Building a culture of collaboration and innovation wp

Building a culture of
collaboration and
innovation
<<TOURISM 3.0 WHITEPAPER SERIES >>
1. Introduction: reasons for developing a new culture 2
2. The culture change process 4
3. Leadership development for culture change 14
4. Fostering collaboration, innovation, and engagement 19
CONTENTS
Jordi Pera Segarra
Envisioning Tourism 3.0 CEO
December 2017

BUILDING A CULTURE OF COLLABORATION AND INNOVATION
w w w . e n v i s i o n i n g t o u r i s m . c o m 2
1. Introduction: reasons for developing a new culture
When developing the collaborative model and the open innovation system, the greatest
challenges are not in framing them, but in engaging members with a new culture driven by
collaboration and innovation. This will require a previous diagnosis on which cultural inhibitors
are rooted in their mindsets, to open their minds and change their attitudes towards a new
approach. Then, the success in building a culture of collaboration and innovation will need the
appropriate leadership and a supporting system that rewards contributors according to the new
cultural values.
Other key success factors in the culture change are the enthusiasm and trust in the vision and
mission statements as a result of the community members’ participation and effective
communication, as well as the local culture itself, considering its level of trust, cooperation and
openness to new ideas. On this point, it is interesting to remark that mission driven purposes
are those that naturally motivate the most contribution and cooperation among humankind.
Before going ahead, it is convenient to define what culture is. Among the many definitions,
there are two which define it quite accurately:
 Group norms of behavior and underlying shared values that help keep those norms in place.
 Values and characteristic set of behaviors that define how things get done in an organisation.
It is also necessary to be aware that, beyond our efforts in building a better culture according
to our mission, there are many reasons or forces that can make it degrade over time as a
result of major restructuring, mergers and acquisitions, and frequent changes in leadership at
the corporate level. The most typical cases are the three following:
1) Growth dilutes the initial culture. As the business experiences growth and so the
organization expands, the culture that made the business begin successfully and grow faces
the risk of being diluted by the new hires, especially those who work away from the leadership
team, for instance in far-away geographical locations. That said it is also possible that the new
executives bring in a positive change and innovative ideas, but in any case it is convenient to
take measures to preserve the corporate culture core essence that allowed the business to
succeed up to the present stage.
2) Continuous growth & transformation burns people out. Non-stop growth and the
tension derived from it are a serious threat to employees’ sustained engagement and
commitment, and therefore put their performance at risk. To avoid burning out the workforce
it is necessary to understand business growth as a marathon run instead of a sprint. That
means that there have to be rest cycles in between the periods of fastest growth in order to
recharge energy, celebrate the achieved successes and consolidate the new achievements to
ensure that they are to be long-lasting.
3) Complacency. This is one of the most dangerous enemies of culture. As a result of
achieving good results and the desired level of well-being, it is usual for many people to relax
and over-rely on their capacities and chances for sustained success. So long as the business
environment keeps on changing over time, the business has to keep on adapting to these
changes and therefore has little or no time to relax on the competition. Only those businesses
that continue to adapt to evolutionary changes in their environment will thrive.

Beyond the causes of culture degradation, it is convenient to know how to identify the need for
organisational culture change. There are five key questions that may orient us in this regard:
 Is there a growing sentiment that your culture is an obstacle for achieving your goals?
 Has there been a change in strategy? Is your current culture aligned with your strategy?
 Are you considering or involved in a merger? Are the two organisational cultures aligned?
 Are you engaged in a transformation? Are the behaviors required to deliver results in place?
 Are you struggling to drive higher levels of productivity?
Organizations are quite unlikely to sustain a good performance without the right culture
according to the strategy that is being implemented, and the right culture does not develop
unless the context or system encourages the desired behaviors that define this culture. Culture
change is a necessary and key factor for business success in the aforementioned cases.
In the case of Destinations 3.0 the need for a leap forward in increasing competitiveness
inevitably demands a shift towards a culture collaboration and innovation, which eventually
should deliver many payoffs. First, this is what nurtures the model’s competitive advantage, its
capacity to continually reinvent itself, and develop life-changing experiences and compelling
stories that engage stakeholders to pursue the mission. Empowering and stimulating
participation from different kinds of stakeholders brings new insights to obtain a holistic vision
of the model ecosystem which makes it possible to revamp the model with less iterations,
hence shortening the change periods and smoothing the innovation process.
Secondly, the values-driven culture itself attracts like-minded and talented stakeholders, who
ultimately are the greatest asset of the destination model, as long as they engage with the
mission and become active innovators and brand ambassadors. Models defending their values
and their mission over the short term profits gain admiration from these like-minded
stakeholders, managing to engage them with full commitment. Such engagement is what
makes them deliver authentic experiences according to the brand stories.
Finally, as a consequence of the first two, such culture leads –at least in the long term- the
model to outperform its competitors who have not developed such powerful culture. So long as
human spirit driven motivations spur most of everyone’s creativity and engagement, this is
what ultimately maximizes the outcome in terms of mission accomplishment and value
provided to the tourists.
Among the stakeholders, the model should pay special attention to its employees, by building
a values-driven culture that guides them to live up to the brand mission, providing them with
the same value-driven experience they are to provide to the final customers, turning them into
brand ambassadors and life-transforming agents to the customers, delivering value in
accordance with the stories. This requires the maximum integrity and good leadership from the
platform’s executives, demonstrating these values through everyday behavior.
To involve all stakeholders, it is necessary to make them feel empowered, supported and
eventually rewarded to take the lead in any initiative aligned with the mission. In the first
stage, the local stakeholders have to be empowered to participate in the mission definition.
This is critical to get them engaged. Then, the collaborative platform is likely to attract many
other stakeholders identified with the mission who are also willing to show their capacity to
make a difference, joining efforts to move the business towards the mission accomplishment.

