Ideas & Innovations
Exploring the intersection of technology, leadership, and digital transformation. Published weekly by Kevin Novak.
Explore 2040’s weekly Ideas and Innovations Newsletter Articles below.
Welcome to 2040’s Ideas and Innovations – where organizational transformation meets human psychology.
Every Thursday for 4+ years, I’ve been sharing insights with 5000+ leaders about why change initiatives succeed or fail. Spoiler alert: it’s rarely about the technology.
I’m Kevin Novak, CEO of 2040 Digital and author of the books “The Truth About Transformation” and “The Truth About Transformation: Leading in the Age of AI, Uncertainty and Human Complexity”. I have spent decades helping organizations navigate change by focusing on the most critical factor: the humans involved.
What you’ll get:
- Weekly deep dives into transformation topics, including strategy and psychology
- Real case studies from 100+ organizational transformations
- Frameworks that actually work in practice
- Leadership counsel and tips
- The human stories behind digital evolution
No buzzwords. No surface-level advice. Just practical insights from the front lines of organizational change.
Subscribe for free and join leaders from Fortune 500 companies, startups, and nonprofits who rely on these insights to drive successful transformation.
Also explore our latest research, Measuring What Matters, which examines why organizations struggle to connect measurement to meaningful decisions and what separates effective measurement from data collection.
Join me here on our website and subscribe using the form provided on this page or find me on Substack (20Forty’s Newsletter).
Kevin Novak, CEO, 2040 Digital and author of “The Truth About Transformation” and “The Truth About Transformation: Leading in the Age of AI, Uncertainty and Human Complexity”.
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2040’s
Ideas and Innovations Newsletter
The Trouble with Making Assumptions and Over-Generalizations
The Trouble with Making Assumptions and Over-Generalizations Issue 160, May 16, 2024 We’ve noticed a disturbing trend over the past three years. To put it bluntly, organizations including governments, are making many assumptions about their stakeholders and constituents. The assumptions stem from over-generalizations, past knowledge, or due to wearing blinders. In each instance, we will discuss how you, the consumer, will bear the cost and impact of these behaviors. Failing to See the Total System Let’s take a US political…
The Misfortunes of Uninformed Urgency
The Misfortunes of Uninformed Urgency Issue 159, May 9, 2024 We write often and passionately about the sense of urgency organizations should feel as they manage disruptive marketplaces, unpredictable consumer trends, and geopolitical instability. Coupled with urgency are our mantras about market orientation, shared purpose, and critical thinking. We could stop right there but we’re not going to! We don’t want our advocation about modern leadership and organizational strategies to become platitudes and buzzwords. In that spirit, we’re taking a…
Why Strategic Re-Think Is Today’s Prerequisite Strategy
Why Strategic Re-Think Is Today’s Prerequisite Strategy Issue 158, May 2, 2024 Although it seems counterintuitive in today’s dynamically changing marketplace, many organizations still live, breathe, and sometimes die by their static three- or five-year strategic plans. It takes so much work and time to develop these long-term plans, often structured more as a laundry list of aspirations, that they are hard to let go of. This multi-year term model is often disconnected from the actual capability or capacity of…
The Importance of Language in Organizational Transformation
The Importance of Language in Organizational Transformation Issue 157, April 25, 2024 Think about this for a moment. The English language we speak is referred to as Modern English dating back to 1450. It’s related to the emergence of the printing press and was adopted through the expanded volume of printed materials including Shakespeare in the late 1500s and the King James Bible in 1611 (study.com). That was over 570 years ago. If you’re following us here, it might dawn…
Where Has Our Optimism Gone?
