FEAR
BY PROFESSOR EDWARD D. HESS AND DR. DONNA MURDOCH
THE BIG INHIBITOR OF INNOVATION AND TRANSFORMATION
M
omentum is growing in the corporate world — more and
more companies are realizing that the convergence of ad-
vancing technologies will fundamentally change how we live
and how we work.
This realization has led some leaders
to initiate either a digital transformation
or the building of an innovation system.
In many cases, the ultimate objective is
to “win” — beat the competition by in-
creasing the speed and quality of human
learning in order to attain the highest
levels of human cognitive and emotional
performance in concert with advancing
technologies.
Questions that are commonly
40 essentials | summer 2019
asked include: Where do we start?
How do we structure the initiative? Is
the initiative company-wide or siloed?
Who leads the initiative? What tech-
nology do we need? What skills are
we lacking? What is our competition
doing? How will we train our employ-
ees for new roles as these technologies
are implemented?
Questions that are rarely asked
happen to be as important: How do we
handle the human, emotional part of the
transformation? How do we lead in a
way so that our employees will emotion-
ally embrace the new learning and ways
of working that need to occur? How do
we minimize one of the biggest human
inhibitors to transformation: fear?
TRANSFORMATION
STARTS AT THE TOP
An organization can’t transform
unless its people transform. And its
people won’t transform unless their
managers and leaders transform.
Leaders and managers must role model