Imagine It Forward: Courage, Creativity, and the Power of Change

by Beth Comstock

How do we navigate the relentless pace of change? How can we open up our culture and innovate more quickly? How do we stay relevant in a world that is being constantly disrupted?

One of the defining characteristics of our new age of rapid-fire change is that leaders, managers, and employees have to be able to move forward without having all the answers. They have to feel their way in the dark.

Thrust into an unpredictable and profoundly complex world, the nature of today’s challenges cannot be solved by yesteryear’s tried-and-true expertise.

We must become “change ready”—that is, fearless, perpetually ready to reenvision, rethink, and redesign, whatever we do and wherever we are. We must constantly adapt, discover, think ahead, and iterate. We must meet change early and continually adapt to it. Yes, we must focus on the scaled-operations part of work—we must deliver for our customers and shareowners; but we also need to lib-erate the forward-thinking parts of business—our ability to evolve, to defy convention, to embrace emerging change. And to do that requires imagination: infusing our work with a disciplined capacity to go beyond what we know and can conceive is possible. And that starts with a shift in mind-set. You must give yourself permission to imagine a new future and act on it.

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent …” Charles Darwin wrote. “It is the one that is most adaptable to change. Those who have learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.”

I’ve since come to understand that charging into the unknown, optimistically and courageously, with all flags flying, is a skill, one that needs to be developed and nurtured, rather than quashed.

any one person who steps forward to make a difference on the path to better.

I’ve realized you can’t worry so much about making the right decision. What is more important is to develop a habit of acting decisively. It’s not that I have less doubt—as with most people, my insecurities run deep—but that I act in spite of it.

One of the things I’ve discovered over the course of my career is that people who effect radical change have to exhibit an uncompromising faith in experimentation, a radical impatience with the default, a bias for novelty and action, and a sense that disruption is something you engage, not observe. We have to give

As a vast array of research has shown, success correlates as closely with confidence as it does competence. This is particularly true for someone who intends to be a change agent. So I made a plan.

New York Times columnist David Brooks offered a memorable take on the idea a few years ago: “In today’s loosely networked world, people with social courage have amazing value,” he wrote. “Everyone goes to conferences and meets people, but some people invite six people to lunch afterward and follow up with four carefully tended friend-ships forevermore. Then they spend their lives connecting people across networks. People with social courage are extroverted in is-suing invitations, but introverted in conversation—willing to listen 70% of the time.”

Managers aren’t mind readers. They won’t know what you aspire to do unless you tell them. It doesn’t mean you will necessarily get the opportunity, but at least you will both know where you stand.

Put yourself out there, with passion. And persevere. No skill in the world can overcome a lack of perseverance.

As I would see over and over again in my career, learning how to withstand disappointment is critical for anyone who hopes to effect change in an organization. Disappointment, delays, obstacles, recalcitrance, and resistance—they are inevitable in fomenting change. It is in how you handle yourself during the constant tussle between the thrill of a new idea and its adoption that the real work lies.

Because being direct is actually being nice: Clarity, telling people where they stand, is a form of kindness. It is fair.

that one of the greatest enemies of change is what I call incapacitated learning, a phrase I borrowed from the futurist Edie Weiner. She describes it as a condition of “knowing so much about what we already know that we are the last to see the future for it differently.” It’s like carrying a career’s worth of mental baggage around.

The unfortunate truth is, most of us fear losing what we have more than we desire winning something we don’t have. The better we get at doing one thing, the less we want to work on something else.

Having time to connect with people is as important as getting everything done. Sometimes you have to go slow to go fast.

Discovery is about engaging the world as a classroom, to extract the ideas that will create the future.

Every company, organization, person has a story that conveys their purpose in the world. And in business, telling that story is one of the most important things we do. To put it another way, if you can’t tell it, you can’t sell it. Whether it’s an idea, a product, or a project, you must be clear on why it is important, what the anticipated out-come is, and why it is relevant. It’s not what we sell, it’s why we sell.

We focused on five core traits. We called these GE’s Growth Values: having an external market driven focus, measuring performance through the customers’ eyes; being a clear thinker, able to sift through complex information and focus on the critical priorities and strategy action steps; having imagination and courage, creating environments in which others can take risks and experiment; acting through inclusiveness, building diverse teams and partnerships, as well as collaborating across and outside the company; and deep expertise as a resource to drive change. The top five thousand people in the company would be rated on each of these traits as part of their annual performance review. To make it clear this was indeed about growth and development, and not an iteration of the previous rank-and-yank performance reviews (after which the bottom 10 percent of GE’s performers were ousted—in theory—every year), we stipulated that everyone would have at least one value that was rated red (as in a red stoplight: “Stop, this needs work”)—and one that was rated green (as in “Keep going; this is good”). The message: growing a company, as well as growing leadership, was a work in progress, and each one of us needed to evolve.

