#345 How to Drive Innovation with Brian Solis, Head of Global Innovation at ServiceNow

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We have to recognize that there are two paths forward and this is where it gets difficult because we're usually tasked with one, which is iteration. Now the opportunity, especially with artificial intelligence, is to unlock how do we compete differently moving forward? How do we use AI to differentiate our work? How do we use AI to create and scale new value in addition to improving yesterday? And because I believe that you cannot automate your way to innovation, we can't change people's minds because we want them to or we tell them to. They have to believe that they play a part in the story and that they can see themselves on the other side of what change looks like. In order to even have the conversation, you need a Jedi mind trick to tell people how to see things differently.

Welcome to Data Framed. This is Richie. A consequence of widespread AI disruption is that now everyone is expected to be an innovator. There's a core expectation that you will change your workflows and come up with new business ideas and product ideas. There's a romantic perception that innovation only comes from geniuses, but you don't have to be Leonardo da Vinci. Innovation is a skill set and a mindset, and that's what we're going to be discussing today. Our guest is Brian Solis, the head of global innovation at ServiceNow. Forbes called Brian one of the more creative and brilliant business minds of our time. He's written nine books, including the best selling Mind Shift. Brian's work focuses on AI maturity and building a vision for future innovation. So let's find out how to innovate. Hi, Brian. Welcome to the show.

Richie, it's about time. I know.

Where have you been the last three or so episodes? It's exciting times, as I'm sure you're aware. There's so much going on with AI. Really, really interesting stuff, but it can also feel difficult to keep up with stuff sometimes. Easy to feel like you're drowning. How do you stay afloat?

I got AI floaties and they go right here. And every day, the news cycles come through the technology breakthroughs come through. I'm riding along right there on top. But you're right, it is becoming more and more difficult. So just as an aside, I'm someone who absolutely believes in having the most minimal amount of tabs open in any given day. And every day there's a new report, there's a new article, there's a new breakthrough. And right now I am drowning. I think that last count, I have over 30 tabs open of research I need to read. And so let me just say that I'm in the process of building and deploying agents and digital twins to keep up. Okay.

I like that. Using technology to solve the problem of too much technology. Do you think it's going to work?

It's not working as it is without it, so anything can be better. Let's hope so. Fingers crossed. I'll report back.

Okay. All right. Yeah. So I think it's a challenge everyone faces is like, how do you deal with the sort of fire hose of information and new developments? So I know lot of your focus is around changing your mindset in order to be able to deal with this. So talk me through maybe, I guess, to begin with, give us some motivation. So have you come across anyone who has sort of successfully changed their mindset to be more amenable to innovation?

Oh, boy. You just want to jump right in. Oh, yeah.

Straight to it.

I suppose if it was. If it was easy, we probably would be in a very different state of affairs in terms of all things related to a mindset. It took an entire career to write this book. It's called Transform Leadership, Drive Innovation, and Reshape the Future. And what I had learned was that we can't change people's minds because we want them to or we tell them to. They have to believe that they play a part in the story and that they can see themselves on the other side of what change looks like in order to even have the conversation. And what I had learned is that you need a Jedi mind trick to tell people how to see things differently. But no, in all seriousness, the work is on the person who has a vision to help other people see, feel, and believe in that vision. And it's taken a long time to figure it out. But I gotta tell you, Richie, the storytelling element of this becomes more important than I think then people give it credit, but it's certainly as important as the vision that you have.

Okay. Yeah. Storytelling is one of our favorite topics here on Data Framed. So, okay, do you want to talk me through? Like, how does storytelling help change people's?

Minds, then. Yeah, well, I'll give it my best. I. I wouldn't say that I'm an expert storyteller, but people like Nick Sung or Nicholas Sung, who used to be a Pixar Disney storyboard artist, to me, are the experts out there. In fact, so much so that we've worked together over the last decade. I've hired him on a couple of fronts to kind of teach me the ways of Disney Pixar storytelling. And I think what's most interesting is that as a storyboard artist that he is, he would say that when you think about putting together these cells or these frames of how a story unfolds, that you might be doing so at a sequential series of events in order to sort of play out the story, play out the character development, and then use that to get it to a point then before you invest in the expensive animation or shoots, or in our case, speaking with executives on what the data means and what's on the other side of the data and what potential strategy could look like as well, a result. But really what it's for is it's an understanding. It's an. It's an opportunity to basically put all of the pieces together, not just the data in our case, but also the people on the other side of the data or the processes or all of the. All of the things that kind of serve as the foundation for a story. And that the whole point of storyboarding was to be on the assembly of these pieces and people and things and ideas was to test the believability of the story and of the characters and also the relatability. Do you see yourself in it? Does it mean something to you? Does it move you? And then as any true hero's journey unfolds, it puts you as the audience or as the stakeholder, through the process of recognizing that you are part of the story and that you go through these transitions in the story of not just believability or relatability, but also empathy. And what's on the other side of empathy, which is hopefully that you see yourself in the story so much that you want to be part of the change, that you want to be part of the solution, and that you want to be part of the outcome. And so there's a deep, deep sense of humanity, there's a deep sense of emotion, and there's a deep sense of losing the ego, a deep sense of vulnerability as the storyteller to put take yourself out of the way and let the story become the thing that other people can Connect with. It's selfless, but it's beautiful and wonderful, and it's also a lot of work. But what happens is, is that then you scale empathy from one to many, which then sets the stage for a better outcome for whatever the story is you're trying to tell for more than one person on the other side to want to be part of that transformation. So Nick Sung is his name. He. He now. He now works with. He still does animation and storyboarding, but now he works with organizations like Nike. It's a famous story of him working with Airbnb. If you want to look it up, it's called. Called Snow White, where he helped lead their transformation. But storytelling has always been at the center of his work and every. Every bit of transformation I've ever done and am still doing now with AI.

