by Robyn Bolton | Jun 23, 2026 | Leadership, Leading Through Uncertainty, Tips, Tricks, & Tools
For eight days, the Tartan Army filled Boston’s streets with kilts, bagpipes, and the constant refrain of “No Scotland. No Party.” Bars ran out of beer, traffic cones adorned statues, and resident’s souls were healed.
Now, some are saying corporate managers should have the same effect on the people around them (presumably without consuming all the beer in the office).
The possibility of collective effervescence
Collective effervescence is everywhere right now: in New York at the Knicks’ championship parade, the Tarps Off shirtless section at baseball games, at every unexpected draw or win at the World Cup.
It’s the “emotional electricity or excitement that lifts people outside of themselves and makes them feel like they’re connecting to something transcendent,” explains Christina Simko, and associate professor of sociology at William College. “They (members of a crowd) have to have a common focus and a common mood, and through that physical interaction, they generate something … greater than the sum of its parts.”
Greater than the sum of its parts.
Where have a I heard that before?
Could it be in every press release announcing an acquisition, all-hands meeting kicking of a transformation, and email confirming a re-org?
Which explains why I’m reading about the need for executives to create collective effervescence to ensure the success of transformational initiatives.
Seventy percent of transformations fail and one of the leading causes of failure is insufficiently high aspirations. Collective effervescence is sufficiently high but setting that as a metric of success will only drive up the failure rate.
The probability of emotional contagion
Emotional contagion is also everywhere: in the laugh that spreads through a room, the frown that moves around a conference table, the yawns that can’t be suppressed in meetings.
It’s the “phenomenon in which a person unconsciously mirrors or mimics the emotions of those around them” through nonverbal, conversational, or behavioral cues. It can be positive, like smiles and laughs, or negative like frowns or the tension from a tough conversation.
That’s good news for executives.
Leaders are “emotional amplifiers” because team members are more likely to mirror the leader’s tone than their peers. Research out of USC also indicates that, historically, positive emotions are more contagious than negative ones.
It’s also bad news for executives.
The emotional amplifier role cuts both ways and research shows that people tend to “overperceive” negative cues from leaders, even magnifying small emotional cues well beyond what a leader intended.
That means the frown everyone on the company-wide Zoom was most likely interpreted as disagreement, even opposition, to what was being discussed. And not that your shoes are too tight.
The reality of leading humans through change
Leading people through change is hard. It’s even harder when you’re under a microscope and every smile, frown, sigh, cough, and eye roll is scrutinized and interpreted as if it were a secret code foretelling the future of thousands.
It’s not. But your team believes it is.
And perception is reality.
Here’s how to start shaping reality to make the changes happen:
- Start with self-awareness. What is your mood right now? If it’s useful to the team, spend time with them. If it’s not, reschedule the meeting or send a proxy.
- Make direct eye contact with people. According to the research, eye contact during verbal communication activates brain regions that help us understand what someone is saying and what they mean. Just don’t stare. That’s creepy.
- Neutralize the negativity publicly. A bit of skepticism can be healthy for teams going through change but too much easily crosses over into pessimism and even hostility that spreads throughout the team. So stop the spread by publicly and patiently calling out the behavior and seeking to understand the root cause.
You don’t need collective effervescence to successfully lead change.
You do need spread the belief that change is possible and beneficial.
And you can do that without wearing a kilt.
by Robyn Bolton | Jun 17, 2026 | Leadership, Leading Through Uncertainty, Tips, Tricks, & Tools
Up and down New England’s coastline you’ll find lobster (pronounced “lob-stah”) shacks. These weathered wood structures produce the freshest lobster and crispiest fried seafood anywhere, enjoyed on picnic tables as the sun beats down and the waves crash against the rocky shore.
It was at one of these shacks that, many years ago, I learned priceless lesson.
As my friends and I placed our orders, I asked that the head of my lobster be removed before serving. The waitress looked at me like I had nine heads but wrote down my request and returned to the kitchen. A few minutes later she reappeared and announced that the kitchen refused to decapitate the lobster prior to serving.
“I don’t like making eye contact with my food,” I stammered.