At the time, marketing at GE had become what it still is at many companies, especially with businesses that do not sell directly to consumers: a way to launch a new product after it had already been developed. It consisted—if it existed at all—of advertising, trade shows, sales collateral, and publicity events. At worst, marketing was the place where washed-up salespeople went. But Jeff saw the potential—and the need—to use marketing in more proactive ways, probably because he had worked in marketing himself before going into sales.

You can cut the time to fluency in any discipline if you can get a world-class practitioner to guide your journey. Open yourself up to be an apprentice, finding a “master craftsperson” to study under. Seek out the best in the field; take a key element of wisdom from each one, and then find a way to make it your own.

Look at what isn’t happening and imagine what could.

The secret to successfully adopting a market mind was looking and doing and feeling things from other people’s points of view. An easy way to induce a roaming mentality is through a practice I call mental grazing. This is the seeking stage of discovery, where we playfully attempt to stray outside our comfort zones to encounter new experiences, new tools, and new people outside our networks. We ask people to be more creative, more innovative, generate new ideas … but we often forget that new outputs require new inputs. It’s like demanding milk from a cow without allowing it to graze first.

Shelter it: An idea starts as a seedling, sometimes something that you can’t even articulate. Maybe it comes to you on a walk or on the train, or it builds on top of something someone else said at work. Noodle it, let it breathe. Ignore it and see if it still comes back to nudge you again. Tell it: We have a tendency to keep new ideas secret for fear of someone else stealing them or of looking silly. The irony is that the more you talk about your idea, the clearer it becomes. Ask people for help in making the idea clearer. Ask yourself: How much do I believe in this idea? There comes a time to test your passion and commitment. Do I feel strongly enough about it that I’m willing to devote the time to refine it and test its viability? Can I handle the criticism I may receive from others when I put it out there? Do I feel so strongly about it that I want it to happen with or without me? Repeat: Be resilient. Don’t give up. Find more people with whom to share the idea, more ways to bring it to life. Sometimes the timing may be wrong. The company may be wrong. The boss may be wrong. Keep at it.

Because tomorrow always comes, change-makers can’t be afraid to share their vision and declare their aspirations for it loudly, even before they’ve built it, done it, won it. This is how you grab mindshare. And you need mindshare before you can capture market share. You need to sell a vision, devise a plan, and invite others to help build it. This is how change gets harnessed. It’s not without frustration or peril. As Jeff told a newspaper reporter several years later, “There were only two of us who thought this thing was a good idea.” For my sake, I’m fortunate that Jeff was the other one.

The traditional top-down style of leadership—here’s the answer, now do it—won’t work. Often, the person leading the change doesn’t know the answer, only the need for a new direction. How do you get people to work toward unseen opportunities?

You can’t avoid it. In fact, you have to surface conflict continuously, before tensions mount too high. Tension is the price of admission when you are innovating. I should have confronted Jeff Zucker long before and told him that his actions were unacceptable. And I should have stated my position up front—I was in charge of the NBC Agency. I didn’t need his permission to run the agency. I had backed down to preserve the peace, but as I was coming to realize, appeasement is the antithesis of innovation.

Learn to listen and trust your doubts. And don’t be afraid to express them to others.

Change is not a single act or initiative. It is an ever-evolving dynamic in which you prod and seed the environment with a range of friction-causing catalysts.

you’re going to innovate to greatness, you have to be able to give your colleagues candid feedback on their ideas—and be prepared to face the same firing squad yourself. Striving to maintain harmony is dangerous; it silences honest criticism and allows people to serve up polite praise for bad ideas.

“Couldn’t we find different ways to price the ads? Like better targeting? What if we charged advertisers different rates based on how well their ads hold viewers?” I said. But Jeff waved me off. In the end, though, I believe choosing profits over the user experience is one of the things that made broadcasting so vulnerable to disruption, something Jason knew intuitively.

Challenger brands create value only inasmuch as they are led by someone who knows how to challenge.

She was a hard-charging sales department head. Influential and outspoken, she made it clear that no one messed with her. She oversaw sales for important dayparts—meaning big revenue—and had been at NBC for what counted as forever. Whenever the marketing or digital teams suggested something vaguely different, she’d say, “No, that won’t work.” Or she’d trot out the name of a big buying agency: “I just talked to Julie of Zenith Media, and she doesn’t think this is a good idea.” She was an immovable force. No matter what it was—a digital banner ad, video pre-roll in digital video, branded content—the judgment was always the same. Always brutal. Few people would challenge her.

Some of the conflict I experienced at NBC came because people were threatened by change or my fervor in driving it, and some came from my avoidance of conflict with people. That’s clear to me now. My relationship with Jeff Zucker never improved. He barely tolerated me, and I him. Until he didn’t have to any longer.