Where Has Our Optimism Gone? Issue 156, April 18, 2024 If you were asked to describe the personality of America you might use the adjectives resilient, optimistic, can-do, problem-solving. Our history has been built on these principles and they are still very much embedded in what drives our economy. However, what’s driving our culture seems to be shifting from these positive “optimistic, can-do” characteristics and turning to a darker, more fractious side – if you believe what you see, hear,…
The Value of Reflective Decision-Making
The Value of Reflective Decision-Making Issue 155, April 11, 2024 Admit it, most of us are stressed out and often filled with anxiety. We are time-pressed. Overbooked. Distracted. Confused. Dumbfounded. Surprised. And potentially even trending to pessimism. We are trying to make sense of events we can’t control that are hurtling toward us daily through our news feeds. A Moment in Time We’re also grappling with the speed of change in the digital economy and our connected society. The news…
Reactive Decision-Making, Social, and Youth
Reactive Decision-Making, Social, and Youth Issue 154, April 4, 2024 We’re worried about the members of our younger generations – your customers, employees, children, and family members. We’re worried as well about the kneejerk attempts of some of our leaders and those with influence to solve what is perceived as a problem without truly understanding it or the consequences of the solution they attempt to put into place. Reactive States of Mind Post-pandemic society appears to be in reaction mode,…
Are We Playing Monopoly as a Society?
Are We Playing Monopoly as a Society? Issue 153, March 28, 2024 Big tech has been taken to task repeatedly often without a complete understanding of who they are, what they do and how their business model functions. For many, it seems elusive to understand their motives, wrapped up in proprietary strategy. And frankly, just about no one (certainly not the average individual) can figure out what they’ve been up to and what their intentions are. Are they out to…
What We Know About You: Welcome to the Surveillance State
What We Know About You: Welcome to the Surveillance State Issue 152, March 21, 2024 We recently read a report in The Wall Street Journal that got our attention. Commercial data brokers are selling their third-party data to the government. If you’re an optimist, you would think this could be a good thing. Our intelligence agencies and the defense department may be able to identify patterns that could predict and prevent an unfortunate event – terrorism, for example. But honestly,…
Unintended Consequences: Decision-Making and Economic Interconnectedness
Unintended Consequences: Decision-Making and Economic Interconnectedness Issue 151, March 14, 2024 We’re entering the fray in the debate on the economy. And central to this debate is a refresher focused on our inability to make connections, see patterns and anticipate how micro and macro trends can radically and consequentially compromise our approach to solving real or perceived problems. In solving what we see as immediate problems (low wages, inflation, price-gouging, lack of skilled workers and migration as examples), there are…
AI: Spring Awakenings
AI: Spring Awakenings Issue 150, March 7, 2024 We think the onset of Spring is a good time for house cleaning and taking a pause to reassess AI. It has taken over both the imagination and the anxiety of most anyone who has been paying attention. Take a straw poll and you may have two oppositional results. AI is a tool that will help human beings achieve higher levels of productivity and more efficient levels of profitability. Or AI is…
The Need for Reversed Learning
The Need for Reversed Learning Issue 149, February 29, 2024 Is it really true that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks? If you’re an old dog in a digital marketplace, you don’t have a choice. Let’s say you are an editor. You used to work with writers to create provocative, well-researched, surprising articles. Today, you have to write titles, headlines, and content to optimize search and game the online systems. Or let’s say you are a marketer. You…
The Value and Challenge of Compromise
The Value and Challenge of Compromise Issue 148, February 22, 2024 How many times did your parents tell you to, “Pick your battle.” And then in the next breath say, “Never compromise your values.” That ambiguity could be confusing to a child, but is mind-bending to an adult navigating our complex, polarized society. Increasingly public opinion is becoming less compromising, leaving common ground hard to find. Compromise: Positive or Negative? In its most basic sense, a compromise can be understood…
Do You Fall Prey to Oversimplification?