2. The culture change process
How does culture change? In most cases, a top leader, or a large enough group of formal and
informal leaders in the organisation realises that the current culture does not work properly,
figures out a change vision, starts acting differently, and enlists others to act differently. If the
new strategy and set of behaviours produces better results, the results are communicated and
celebrated, and the resistance to change does not block the new operating ways, the new
norms and new shared values are likely to expand across the organisation and stick over time.
In any case, it is only through strong leadership that culture change can be achieved.
As Albert Einstein once said, “The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It
cannot be changed without changing our thinking”.
2.1 Creating and communicating a vision for change
The best way to solve a systemic problem is to manifest a vision in which that problem no
longer exists. So long as the culture change is an essential step towards achieving this vision
statement, communicating why the culture needs to change and the benefits it will bring is the
first step to take.
A vision that depicts a feasible path towards a state where the challenges have been overcome
is a tremendous motivator and mobilizer. Research indicates that employees respond
extremely well in terms of positivity, engagement, and of course productivity, when the
company leaders have a clearly articulated and communicated vision that responds to people’s
concerns and aspirations, as long as the leaders really walk their talk and results meet
expectations along the way.
A well-crafted vision is essential to align the workforce and motivate them to make change
happen. To be effective, the future vision has to comply with these six conditions:
 Imaginable: it conveys a clear picture of what the future will look like upon attainment of
the vision statement.
 Desirable: it appeals to the long-term interest of employees, customers, shareholders and
others who have a stake in the enterprise.
 Feasible: it contains realistic and attainable goals that stakeholders believe can be achieved.
 Focused: it is clear enough to provide guidance in decision-making and serves as a true
north that aligns the actions of others.
 Flexible: it allows individual initiative and contingency plans in light of changing
environment conditions
 Communicable: it is easy to communicate and to understand by the stakeholder audience.
Engaging people in the change process requires first the establishment of a sense of urgency,
according to Kotter 8 step process for leading change. One of the best ways to do so is to craft
a powerful case for change. This consists of a story that explains the change process that is
coming to the organisation. Its objective is to provide a common baseline of awareness and
understanding among stakeholders. When facing the audience you should be able to tell the
story in 10-15 slides and include visuals and graphics to enhance the story whenever possible.

The major content pieces to incorporate in the Case for Change story are the following:
Context: set the stage by explaining why changes are needed now, mainly referring to the
opportunities and threats that make it necessary.
Changes: explain what will change, who will be impacted by the changes and to what extent,
stating also what is not going to change.
Process: describe how the changes will be implemented and its expected timing, providing
the next steps and introducing the team members who will lead the change.
Benefits: highlight the expected benefits as a result of the changes. Be sure to address all
levels of benefits: enterprise-wide, specific divisions, and individual roles.
Consequences of delay: list out the consequences of delaying the changes. These are the
counterpoints to those who would say “we can wait until next year to do this”.
Expectations: inform your stakeholders about what is expected from them. Make it clear that
everyone has a role to play in successfully implementing the changes.
Commitment: the top leader should present the Case for change first. Then, subordinate
leaders should present it to their teams, stating their commitments to make them accountable
to their employees.
The leader’s objective with the Case for Change is to establish baseline level of awareness and
understanding of the changes. Once defined, it’s time to implement it following five principles:
1) Train employees and stakeholders on how to apply the new set of values on a daily basis.
2) Put the new values into practice by changing behaviors
3) Leaders have to preach by example, becoming the role models that inspire everybody
4) Ensure that everyone is aligned with the new values and behaviors, and correct if necessary
5) Celebrate results achieved by any employee or community member to encourage others
The key ideas of driving culture change to understand are that this has to be started from the
leadership positions, practising what you preach, communicating to convince their organization
or community while listening, understanding and addressing their possible resistance,
achieving and celebrating results, and benefiting all stakeholders to engage them further.
To communicate the vision and the Case for Change effectively, the storytelling techniques can
provide us with many tips. Effective leaders tell stories that position them and their
organisations as change agents instead of defenders of the status quo. Stories are pull
strategy: they allow people to decide for themselves, which is one of the great hallmarks of
effective influence. In the case of destinations shifting their model it will be necessary to
explain to them the model vision in a compelling way that connects first with their emotions
and human spirit, to open their want for a deeper understanding of the process and purpose.
Stories are the best way to help people imagine how the new model is likely to improve their
current status quo, how it creates value and improves the community’s life quality. Stories
convey the new model ideas to the people’s minds describing them in a way that overcomes
resistance, the most likely reaction to new model propositions challenging the status quo. By
capturing people’s attention, stories are to pave the way for an in-depth presentation.