She nodded and walked away.
When she returned with our lobsters, they all had heads but one was noticeably different. It was wearing “sunglasses” made of olives and toothpicks.
“Here,” our waitress said. “Now you don’t have to make eye contact with it.”
A short-term “solution”
As VUCA-ness (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) accelerates, C-suite executives do everything possible to create certainty and construct safety. After all, if the company doesn’t survive the short-term, even the best long-term plans don’t matter.
Evidence of this approach is everywhere:
When these decisions land on your desk, you sigh, knowing they are short-sighted but understanding the rationale. Then, you go implement them, knowing unintended consequences are coming.
Unintended doesn’t mean unpredictable
In fact, because you are on the frontlines of your business, striving to deliver today and build tomorrow, you can predict what those consequences will be:
It’s frustrating to see the problems coming but feel powerless to avoid them.
But what does any of this have to do with a lobster wearing sunglasses?
When you know the Why, you can choose the How
When directives land on your desk, don’t sigh and roll them out. Ask for the Why behind the What.
- Why are employees being forced back to the office? Did productivity decrease? Are mission-critical operations not occurring? Are top-performers leaving for in-person roles?
- Why are experienced people being let go? Is the work being outsourced or has it genuinely gone? Why are you no longer hiring entry-level people? Are they too expensive to train? Is retention genuinely poor?
- Why are innovation initiatives being cut? Is the core business in that much trouble? Do we lack the talent? Are we pursuing growth through other means?
Each directive’s Why is different which means you have more options than you realize for delivering the How. Understanding the outcomes the company needs, reveals options for delivering it while minimizing the unintended consequences.
Don’t decapitate the lobster. Find opportunities for sunglasses.
The kitchen could have easily removed the head from my lobster, but they foresaw the unintended consequences of a disappointing dining experience. When they understood my why, they created a spectacular how.
You don’t control the system so asking “Why?” feels scary, hostile, even mutinous.
You do control your piece of it. You know it better than anyone, so there’s no one better to determine the how.
by Robyn Bolton | Jun 10, 2026 | Leadership, Tips, Tricks, & Tools
We have entered the “do more with less” era of management edicts.
And, just like the eras of “fail fast,” “synergy,” and “we’re a family,” the phrase is met with eye rolls, silent groans, and a deepening certainty that management is completely out of touch with the reality on the ground.
But what if doing more with less is possible without the extra hours and stress that lead to burnout?
(Re)Define “more.”
When we hear “more,” we naturally think of work. More meetings. More emails. More Slacks, texts, Zooms. For most of my career, I believed the more emails I received, meetings I attended, and documents I wrote, the more valuable I was.
Volume does not equal value.
“More” can’t (and shouldn’t) mean more work. It must mean something else.
More value creation. Less box checking.
More progress. Less process.
More meaningful work. Less meaningless activity.
What is the “more” you want from your team? Define it or you’ll get more emails, meetings, and documents. Name it (value, efficiency, progress), and your team will figure out how to do it.
Experiment with “less.”
A client’s team stopped sending meeting summaries. They didn’t send shorter ones, change the distribution list, or even share the link to the AI note-taker. They just stopped.
No one noticed.
Six months later, a new team member asked if they would send a meeting summary. The team leader said no but offered to recap next steps before everyone left the room. No one argued. Everyone left the meeting with clarity on what they needed to do next.
Activity does not equal achievement.
Our days are filled with BS work, tasks that we do because we’ve always done them, because they feel important, and because we worry what happens if we stop.
Documents don’t ensure that people are informed, aligned, or are ready to act.
Meetings don’t guarantee that everyone has thoughtfully considered and agreed on a decision.
Meeting summaries don’t make people complete their next steps.
It doesn’t mean we don’t need documents, meetings, or meeting summaries. But “less” is possible.
Ask your team what you can do less of. Stop doing things and see if people notice. If you can’t stop something completely, ask what less of it looks like. Instead of a meeting summary, send next steps. Instead of a presentation, write a one-page summary. Instead of a spreadsheet build a visual dashboard.
Rethink “indispensable.”
