You Don't Need A Cheerleader

Last week I signed up for an expedition to Antarctica.I get terrible seasickness. I hate small planes. Antarctica has never appeared on any version of my bucket list.I signed up anyway.----Innovation culture talks constantly about the courage to change. It almost never talks about the voice that tells you not to.Over nineteen weeks, this series has mapped a lot of terrain: systems, tools, collaboration architecture, AI as thinking partner, expert perception, incentive structures, the ecology of innovation at scale.I’ve spent most of that time one level above the person doing the work.This week I’m inside. Not to get philosophical — to get practical. The gap between knowing what good innovation practice looks like and being able to sustain it under real conditions lives right here. In the space where either one or both voices show up.----Connections to The Insider’s Guide to Innovation at Microsoft* Behavior is the Barrier: The barrier isn’t always in the organization — sometimes it’s in the practitioner. The first voice is Behavior is the Barrier operating internally. The innovator who can’t quiet it becomes the bottleneck in their own work.* Cognitive Inertia: The first voice is cognitive inertia in first person. It doesn’t resist change in others — it resists change in you. The second voice is the compelling force that doesn’t come from policy, incentive, or peer pressure. It comes from accumulated internal evidence.* The B2Me Journey — Applied Inward: B2Me, applied outward, is the journey a stakeholder takes from unawareness to advocacy, guided by the innovator. The second voice runs that journey internally. When the first voice fires the fear response — are we even doing anything worth doing? — the second voice doesn’t lead with logic. It leads with emotional reset: not every day is a breakthrough. We worked. We learned. Recovery before rationale. The internal B2Me journey is the same architecture as the external one.IOL is produced with the help of AI, specifically Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and a team of custom personas developed by Regenerous Labs. All insights, editorial choices, and final content are mine. Mistakes too.Say It Ugly, Build It Better. Onward! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit innovatingoutloud.substack.com