Such destination’s vision is not only necessary to convince the community members to
integrate, but also a guiding force that constantly aligns everyone’s efforts on their
contribution to expand the destination model to the utmost of its potential and to accomplish
the mission statement.
When crafting the case for change, it is convenient to craft some stories that illustrate for an
individual what the change is going to be like, escaping formality to make it more familiar to
the audience. Then, it is necessary to remind of the basic features that good stories share:
1) A strong sense of a plot: the story should provide listeners with a sense that the
organisation is going somewhere exciting
2) Meaning that drives action: employees should be able to say “I know what to do in my
area because it fits with my values and where we are going”
3) Multiple and consistent versions: each person who hears the story should be motivated
by it in different yet compatible ways
4) Inevitable: listeners should come away thinking “it had to happen that way”.
Further, stories are effective for culture change purposes when they are:
 Simple: listeners are not overwhelmed with detailed facts and information
 Relevant: the purpose and theme of the story matters to those who hear it
 Inclusive: everyone can see themselves in the story
 Emotional: the story excites, delights, surprises, or otherwise moves the listener at an
emotional level. It engages multiple senses.
 Friendly, not cynical: even sad stories should leave the listener feeling hope,
understanding or satisfaction.
 Shared by many people: the story is interesting and important enough to be shared over
and over again. The best stories get more compelling when they are shared and refined as
part of a dialogue before being passed on.
Beyond the story itself, mastering the art of storytelling to make stories compelling requires
several skills and strategies to take into account:
 The teller should convey his or her own personal energy, excitement, and conviction. Using
phrases such as “I feel…”, “I am doing this because…”, “I want to go for this…”, or “I know
we can do this” may help in transmitting positive vibrations.
 Providing context, like using a global perspective to gain understanding about the threats
that force the change or raise ambition about the scale of the opportunity
 Being clear on the rationale for change by drawing on both the burning platform (the need
for change) and the shining beacon (what can be achieved with the change)
 Using simple language that is relevant to the audience, translating technical terms into words
that everybody can understand easily
 Showing personal commitment, making it clear what would be done differently and how the
staff are to be supported during the change process.
 Using tested rhetorical techniques so long as the teller can build them into his/her own style.
For example, using repetition for emphasis like “I believe we can do this, I believe we have
the skills to do this, I believe we need to do this, etc.”

2.2 Kotter’s model of culture change
John Kotter’s change model is a reference model for all professionals dedicated to culture
change. It is structured in 8 steps:
1. Create a sense of urgency, awareness and desire. Change leader should first open an
honest and convincing dialogue about what’s happening in the marketplace and with your
competition, to make the audience foresee the threats and opportunities to tackle. When many
people start talking about the proposed change, the urgency can build and feed on itself. In
that sense, the leader should:
 Identify potential threats, and develop scenarios showing what could happen in the future.
 Examine opportunities that should be or could be exploited
 Start honest talks, and give convincing reasons to get people discussing and thinking.
 Request support from customers and outside stakeholders to strengthen your arguments.
Kotter states that for a change to be successful, 75% of a firm’s management has to “buy into”
the change, which means to spend time and energy creating urgency, before moving on.
2. Create a powerful coalition. Culture change has not only to be managed, but also has to
be led, and so change leaders should be found throughout the organisation. To lead change,
you need to gather a coalition of influential people whose power comes from a variety of
sources (job title, status, expertise, and political importance). Once the change coalition is
created, it needs to work as a team and continue to build urgency and momentum around the
need for change. This could be done by:
 Identifying the true leaders in the organisation and the key stakeholders
 Asking for an emotional commitment from these influencers
 Working on team building within your change coalition
 Ensuring that you have a mix of people from different areas and levels in the organization
3. Depict a vision for change. The coalition members have probably great ideas, but these
should be linked to create an overall vision that people can understand and remember easily.
To help them understand the vision and move them to take action, the leaders should:
 Determine the values that are central to the change
 Craft a short summary that captures what they see as the future of the organisation
 Design a strategy to execute that vision
 Ensure that their change coalition can describe the vision in no more than five minutes
 Practice their “vision speech” often
4. Communicate the vision. Once you have created your vision your success will be
determined by how effectively, frequently and powerfully you communicate it. You should
actually try to embed it within everything that you do, like using it daily to make decisions and
solve problems. When you keep it fresh on everyone’s minds, they’ll remember it and respond
to it. What you do is far more important than what you say. Walk your talk to be credible.
Show the behavior you want from others by practising what you preach. This can be done by:
 Talking often about your change vision, linking it to all the aspects of operations
 Listening to the people’s understanding of the vision and concerns, to clear doubts and
reformulate the speech if necessary
 Addressing peoples’ concerns and anxieties, openly and honestly
 Leading by example