That's cool. So, obviously, I love the idea of doing some storyboarding and thinking about what you want to say, especially in a business context. Like, before you have that conversation with your. With your CEO, it's like, maybe just think a little bit first. Brilliant idea. And also, I love the idea of having a bit of empathy with your audience, like, making them feel something. Now, if you're Pixar and you go like, I think, what was that thing in Toy Story 3 with all the toys, like, about to melt? I don't want to spoil it for too many people, but, yeah, that's a really emotional moment in a business context. You don't, you know, you've not got, like, the toys and the sad moments, but. So talk me through. How do you get empathy in a business context? Have you gotten any examples of really emotional business stories?

Oh, boy. Absolutely. And none of this comes without experimentation. It's easy to say, be a great storyteller. And sometimes people just sort of confuse the ability to tell a great story as being a storyteller. But the honesty of it is that you have to get someone else to first open their mind in order for that mind to change. And that, I think, is where, for example, let's go back to Nick Sung's story with Airbnb. I think that. Because that's the story that changed my mind. And it was at a time where Airbnb was going through an incredible transformation. They had a real big brand issue, real big MPS issue. Mobile was coming up at a time where it was going to require not only a different interface, but a different way of navigating a service like Airbnb. So. So what they had recognized was at the heart of the problem was that they were a data company. They were a logistics company in many ways, and that was part of the problem. What they didn't know was how to effectively recruit more hosts for properties, whether that was rooms or apartments or houses, and how to recruit more travelers and visitors and then how to connect them via a mobile device or a smaller screen. One day, Brian Chesky, his co founder and now he's the current CEO, was on a holiday flight, and he was reading the story of Walt Disney. And in that Walt Disney biography, they talk about how storyboards were used for the movie Snow White. And at the time, storyboards didn't exist. Snow White was the first animated motion picture. So they were breaking a lot of ground. So storyboards became a way of testing a lot of things out before making a movie and breaking ground. But coming back to the relatability and the believability that became. That became the art and science of storytelling. Because essentially, you had to practice McDisney and his. His imagineers and artists would practice the storytelling in front of these storyboards with a room full of other artists and colleagues to test the believability and the relatability and get that feedback before the story was ever told. So there, I guess there's two business cases here. One is the making of Snow White and how that became successful coming out of the gate. But it touched Brian, and he realized he didn't have the relatability, the empathy, the. The. The emotionality of what Airbnb was trying to become, because he didn't know the. The hosts and he didn't know the users. He was thinking about it at space as people saving money, as people getting different types of experiences versus going to a traditional hotel or what have you. And what ended up happening was that he had heard about, I think it was a mutual connection with Nick Sung, who at the time was a pixie. Pixie. Pixar Disney storyboard artist. And he came through and with the team, they analyzed the data and they went into that with different questions, like, who is the host? Who is the guest? Why does somebody open up their home to strangers? Why do strangers go to a stranger's home versus a traditional hotel with amenities, et cetera, and a brand? And so they let the different data tell the story. They. They used the insights that they were getting to start to build that story arc. And then they used Nick Sung to visualize then those stories. And so they came up with a host journey, and they came up with the guest journey. And for the longest time, those storyboards existed in the the Airbnb lobby. But why this is an important story is because, number one, it helped. Just like in the room full of artists and colleagues for Disney, it helped everyone at the organization see the AHAs at an emotional, human level that they didn't see. Like, it gave their work purpose, it gave their work meaning, it gave that transformation now sort of an understanding of what are we doing, what's our mission, our vision, what's the North Star, what does, what could success look like on the other side? But more so, they took those storyboards and now they had the capacity to tell that story to the board and to the investors and to all other stakeholders to then further invest in the company to transform Airbnb to what they are now, which is an experience company, regardless of the screen you use to book that experience. That is at the heart and soul now of how you interact with Airbnb. Now as a user, we could have a different conversation, but. But the purpose of that story in that transformation was profound. And that was the moment that I started working with Nick. And we have done those types of transformations, even with my own work and how I approach, for example, books and developments of books and the design of books with that same approach.

I love that when you got a company that, where I guess leadership understands that you really got to change a lot about your business because something's not working right and there's many different elements. So you talk about like trying to find out what are your users as you want. You speak to a lot of them, using data to synthesize all that. And then you need that story to tell, to persuade, I guess everyone in your organization that this is the thing that we need to do. And I guess I love the idea of having just the result of this in the lobby, just like your final visualizations. This is like, got to be like a career defining moment. I think for anyone who's involved in that, like the business intelligence, like top spot here, look, this is what our business is doing. Okay? So in terms of like trying to figure out doing transformation systematically or transformations of your mind, I know you've got a six step framework for this with rhyming names for each of the steps.

