The Breakthrough Manifesto| Kim Christfort | 547

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is Kim Christofort. She's Chief Innovation Leader and National Managing Director at Deloitte Greenhouse Experience. She's an author, a strategist, an experience designer, and an innovation speaker. She's got a book out called The Breakthrough Manifesto: 10 Principles to Spark Transformative Innovation. And, we get to chat with her for a bit today. So welcome, Kim.

Thank you so much. I'm delighted to be here.

Thanks. So let, let me ask you this. So what's your journey? What's your path been?

Right?

Because I don't think anybody X number of years ago when they're starting careers said, ah, I wanna be a thought leader. I wanna be run innovation at Deloitte. So how did, how did this all happen?

It's funny you say that because I think the story sounds better in reverse than it did from the start. I would not have guessed I would be here. I actually come from a background of theater and science. So I was a pre-med undergrad, but I did a ton of performing arts. And when I—

You could be like Bill Nye the Science Guy.

I don't think I can be as cool as Bill Nye the Science Guy, but— I definitely have aspirations in that direction. Exactly. Maybe one day. We'll keep trying.

I'll send you a bow tie.

Yeah. Yeah, so it was interesting because I was sort of on this path of doing something in medicine. I love problem solving. I loved interacting with people and really being helpful in that way. But I was missing this ability to tap into my creative side as well. And when I landed at Deloitte, it was really more because I realized medicine probably wasn't the best route for me in terms of some of my interests. And so I was going down the problem solving path and still didn't have the creativity side. And so over time I kept looking for opportunities to weave in the different things. And really my current job was created by me, for me, uh, you know, with a lot of people who help bring it to life. But it was meant to be a synthesis not only of my passions, but of people's brains. You know, we are all very intellectual people in the business world, but we also have creative human emotional sides too. And so it was a way to bring those things together.

Cool. So stay there for a minute because I don't think it's as unusual, at least in my world, as you think it is that many of the people that I work with, that I speak with, that we support, their quote job, if they have a day job, was created for them. It wasn't like they were the 11th person to be the, you know, SVP of refrigerated supply chain. I think, I think that's actually sort of in an uncommon way common, particularly in professional services. Like somebody the spark goes off, they have an interest, they're passionate, they happen to be a good speaker or a good writer or whatever, whatever. And the firm or whatever finds places for them. And then you're like, oh, but we have to give them a job and a title. And what is like, do they have direct reports? And probably a budget would be lovely. And like, I think a lot of people have, you know, creativity applies to the role that you've, you've actually created. So that's pretty cool.

Yeah. No, I think that's very true. And I think part of it was, you know, in the early parts of my career, people were definitely trying to figure out, how do we leverage her in different ways? And how do we, as you say, create something that would bring that to life? And then as I advanced in my career, then it was me saying, I know you asked me to do this, but what I actually should do is this other thing, which will give you everything you want and more. And that's really what the Greenhouse was. I mean, Greenhouse originally was a space strategy. It was an idea of having a space to bring people together and do— you know, whatever it is they wanted to do. It could have been learning and development, it could have been innovation. And when they brought me in to lead it, it was an operational role. And I said, yeah, about that. Here's what I think it could be. And so we've turned it into an engine really for innovation and transformation much more broadly versus just managing real estate.

Well, and it used to be, because I, I was visiting one of them in, um, I, I think it was Chicago years ago, but it used to be almost the showroom of, or a physical come to this place and we'll blow your mind kind of thing. Then this little thing called COVID happened. So that kind of didn't work, right? Like, like, so I like what you said. It's more like an engine or a, it's a place that's not a place, right?

Exactly. I mean, what we found, and, and luckily we discovered this pre-COVID, uh, even because what we found is it's not about the space, it's about the experience. And the, the space is a petri dish for us. You know, it, it lets us, or, or maybe a more pleasant term since we're talking about Canvas, uh, or, uh, COVID, let's go away from, uh, —petri dishes. But a more pleasant term is it's our stage. That's where we're able to set the environment. But what we're really doing is diagnosing what is holding this group back, how do we then create an experience in this space potentially, but even outside of it. COVID was a great example of creating experiences without physical space. And that activation of the brain through immersion, whether that's actual literal immersion or whether that's doing things through a virtual setting, is what we found to be the key.