Do You Fall Prey to Oversimplification? Issue 147, February 15, 2024 We all do it. We oversimplify when it suits us or when we believe that is what our audience wants to hear. In business, we have been programmed not to share too many financial details and just report the high-level numbers. Or not get all techy; talk in plain English. Avoid all those legal terms that make heads spin. Can’t you just say that a different way? Add to…
How Clock Time Reshaped the World and Work
How Clock Time Reshaped the World and Work Issue 146, February 8, 2024 We think it’s safe to say that most of us take clock time for granted. Timepieces are ubiquitous; they are on our stoves, microwaves, refrigerators, walls, radios, wrists, and mobile phones. From 1300 to 1600, they were the centerpiece of small towns placed on towers and public buildings, which dramatically changed how people ordered their lives. So fast forward and timepieces have become so affordable and mobile…
Randomness and Flukes: Changing the Course of History
Randomness and Flukes: Changing the Course of History Issue 145, February 1, 2024 Hindsight is foresight, yet we may be better equipped to predict the future with the benefit of so much emerging tech. But what AI and ML don’t anticipate is the random moments that change the course of history. What’s frustrating is that you rarely see those moments in real-time. We suggest the reason is that we are looking for the wrong thing, making those random occurrences nearly…
Vulnerability as an Asset
Vulnerability as an Asset Issue 144, January 25, 2024 We’ve all heard about EQ as the skill and management strategy transcending IQ. Emotional Quotient is defined as the ability to perceive, use, understand, manage, and handle emotions (Wiki) and the ability to manage one’s own emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome challenges, and defuse conflict (HelpGuide). Any way you define it, it’s an essential leadership approach in today’s culture that is increasingly fraught…
The Risk of Certainty
The Risk of Certainty Issue 143, January 18, 2024 Human nature, at its deepest core, reinforces our longing for certainty and the prospect of security and stability. We don’t want things around us to change. We want assurance that what we know is true and real. We want certainty that we made the right decisions and choices so that outputs and outcomes will be what we expect. Ambiguity creates anxiety and insecurity and makes us defensive. Ambiguity makes most of…
What is Normal?
What is Normal? Issue 142, January 11, 2024 How many times have we heard, “the new normal.” Or conversely, the longing to return to what was normal. Or an optimistic claim to create a modern normal. Well, guess what, there is no normal. Nor was there ever one. We have operated in a disruptive, asymmetrical marketplace for over a century of continuous change. The difference today is the speed of communications that transmit the market conditions that we face 24/7…
Is This Us?
Is This Us? Issue 141, January 4, 2024 If you just landed on the planet from elsewhere, or you are a student of modern media, you might believe that America is polarized, disappointed, angry, mentally ill, always dancing in front of its mobile phones, and with a chip on its shoulder. Is this really us? Is this who we are? The issue is whether our actions, beliefs, and values are representative of who’ve always been. Or in the current fractious…
2023’s Reader’s Choice: The 5 Most Popular Issues of 2040 Ideas and Innovations
2023’s Reader’s Choice: The 5 Most Popular Issues of 2040 Ideas and Innovations Issue 140, December 21, 2023 2023 is wrapping up and we’re doing a reader’s choice this week. After all, we preach customer centrism and make it a practice with our clients. So, what’s interesting when we look at the top five newsletters we have published over 2023, which we sent to you and posted on LinkedIn, Medium, our website, and our Substack Newsletter, it says as much…
When Your Reach Exceeds Your Grasp
When Your Reach Exceeds Your Grasp Issue 139, December 14, 2023 Here’s a question for you as we wrap up 2023: Why have so many organizations reset themselves by dramatically cutting back on their staff and operations? Why did their aspirations seem so out of line with their new reality? Whatever happened to foresight? This syndrome makes us think of two quotes from two distinctly different individuals. Poet Robert Browning said, “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s…
Inspiration for Commitment, Redefinition, and Reinvention
Inspiration for Commitment, Redefinition, and Reinvention Issue 138, December 7, 2023 What We Can Learn From Others For many of us, this year has been one of surprises and some unexpected gifts. Global events have become 24/7 headlines on our newsfeeds and most of the news is troubling. 2023 is the hottest year on record for the planet. Two wars are being waged simultaneously at great costs. Inflation remains a persistent worry despite improving economic data. The vision of an…
Bias Revisited
Bias Revisited Issue 137, November 30, 2023 If you have been following our newsletters, you know that we have a fascination about bias. In fact, from our observations about workplace dysfunction, leadership disconnect, market orientation dislocation, and digital transformation gone awry, conscious, or subconscious bias is usually at the root of the problem. It may sound simplistic, but what we don’t know we don’t know can shortstop the best of intentions and the most optimistic plans. When we think of…
Belonging Matters
Belonging Matters Issue 136, November 23, 2023 The most fundamental motivation among the human species is to belong. Belonging is implicit in sharing trust, affinity and caring about someone or something bigger than yourself. Renown philosopher Dan Dennett in a TED talk in 2006 encouraged everyone to dedicate and devote themselves to something more important than themselves to find meaning and purpose in their lives. We’ll let you draw your own conclusions whether the audience of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and…
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