Yes, rhyming. Rhyming names. One of the things about it's like always like the, the story of the power of threes is that if you could make it, well, relatable and memorable, you can make it shareable. And I think that's the big, that's the big trick to any framework, I guess. And this being one of the frameworks, which is the six stages of mind shifting, which is receive, perceive, weave, conceive, believe, and finally achieve. It's a, it's a journey as much as it is a framework. And the book, the first half of the book is sort of designed as to like, what, what does it mean to mind shift? And it sort of gets the reader ready to recognize. So before we, we can actually dive into the framework, I had to, I had to start with the first part of the book to get us ready for the framework. And it's true for any story. People can't just hear the story or create the story. They have to actually get to the beginning point where they recognize that they might be part of the problem. Which means that anytime we do the work, anytime we're extracting insights, we're trying to find patterns, we put ourselves in that story. We're stakeholders, we've got skin in the game. We take this personally because we've put in the work and the due diligence to get those things out. And now we, we, our drive is to get those insights in front of somebody in order to drive a decision or to drive an outcome or to drive some type of transformation or adoption or whatever is. But in reality, we're not the protagonist, we're not the hero of this story. We are merely the humble servant for it and trying to bring it not just to life, but to scale and to bring others along for the journey. And that's why I say that the six, the six stage framework is actually a journey as much as it is a framework. So the first part of the book, we have to recognize that in order to open minds or in order to change minds, we have to open minds. And that starts with our mindset. So self awareness becomes a real big deal. And in the book, I tell the. I share a stat where most of us, well, 100% of us believe that we're self. Aware. And you have to be self aware in order to recognize that you are not the hero in the story. Which is hard. But turns out that studies show that really only 10% of humans are actually self, aware, which was a humbling statistic. And of course everybody's going to say, well, I'm part of the 10%, it must be somebody else, totally somebody else, but it is actually true. And so the beginning of the book is really about getting you to a place where you recognize that your mind isn't as open as it could be or should be. And it kind of walks you through opening your own mind. So that by the time you get to the first stage of the framework, which is receive, you are actually ready to receive, which that part of the framework talks about the signals. So that could be data points, that could be whatever you're tracking in terms of then receiving those signals, to not just analyze them, but to interpret them, to pers. To essentially empathize with them, to humanize them, and then carry you on through the rest of the journey.

Okay, so I love the idea that openness to new ideas is important. So with all the sort of modern psychological or psychometric tests, there's like five big personality traits and openness is one of them. So is this something that's fundamental to people or can you learn to be more open?

Not only can you learn to be more open, we all need to be more open. I think that's part of the problem that we're facing in society today. So outside of artificial intelligence and business transformation, if you look at socioeconomics, if you look at politics, if you look at, just look at social media in general, I wrote a book about this in 2019 called Life Scale. It probably is more important today than it was when it came out. And it, it, it demonstrated how insular and polarizing information was becoming in social because of the people we follow, because of the algorithms that determine what we need to see and what we don't need to see, that we were sort of perpetuating a much more finite realm of information. And as a result of just being human beings, that information then becomes our reality because we're not self aware enough usually to recognize that there must be something else that I'm not seeing or considering. And so just our day to day life perpetuates the challenge that we face. And if we bring that same mindset into our work, we bring a limited view of the opportunity and of possibility. And so this is, in the absolute best case, can lead to iteration, which is taking those insights and improving what we did yesterday to do better tomorrow, profitable, scalable, faster, et cetera. But we'll never get to innovation that way. And so what we try to do, just in terms of a long story short, before you frame up your next question, is we have to recognize that there are two paths forward. And this is where it gets difficult, because we're usually tasked with one, which is iteration. Now the opportunity, especially with artificial intelligence, is to unlock how do we compete differently moving forward? How do we use AI to differentiate our work? How do we use AI to create and scale new value? In addition to improving yesterday and because I believe that you cannot automate your way to innovation.

So this is an interesting point. Like, do you iterate on your existing stuff or do you go for something completely new? So we've had differing opinions on the show already. So last year we had Ilya Strobiliev from Stanford University. She works with a lot of venture capitalists. And he was like, yeah, you gotta go for the big bets on something completely new. And then earlier this year we had. It was Don Kiefer and Nelson Revening from MIT talking about, well, they come from like a manufacturing background. Okay, well, you just gotta find, like, what one problem at a time, fix that, and just solve lots of little problems and that's the way to success. So it's like, do you go with a big bet or lots of smaller bets? So I'm not sure whether there's one right answer to it, but there's certainly different opinions. I'd love to hear your take.

I think context matters. It's always mattered, but I don't know that there's one right way forward. I think what I need to understand in every situation is, is who and why are we even considering this? Whether that's going from first principles, whether that's going to. Before we get to first principles, kind of getting to the. Even the answers to those questions, that is the hardest part. But it's also, I would, I would argue that it's one of the least traveled paths to resolution or outcome. The reason I say that is because, as my friend Ryan Holiday famously said, ego is the enemy. So what, how I interpret that in my work is we are where we are because of our experience, our success, our ability to get to that outcome or resolution systematically, the way that we've always done so that in many ways has made us successful. And I would argue that that in many ways puts us and locks us into a position of iteration, not innovation. And so whether I make those bets, whether they're small, medium or large, are going to be limited by my hypothesis or idea or my gut feeling around what that iterative potential is. And I won't call it iteration because it's my idea, it's my, my methodology. So therefore, it can only be innovative. But that ego check that I have for myself is, I'll make two columns, or I'll make a four, or, you know, two by two, whatever I'm. Whatever I'm working on. And I will say one bucket is iteration, one bucket is innovation. I define iteration as improving yesterday. Innovation. I defines, and this is just for simplicity's sake, innovation I define as creating new value. And so now I have to see, does this idea or does this bet fall into either of the buckets? And my assumption is that I need both buckets eventually and systematically over time to improve and explore or exploit and explore as, as, as as many thinkers would say. But you can't get both with just one, and you can't unlock exponential opportunity with just iteration. So therefore, you have to have a constant cycle of experimentation in order to yield the returns of those bets at, at the, at the greatest odds as possible in terms of competitiveness.

Okay, I like that you probably need both of these things and maybe one more than the other at different points. But yeah, I suppose you can't just keep coming up brand new ideas all the time. You're gonna have to refine those ideas. You do need the iteration, but if you just stick with iteration, you're not gonna see the, or harness the exciting new ideas. Yeah, okay. All right, so we got slightly distracted there from the six step process. So you're talking far about opening your mind. So suppose you've managed to do this, you've opened your mind. Okay, I need to get started. I feel like the biggest challenge with like doing something new. It's just the time. It's like you're already doing things like everybody's busy. How do you find the time to try new ideas?