The managers in my client’s training program were in roles that everyone called the most pivotal in the company. They didn’t feel pivotal. They felt reactive and overwhelmed, with no control over their own calendars.
The COO’s fix was simple. Just stop attending.
It surprised him that they wouldn’t. They couldn’t. The fear of missing something kept them in every room, including the ones that ran fine without them.
You’re in every meeting because you’re good at your job. Being good got you invited into every decision, and somewhere along the way no one uninvited you. Now you stay out of habit, not need. The permission to step back is usually there. You just haven’t tested it long enough to know what happens.
Presence does not equal performance.
Look at your calendar for the meetings you sit in out of habit. Pick one this week to not attend. Resist the urge to instructions. Simply tell the team lead you won’t attend and that you trust them to keep things moving.
Your absence isn’t dropping the ball. It’s demonstrating that you trust the team and empowering them to do their jobs. It’s the rare version of less that gives you more time and your team their autonomy.
“Do more with less” isn’t a demand to work harder
The constraint isn’t going anywhere. Volume isn’t value. Activity isn’t achievement. Presence isn’t performance. It’s a reason to finally drop what doesn’t matter.
by Robyn Bolton | Dec 16, 2025 | Just for Fun, Leadership, Tips, Tricks, & Tools, Uncategorized
Everybody loves a Top X list. This past week I’ve read the Top 100 Best Comedy Movies of All Time, The 100 Best Episodes of the Century, and the NYT’s 100 Notable Books of 2025. And all this before we’re inundated with the Top 10 lists sports, politics, celebrity news, world news, and whatever other topic a writer can dream up.
Top X Lists are about big things, events that affect everyone or that will be remembered for decades. And while those Macro-moments are what stand out in our memories, they rarely define our everyday existence.
What are Micro-moments?
I first heard of Micro-moments in an interview between Dan Shipper, founder of Every, and Henrik Werdelin, founder of Prehype (and incubator that helped launch Barkbox and Ro Health). According to Werdelin:
Micro-moments for me are things when I’m in flow and things where I’m happy. It can’t be a big thing like having a family. It has to be a very concrete things like I like walking over the Brooklyn Bridge in the morning. It’s just something I get profoundly happy about, right? Or I like being in brainstorm meetings with (other entrepreneurs)
But his list of Micro-moments isn’t just a new-age happiness manifestation, it’s an actual decision-making tool. Werdelin explains:
I was basically trying to figure out what to do next and I was keeping all my options open. I got offered a job to run BBC Digital on the international side and then I got offered a job at a design agency called Wolf Collins who had an incredible CEO.
And so, I ended up having these 30 concrete [moments] where I’ve done stuff and then I started to use that as a way to measure options that would be thrown at me. The BBC sounded like it would be a lot of money, and it was like a cool job, and it would give me, I guess, self-esteem for a second. But then when I looked at what it would entail, none of the Micro-moments would be included so I was like, “ah, probably not for me.”
My first Micro-reactions
- Eye roll: Thank goodness you had a list of Micro-moments so you could avoid the soul sucking horror of running BBC Digital!
- Righteous indignation: Do you have any idea how hard it is out there to find a job? People would be thrilled to have a job that delivers only ONE Micro-moment of happiness?!
- Breathe: What a second. What if Mico-moments don’t determine your role. What if Micro-moments…perhaps…mean a little bit more! (yes, that is a terrible rephrasing of the Grinch’s epiphany)
Micro-moments are more than moments of flow and joy. They’re the moments that make up our lives, relationships, and view of the world. They’re the moments that should be on our Top 10 lists but too often get crowded out by noisier, bigger moments.
They’re also things we can create, design for, and sometimes even control.
What are YOUR Micro-moments?
As the period of end-of-year reflection approaches, think about your Micro-moments. What small, concrete moments that brought you flow, joy, or peace, this year? Where were you? What were you doing? Who were you with? Jot them down
When the new year dawns, go back to your list and get curious. What are the common themes, people, places, and activities in your Micro-moments. Write down what you notice.
As the year kicks into gear and everyone settles back into work and school routines, return to your list and start planning. How might you create more Micro-moments?
