Navigating a Restless Sea: Mobilizing Innovation Adoption in Your Community

by Peter Denning, Todd W. Lyons, Ron Kaufman (foreword)

Innovation adoption is one of the hottest topics in business and government. We want more, we want it faster, and we’re not getting it. Traditional approaches to innovation emphasize ideas and inventions, often leading to a losing confrontation with the mysterious “Valley of Death.” Peter Denning and Todd Lyons upend this paradigm by emphasizing the adoption of new practice. Adoption is about mobilizing people, not creating new ideas or manufacturing new products. They offer eight mutually reinforcing practices that power skillful navigation toward adoption across a restless sea of concerns and conversations in your communities. They guide you in developing your skill in these eight practices. They instill somatic awareness into the practices, enabling you to sense the resonances that reward deep listening to concerns. They show you how to blend with the resistance and reframe it as a window into a larger space of possibilities. The practices you learn here will aid you anywhere you aim to mobilize people for change, small or large. You will become a better leader and make a difference in your community.

413 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 17, 2024

Reviews

[G. Vachon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Navigating The Restless Sea review.

The "Restless Sea" Metaphor: The "sea" represents the complex, unpredictable, and ever-changing world of human conversations, challenges/concerns, and existing practices within a community or organization. 
• Innovation as Adoption: The authors redefine innovation not as a new idea, but as the successful adoption of a new practice by a community. An invention that nobody uses is not an innovation. 
• Mobilizing People: The book contends that achieving adoption is fundamentally a social and political process. It's about "mobilizing people" and navigating their resistance and concerns, not just building a better product. 
• The Eight Practices: The book offers a guide built around eight specific practices to help leaders and innovators "navigate" this restless sea. These practices are designed to help build trust, listen effectively, and skillfully move a community toward embracing a new way of doing things. 

• There is an app/website that serves as a worksheet/workbook for your own innovation efforts. Recommended!

[Remo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book with lots of insights. Parts of it are a little "touchy-feely" for my taste, but others have brilliant insights into leadership, self discipline, and actually how to live life. I made many a highlight. One of my favorites is "Leaders who are concerned with their legacy are less likely to be successful because they orient on themselves rather than their community." So true.