That is probably the greatest challenge that any of us face. In. When I, when I wrote Life Scale, towards the end, I, I talk about putting some sort of analytical process in place so that you can understand how to get to the root of that question. And what I had found is that time is a construct largely built on belief systems. And those belief systems create according or corresponding value systems. So meaning a typical week is probably structured with meetings reporting. Those two things alone probably take up a majority of that time. If you use teams or if you use other internal messaging platforms, that's probably, let's, let's not forget email. Those, those platforms are also going to take probably an unruly and unwieldy amount of time. Added to that with meetings, well, those pockets of, in between, you know, aside from bio breaks and lunch and what have you, you're not left with a lot of time. The joke is that weekdays are for meetings and email and messages, and weekends are for catching up on the work that you were supposed to do. And so kind of coming back to that time as a construct of beliefs and values, a simple question is, where am I trying to go? How does, what does success look like at the end of the week, end of the month, end of the quarter, aside from all of the other things that everyone else says are that's what success looks like. Because what we have to do, this is hence the name of life scale. Where are you trying to go so that the activities that you mindfully invest in are scaling your life or your work in that direction. Because if you're not structuring your day around those things, then you are not achieving then what you're setting out to achieve. So the, the measure that I used, this was before mind shifting, by the way. I had to come up with a mechanism in order to create the time to research and write mind shift. And so what I started doing was tracking what I did every single day and how much time was spent towards it. And I put this pie chart together and let me tell you, if that, if the word humbling ever really was a gut punch, that that was it, because I saw exactly how very little time I was making to do the things that I set out to do. And that boy, I mean, and okay, so that's part one. Part two is then what are you going to do about it? You got to say no to all the meetings that come to your way. Are you going to say no to responding to messages and to all the team's messages? Well, you have to create like you do in your personal life. You have to create boundaries and guardrails and governance systems that dictate then how you're going to spend your time, how you're going to communicate that to people so that you're not part of the problem in the organization, you're part of the solution, that you become a leader, that hopefully this becomes contagious so that other people are doing the same thing as well. So I'll give you an example. The most powerful word in this transformation is no. No, I don't need to join that meeting. No, I don't need to respond to that message and then also start saying, what are you saying yes to? And you have to communicate that out so that you're not, you're not the problem child. You are the person who is actually taking a leadership position and achieving the things that are going to help you, your team and your organization. So that that exercise was as painful but as thorough as necessary to answer your question, which is if you do not make the time, then you do not achieve what you're setting out to achieve. And that was the hardest part, was recognizing that I was the problem in that scenario. Wow.

I can imagine that's a very tough thing to use. Okay, I'm the problem. Yeah. And it's very easy to be the bottleneck, I think, especially when you're collaborating with the people. So I love the idea of saying no to stuff. Do you have any tips for like, how do I politely decline this meeting or this piece of work and whatever? Like, how do you say no and practice without just annoying everyone you work with?

It kind of comes back to, kind of comes back to storytelling because there's how you're intending to, to say something and then there's how someone's going to receive and perceive that, that message. And so I probably spend way too much time thinking about that stuff because I'm, I'm, I'm an empath at heart. So that comes with its own set of challenges. But I'll give you an example. A friend of mine, this is a funny story, says it. I don't know if it's folklore or if it's actually research based, but the idea of a 60 minute meeting became the norm simply because it was the default setting in Outlook. And the same is true. When it became the default setting for 30 minutes, that became the norm. Suddenly every meeting had to either be 60 minutes or 30 minutes. Most meetings, whether it's 60 minutes or 30 minutes, most meetings will last that long. Just because that's your mental model for how long a conversation takes place. But I think it's Jeff Bezos who famously said that we're not going to have meetings like that. We're going to have meetings that are aimed at outcomes or decisions, and so they change sort of the framework. But before I get that, a friend of mine decided, well, 30 minutes is unnecessary. I have studied my time spent with others in that 30 minutes. There's a point of diminishing returns in that 30 minutes where we just sort of start filling time at the beginning, at the end, let's get right to the meat. And he started experimenting with 20 and 25 minute meetings. And he had found that when he would send out invites or if he received an invite and then asked for it to be switched to 20 to 25 bits or whatever he felt was necessary, the natural response was, is my time not worth your time? I asked for 30 minutes and you're proposing 20 minutes. Because our, our mental model with us is the, you know, with ego at the center. How could that possibly be? So I don't know if he's the kind of individual who's like, that's my Time, take it or leave it. But I would say like a fixed auto response. I'm experimenting with a new thing to see if we can't give each other time back to improve our own day to day productivity and the deliverables that we're saying to do whatever it is that you want to say. So I'm experimenting 25 minutes. And by the way, here's what I learned. If we organize the 25 minutes this way, we get some things done. Jeff Bezos sort of said, this is how our construct is going to be. You're in the invite, have your pre work, so you're going to carve out time to get that stuff in your head processes. And then in our time together, we're going to make decisions about it so that you kind of break it out in stages. But it's really now what you're starting to get to is how do we not hurt feelings but also communicate the why we're doing this to see if we can't make it contagious. And now you're talking about norms, you're talking about behaviors ultimately which add up to the culture of work. And that's a, that's a bigger conversation because that technically needs to be designed not one employee at a time, but from a leadership level like Bezos and their meeting culture. But I think transparency and even a little fun involved in why you're doing that, I think goes a long way.