Life is made up of moments. Many of them are beyond our control. But some of them aren’t. And wouldn’t it be great to know which ones make us happiest so we can experience them more often?
by Robyn Bolton | Oct 6, 2025 | 5 Questions, Customer Centricity, Innovation, Tips, Tricks, & Tools
For decades, we’ve faithfully followed innovation’s best practices. The brainstorming workshops, the customer interviews, and the validated frameworks that make innovation feel systematic and professional. Design thinking sessions, check. Lean startup methodology, check. It’s deeply satisfying, like solving a puzzle where all the pieces fit perfectly.
Problem is, we’re solving the wrong puzzle.
As Ellen Di Resta points out in this conversation, all the frameworks we worship, from brainstorming through business model mapping, are business-building tools, not idea creation tools.
Read on to learn why our failure to act on the fundamental distinction between value creation and value capture causes too many disciplined, process-following teams to create beautiful prototypes for products nobody wants.
Robyn: What’s the one piece of conventional wisdom about innovation that organizations need to unlearn?
Ellen: That the innovation best practices everyone’s obsessed with work for the early stages of innovation.
The early part of the innovation process is all about creating value for the customer. What are their needs? Why are their Jobs to be Done unsatisfied? But very quickly we shift to coming up with an idea, prototyping it, and creating a business plan. We shift to creating value for the business, before we assess whether or not we’ve successfully created value for the customer.
Think about all those innovation best practices. We’ve got business model canvas. That’s about how you create value for the business. Right? We’ve got the incubators, accelerators, lean, lean startup. It’s about creating the startup, which is a business, right? These tools are about creating value for the business, not the customer.
R: You know that Jobs to be Done is a hill I will die on, so I am firmly in the camp that if it doesn’t create value for the customer, it can’t create value for the business. So why do people rush through the process of creating ideas that create customer value?
E: We don’t really teach people how to develop ideas because our culture only values what’s tangible. But an idea is not a tangible thing so it’s hard for people to get their minds around it. What does it mean to work on it? What does it mean to develop it? We need to learn what motivates people’s decision-making.
Prototypes and solutions are much easier to sell to people because you have something tangible that you can show to them, explain, and answer questions about. Then they either say yes or no, and you immediately know if you succeeded or failed.
R: Sounds like it all comes down to how quickly and accurately can I measure outcomes?
E: Exactly. But here’s the rub, they don’t even know they’re rushing because traditional innovation tools give them a sense of progress, even if the progress is wrong.
We’ve all been to a brainstorm session, right? Somebody calls the brainstorm session. Everybody goes. They say any idea is good. Nothing is bad. Come up with wild, crazy ideas. They plaster the walls with 300 ideas, and then everybody leaves, and they feel good and happy and creative, and the poor person who called the brainstorm is stuck.
Now what do they do? They look at these 300 ideas, and they sort them based on things they can measure like how long it’ll take to do or how much money it’ll cost to do it. What happens? They end up choosing the things that we already know how to do! So why have the brainstorm?”
R: This creates a real tension: leadership wants progress they can track, but the early work is inherently unmeasurable. How do you navigate that organizational reality?
E: Those tangible metrics are all about reliability. They make sure you’re doing things right. That you’re doing it the same way every time? And that’s appropriate when you know what you’re doing, know you’re creating value for the customer, and now you’re working to create value for the business. Usually at scale
But the other side of it? That’s where you’re creating new value and you are trying to figure things out. You need validity metrics. Are we doing the right things? How will we know that we’re doing the right things.
R: What’s the most important insight leaders need to understand about early-stage innovation?
E: The one thing that the leader must do is run cover. Their job is to protect the team who’s doing the actual idea development work because that work is fuzzy and doesn’t look like it’s getting anywhere until Ta-Da, it’s done!
They need to strategically communicate and make sure that the leadership hears what they need to hear, so that they know everything is in control, right? And so they’re running cover is the best way to describe it. And if you don’t have that person, it’s really hard to do the idea development work.”
But to do all of that, the leader also must really care about that problem and about understanding the customer.
