Is Your Innovation Stuck? 5 Ways to Rethink Your Approach

Huff Post Business Blog | Jodi Detjen

Extraction or Cultivation
Control or Freedom
Theory X or Theory Y
Bureaucracy or Innovation

Everywhere I go, I hear people talk about disruption and innovation. They desperately want to upend their business and be the champion! But instead, they talk, they make changes around the edges to try and compete and the idea gets lost in what if’s and can’t-dos. Any disruption gets squelched barely out of the gate.

Yet there are some major shifts coming (they’re actually already here) that will make this challenge even more difficult. We’ve got the most diverse workplace in the worldand getting more so annually. There’s low employee engagement. And people feel under increased competitive pressure.

How do organizations respond? By implementing what they know. Increase productivity! Decrease costs! Pressure employees to do more with less! Continue Reading…

IT ALL MATTERS – EVEN MONEY AND POWER

Huff Post Business Blog | Jodi Detjen

One of the key assumptions we found in our research of 118 college-educated women was that women assume that “tangible, material rewards are not supposed to be important.” The results of this assumption are that women avoid asking for what they deserve and lower their career expectations.

This conflicts with the Third Metric approach. The Third Metric broadens the definition of success to include health, happiness and passion. But it doesn’t exclude money and power, nor does it give women an excuse to abandon the pursuit; it just defines them as part of the mix rather than being the primary and exclusive focus. Continue Reading…

 The Third Metric Is Within Reach If We Remove This First

Huff Post Business Blog | Jodi Detjen

It’s so refreshing to see the definition of success in life expanded beyond money and power to include other dimensions such as health, wellness and spirit. This brings meaning into the conversation and allows us to integrate purpose with power and material rewards.

And at first, it may seem like finally we are setting a standard where women have a competitive advantage. But let’s look more closely: How many women do you know at the top of the success ladder that have achieved this integration of money, power, health, wellness and spirit? Most still see this conversation as an either/or — you can have the third metric, but only at the expense of the first two. So, women tend to grasp for the one that comes more naturally: #3.

But, if women give up seeking power and money to pursue loftier goals, they find the cycle of disenfranchisement continues. They don’t rise to power automatically (less than 20% of CEOs and national political representatives are women), they don’t accumulate wealth automatically (women’s pay is still only 77% of men’s) and decision-making continues to be unbalanced. So, what would it really take for us to live an integrated life, where we can have success across all the metrics? Continue Reading…