5. Remove obstacles. Is there anyone or anything resisting the change? Once the structure
for change is put in place, it is necessary to remove obstacles, empowering the needed people
to move the change forward in the direction of the vision. This can be done by:
 Identifying or hiring leaders in charge of delivering the change
 Ensuring that the organisational structure and incentive systems are in line with the vision.
 Recognizing and rewarding people for their contribution to make the change happen.
 Identifying people who are resisting the change, and helping them see what’s needed
6. Create short-term achievements. It is very convenient to get a taste of victory in the
early stages of the process, achieving some visible and relevant results to keep critics and
negative thinkers away from the spotlight. To do so, it is necessary to create short term goals
as milestones along the whole process, so as to keep the organisation members engaged with
the change process. This can be done by:
 Looking for sure-fire projects that you can implement without help from any change critics
 Not choosing expensive early targets. The project investments should be easy to justify
 Thoroughly analyzing the pros and cons of every target, to choose attainable goals
 Rewarding those who help in meeting the goals
7. Build on the change process. Many change projects fail because victory is declared too
early. The change process takes time until it is fully completed and quick successes are only
the beginning of what needs to be done to achieve long-term change. Each win provides an
opportunity to build on what is right and identify what needs to improve. This can be done by:
 Analyzing what went right and what should have worked better after every success
 Setting goals to continue building on the momentum that is being achieved
 Learning about kaizen, the concept of continuous improvement
 Bringing in new change agents and leaders for the change coalition to keep ideas fresh
8. Anchor the changes in corporate culture. To make any change stick, the values behind
the vision must show in day-to-day work, and so it is necessary to make continuous efforts to
ensure that the change is seen in every aspect of the organisation. It’s also important that the
organisation’s leaders continue to support the change. This can be done by:
 Talking about progress every chance you get. Tell success stories about the change process,
and repeat other stories that you hear.
 Including the change ideals and values when hiring and training new staff
 Publicly recognizing key members of the original change coalition, and making sure the rest
of the staff remember their contributions.
 Creating plans to replace key leaders as they move on to ensure that their legacy is not lost
2.3 BCG model of culture change
According to Boston Consulting Group, culture change is not only achievable but entirely
feasible within a reasonable amount of time. Any organisation can realize its target culture by
implementing change based on the answers to four questions:
1) What culture do we need?
2) What culture do we have and why do we have it?
3) What aspects of the organisational context should we change to get the behaviors we seek?
4) How do we make the change happen?

1) What culture do we need?
To determine what culture your organisation needs it is necessary to have a clear purpose, a
set of goals and a strategy designed to meet them. The target-setting process involves
translating the strategy into the specific capabilities and behaviors required to implement it.
The target culture is thus a combination of behaviors related to employee engagement and
strategy-specific attributes. Engagement can be described as the degree to which individuals
and teams are in accordance with the organisation’s culture. Engaged employees are
ambitious, inspired, achievement oriented, accountable, and supportive:
 Ambitious: they set high goals for themselves and the organisation, in order to strive to be
a leader in its industry.
 Inspired: senior management effectively communicates the vision in a way that employees
believe in the organisation’s goals and in the intrinsic value of their work.
 Achievement-oriented: they meet or exceed performance requirements despite
challenges. Exceptional performance is rewarded; poor performance is not tolerated.
 Accountable: they are held accountable for meeting corporate and individual goals. There is
a compelling desire to consistently meet the organisation’s milestones.
 Supportive: they mentor and develop direct reports and others. Real value is placed on
teaching and mentorship.
The leaders must choose strategy-specific behaviors along the following seven dimensions:
 Structured vs flexible: how specifically are processes and acceptable behaviors defined? How
closely are they followed in practice?
 Controlling vs delegating: to what extent is power and decision making concentrated at the
top or diffused throughout the organisation?
 Cautious vs risk permitting: how much does the organisation support risk taking?
 Thinking vs doing: to what degree do people spend time creating ideas or executing them?
 Diplomatic vs direct: how transparent are communications between coworkers & managers?
 Individualistic vs collaborative: to what extent are employees concerned with their own
individual performance versus shared goals?
 Internal vs external: to what extent are processes and behaviors oriented toward the outside
world versus the internal environment?
Leaders make these choices by translating the organisation’s strategy into a set of capabilities
and behaviors required to deliver it. The strategy is therefore implemented through the
employees’ behaviors in accordance with the mentioned parameters.
2) What culture do we have and why do we have it?
Culture is mainly determined by the organisational context. Many organisations’
members may be unaware of the effect that the leaders, structure, systems, and incentives
have on people as individuals and in teams. It is this organisational context, and not mindsets,
that drives and sustains culture. Desired behaviors can emerge spontaneously when the
context changes. Mindsets, values, and culture will follow the contextual changes.
Diagnosing culture. To diagnose why you have the culture you have, you need to identify
employees’ behaviors and uncover their causes. This can be done by conducting a survey,
interviews and focus groups to identify the behaviors that characterize its culture. Then,
organisations can clarify whether current behaviors match those that the strategy requires. It
is also necessary to find out their underlying reasons, to design the appropriate interventions.