We must create value for the customer before we can create value for the business. Ellen’s insight that most innovation best practices focus on the latter is devastating. It’s also essential for all the leaders and teams who need results from their innovation investments.
Before your next innovation project touches a single framework, ask yourself Ellen’s fundamental question: “Are we at a stage where we’re creating value for the customer, or the business?” If you can’t answer that clearly, put down the canvas and start having deeper conversations with the people whose problems you think you’re solving.
To learn more about Ellen’s work, check out Pearl Partners.
To dive deeper into Ellen’s though leadership, visit her Substack – Idea Builders Guild.
To break the cycle of using the wrong idea tools, sign-up for her free one-hour workshop.
by Robyn Bolton | Sep 30, 2025 | Leading Through Uncertainty, Strategy, Tips, Tricks, & Tools
Just as we got used to VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) futurists now claim “the world is BANI now.” BANI (brittle, anxious, nonlinear, incomprehensible) is much worse than VUCA and reflects “the fractured, unpredictable state of the modern world.”
Not to get too Gen X on the futurists who coined and are spreading this term but…shut up.
Is the world fractured and unpredictable? Yes.
Does it feel brittle? Are we more anxious than ever? Are things changing at exponential speed, requiring nonlinear responses? Does the world feel incomprehensible? Yes, to all.
Naming a problem is the first step in solving it. The second step is falling in love with the problem so that we become laser focused on solving it. BANI does the first but fails at the second. It wallows in the problem without proposing a path forward. And as the sign says, “Ain’t nobody got time for this.”
(Re)Introducing the Cynefin Framework
The Cynefin framework recognizes that leadership and problem-solving must be contextual to be effective. Using the Welsh word for “habitat,” the framework is a tool to understand and name the context of a situation and identify the approaches best suited for managing or solving the situation.
It’s grounded in the idea that every context – situation, challenge, problem, opportunity – exists somewhere on a spectrum between Ordered and Unordered. At the Ordered end of the spectrum, cause and affect are obvious and immediate and the path forward is based on objective, immutable facts. Unordered contexts, however, have no obvious or immediate relationship between cause and effect and moving forward requires people to recognize patterns as they emerge.
Both VUCA and BANI point out the obvious – we’re spending more time on the Unordered end of the spectrum than ever. Unlike the acronyms, Cynefin helps leaders decide and act.
5 Contexts. 5 Ways Forward
The Cynefin framework identifies five contexts, each with its own best practices for making decisions and progress.
On the Ordered end of the spectrum:
- Simple contexts are characterized by stability and obvious and undisputed right answers. Here, patterns repeat, and events are consistent. This is where leaders rely on best practices to inform decisions and delegation, and direct communication to move their teams forward.
- Complicated contexts have many possible right answers and the relationship between cause and effect isn’t known but can be discovered. Here, leaders need to rely on diverse expertise and be particularly attuned to conflicting advice and novel ideas to avoid making decisions based on outdated experience.
On the Unordered end of the spectrum:
- Complex contexts are filled with unknown unknowns, many competing ideas, and unpredictable cause and effects. The most effective leadership approach in this context is one that is deeply uncomfortable for most leaders but familiar to innovators – letting patterns emerge. Using small-scale experiments and high levels of collaboration, diversity, and dissent, leaders can accelerate pattern-recognition and place smart bets.
- Chaos are contexts fraught with tension. There are no right answers or clear cause and effect. There are too many decisions to make and not enough time. Here, leaders often freeze or make big bold decisions. Neither is wise. Instead, leaders need to think like emergency responders and rapidly response to re-establish order where possible to bring the situation into a Complex state, rather than trying to solve everything at once.
The final context is Disorder. Here leaders argue, multiple perspectives fight for dominance, and the organization is divided into fractions. Resolution requires breaking the context down into smaller parts that fit one of the four previous contexts and addressing them accordingly.
The Only Way Out is Through
Our VUCA/BANI world isn’t going to get any simpler or easier. And fighting it, freezing, or fleeing isn’t going to solve anything. Organizations need leaders with the courage to move forward and the wisdom and flexibility to do so in a way that is contextually appropriate. Cynefin is their map.