Definitely. I do like the idea of transparency there. And I feel like there's not many people are going to push back on shorter meetings. Like maybe there's a couple of people who are really enthusiastic about meetings and they want the extra time, but most people seem like, right, short the meeting, fine. And you say, okay. Jeff Bezos recommends shorter meetings. That's probably going to be good enough for most people, hopefully.

But I did find it fun in. I mean, look, just think about it this way. If I get to the rest of the story later, then great. But think about it this way. How often have you been in a meeting where it goes all the way to the end of the scheduled time or even over, and you're like, my goodness, this is, this could have ended a long time ago. We've shifted from productivity to pain. Like now my impatience is all consuming and I just want to leave. And then suddenly someone says, I think that's it. I think we've got everything covered. I'm going to give you back seven minutes. And you're like, oh, wow, I just won the lottery. Like, how good does that feel and that that's. I think ultimately if we could get there proactively and then start to manage our time and then start to be intentful or intentional with our time, purposeful with our time towards an outcome, then it's essentially a behavioral shift or a mind shift to getting us to. The answer to your question is how do we make the time? Well, you make the time by spending the time where you need to in ways that are beneficial to you and those who work with you.

I think we've covered time management very well now. So I also want to talk about trends. So I mean, since you're very much a futurist, analyzing trends is a lot of what you do. And I guess if you're gonna do something new, you need to figure out like what's the cool next thing or what's the useful next thing. Talk me through your tips for like, I guess how do you find out about like useful up and coming trends?

Oh, I just ask ChatGPT, the solution to everything.

What does ChatGPT say?

That certainly seems like what everybody's. What everybody's doing these days, but I don't know. Just on the side, I read this beautiful, beautiful story in Harvard Business Review that talked about work slop, which was how everybody's using AI to essentially write their emails, write their LinkedIn posts, write their summaries, etc. And slop became synonymous with AI because it was sort of like mindless stuff in order to just check a box versus to be thoughtful with it. So how do I think about it? Well, that's essentially what probably never going to get to it in this conversation. But that's essentially what the six stages of the mind shift are about. So this shift from receive to perceive is essentially setting up your brain and your, your work and your processes and your. And your systems essentially to be open. So not just your mind, but also your ability to essentially identify the signals out there that you want to now start to track and then start to perceive. So receive to perceive and then essentially understanding those signals that are important to your work today and then also understanding how those signals converge so that you can start to identify where are things going and start asking yourself questions like, well, what does this mean? Where is this going and why is it? Or could it be important to us now and. Or over time? And as you start understanding this, what you're allowing yourself to do is piece together puzzle pieces that essentially form potential stories, or as I would call them, scenarios. Like if I believe these things to be important and If I believe these things to be true, if they come together, then this is one potential scenario that could happen. How would I think about that moving forward? And so that's the weave part of the framework is that you now start putting all of these things together in order to be meaningful to you, to make sense of it. And then the next stage is weave, so you're scattering all these different inputs into visionary possibilities so that you're essentially unlocking creative problem solving. And then in the conceived stage, that vision now starts to become tangible. It starts to serve as the foundation for that storytelling component, so that the believe part of this now is that you're so vested in this possibility, this vision now that you are compelled to bring others into it. And then the last stage which is achieved, this is where that mindset, that vision now becomes a movement and essentially building that movement into one that leads to whatever that outcome or decision or that transformation is all about. So try to squeeze a lot into that. I was going to say no two companies are tracking the same signals, but many are AI gen, AI agents, AgentIC, AGI, if that's on your realm of possibility, quantum. So there's usually a series of signals that we're tracking, but what they mean is going to be unique to your approach, what they mean to you, because you have a unique set of customers, you have a unique set of shareholders and stakeholders. And so coming back to our beginning part of the conversation around storytelling, we have to make those things more human, more empathetic. So those signals then become profound and meaningful so that the work as you're, as your trend casting as you're thinking through, translating those trends into possibilities or into scenarios that they're deeply meaningful to people who are going to need to hear about them. Not just the trend or the shiny object or the data or your personal insight, because you are you, it's becoming meaningful to other people.

This idea of signal does seem incredibly important, but it raised the question, like, how do you know what's a genuine trend and what's just a fad? So I mean, we've had a few tech fads in the last few years. I mean, think about like the metaverse or NFTs were super hyped and then disappeared. Generative AI seems to be a huge trend. Same with agents. And then you mentioned stuff like AGI, Quantum. How do you evaluate these things? Like, are they going to be real?