3) What aspects of organisational context should we change?
Many people believe that there are too many factors and their inter-relationships and
relationship with the culture are too complex, in order to know how and where to intervene.
The reality is that learning what to change is a logical and feasible process. Actually,
so long as you understand the organisational context and the inter-relation among its
constituent elements, you can effectively change culture. By applying techniques drawn from
social and behavioral psychology you can create a set of interventions that move multiple
“context levers” in the right combination.
Designing the interventions. Leaders have a plethora of context levers at their disposal to
align employee behavior with strategy –and close the gap between their current and target
culture. These levers represent a mix of hard and soft approaches that separately and in
combination shape behavior. They enable organisations not only to understand the forces
shaping their current culture but also to determine what needs to be changed.
BCG has identified 7 organizational-context levers that influence behavior and shape culture:
 Leadership: leaders’ role-modeling behaviors; their manner of communication, especially in
reinforcing desired behaviors; how they spend their time, manage their priorities, and
interact with direct reports (do they micromanage or manage by principle?).
 People and development: the kind of employees who are recruited; opportunities for
meaningful work and the kind of career paths the organization enables; how talent is
promoted and retained; the provided coaching; learning and development programs.
 Performance management: the KPIs that the organisation uses to define and track
performance drivers, its policies and practices regarding compensation, benefits, reviews,
promotions, rewards, penalties, and consequences of undesirable behavior.
 Informal interactions: networks, the nature of peer-to-peer interactions, gatherings, etc.
 Organisation design: organisational structure, processes and roles, decision rights, and
collaboration processes; units’ relationship to headquarters, office layout and design.
 Resources and tools: the projects that are funded, access to human resources,
management systems, and analytical tools
 Values: the collective beliefs, ideals, and norms that guide people’s conduct and help them
adhere to priorities, especially when facing a business dilemma.
For each gap uncovered in the context analysis, organisations must choose the right levers,
design the right interventions, and determine when to apply them. Some interventions, such
as setting a recognition system, generate quick wins, while others, such as a reorganisation,
take longer. Finally, it’s important to prioritize them according to their estimated impact.
4) How do we make change happen?
There is also the myth that changing behavior and culture is a gamble, so long as the
complexity of the process makes culture change unpredictable.
The reality is that behavior and culture change is a predictable process and can be
orchestrated to achieve the intended results. If you have carried out a sound diagnostic
and identified, designed, and implemented the appropriate interventions, you can get fairly
predictable results in the foreseeable period of time. However, doing so requires an active,
practical and systematic approach, as well as considerable attention to change management.

Implementing culture change. A handful of practices can ensure that the interventions you
choose will have the best chance of achieving the intended results.
 Find and support change champions in the organisation. In every organisation there
are people who have already adopted the new behaviors and are enthusiastic about
attracting others to the new culture. These should have been involved in the intervention
design and are committed to the proposed changes. It is also preferable to train these
champions in leading change and ensure that they are rewarded for taking on that role.
 Run pilot programs and roll out interventions. It is crucial to test a set of interventions
through pilot programs. Once tested, there has to be a clear sequence and timetable to roll
out the levers and interventions in accordance with the strategy. It is necessary to establish
a metrics system to monitor the change progress.
 Ensure frequent, precise, and transparent communication. Communication is critical in
any change program, and it is even more important in culture change. The goal of a
communications program is to make culture as tangible as possible, emphasizing what it
means for the individuals who will be affected.
 Monitor progress to adjust and refine interventions. Culture change is predictable, but
it is also inevitably messy. Changing organisational context in the right ways will certainly
reinforce the desired behaviors. Then it is crucial to monitor progress to determine if the
desired results are actually being attained. If not, you have to adjust the interventions.
2.4 Other tips about culture change
Beyond the two approaches that have been explained about culture change, Harvard Business
Review provides a long list of tips to complement the aforementioned methodologies, and also
to understand all the factors that should be taken into account, so long as they influence the
process of culture change and its chances of success. These are the following:
Readiness to change is about arousing a sincere want for change. A leader’s admission
of vulnerability is rather likely to help others recognize and address their failings. You can’t
force people to change. You can only help them want to.
It is essential to replace negative habits with positive ones. Linking old to new habits is
far more effective than approaching them separately. Doing A instead of B simplifies the
change, rather than stopping the B habit without clear instructions of what to do instead.
Peer support and pressure foster change. One of the best ways to change human behavior
is to gather people with similar problems. Bringing employees together to discuss initiatives
creates accountability, mutual generosity, a judgment-free attitude, and increased pressure.
Sponsorship deepens commitment and sparks results. Identifying and rewarding early
adopters of the new behaviors is likely to create positive contagion. For the slower adopters of
the new behaviors it is much better to pair them with early adopters than external coaches.
Community without hierarchy is a catalyst for change. Confidence and trust tends to be
higher in the closest relationships with peers rather than formal leaders, and so the informal
relationships should be leveraged to move change forward, beyond the hierarchical leaders.
It pays to acknowledge small wins. Change management system should find ways for
employees to show and celebrate incremental achievements. Failing to create short term wins
is likely to lead the process to failure. Change effort needs to be often refilled with new energy.

