Business Change Management

Can playing games really lead to innovations? Yes, with Innovation Games!

Have you ever sat in a staff "ideation" meeting where the purpose was to come up with groundbreaking, business-building, innovative ideas, and no one could come up with anything? Or if someone did throw out an idea, everyone shot it down? Pretty depressing, right? Well, what if I told you there is something that gets teams engaged, encourages them to work together, and enables them to arrive at breakthrough ideas and accomplish goals faster. All while having fun. What is this magic solution, you ask? Innovation Games.

At Simon Associates Management Consultants, we find the steady downloads of our power points and white papers on Innovation Games totally amazing. Apparently, the challenges of coming out of the pandemic seem to have accelerated the interest in innovation, and as a result, Innovation Games have become in high demand. But you might ask, what are Innovation Games? Should you try them yourself? Do you need a professional’s help, someone like us? Let’s begin at the beginning.

In my last blog I talked about how in these turbulent times, businesses of all shapes and sizes, even non-profits, are finding that their old ways of doing things are just that  — old. They need to change their culture, but they don't know what their current culture is, or how to go about changing it.

I then described how from our earliest childhood, our mind forms a story (which others help us craft) and it doesn't like to deviate from that story, which makes change difficult. I also talked about the workshop I conducted for Eric Buehler's November 2022 Enterprise Agility Global Conference on how to adapt an organization's culture during fast-changing times. You can view the slideshow of my workshop here.

In this blog, I'd like to delve into how change is literally pain but it can be done, and often, must be done.

How can you change your culture if you don't know what your current one is?

Far too often, an HR professional is asked by his/her CEO to help transform their organization's culture. One recent call to us was so typical, and frustrating to the individual who was calling. Without ever having evaluated her company's culture, she could not tell me what culture the company had today or what the CEO wanted for the future.

Boy, is this ever a time for getting "off the brink" to reflect on how we get things done in our businesses and personal lives, and where some changes might need to be made. At SAMC, the recurring theme we're seeing with so many of our clients is what to do post-pandemic (assuming we are post-pandemic) to rebuild their business strategy in order to help their company do what it's supposed to do: adapt, pivot if need be, and grow.

As Blue Ocean Strategy® experts, we have had many calls and emails recently from companies large and small asking us to help them address their dilemmas. They want to know how should they revamp, or even overhaul, the way they offer their products and services while facing an abundance of challenges to their status quo. A big order.

"Ref, no way was that offsides." "Foul? You call that a foul?" "Oh c'mon, you're giving me a YELLOW CARD??"

At the recently-concluded World Cup held over 29 days in Quatar, the comments levied at referees — from players, coaches and spectators alike — were in some cases, for the first time ever, directed at women referees. That's right: six women officials (including Kathryn Nesbitt of the US) worked this year's tournament, the most-watched international sporting event on the planet.

Recently I learned about the Women’s Sports Foundation Annual Salute to Women in Sports, an event held in New York City in October which celebrated the extraordinary achievements of women athletes this year. As 2022 marks the 50th anniversary of Title IX, this year's WSF tribute must have been especially meaningful to those in attendance and all of us everywhere who reap the benefits of this landmark law.

"We didn't hire Becky to make history," Popovich said. "She earned it."

When Becky Hammon joined the San Antonio Spurs pro basketball team as an assistant coach in 2014—the first woman in NBA history to hold this position—Barack Obama congratulated her on Twitter. Then when the Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich was ejected from a game against the Los Angeles Lakers in December 2020, Hammon replaced him to become the first woman to act as head coach in a regular-season NBA game. Talk about change!

In the NFL, women are finally breaking through

In February of last year, there was an article in The New York Times entitled, “These Women Were N.F.L. ‘Firsts.’ They’re Eager for Company.” It discusses the many “firsts” in the NFL from team CEO (Amy Trask of the Oakland Raiders) to coaches (Maral Javadifar, an assistant strength and conditioning coach, and Lori Locust, a defensive-line assistant, both for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers) to referee (Sarah Thomas who officiated the 2021 Super Bowl) to the front office (Callie Brownson, chief of staff for the Cleveland Browns).

In January of 2021, there was big news concerning the NFL’s Super Bowl. Sarah Thomas — the first woman to officiate a major college football game, the first to officiate a bowl game, the first to officiate in a Big Ten stadium, the first full-time female official in NFL history and the first to officiate an NFL playoff game — was named to the referee crew for the 2021 Super Bowl, having officiated NFL games since 2015.

Talk about a glass ceiling being smashed! This put a woman squarely in the arena of what has traditionally been a men-only sport.