GDA Podcast: Simplifying Innovation + Change Management with Lisa Bodell
The following is a transcript of the GDA Podcast, Episode #53 with Lisa Bodell. Listen to the entire podcast here.Gail Davis: Today's guest on GDA podcast is Lisa Bodell. Lisa is a best-selling author and the founder and CEO of futurethink. As a globally recognized expert on innovation foresight, simplification, and change management she has helped thousands of senior leaders ignite innovation at companies like Google, Pfizer, Citi Group, Lockheed Martin, and more. Lisa has inspired over 100,000 attendees in 30 countries with radical thinking and on-the-spot business solutions that motivate people and organizations to action. Her presentations are frequently the highest-rated sessions at conferences. She has a new book on how to simplify things and that's a topic that really resonates with me, so I'm very excited to welcome Lisa to today's episode of GDA podcast. Welcome, Lisa.Lisa Bodell: Hey, thanks for having me. Thanks for the great intro too!Gail Davis: This concept of simplification...how did you land on that?Lisa Bodell: So you know, it's interesting. It was one of those happy accidents that grew out of a problem I was seeing. You know, we go to a lot of clients as futurists and innovation experts and we help them teach change, right? And innovation what was interesting to me was all these incredibly smart, driven leaders that were having issues like they get so much done every day on their to do list yet they still felt like they weren't getting the things that were important. Or there are people that really wanted to innovate but they just couldn't seem to get to it because things were getting in the way. And I wanted to find out why. You know, here's all these smart people, they've got lots of money, they've got big organizations, they've got good resources, what's holding them back? And I asked them what they spent their day doing. And the answer was meetings and emails.And so I realized everyone's drowning in the mundane work and they can't get to the work that matters because they're focusing on the wrong things. So this book set out to have people realize that we've got stop the complexity so we can get to the work that makes a difference.Kyle Davis: One of the things that I found interesting—because you mention frivolous meetings—is that Google, after they have a meeting they pass around a survey to see if that meeting was impactful. And I'm wondering is that what we're talking about? Is the meeting that we're leading, did it make a change, did something come out of it? Or are we trying to say that just these frivolous, mundane meetings where we're just kind of checking in and dipping our toes in the water?Lisa Bodell: What I mean by 'meetings and emails' is not just 'how many of them do we have, and how good are they,' it's 'are they even necessary in the first place?'Read More →