As a change-maker, you will have your share of failures. It’s the nature of the job. The important thing is to learn from them. I had learned, painfully, the importance of confronting and not running away from conflict. I had discovered the importance of co-opting the resisters. I learned the importance of never giving up and constantly moving forward. Of creating a challenger brand to help drive change throughout the organization.

Keep the opposition close. It’s vital to do things like have coffee with the person most dedicated to seeing you fail. I should have sat down for coffee with Jeff Zucker—often. Ask your opponents to articulate their vision for success. I didn’t ask Zucker several vital questions about NBC and digital: What are your goals? What does success look like to you? Be candid. Turn conflict into the basis for an alliance.

At times like these, I summon the words of Samuel Beckett: “All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” Next time you fail, ask yourself, What did I learn? What will I do differently next time? Now share it with a teammate or your manager.

The power of a positive attitude has been supported by research. Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania, who pioneered the field of positive psychology, conducted studies showing that those who attributed setbacks to the larger, imperfect world (“It’s not all my fault”), who framed periods of adversity not as personal failures but part of a process of growth (“I learned so much”), were less prone to depression and more resilient. Or as my husband, Chris, would say to me at the end of many long, soul-searching conversations, “The NBC experience was something you needed to go through. As painful as it was, I feel like it will one day serve you well.”

bankruptcy, “In the words of the immortal philosopher, Mike Tyson, ‘Everybody has a plan till they get punched in the mouth.’” Or my version of his sentiment: it works until it doesn’t. Too many times people assume their models will work … forever (aka “Trees will grow to the sky!”).

We can’t make uncertainty go away. But we can change the way we react to it. Every uncertainty is a new potential future.

And acceleration. We are communicating faster, working faster, innovating faster, and by some accounts even talking and walking faster than we did in previous decades. (It’s not your imagination—studies show we’re actually walking 10 percent faster in cities than we did a decade ago.) We can’t make uncertainty go away. But we can change the way we react to it. Every uncertainty is a new potential future. Seen in this light, uncertainty doesn’t need to be a source of anxiety; it can be a signal that it’s time to change.

In previous eras, marketing was about creating a myth and selling it. Today, it’s about finding a central truth and sharing it. Manufactured myths just don’t stand up these days. With a few clicks of the mouse, people can discover almost anything about a company and instantly circulate it to an audience of millions. It is the organizations that are confident enough to share the truth—warts and all—that succeed.

Being Always in Beta Never being done is part of the inherent experience of sensemaking in digital life. In an analog world of books and paper memos and clocks that chimed at five to release us from the world of work, we had deeply satisfying periods of being “done.” But, of course, the flow of life and of events was never as organized as all that. Turning the last page of a newspaper didn’t mean that the news stopped happening. Now that we have the tools that have caught up to the endless flow of our thoughts and actions, we’re at our best when we let go of the expectation of being “done.” A digital innovator’s motto is that everything’s “always in beta.” You’re also never done improving. There’s always more time to get better.

Write It as a Press Release The surest test of a sound strategy is that it can be written as a press announcement. I often test my new business ideas, company initiatives, and partnerships this way. Press releases in and of themselves are an artifact of the past. But the purpose (to alert the world to your news) and the structure (how it is composed) stand the test of time: HEADLINE: What is happening SUB-HEADLINE BULLETS: List the two or three most compelling points. BODY COPY: Restate what is happening in the first two paragraphs, list the anticipated outcomes and benefits, and then quote the leaders of the effort to summarize the strategy. End with supporting points. END: Summarize in one sentence the benefits, and in another the bridges to what’s next. Ask, Is the strategy and rationale clear? Do the quotes make sense? If they are filled with clichés and empty words, then the strategy isn’t clear yet. If you make the release about yourself or your business, nobody’s going to care. If you make it about what the reader might want to hear, then you’ve got a shot at capturing people’s attention. I use this approach after an ideation session with teams. Once we’ve summarized our best ideas and then agreed to a course of action, I’ll assign someone to write a press release. When we get back together again, we review the press release as a way to revisit and test our ideas. Do they make sense? Are we united in the vision? What’s missing? This is also a good way to summarize...

BBDO thought that lobbying me about their scale, rather than the quality of their capability, would win the day.

The digital efforts were gaining traction, but not everyone embraced the change. Some people are eager to change and are just waiting to be given the permission; others are undecided and need proof, permission, and skills; and others still can never get there—either they don’t want to change, they don’t like it, or they don’t have the skills to change and ultimately they leave. Judy eventually did just that.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men or they are no better than dreams.”

To build public support for his grand project and demonstrate it was safe, Edison organized an “Electric Torch Light Parade,” in which four hundred men wore lightbulbs on their heads—connected via wires that ran up their shirts to a steam generator that rolled behind them. Through the vehicle of the parade, Edison invented an idea that people could rally around: safe, reliable, 24/7 electric light. Once he created that idea, the lightbulb quickly became one of the most disruptive technologies the world had ever seen.