I certainly spent a lot of my cycles really analyzing the Metaverse, for example, and Web3. And those are trends that you could say burst with, with the Hype Cycle. But in, in my work, I did find that the Metaverse actually has really killer apps attached to it when technology and experience design catch up with it. So I'll give you an example. That is the type of thing where somebody would throw it back in my face and say, yeah, but Brian, you said this about the metaverse, and now look at where the metaverse is. But I would say if you read, if you read my stages of the Metaverse, you would see that ultimately, you know, follow the Gartner Hype cycle, we would hit the trough of disillusionment until we found those killer apps and also the technology that could power those killer apps. And here's what those killer apps could look like. And now in that Metaverse application, things will become real. So I, I know for certain we will be back in, in that regard. So how do you do that? Well, it's the same process that we just, we just talked about. It is, it is, it is sense making of all of the things that we need in order to be able to make it meaningful to our organization. So we can assess where we are, we can assess where things might be, but ultimately we have to make sense of why they're impactful to our organization and when they might be impactful and why they might be impactful. So the example I want to give you with the Metaverse, not that I'm championing that, all right? There's still plenty of, there's still plenty of work we need to do around the five stages of AI, which we can get to as well, or five stages of generative AI, I should say. There's a new model that just introduced by Dr. Fei Fei, she's tremendous. If you don't follow her work. She's been in AI forever. Dr. Feifei Li, Stanford, brilliant mind in artificial intelligence. And her new company just launched a model called Marble. And if you think about what Sora is to video or what ChatGPT is to text, marble is to three dimensional immersive worlds. So it's multimodal. So you can, you could, you could type, you could voice, you could upload images or what have you to create an immersive 3D world. And it is persistent and consistent. So, meaning it has memory. So as you design this world and you move an object, it remembers what you moved and where you place it. If you move around a corner, it remembers where you are, but also remembers what you left. And so this now then becomes essentially imagine creating these worlds. Aside from business applications like Architecture or, or say we're doing molecular research. Say something silly. Like for me, not silly, but fun, like a game or for VR. Say you grab an Apple Vision Pro and you've designed this world and now you can move through and work whatever. Now we're starting to see technology evolve in ways that democratize this type of capability of which then these platforms like Apple's Dish and Pro or Metis Quest or the new Steam frame, these things now become the conduits for those experiences to be delivered at scale. You and I can become the architects of those worlds and design the applications of which then become, you know, become meaningful or not. But all of these things then are an example of how do we trend site. So it's sharpening the receiver state to tune into these signals, then trend siting, which is systematically collecting or organizing and analyzing this information. I introduce in the book this thing called the Trendscape Canvas. So it's a framework of which then where do you place it? Is it on. Is it a potential bubble? Is it potential hype? Is it, Is it something worth further study based on what we're, you know, what the other signals are telling us and where we're trying to go? And then the process of then communicating that in terms of storyboarding is what I call trend fluence. And then trendspark is about igniting action around that idea. Maybe it's not now, but maybe it is Quantum. For example, we've been saying 10 years out, now we're starting to see real activity. At what point do we take action, either with a COE or a Quantum lab in order to start answering these questions? Well, that would be done by your signals work. So that way we know it's ah, you know, we don't need to do anything for one, two, three years. But at least you'd have an answer to that question.

I have to say, you're perhaps one, one of few people who's very positive about the Metaverse. So yeah, I love the idea of having like, there are killer apps on their way. We just got to be a little bit patient and maybe. Yeah, certainly Fei Fei le is artificial intelligence royalty at this point. And so yeah, if anyone can, can uh, pull this off, then, uh, I think she can. So yeah, uh, the idea of like, uh, AI for 3D worlds, that seems very cool. And yeah, maybe that, that's one one way we'll get to Metaverse fun times. So the other part of this was around like, is there a way of determining what's going to be a trend, what's going to be a fad. And so I like the idea that, yeah, I've got this methodology about, like, just looking for trends and then just, I guess, crunching them and seeing are they going to be relevant to you. So there is a formal methodology there. Maybe that's like a whole episode in itself. Okay, so once you've gone through, like, figuring out, okay, we've got some trends that are kind of interesting to look at. Suppose you find something you believe in. Once you go from, I believe in this, you then got to figure out, well, okay, everyone else believes in this as well. This is, I guess, the storytelling stuff that we talked about before. And then as an individual, that's fine. If you're a manager, like, what. What's your process for, like, going, okay, now we've got to act on these exciting trends?

Oh, boy. Yeah. Well, at that. By the point. At the point where you believe that this is the belief part of the framework, you're. You're vested, you've done the work. You can validate that these are important. It's not just a belief. It is actually. It is actually something that you have documented, studied, and proven to be relevant to the organization now or at some point in the near future. And it's now. It's now time to really start talking about that. So essentially, this is where this, the storytelling part, comes to bear. How. How are you going to put that? I think I was going to get a copy of the book and start showing you. I dedicate like three or four chapters to this answer, because there. There are parts of the story that aren't just important because you've been able to say it's important. Now the work begins of making it relatable and meaningful to somebody else. There are empathetic attributes to this, and there are also influence attributes to this. So my friend Jason Corman, who's the CEO of a culture design company called Gaping Void, he would say that leadership is. Is influence. And by that I don't mean the latest dance video on TikTok to go viral. What influence means in this capacity is the ability to change behavior or outcomes. And so that's. That becomes sort of like the fundamental foundation of how you bring that trend to life in a way that isn't just believable and relatable, but now there is action on the other side of it. And so these last three chapters of the book essentially help you turn that foresight into force, into transformation. And you're doing it through the storytelling construct. That essentially everything I learned from Pixar and Aristotle and the Hero's journey from Joseph Campbell are all sort of broken down into actionable steps to answer that question. Question.

I love how we're putting like Aristotle's rhetoric triangle and Pixar in the same sentence. So just have nothing. But I like it. Okay, cool. So you said management is influence. Now, earlier today, I had failed to do a task my boss had asked me to, and his message to me was, once again, I'm yelling into the void. So in theory, management is influence. What are the sort of high leverage points if you want to make organizational change? I feel like there are some times within your organization or some situations where you're going to have more ability to change your culture rather than like other times where it's going to fall flat.

