Innovation usually happens when things are used in ways we didn't intend.It rarely happens on command and flourishes when people at all levels find new uses for things. Don't limit innovation to isolated R&D; encourage creativity to flourish across the entire organization as people actively sense and seize opportunities.

Bottom-Up Innovation

Structure workflow loosely coupled but still strategically aligned, like a regatta of speedboats heading generally in the same direction. Avoid imposing rigid, interdependent cross-functional processes that cause bottlenecks. Prioritize small autonomous teams that can work independently without bureaucracy.

Streamlined Workflows

Escape the constraints of traditional annual budget cycles that lock in resources based on backwards-looking assumptions and politics. Instead, allocate financial resources based on real-time market data, emerging opportunities, and initiatives that serve the organization's purpose. Minimize long-term spending commitments in favor of discretionary resources.

Budget Dynamically

Compensation should be fair and generous enough to not matter and to support motivation, keep the focus on autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Centralized authority structures are too slow and bureaucratic to respond effectively in rapidly changing business environments. Pushing authority to the edges of an organization where access to real-time market information resides allows much faster responses. People also need the autonomy to experiment, fail, and learn rather than just follow orders. Freedom enables innovation.

Distribute Authority  

<ul><li>Proactively make information accessible to everyone instead of hoarding it as power. </li><li>Work in public with early drafts instead of waiting for perfection. </li><li>Information is meant to flow freely across an organization, not create power fiefdoms. </li><li>Transparency builds trust and collective wisdom.</li></ul>

Radical Transparency

<ul><li>Organizations need a compelling purpose that goes beyond profits to inspire people. </li><li>This higher collective purpose should directly inform decision-making at every level. </li><li>It provides meaning and guidance beyond top-line financial metrics.</li></ul>

The Need for Purpose

<ul><li>Organizations should create flexible networks of small, autonomous teams that can self-organize around projects and programs in agile ways. </li><li>Allow people the flexibility to go where their passions, energy and skills take them within the organization. </li><li>Drive the organization through customer-focused product teams rather than centralized bureaucracies.</li></ul>

Dynamic Team Structures


In fast-changing fields, even the best strategic plan quickly becomes outdated. The strategy is only as good as the ability to continuously adjust course based on real-time learning and market feedback. Scenario planning is more effective than fixed, long-term strategic plans. Strategies must evolve.

Flexible Strategies

Reduce unnecessary status updates and other time-wasting meetings that suck precious time and resources from an organization. Instead, hold occasional but meaningful governance meetings for voicing concerns and proposing changes. Also conduct periodic retrospective meetings to share perspectives and capture learnings.

Rethink Meetings

Any organization or team needs a purpose. A mission statement that defines success as making a profit lacks an inspiring purpose.

"Brave New Work" is a book written by Aaron Dignan, the founder of The Ready, an organization design and transformation firm that helps institutions like Johnson & Johnson, Charles Schwab, Kaplan, and more.  In the book, Dignan helps teams around the world completely reinvent their operating systems—the fundamental principles and practices that shape their culture—with extraordinary success. He helps them see that organizations aren't machines to be predicted and controlled. They're complex human systems full of potential waiting to be released. 

“This is the management book of the year. Clear, powerful and urgent, it's a must read for anyone who cares about where they work and how they work.”  —Seth Godin, author of This is Marketing   “This book is a breath of fresh air. Read it now, and make sure your boss does too.”  —Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Give and Take, Originals, and Option B with Sheryl Sandberg When fast-scaling startups and global organizations get stuck, they call Aaron Dignan. In this book, he reveals his proven approach for eliminating red tape, dissolving bureaucracy, and doing the best work of your life. He’s found that nearly everyone, from Wall Street to Silicon Valley, points to the same frustrations: lack of trust, bottlenecks in decision making, siloed functions and teams, meeting and email overload, tiresome budgeting, short-term thinking, and more. Is there any hope for a solution? Haven’t countless business gurus promised the answer, yet changed almost nothing about the way we work? That’s because we fail to recognize that organizations aren’t machines to be predicted and controlled. They’re complex human systems full of potential waiting to be released. Dignan says you can’t fix a team, department, or organization by tinkering around the edges. Over the years, he has helped his clients completely reinvent their operating systems—the fundamental principles and practices that shape their culture—with extraordinary success. Imagine a bank that abandoned traditional budgeting, only to outperform its competition for decades. An appliance manufacturer that divided itself into 2,000 autonomous teams, resulting not in chaos but rapid growth. A healthcare provider with an HQ of just 50 people supporting over 14,000 people in the field—that is named the “best place to work” year after year. And even a team that saved $3 million per year by cancelling one monthly meeting. Their stories may sound improbable, but in Brave New Work you’ll learn exactly how they and other organizations are inventing a smarter, healthier, and more effective way to work. Not through top down mandates, but through a groundswell of autonomy, trust, and transparency. Whether you lead a team of ten or ten thousand, improving your operating system is the single most powerful thing you can do. The only question is, are you ready?

entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

books

Books

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

Aaron Dignan

Brave New Work

There has been tremendous concern recently over misinformation on social media. Unfortunately, the concern is justified, as the consequences of believing false information are shaping the future of nations and affect our collective health.  One popular theory why people fall for misinformation they find online is that they lack digital literacy skills, yet, very little research has investigated the link between digital literacy and susceptibility to believe false information.

Misinformation on social media

There are two different definitions for digital literacy. <ol><li>It is the possession of basic digital skills required to effectively find information online. </li><li>It's asking whether people understand how platforms decide what to show in the newsfeed.</li></ol> One study found that digital literacy is indeed a good predictor of one's ability to discern accurate information from falsehoods. In addition, both digital literacy measures independently predicted the tendency of participants to rate factual news as more accurate than false news.

Definitions of "Digital literacy"

A study showed that people who were more digitally literate were just as likely to say they'd share false articles as people who lacked digital literacy. Even people with high digital literacy were not immune from sharing false news.  Potential reasons are that although people don't want to spread misinformation, social media is quick and distracting. People are drawn to social validation and other feedback such as likes on their posts. This means they often forget to ask if a story is true when considering whether to share it.

The willingness to share false information

Just because a piece of false information parading as “news” has been shared millions of times doesn’t necessarily mean that millions believed it to be true. At the same time, just because someone is better at distinguishing fact from falsehood if they stop to think about it, does not necessarily mean they will share more accurate information.

No one is immune from the potential to spread misinformation

Scientific American is the essential guide to the most awe-inspiring advances in science and technology, explaining how they change our understanding of the world and shape our lives.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

artsandculture

Society, Arts & Culture

Digital Literacy Doesn’t Stop the Spread of Misinformation

When you're at the idea stage, it's easy to throw ideas around and poke holes in them. Don't do this. All ideas are flawed, you're limited by what you know, and it's hard to get honest feedback when you're talking through hypotheticals. Instead, get out into the market, have conversations, and test early models.

Finding an idea

<ul><li>Don’t rush into just starting a company—wait for the right thing to hit you personally, emotionally, and logically.</li><li>If it feels like you’re pulling teeth to find the pain point, you haven’t found a problem worth solving.</li><li>Be sure to validate the pain points for each persona you’re targeting.</li><li>Build prototypes and test your early ideas on real customers.</li><li>Don’t build a complete product until you’re feeling a real pull from the market. </li><li>Figure out who you can sell to most easily, and start there.</li><li>Develop a product that unlocks revenue for your customers.</li></ul>

Quick startup tips

<ul><li>Asking the wrong questions. Ask people about their past and current actions and problems, not to predict their future behaviour.</li><li>Settling for a "nice to have" reaction from early customer discovery. Instead, search for a big problem and solution.</li><li>Not having enough conversations. You need to start new conversations until clear patterns and themes emerge.</li><li>Selling a vitamin, not a painkiller. Painkillers are a “need to have”. while vitamins are a “nice to have”. Classic painkiller products include Google search and Mailchimp. Vitamins include Google Glass and CNN+.</li></ul>

Common traps to look out for

<ul><li>Take time to appreciate the small and large wins.</li><li>Document your metrics and share them with your investors and advisors.</li><li>Keep updating your roadmap and goals, so your team knows where to focus their efforts.</li><li>Carefully expand your team. Ensure to build to company culture you want while keeping an eye on your burn rate and cash reserves.</li></ul>

What to do once you have validation

First build a MVP (minimum viable product) to test with potential customers and validate that people want the product. For Christina at Vantra, she knew they were onto something when people proactively reached out to ask about what she was building.

Validating the idea

There's no single right way to get started or build a business. Timing, luck, and grit often play an outsize role. However, we can learn from how the best entrepreneurs went about building their companies.