Match strategy and culture. Too often executives underestimate to what extent culture
alignment is a key success factor for strategy’s effectiveness, and actually is being an obstacle
to strategy implementation. Culture, strategy and goals have to be closely interconnected.
Focus on a few critical shifts in behavior. Implementing culture change, as for any
strategy challenge, is essential to set priorities. In this case, it is convenient to identify the key
behaviors to change, prioritize them and focus only on the top priorities at first.
Honor the strengths of your existing culture. Instead of focusing only on the negative
behaviors to be changed, it is recommendable to acknowledge the cultural assets of the
organisation that do not need change, and make the change feel more like a shared evolution.
Integrate formal and informal interventions. When promoting behavior changes it is
necessary to appeal first to the emotional level (values, pride, integrity, etc.) and then to the
rational self-interest (incentives, promotion, etc.) using both formal and informal interventions.
Care about professional development. Employee commitment is more likely to be achieved
when these feel that the organisation is investing in their future by providing training and
caring for their professional development. Then they are more eager to buy into the change.
Assign clear accountabilities. Every member, starting with the executive team, should
know what change goals and initiatives he or she is responsible for. The accountabilities should
be cascaded accordingly from the leadership level to the bottom level of the organisation.
Measure and monitor cultural evolution. As well as any other aspect related to strategy
implementation, culture change progress has to be monitored, in order to identify
misalignments or need for strategic reorientation. Executives should focus on four areas:
 Business performance. Progression of the KPIs, assessing both outperformers and
underperformers, and analysing the underlying causes of the measured results.
 Critical behaviors. The extent to which the members of the organisation have changed
their behaviors according to the established priorities.
 Milestones. Level of accomplishment of the intermediate goals established in the
implementation plan, considering the priority level of each goal.
When designing cultural metrics, it is better to focus on a few critical indicators than to create
a complex system, which actually takes a great effort to develop and manage. In accordance
with the metrics system, there has to be an incentive system to reward successes and give
recognition to the best performers. Finally, don’t underestimate the power of a positive
mindset, as it has the potential to change performance by creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
2.5 Overcoming resistance to change
Changing the culture of a complex system requires a leader’s mindset at least as complex as
the system that has to be changed. In most of the cases, the change entails moving forward
towards a more complex system, which not all leaders are ready to tackle. For instance,
moving from Patriarchy to Partnership requires that Controlling leaders share power and lose
part of the control, which is the scariest thing they could do. Instead, Complying leaders have
to take on power and risks, challenging their worst fears.

As it is explained in the section “Four levels of leadership”, every type of leader has its own
challenges, and overcoming them requires a great deal of courage, humility and mindfulness,
among other attitudes. There are many reasons why cultures are difficult to change, so long as
the cultural values are deeply ingrained into the policies and practices of the organisation.
Therefore, when leaders want to implement change, not only they have to review the
organisational goals and behaviors, but also the KPIs, the professional profiles needed and the
training procedures.
Barriers to change. Throughout the change process, leaders are likely to come across many
barriers that block or deaccelerate the change progress. The main ones are the following:
 “Not-invented here” syndrome: workers mistrust the new methods that have been
developed outside and have not yet proven to be successful in their organisation. In this
regard, many may feel that “alien know-how” challenges their corporate pride, especially in
the top management levels. People believe in what they have seen to work.
 Feeling threatened: many employees may feel that they are rather likely to be part of the
problem than to be part of the solution, and so they feel threatened by change. Their natural
reaction may be to resist in group, to make it impossible, believing that the leaders are not
likely to replace them all, because it is too costly.
 Business as usual: many people are so used to operating according to certain procedures
that it is really challenging for them to change them. They have serious difficulties adapting
to new rules so long as the old ones bring them security and confidence. They are likely to
follow the inertia of the old procedures as soon as they hesitate about the new ones.
 Misunderstandings: lack of communication effectiveness is one of the most current
obstacles to implementing culture change. So long as change entails shifting to another
operating system and not just some operational changes, complexity always arouses many
questions and misalignments that expand the chances for misunderstandings.
 Different assessments: no matter how brilliant the change leaders can be, it is difficult to
prevent the employees thinking by themselves and so they have different assessments and
opinions about the problems and the solutions, the advantages and disadvantages. This is
likely to arouse discussions and at least, to slow down the change process.
Strategies to manage resistance to change. In accordance with the level of resistance,
there are some strategies to tackle it ranged from the least to the most extreme:
 Education & Communication: employees need to understand the logic of the change
effort, the reasons why they have to create change. Education and communication can be an
effective practice to convince them to buy into the change and clear misunderstandings.
 Participation & Involvement: another effective way to engage employees into the change
effort is to let them participate in the design of the process, as active players of the
challenge, instead of letting them play only a passive and reactive role.
 Facilitation & Support: beyond the mentioned strategies, manager’s coaching, mentoring
and support is likely to be necessary in many cases, to help some employees deal with their
fears and insecurities during the process. This may entail dedicating time off work with them.
 Negotiation and Agreement: when resistance is stronger, this may be tackled with a
negotiation including an incentive system to stimulate them to perform according to the
change planning. This makes them feel empowered instead of feeling obligated.
 Neutralizing resistance leaders: most organisations have some informal leaders, with a
more or less strong influential capacity on the rest of the group. Neutralizing their negative
influence on resisting change may be a solution, by convincing, relocating or firing them.