So how, whether it's Deloitte or you can talk more, more generally, how are decisions made around metrics and give this more and give this less? So there's, yeah, they're right. So certain parts of businesses, it's easy to say, kill this, feed this, try this. Like what are you measured against? What are the KPIs against? Because they're making significant investments in terms of the book and your time and the people.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So impact. And getting huge value back, I feel compelled to add. But yes, I laugh at the metrics question because I think people, especially in Deloitte where we have a strong accounting practice, they like to count things, you know, can we count here? And what we're talking about experience is what I don't want. So the metric I avoid is how many sessions have you done? Right. Because volume is not ROI.

And so yes, stay there for a minute because so funny because I, I've seen this. Time and time again where it's, you know, you don't measure thought leadership by the pound. So more is not necessarily better than less. Right? So, you know, if you put out 1 piece a week, 2 would be double. So why don't we get you to do 3? And, like, you know, ultimately—

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. No. I, I think you're so— I think you're so right because volume, volume tends to be our, our sort of easy metric across the board, whether it's thought leadership or, or the kinds of things that we do.

But how many widgets, right? Like, how many widgets?

Exactly. Exactly. But, you know, I mean, even with other spaces, if I even put the, the sort of thought leadership and experience piece to the side, even other spaces aren't always measured on utilization. You think of a stadium or an amazing theater, it's about that incredible moment. It's not necessarily about keeping it busy all the time. So I don't like that metric. The metric that is actually an interesting one that I think has served us quite well is repeat usage. So if we have people coming back again and again and again and willing to invest their time and money to use us, they must be seeing value out of it. I like that one because it's interesting.

Repeat usage. Wait, so repeat usage meaning ongoing engagements?

Well, not even of sold projects necessarily. So the way, the way we exist, we exist to really spark new thinking. Yes. To accelerate decision making, to do a lot of things that may not have an immediate payoff there. It's sort of longer term business development, uh, kinds of things. And so If the people within Deloitte or their clients say, wow, that session was so helpful, or that conversation was so useful, I want to come back in. Great. Because that I, you know, that has a backend assumption built into it, which says they used it for something that gave them enormous value. Now, I also try to measure the long-term value. You know, was a client able to actually transform their organization? Sure. Was our account team able to deepen their relationship? So we do look at things like that. But I think that indirect method of looking at usage is actually one that's overlooked sometimes and a really good signal. I love that.

'Cause it's easy to deal with the lazy vanity metrics of, ooh, how many downloads? And it's like, okay, so if you got X number of downloads on this piece, well, who's downloading it? If it's a bunch of undergrads in Iowa, well, that's not very helpful to the business, right? And I think people don't, it's just such an easy way to look at, oh, this got more than that, therefore it's better. And it's, it's really the composition of, as opposed to the quantity of when it comes to those things, because certain pieces that you're producing from a thought leadership perspective, the universe of who it's really relevant and important to might be fairly small, like hundreds, maybe the total universe. So if you've got 30 people looking at it, like as a percentage, that could be phenomenal versus, you know, for sure.

Yeah, for sure. And, and I think we, you know, I'm probably making my life harder on myself than I need to by insisting on these other metrics. I mean, I could absolutely get my volume metrics up, as you say, by silliness. Bring people in for random things or get random downloads. But I think that we really believe that there is a ripple effect to all of this. And so if I reach the right people in the right time in a moment that matters to them— and this concept of moments that matter, that's a big concept we use all the time. If I reach somebody in a moment that matters, that's going to have impact not only on them, but on their teams, on their organizations, and hopefully eventually the broader world.

