Innovactions changes behaviours into continuing innovation

Innovation is back on the radar in many organizations, driven in part by recent movements such as ‘crowdsourcing’, open innovation and the wikinomic world. Interesting is that a lot of airtime is given to ‘processes for innovation’, which are focused on generating and capturing so-called ‘innovative ideas’.
In Innovactions, Leandro Herrero explains that capturing those ideas will only take your organization so far. “Processes and skills are indeed valuable,” he admits, “but creating an environment that is wide open to inquiry, curiosity and perpetual re-invention will ensure that innovation is no longer a word in your organization, but a behaviour. And not just any behaviour, but one that will lead your company to flourish.”
In this new book, the author focuses on analyzing the components that are needed to create a culture of innovation, with a heavy emphasis on what people do (or don’t do) to achieve (or miss) a goal. These innovative behaviours the author describes as ‘disruptive’, following the thread in his previous book Disruptive Ideas.
Debunking the myth that the capacity to innovate is allegedly connected to the size of the organization or the type of industry, Innovactions will appeal to any manager and leader interested in creating the socio-environmental conditions for innovation within their company. The simple management tools provided by the book will help them create a culture in which different forms and degrees of innovation can co-exist and flourish.
Leandro Herrero was a practicing psychiatrist for many years before holding senior leadership positions in top league business organizations. He is currently CEO of The Chalfont Project Ltd, an international group of organizational consultants, which he co-founded. His previous books include The Leader with Seven Faces, Viral Change, New Leaders Wanted – Now Hiring! and Disruptive Ideas, also published by meetingminds.
Innovactions - Escape from the me-too company
meetingminds, 2012
£20.00/US $29.00 - Paperback, 200 pages
ISBN: 978-1-905776-06-1
Available to pre-order at: Waterstones, Barnes and Noble, Amazon UK, Amazon US, meetingminds and many other (online) bookshops and outlets.

Pause....!

I am taking a blogger leave from The Leader with Seven Faces for a little while. Follow me in sister blog www.viralchange.net; the home of conversations on Viral Change, the alternative to slow, painful and unsuccessful management of change in organisations. Viral Change and The Leader with Seven Faces are two of the four pillars of my work. The other two are Human Collaboration and Organisational Innovation. Take a look at our consulting website www.thechalfontproject.com for more information. Talk to you soon here again around October time!

Disruptive Ideas - making Viral Change happen

Lee Smith at Talking Internal Communication continues his views on Leandro Herrero's work, described in two of his books: Viral Change and the follow-up Disruptive Ideas. I wanted to share his views with you here:


"I've just ordered my copy of Dr Leandro Herrero's new book, Disruptive Ideas - the follow up to his excellent work on Viral Change. While I eagerly await my Amazon delivery I've been looking at the Disruptive Ideas 'open book' - basically a blog which allows you to read and comment on much of the content. I love what social media has done for publishing and how its beginning to create a real dialogue between authors and readers. If you want a taste of Leandro's views and insights, be sure to check it out. The introduction provides an excellent overview of Viral Change thinking and its associated methodology. What's more, if you are willing to leave your thoughts and comments behind, you could help shape the second edition of what may well become a classic text on change."

Viral Change Book Review

I came across a great blog by Lee Smith (Talking Internal Communication) and he had the following to say about Dr Herrero's book Viral Change:

"I recently finished reading Leandro Herrero's superb book, Viral Change. I was planning to review it here on the blog, but I've just discovered that Kieron Shaw has beaten me to it!

The good news is that Kieron's response to the book was very similar to my own - in Kieron's words, it 'rocked his world'. I wouldn't go quite that far, but it's a seriously impressive book and a must-read for anyone in the business of change.

So, rather than reinventing the wheel, I suggest you check out his review in full on the Viral Change website. It will also be published in the next issue of Melcrum's SCM magazine, for those of you who subscribe.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. Buy it now. Read it and re-read it.

As an internal communicator you'll need to take some of his comments on the chin (Leandro doesn't have many good things to say about traditional approaches to communicating change) but at the heart of it is a sensible and workable methodology for delivering real, tangible behaviour change.

For me Viral Change is up there with John Smythe's Chief Engagement Officer as one of the most important books on employee communication, engagement and change to emerge in the last few years."

Viral Change revisited

Since the first edition of Viral Change, Dr Leandro Herrero and The Chalfont Project continued to expand their experience in the field of viral change management, which they pioneered. This has now resulted in a second and revised edition of Dr Herrero’s book: Viral Change: the alternative to slow, painful and unsuccessful management of change in organisations.

I wanted to share with you the prologue that Dr Herrero wrote for this second edition:

“The terms ‘viral change’ or ‘behavioural change management’ have increasingly been linked to our work as any Google search for these terms will show you. And I am delighted that there is a growing interest - from many sectors of the business and organisational life - in understanding the viral model of change management that we pioneered and its applications.

Since the first edition, we have continued building on our Viral Change experience, both in large scale interventions and in its applications in medium-sized organisations. Additional work on viral leadership has also taken place and some extra notes on this topic have been added in this second edition. Viral leadership goes beyond communication (‘viral communication’) to engage others to champion the new idea, the new process or the new behaviours. We are so used to equating change to good communication that sometimes people think these two things are not just connected, but interchangeable. However, they are not the same.

I have also added some notes on influence mechanisms. In recent months, it became fashionable to question the true role of ‘influencers’, for example, in marketing. In this second edition, I have stressed how any virally induced cultural change recognises a combination of mechanisms: influencers (‘the opinion leader model’), the first followers (‘the early adopters model’) and the fact that a critical mass of ‘new culture practitioners’ (‘the critical mass model’) is powerful enough in itself to induce another critical mass, no matter what the initial trigger was. Social copying leads the way. This is incredibly important for me as a practitioner of Viral Change™ (as opposed to a simply theoretical advocate), because I am more interested in the infection of new ideas and behaviours being spread and leading to new routines within the organisation (‘new cultures’) than in the socio-arithmetical ability to measure whether 20% of those were due to mass social imitation or direct Change Champion, peer-to-peer work. The best (cultural, organisational) Viral Change^™ in action is the one that has used multiple mechanisms of influence.

Every day I encounter more and more people in organisational life who are tired of yet another corporate initiative with a change management angle. The mechanistic top-down model (push from the top of the organisation, get results at the bottom) is still what people think of: a burden you have to endure at some point, one way or another. This model is past its sell-by date. Making no apologies for stealing the slogan of a European mobile communications company, I’d like to proclaim that ‘the future is bright, the future is viral’. I really believe that the viral model of change is the only hope for a tired, overwhelmed, over-managed, predictable, commanded-and-controlled, straight-jacketed and initiative-inundated corporate life.

Leandro Herrero May 2008”

The second revised edition of Viral Change: the alternative to slow, painful and unsuccessful management of change in organisations will be available from 15^th July 2008. It can already be pre-ordered from Amazon UK, Barnes and Noble and meetingminds.