resume management tool for the future of work life.