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That's exactly right. And this idea of thinking about things in terms of moments that matter was actually the work of my former colleague and mentor Brian Fuhrer. Mm-hmm. But what he said is moments are all around us. They're opportunities and some moments are very obvious and they're coming to you. So for instance, one of the ones we talk about quite a bit is a client in transition. I either got promoted to a new job or maybe I'm switching organizations. Like that is a moment that matters to that person. Yeah. But it's there, it's in front of you. You can see it and do something about it. And that can lead to all sorts of other things. But the other kind of moment that I think is as interesting and often overlooked is moments that you make. So you don't necessarily have that transition happening. And to your point, you know, maybe there's attention elsewhere and they're not focused on you and you're the last thing on their to-do list. You know, how do I make a moment? And I think thought leadership has a huge role to play in making moments if it's really tailored to that person. So you may be the last thing on their list, but you happen to know that something's happening in their industry or there was an interesting announcement. And you relate what you've done in thought leadership to that thing, proactively providing it with no expectation of anything in return. It's simply a, hey, you know, thought of you, thought this might be relevant. Here's the reasons. And by the way, that could be my own thought leadership or it could be somebody else's. You know, you're just—

I, I, I think people often don't understand the power of relationship development and such vis-à-vis thought leadership. Because if I, if you're kind of on my radar as you, maybe you could be a client at some point in time. Right? Well, I can give, I can do the quarterly, is now a good time for us to chat email that nobody wants, right? Or in an unpredictable way from a time standpoint, send you stuff that's really insightful, whether it's something I created or something, hey, read this piece based on our last call. I know you're struggling with that. Thought this would be cool, whatever. That's a way to stay top of mind. And even when you're creating thought leadership, like a book, like an article, say, can we grab a couple minutes to talk about this? 'Cause I know you have a perspective. And I'm doing a series on this or a book or white paper, whatever it is. That's a call people will often take versus can we do the check-in where I try to sell you some stuff and you try to avoid being sold? Because that's how—

that's exactly, that's exactly right. And it's Goldilocks principle, right? Like you don't want too much, you don't want too little, you want just right. And just right may not only be quantity, it may also be it is personalized to whatever they are trying to do in that moment. And so I had an example of this earlier today. I was talking about the new book, The Breakthrough Manifesto, with, with someone, and we wanted to do an event. And the person was like, oh, okay, a book event, a fireside chat, like fine. And I said, actually, here's what I was thinking. It's actually not a fireside chat about the book. It's a fireside chat about the issues that people are facing in this particular industry and how the book can actually help to accelerate pipeline. Because I knew that that audience was really concerned about sales. Not about me, not about the book.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I love that because oftentimes, you know, authors do that, say, hey, we, you know, I'm in book mode and the client's like, well, I don't care what mode you're in. Like, what is, what's in it? How does this relate to me? But if you say the principles in the book, when applied to this population, could give you this benefit, which is, which is so what part, which is a good segue into book. Nice plug, by the way. Um, how, so give, give me just a, the high-level overview of how the decision's made and then why you decide to write a book and then what the expectation is, because I think there's a lot of fuzziness around that in many places or with many.

Yeah. Yeah. So this book really came about because for more than a decade our group had been doing work to get people, their teams, the leaders to break through. And this concept of breakthrough we found to be really interesting. It's a different take on innovation. It's saying, you know, whether you're inventing some amazing new phenomenon or you're just transforming your organization in some way, it often requires breaking away or breaking down whatever is holding you back, getting outta that status quo and moving through, making momentum to something different. And so for 10 years we've been doing this, but all of the research that we'd been gathering and that we'd been utilizing from outside had never really been codified. And it had never been packaged up in a way that we could talk about it. And that's why it's called a manifesto. We realized part of this is about being very transparent and really owning our beliefs in a visible public way. And that has several benefits. That lets us be consistent as an organization with how we're doing this. But it also lets other people say, ah, that idea of making a mess or not playing nice, like that's intriguing. Let me do more. And so as we started packaging this up into principles, we got a lot of interest from our clients cuz we said, yeah, this is the way we do things. And they said, that's great. We'd like to do that too. Right. And, and the book was really a response to that. It was a way for us to take that and put it out in the world. Now, one thing that we did differently about this book was we did it in two halves. So the first half is talking about the 10 principles themselves. The second half is actual methods. So we said, if we're gonna put this out in the world, we don't want people to buy it and put it on a shelf. Although buying it is always nice, but we want them to actually use it more like a field guide, if you will. Like actually take it off the shelf, flip through and do something different. I love that.