Beyond the strategies in accordance with the resistance level, it is important that the change
instructions are personalized for every type of worker, or even tailored individually in some
cases. Individuals’ performance has to be tracked and rewarded according to redesigned
metrics to sustain and stimulate the intended behaviors and focus of attention.
3. Leadership development for culture change
3.1 Four levels of leadership
Regardless of the culture they belong to, leaders develop through a series of sequential stages.
According to The Leadership Circle Profile –a reference methodological framework for
leadership development- at each progressive developmental stage, the way we manage the
self-world relationship changes, shifting the self towards a more complex and superior Inner
Operating System (IOS). With this “new operating system”, the leader is able to handle more
complexity with greater ease and efficiency. The person experiences a leap forward in
creativity, effectiveness, freedom, power, and joy, becoming capable of greater contribution.
The culture change process takes place first in the consciousness of every person. Then, every
individual influences the system to change it, and the new system encourages more people to
experience their personal leap forward. As soon as a critical mass has developed, the new
stage is achieved and consolidated, reducing significantly the chances of leaping back to the
previous stage, and setting the stage for a leap forward towards higher-order leadership level.
Therefore, the organisation performs in accordance with the level of consciousness of its
individuals. Actually, resistance to change is mostly derived from the difficulties that
individuals have in making this leap forward in consciousness. This needs coaching and
support. The four leadership stages are: egocentric, reactive, creative, and integral.
Egocentric leadership. This stage starts at the age of 8 and usually finishes at the end of the
adolescence or early adulthood. This is characterized by relating the identity with the ability to
meet ones needs, and so the social relationships are built in view of satisfying the personal
needs only. Unavoidably, the strength of egocentricity is the capacity to get the personal needs
satisfied and gain independence. So long as the egocentric are not aware about the others’
needs, they do not take these needs into account when making decisions. There is a total
absence of shared reality in this personal stage, and so the growth path consists of taking
others’ concerns into account and defining the identity co-relationally in a way that loyalty
shifts from self-loyalty to the social loyalty. Around 5% of leaders operate in this stage.
Unfortunately, some people do not fully make the leap forward to the next stage and remain
egocentric in their adulthood. The Egocentric mind is normal in adolescence, but pathology in
adulthood. Leaders with egocentric mindsets tend to be autocratic and controlling, pretending
that employees exist to serve them. This turns into an oppressive and destructive leadership.
Reactive leadership. The challenge of the Reactive Mind is to develop the ability to cooperate
with others and within organisations. Leaders at this stage build their identities from the
outside in: their self-worth is determined by their ability to meet the expectations of their
social environment. To feel successful and worthwhile they need the approval of the others,
which is based upon a set of standard cultural values.

These leaders are defined according to their capabilities, in three categories:
 Complying. They define their identity around the relationship skills, developed by leveraging
their big-hearted nature, and tend to give up too much power to be accepted.
 Controlling. This type of leader tends to use power to achieve what they want, using people
for their own profit. These leaders define themselves through their achievements.
 Protecting. These leaders build their identity upon their intellectual superiority. They are
distant in relation to others, thus limiting their capacity to influence.
By focusing on their capabilities they eventually over-use these strengths, and this excessive
use becomes a weakness and their main limitation, so long as they restrict the range of
options when dealing with any challenge. This obviously limits their leadership effectiveness.
This mindset is programmed to perpetuate the status quo, and so whenever there is a
challenge, the leader will focus on fixing the problems in a way that everything gets back to
the previous state, without making any leap forward on the model to address the root of the
problem. Further, the lack of vision makes it barely impossible to anticipate challenges and
take action accordingly, and so he or she is only moved by the reaction to the problems when
they arise, and this reaction is driven according to the standard procedures of the cultural
environment to meet the expected results of this environment.
With regards to the Egocentric style, Reactive style replaces the loyalty to the self with the
institutional loyalty. This is characterized by relationships based on loyalty and obedience, and
bureaucratic oriented hierarchies. Nowadays, however, most change efforts intend to create
leaner, flatter and engaged cultures, which require more ownership and creative accountability
at the lower levels of hierarchy. The Reactive leadership is not ready for such kind of culture
transformation, and so a higher-order mindset is needed. There comes the Creative mind. It is
estimated that about the 70% of leaders operate in the Reactive level or in transition towards
the Creative stage, so this is the kind of leader we are more likely to deal with.
Creative leadership. In the transition to the Creative Mind, the leader opens the mind by
leaving old assumptions behind and exploring the inner self in search of a more authentic
identity in connection with the soul. In this stage, leaders analyse the values they are willing to
stand for and reflect upon the purposes they want to strive for, depicting a new vision of who
they want to become and how they want to contribute to achieve these purposes with their
leadership. The definition of the new self is configured from the inside out. In this stage, action
is no longer driven by the social standards but by a sense of inner purpose, developing
creativity, feeling more freedom and motivated by fulfillment rather than for appreciation.
The Creative leader is driven by self-expression and cooperation, encouraging others to follow
the same development path, developing new and better leaders within the organisation. This
leadership style is characterized by many new competencies, classified into five categories:
 Achieving, the ability to envision and attain results
 Systems awareness, the capability to design organisational systems for higher performance
 Authenticity, the willingness to act with integrity to tell the truth even when it is risky
 Self-Awareness, balance, composure, emotional intelligence, and ongoing development
 Relating, the capability to relate well to others, build teams, collaborate, and develop people.
The Creative stage is the first level –within the TLCP framework- from which it is possible to
create lean, engaged, innovative, visionary, high-fulfillment organisations and to transform the
culture in accordance with the new challenges of the XXI century.