Well, you know, let's go back to the, the rhetoric triangle for a second. So those who, who haven't followed that work, it's essentially the, the framework for how to be essentially persuasive. And it was highly effective at the time in politics. Well, and still probably highly effective. I would add now a fourth dimension which seems to be polarization, but we could talk about that later. There is, and I say political within the organization in its truest sense in that you have to win favor, you have to be convincing and persuasive, and you have to have someone's interests in mind because they need to believe that you are, or they are a constituent of yours, that they are a colleague of yours, and that by listening to you and potentially working with you that there is something in it for them, whether it's better, faster, cheaper things, or greater influence on their own part. So really sort of understanding the dynamics of the organization, the culture, the gravity, potential resistance, potential organizational trends, like, for example, in some cases there could be kingdom building, there could be shortcutting, there could be ladder climbing. Certain things that are sort of inherent within the organization that either become the cultural norm or just be. Become a known. Known. And you know, these become things we have to, that we have to sort of navigate. But in any, any story of change is understanding where we are and where we want to be and what are the things that inhibit us from getting there. I have to say that some of the best work that I've ever done before I even think about driving change is understanding how people perceive where we are, how people perceive what some of the challenges are and what. How people perceive some of the opportunities are, even if they haven't done all of this work you and I have been talking about for the last hour. That does two things. One, it gives you a real understanding of not just the actual landscapes dynamics, but the perceived landscape dynamics. And as we all know, perception is reality. The second thing that it does, it's sort of. It's not unlike, Gosh, I hate to say it this way, but it's not unlike campaigning. You're talking to people, you're building relationships, you're listening to people. People feel like they're being heard. And as you now start to communicate, then your ideas and your thoughts, your potential, the things that you are seeing, why you feel they're important and why you, why you believe it's important to them, et cetera, all the things that we talked about. You're creating a community of being heard and then getting feedback. And ultimately that community becomes not just mutually beneficial, but also mutually influential in theory. Right. If we're doing things the right way and not talking about imposing your beliefs on someone else, but instead trying to help activate that rising tide metaphor that we've used so often. And I have this saying kind of goes way back to the earliest, earliest ideas of mind shift, which is like 10, 15 years ago, which was. Community is not about belonging. Community is about belonging in joining others. That makes belonging matter. Like, why are we together, what are we doing together and how do we do this, not just together, but for the betterment of the community. So that's really the spirit of this. And yes, it's a lot of work. Yes, it's not in your job description. Yes, you have to try to squeeze this in between your 20 and 25 minute meetings and all the messages that you get. But making the time for the right things, with the right people, for the right reasons, towards the right outcomes, it is the right way to move forward. It is the right way to bring about differences or to make an impact, to make a dent in the universe, as Steve Jobs would say.

Okay, so I love that analogy of getting your colleagues to try a new idea. It's like a political campaign and, you know, you've got to be there, I guess, knocking on doors and saying, okay, this is, this is what we're going to do now. This is how we believe stuff. I'd love to touch on the operational side of things because we've been through a lot of steps in terms of, like, changing your minds. You've got to change your own mind, you got to change your colleague's mind. You've got to, like, create this community where people believe in this stuff. At some point, you have to do the new work. And I'm wondering, like, when do you start that?

Like.

Do you, do you go to implementation after you've built the community, or can you start earlier?

If I knocked on your door and let's just assume you live in a neighborhood where you would open the door to a stranger and I hand you pamphlet or brochure or something and I say, here, I need you to vote. Here are all the reasons why you're probably going to take that, maybe give it a glance or two, see something your mind naturally wants to gravitate towards, seeing the thing that's going to just make it easy for you to just go recycle it instantly versus want to read through the rest of it. And so that in that entire process, I just lost my ability to operationalize anything by handing that to you and just assuming that you would connect the dots and come with me. That aspect of community building isn't just about rallying people together around a North Star or a mission that we all believe in. It's also helping to understand then how we systematize our next steps as a community. Rarely does the person who recognize the signals become the leader for enacting those signals or the strategies necessary to benefit from those signals. Those people who do are usually entrepreneurs or founders and they go create a company around it and they're, they're that founder throughout, like Brian Chesky at Airbnb. So this is where an organization then is modeled around how can we activate this at scale, whether that there's an official construct for that or whether it's a matrix model, what have you. I do believe that, let's just say artificial intelligence, it is generative AI probably formed a number, stood up a number of COEs, maybe also a number of advisory boards and task forces. And so in many ways, however it got there, that process of championing it became the system of which then stood up. This, this, this group of which then part of it was to either become this, the center of excellence for governance and information and knowledge, or it became also a center for strategy and execution, or that that existed somewhere else. So however the organization, culture and construct is, is sort of models throughout that, that system. But it really becomes meaningful once it, it's organized on a racing model or whatever model you use and then measures are tied to it. And then also the good old what's in it for me is inherent in this work too. But the reason why generative AI sort of scaled that so quickly is because I always say there's two moments for an impetus of change and this is the story. This is important for the storyteller, which is there's the aha moment, which is, oh, wow, Brian, this signal that you're talking about that something called generative AI is on its way. And the way that you made me see, like, what my work could, could look like on the other side of it, we got to take action. And now there's a bunch of people like that in, in the, in, in the construct. And now we're going to form a CoE to start learning more and start propagating this information throughout the organization, teaching people about the marvels of generative AI. But in reality, that's not what happened in November 2022. It launched and everybody found the other moment of change, which is, uh, oh, we gotta do something. All hands on deck, let's go figure this out. And then sort of like back into that formal process of change. But it usually will find. It'll usually find its way to a center of excellence, task forces, races, and measures. But the difference I would like to see moving forward is that how often can we respond to, oh, moments. Understanding that technology's faster and more impactful with every wave. And AI itself is, I believe, transformative. In our work. At ServiceNow, Bill McDermott, our CEO, he talks a lot about AI business transformation. That is his North Star. And by that he doesn't mean, like what MIT found in its research. 95% of AI pilots are failing. What he's talking about is breaking out potential ideas like we talked about earlier, from not just iteration, but to innovation, like, what can we do differently with AI and how can we tie that idea to something that's more. That's a bigger impact across our organizational constructs? So what could be end to end? What could be cross functional? What could work across silos and across data centers? And that that type of thinking, those types of questions are going to beget answers. And so the reason I'm sharing this is because not every change can happen at a grassroots, organic level. Sometimes we're going to need change to happen at the top and then to activate all of this stuff. But that leadership, this was the biggest inspiration for MindShift, is that I believe we need a new genre of leaders who want to believe that things can be different, that want to explore the unknown, that don't want to just take all of these trends that are happening and put it in the box of business as usual and use terms like, oh, this is a new normal, or this is a next normal, but who want to control alt delete and reboot as something better and more meaningful and impactful to society, the world, to markets, to each other, to employees, to stakeholders, shareholders. Like, I want a leader who wants to mind shift and bring other people along to empower, empower them to mind shift to also be leaders. Because I, I believe a true leader isn't someone who tells somebody what to do. A true leader is someone who empowers other people who also find ways to be better and do better at scale.