And you know, implied in a manifesto often is it's a movement, right? So people lean in to manifestos because it speaks to them. They're like, oh my God, this is, this is like, This is the thing, right? You go back to some of the, you know, the Chuklis Manifesto or Agile Manifesto or whatever. They take on like a, almost a cult-like craziness to them in a good way. Like once somebody sort of becomes a raving fan of the manifesto, they're like, oh, they give it to the people that they know. You gotta check this out, right? Like they become your best advocate and best fan. I'm a big fan of manifestos. I think when you design them well and deploy them well and use them to increase awareness, engage folks, and then ultimately get them to some sort of a call to action. It's pretty cool. There's a secret handshake part of it. It's—

I'll have to show you that later.

Yes. It's very secret. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

No, I love your description of it as a movement. And I think that's so critical to what we're talking about because this book is not about point-in-time innovation and transformation. It's really about the broader journey. And the journey requires bringing people along and getting them to lean in as you are describing. And so having a manifesto, that is able to help drive that movement and drive that momentum and drive that enthusiasm is critical because innovation's tough, transformation is tough, and you need to have a sustained effort to get there, and you need to have other people along on the journey.

Well, it's usually some outliers inside of an org trying to convince others to do it. So when they find their tribe, when they find their peeps, like, wow, everybody here is kind of crazy like me. And they get it, right? Like, so, yeah, I think there's a, a natural sort of human peer-to-peer community, found my tribe, that sort of vibe that, that happens as well if you do it well. If you don't do it well, it's like anything else. Like, wow, that was, that was pretty awful. Right.

But no, that, that's true. And, and it's why we've tried to use really evocative language with the principles so that they are a little bit stickier. But it's interesting because I think sometimes there's a lot of talk about the importance of a culture of innovation. You know, our organization needs to have a culture of innovation. But oftentimes what people mean by that is either, come on, come up with some good ideas quickly. Come on, innovate. Go innovate. Hurry up. Hurry up. Hurry up. Or it's—

How long could it take?

Exactly. Or it's like, we're going to have a few people who are really creative, and the rest of you are going to head nod and be on board with them. But that's the culture, right? It's not really what you do on a day-to-day basis. So I think that the manifesto, to your point about finding the tribe and bringing people along, it makes it easier for everybody to be part of the tribe because it's a, it's just a different way of thinking. Yeah.

And I, I, the only thing I'd push on that is it doesn't have to, I mean, everybody doesn't need to be everybody, right?

Correct. Correct. I mean, it is, it is interesting. Uh, I think we found that there are big B breakthroughs and little b breakthroughs, right? So big B breakthroughs are like giant organizational transformations that may require not everybody, but a lot of people to get on board because it's too change at such a fundamental level. But then there's little b breakthroughs, which is like, oh my gosh, I've been doing this for X way for a long time, and I really need to shift to do it Y way. And that's my little personal light bulb moment, my little personal breakthrough. Nobody else needs to be part of that. It's my moment for me. Right.

And breakthrough moments are better than breakdown moments, but that's just me.

That is definitely true. So anyway, this has been great.

Any final words of wisdom or things to share?

I think the, the final thought would just be that breakthrough is not something that is necessarily serendipitous. It's something that you are very open to. And the starting point probably of all of these principles is just curiosity. So I would, I would recommend that anyone who wants to take this kind of journey just be, uh, be starting to look around the world differently, and that will have a fundamental difference in how their path progresses. Love it. Love it.

Well, this has been great. I appreciate your time and thanks for coming on today, Kim.

So nice to talk to you, Peter.

Thank you.

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