Books

Facilitating Innovation

The era of process management is fading away and the age of innovation is upon us. This is ushering in the era of knowledge creation where the goal of organizations is to discover how to find and take advantage of new value in the market. However, people are products of their environment. The culture that you have built for your organization is either stimulating creative thought or stunting it. “Facilitating Innovation” explains how the leader impacts the environment and describes the best practices of building a creative culture.

This transformational read explains the need for innovation in all organizations and the unfortunate state of creativity in Corporate America. After describing the conditions for innovation, the reader will be able to diagnose how their organization hinders or empowers novel ideas. The work then describes the best practices for enabling innovation in the office. Applying modern-day successes and epic fails, “Facilitating Innovation” paints a clear picture of the ideal work culture. Finally, the reader will walk away with a game plan on how to pivot their organization and become a facilitator of innovation.

Enabling Innovation: Building Culture in 45-Min

“Enabling Innovation” has decoded the formula for building a creative culture. Over the last century, the average lifespan of a company has moved from 60 to under 18 years. That timeline is shrinking each day. Society and markets transform rapidly with technology significantly increasing that rate of change. New ideas, products, and strategies have become the lynchpin at keeping companies afloat. Company visions, buzzwords, and jargon all call for innovation. However, these same institutions design barriers that inherently limit creativity.

Nudge Change Management: Moving Organizations with Data and Transparency

We humans crave security. Yet, continual change and adaptation is the lifeblood of a company. Keeping an organization competitive and relevant means regular change, thus shattering the sense of security people have with their jobs and their livelihoods. It’s no wonder people resist change.

No matter global corporations or small businesses, change is often ‘done’ to a voiceless workforce. Management wields the power of disruption and often does so without engaging those to-be-impacted with an opportunity to help design the change. Though most will claim there is no other way, utilizing such an approach highlights a real blindspot for managers. Including employees in the process has been proven to have a direct link to ensuring successful change. Simply, managers and change management practitioners must re-think how they implement change initiatives for their organizations.

Matt Watson, Ph.D. developed “Nudge Change Management” to pair best practices of modern-day change approaches with Thaler and Sunstein’s Nudge Theory. Watson’s model empowers employees using data, transparency, and motivation to make decisions to help move their organizations forward. Guided by an illustrative case study, readers of “Nudge Change Management” are able to apply this new change approach in their organizations, and gain deep understanding the fundamentals and nuances of creating a change team to designing and implementing the necessary change in their enterprise.

Rethinking Change Management with Nudges: Transforming Organizations in 45 Minutes

After Matt Watson had run his last workforce reduction project, he felt troubled. Disturbed with how much organizational change forces impact on the workforce. Realizing that the constant is change, he shifted his focus to creating something new. In turn, he created a change approach that would partner the organization with the employees.

Change models are relatively new to organizational management and have made a positive impact on helping companies navigate change. However, there are still gaps in each change model leaving managers with incomplete blueprints. Rethinking Change Management addresses those gaps and explains the 9X change model. This approach curates the best practices from each change model to help build a comprehensive change strategy.

Unique to the 9X model is that the approach to change focuses on engaging the workforce with nudges and empowered decision making. This 45-minute read will help ignite your thinking on looking at change through a new window and how you apply change management at your organization.

Strategy For The Small Business

The excitement of becoming an entrepreneur and starting a new business has faded. Your first dollar of revenue has been earned and quickly reinvested. Now, you are in the thick of the battle. This is where winning means making payroll for the month and losing means the bank foreclosing on your house.

Maybe a professor talked you into running your own business. Or maybe you grew tired of serving in corporate America and working for underwhelming talent. More than likely, your entrepreneurial spirit was ingrained in your DNA. Early on in the journey, you found yourself struggling to survive. You realized that it wasn’t just about providing value and navigating regulations. You had to combat companies that are trying to put you out of business, from major corporations using economies of scale and digitized platforms to squeeze your margins to smaller firms trying to kill you with a thousand pin pricks. Running a small business, you are always under siege.

Victims sit back and worry about their organization; on the other hand, competitors focus their efforts on a grand strategy strong offensive actions, and on training to refine their decision-making. They understand how to differentiate themselves from industry leaders and how to serve a niche customer base. Lastly, they know how to assault smaller competitors with efficient, effective, and high probability strikes to take market share.

Most of your competitors are using rudimentary planning tools with haphazard tactics. They are vulnerable to disruption and to businesses that know how to execute a competitive strategy. Strategy for the Small Business will guide you through the five stages of competition-based strategic planning with easy-to-use templates to help you refine your approach to winning.

Coming November 2021

Strategy Pocketbook: Building a Strategy for Tomorrow's Organization

Strategies move an organization down a long-term path, they put the business in a position to take advantage of their competitor, and they theorize on how to achieve greatness. It is the lifeblood of an organization yet numerous companies fail to develop anything beyond an annual financial plan. The Strategy Pocketbook will help explain the strategy process and guide your organization to a competitive advantage.

Workplace Athlete: Achieving Optimal Performance at Work

Olympic athletes structure their lives for a single moment of intense competition. They train relentlessly, they eat intentionally, and their daily actions are focused on producing the optimal effort for a single moment in time. Why don’t organizations take this same approach to their employees? The goal of any leader is to get the optimal effort out of their team, therefore the leader’s focus must be on creating the ideal conditions for their team. The Workplace Athlete shares best practices throughout organizations on how to achieve peak performance.

Coming November 2022