A culture of reflection, honesty, and humility leads to healthy organizational improvements. Asking the two questions, “What did we do well?” and “What could we improve?” is lazy. These breed mediocrity and fail to bring out people’s best ideas. There is a pattern in the problems. Micro-mentor yourself monthly using constructive language. Make your success inevitable.

The lifecycle and journey of the human-centered experience.

Details of your Current State that help you determine the most compelling innovations to pursue.

High-level and detailed names of how your customer experiences your products and services, in their language and through their lens.

Visual representation of the current customer journey or employee experience - sequence of actions, primary path, and peripheral paths.

A simple two-column script is great for transparency of current state activity. A script makes drafting a process flow very easy!

Whether you build, buy, or rent, your technology - your systems - are instrumental to innovation decisions. Have your inventory ready for those decisions!

Transparency for your Current State is instrumental to know what is most valuable and urgent to innovate next.

Every organization must welcome and capture ideas for change. A Change Log is a form of Suggestion Box. Let stakeholders know you understand their ideas, and you are prioritizing them among other ideas.

Every innovation professional should have a grasp of the share of their time they spend on innovation, versus operations, versus chaos. Managers should be approximately on the same page with their employee’s view of their pie chart.

Frameworks for feedback can be simple and helpful! Here is one such framework. For every point of feedback, ask reviewers to share these three ingredients.

Every week, every team member should share a snapshot of their recent accomplishments and their near-future plans. “Manage up” without “kissing up.”