How to know when an idea is promising

If you have a market in mind, talk to people in that space to better understand their experiences and challenges. Look for a pain that is so bad that customers will try almost anything to solve it. For example, Christina Cacioppo, CEO of Vanta, discovered that SOC2 - the way a company needs to prove its security competency, was a major pain point. While security consultants can offer help, people wanted an easier solution.

Start with a market/space first and look for a problem

<ol><li>Market first: Start with a market or space that you find interesting, then look for a specific problem.</li><li>Experience ripe for improvement: Look for areas where you believe there should be a better consumer experience and iterate from there.</li><li>Problem first: Start with a problem you’ve experienced firsthand, then find out if enough other people have the same problem. </li></ol>

How to come up with an idea

Lessons learned from Flexport, Vanta, Rec Room, LaunchDarkly, Pinwheel, Snackpass, Good Dog, and Cocoon—a guest post by Todd Jackson

business

Business

startup

Startups

How to validate your startup idea

<ul><li>The goal gradient hypothesis was first introduced by Clark Leonard Hull in 1932.</li><li>In 2006, researchers Ran Kivetz, Oleg Urminsky and Yuhuang Zheng followed up on Hull's work by testing the hypothesis on rats. Rats ran faster the closer they got to food rewards.</li><li>This phenomenon can also be observed in marathon runners who run faster once they reach the finish line.</li></ul>

The concept of a goal gradient

The goal gradient hypothesis posits that our efforts increase as we get closer to achieving a goal: when the reward is in sight, we feel incentivized to reach the finish line. Designers and decision-makers can effectively use goal gradients as a motivational tool.

Our perception of progress can impact our overall drive to reach a goal

<ul><li>Offer a head start.</li><li>Track and acknowledge progress.</li><li>Break down milestones.</li><li>Customer loyalty can be encouraged by the insertion of small milestones on the way to the main milestone.</li><li>Celebrate micro-wins to make goals feel more achievable.</li></ul>

How you can motivate others to achieve their goals

<ul><li>Goal gradients do not only impact our motivation but also impact how helpful or socially minded we might be.</li><li>Research suggests that the impact of a goal gradient can be affected by your power status.</li><li>Those who perceive themselves to be in a position of low social or professional power are more likely to be motivated by proximity to a goal.</li><li>Conversely, goal proximity may be of less importance to those who feel more powerful.</li></ul>

The impact of the goal gradient hypothesis

Our perception of progress can impact our overall drive to reach a goal. The goal gradient hypothesis posits that our efforts increase as we get closer to achieving a goal.

productivity

Productivity

problemsolving

Problem Solving

Using the goal gradient hypothesis to help people cross the finish line

<ul><li>Budgeting and frugality: Be smart with your budgeting and try to remain as frugal as possible.</li><li>An emergency fund: Set aside at least enough money to cover a few months of personal expenses.</li><li>Tax-advantaged investment vehicles: With any extra money, use tax advantage investment vehicles to maximize your savings and plan for retirement. </li></ul>

Focus On Independent Saving Strategies

If you start a sole proprietorship or a partnership, you could be held personally liable for almost anything related to the business; that means you will be responsible for paying any business-related debts you incur and you could be sued by your clients, employees, etc.If you start an LLC, you'll have some degree of liability protection. These business structures allow your business to be treated as if it were an individual of its own. The business itself can take out a loan, incurred debt, and be the target of costly lawsuits - reducing your personal exposure to these financial risks.

Establish an LLC (limited liability company) or a Corporation

New business owners are tempted to fund the business themselves, even if they don't have the savings to cover those expenses. They take out personal loans, max out their credit cards, or incur debt in other ways to get the money they need.A few minor expenses here and there won't hurt you, but for the most part, you should never take out personal loans. Instead, work with investors, tap into your savings, or rely on your business credit to take out loans in the business's name.

Never Take Out Personal Loans

Try to diversify your income streams, both inside the business and on a personal level.<ul><li>Within the business, that could mean selling multiple different types of products and services, monetizing your content or applications in different ways, or even targeting different audiences. </li><li>The same principle applies to you as an individual. You can diversify your income streams by investing in dividend-paying stocks, investing in real estate, starting independent blogs or websites, or even picking up side gigs.</li></ul>

Diversify Your Income Streams

The right strategies can help you minimize your personal financial exposure when starting a business.

Brave New Work

Digital Literacy Doesn’t Stop the Spread of Misinformation

How to validate your startup idea

It's time to Read like a Pro.

Using the goal gradient hypothesis to help people cross the finish line

It's time to
Read like a Pro.