That's a great vision. I'm on board with that. No, I, I agree. So, I mean, the thing you talk about first was about how quite often changes happen. Then you're oh, and everyone has to panic. And that is a very powerful way of making change happen. But it's also exhausting for everyone where you're having to react to things and scramble to keep up. And so I do like the idea of just be proactive and be like, well, what could our company like? Or how can we do things better for our customers and have that vision and then persuade other people about the vision and, and change things. It's a wonderful idea. It feels like a better way of doing things. I like that. Okay, so I guess just to wrap up, like, do you have any kind of final advice? So suppose you've persuaded someone that they want to be a change agent for their company. Like, yeah. What's the one thing they can do?

I would, I would say this, is that I have this saying that if you're, if you're waiting for someone to tell you what to do, you're oftentimes on the wrong side of innovation. What I believe is, and another reason why I wrote Mind Shift was because we can't wait for today's leaders to have a dream and wake up because they saw something differently and say, ah, everybody, let's, let's do all of the things that we've not let you do or we didn't listen to before, but to become the leader that you're waiting for. And that is, that is the whole framework for the book is how do you become the leader you're waiting for? By recognizing these opportunities before they become oh moments and bringing people along for the ride so that they become part of the change because they want to become part of the change. And then we're probably not even using the word change. We're using probably more proactive, productive words like enhancement, optimization, enrichment, whatever it is that vibes with the culture of the org. But it's really about becoming that leader and recognizing the things that are, that are happening and bringing people along for it. So that whether it's your, your small team, your large team, your cross functional teams, that there's leadership at every level and hopefully we all meet in the middle and lead to essentially figurative or more figuratively than, than literally, but more flatter organizations that are all working together in a way that is to everyone's benefit. Now that might seem very Pollyanna, but at the very least, to answer your question, we need to become the leaders that we're waiting for. And this is a construct that turned the future into action today.

All right, so just be a leader regardless of whether that's on your job title or not. Yeah, I like that idea.

Or just add it. You know, there's a pen, put it on your business card if you still have one of those. But it's not, it's not, it's not a role. I mean, sorry, it's not a title as much as it is about a role. And I don't know that any, any leader who wouldn't want people to be proactive and productive and understanding. Like what are the things that are going to impact us so that we can do something about it today so that we all win.

Absolutely. Yeah, definitely. Some people who have leader in their job titles, maybe not so much. Some people who don't have it on their, on their title and you can tell that they really are leaders. So I like that. Yeah. Task for everyone in the audience and become a leader finally. I always want people to follow. So. Yeah. Whose work are you interested in at the moment?

Oh, gosh, I. Going back to all those tabs.

You're 30 tabs open. We can have a long list.

I mean, it's hard, it's a hard question to answer because there are, there's so many incredible people that of course there's my team at ServiceNow and my colleagues at ServiceNow that I'm paying a lot of attention to just simply because they're on the front lines of building the stuff that are bringing to life all of the things that we talk about. But I can't help but recommend a friend of mine, her name is Allie K. Biller or my friend Connor Grennan. These are individuals who are trying to make leaders out of just everybody, not just the people with the title so that they can use AI versus being trained and waiting for that sort of construct to roll out. And like how, how should you work with AI? Like you take it, you. You take, you take control of your own destiny by learning how to Use it in your day to day personal, professional lives. And they're doing all of the things. There's Amy Webb, who is an incredible futurist. There's. I was just at the Drucker forum with Johan Rus, who's got a book coming out called Human Magic, which is essentially how to use AI to humanize the collaboration, creativity, all of the things, all of the soft skills or the human skills that make people scalable, not replaceable with AI. But look, if you follow me on LinkedIn, you'll see that I'm constantly spotlighting their work and so this becomes an answer in perpetuity.

All right, I knew this is going to be a good source of answers, certainly. Yeah, Conrad, he came on one of our webinars last year. So yeah, he's a great speaker and a very deep thinker and yeah, some more people to check out as well. All right, so I guess the answer is follow you on LinkedIn then and see who you're chatting about and get a good list.

Yeah, or send me an email and what I'll do is I'll take it as an action item and I'll just. Actually, I should. I'm just going to do this anyway. I'm going to put together a list of everybody I'm following and publish it. So that way it's like pay it forward and, and maybe there's. And hopefully there's people you don't know of today. And that way we're putting the ladder down for each other to bring everyone up together.

I have to say, all those LinkedIn posts with just like lists of other influencers. I spend half my life just like scanning those and contacting everyone for new guests. So yeah, that's a brilliant idea. I would say go and do that. All right, thank you so much for your time, Brian.

Richie, thank you. And to everyone listening or watching this, thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to be here and for sharing my work and thinking. And if you have any questions, you can reach me@Brian Solisvicenow.com my website is Brian Solis.com or I'll see you on LinkedIn or your favorite social network of choice.

Wonderful. All right, thank you.

Sa.