This type of leader is mainly focused on developing new leaders by depicting the vision,
engaging others and making them realise how the vision also sets their path to fulfillment, and
empowering them to cooperate to achieve their common purposes.
Integral leadership. The stage beyond the Creative mind aspires to be a servant of the
whole stakeholder system by working on a vision that goes beyond the interests of the
organisation, to create positive impacts also for the outside stakeholders and caring for the
community’s common good to the largest extent. This type of leader develops the ability to
tackle complex systemic challenges that require a great deal of listening, dialogue, reflection
and vision for the development of complex and integrative solutions. Only 5% of leaders reach
this stage, which accounts for the best performance score of all, around the 90th
percentile.
This can only be achieved through the development of a higher consciousness capable of
envisioning larger and more complex systems where to develop multiple synergies.
The intended legacy of this kind of leader is a mission driven organisation connected to society
in order to address many of its concerns related to the environment and social challenges such
as poverty alleviation. This is a leadership style designed for advancing towards global
sustainability and common good. It is therefore the best possible leadership for developing
destinations towards the vision of Tourism 3.0.
3.2 Leadership development process
The Leadership Circle Profile is a methodological framework to assess Leadership Quality and
orientate leadership development for those who want to leap forward from one stage to
another, creating awareness of the need for the leaders’ transformation as a first step towards
culture change.
The method for leadership quality assessment and development combines peer to peer
analysis and development sessions focused on specific topics, in a way that the leader’s peers
and subordinates analyse his evolution and needs for improvement. This requires a great deal
of confidence, sincerity and commitment, along with humility on the side of the leader, to
listen to his peers and subordinates criticism on his leadership style and effectiveness. The
involvement of peers is not only to obtain a more comprehensive and realistic assessment, but
also to develop their awareness and commitment on this issue, so long as leadership is not
only the leaders’ job, but everybody’s co-responsibility in their role in order to improve the
collective leadership and the organisational culture.
At the end of every session, the leaders commit to improve a certain aspect of their leadership,
and at the following session they analyze the improvements achieved. This usually consists of
reducing a specific Reactive behavior, developing a Creative competence and also a leadership
improvement goal. All these have to be measurable to track progress, and the goals should be
also quantified to measure the level of success in each one. This method manages also to
create a culture of trust and support, so long as peers talk openly about themselves and their
coworkers, their fears, weaknesses and questions. This way, the forces constraining
cooperation and self-development are reduced to leave room for further empowerment and
development of synergies within the organisation. These sessions are usually carried out every
few months for a period of about two years.

3.3 How leadership makes the culture change
As it has been explained, the Reactive leader is programmed to perpetuate the current reality,
thriving within the established system in accordance with the established rules to meet the
standardized expectations of the cultural environment. This mindset is obviously not prepared
to drive change. In their transition to the Creative mind, they start to think by themselves,
feeling free to decide and depict their own vision and purpose. This creative capacity is what
empowers them to lead the change. In the transition from the Creative towards the Integral
mind, the leader develops the capacity to make the organisation capable of integrating all the
stakeholders, caring for the sustainability and common good to the largest extent.
According to the Leadership Circle Profile, the Change leader should follow a servant leadership
approach, listening, understanding and caring for the organisation’s members’ personal and
professional development. The culture change process consists mainly on shifting the focus on
problems, threats and reactions –Reactive- towards a focus on vision, passion, purpose and
action inspired from the Creative mind. This is implemented by identifying the main Reactive
features to reduce (Controlling, Protecting, and Complying) and developing Creative
competencies (Relating, Self-Awareness, Authenticity, Systems Awareness, and Achieving).
This new focus consists of building relationships and making the others realize that we have to
work as a team and rely on each other to overcome the coming challenges. During the leader’s
transition from the Reactive to the Creative mind, the team members can observe this
progression and get inspired to follow the same process. At the moment when there is a
critical mass of people who have experienced this transformation, it can be taken for certain
that the changes can be sustained and the Creative stage is consolidated.
On the McKinsey Quarterly issue about Developing Better Change Leaders, there are
highlighted a series of important change leadership practices:
Tie change leadership to business goals. There is no better challenge than a high-priority
business initiative for executives to develop new change leadership skills. This is a way to
develop both the leaders’ and the organisation’s capabilities at the same time.
Master personal behavior change. It is necessary for leaders to understand how their
mindset and behaviors can propel or hinder the culture change process. Their mindset and
behavior are essential to influencing the organisation members.
Show highly visible sponsorship. Most of the successful organisational transformations
have had sponsors who were highly active and visible in their role to build alignment among
other leaders on the change effort and support them along the journey.
Create networks of change agents. This is to gather a representative share of all types of
stakeholders that are affected by the change process, in order to obtain insights from all
players and engage them in the process, to make it more comprehensive.
Involve employees in the transformation journey. Team members’ engagement has to be
achieved first through the emotional appeal to effectively arouse their will. Only then the
intellectual arguments that appeal to their rationality can be assumed.
3.4 Developing internal leadership talent
The development of the future leaders should begin at present. As a part of the vision and
duty of Creative leaders, the development of young leaders is a must have requirement to
ensure the models’ sustainability and adaptation to the environment’s changes.

Organisations have to change their leadership talent sourcing strategy, by focusing their
efforts on developing talent within the organisation rather than head hunting in the market.
This can be done through the deployment of leadership development programs, which have
proved to bring in many advantages:
Boost of the employee engagement. According to 90% of leaders, employee engagement
has a positive influence on business success, but 75% of the organisations have no
engagement plan or strategy. Development programs provide the employees the opportunity
to leap forward to a better version of themselves and find a more meaningful and fulfilling
professional life. Make sure to appropriately define the program goals.
Increase of the employee performance. As it happens with all professional development
programs, they prepare employees to bring more value to the organisation and therefore
increase their performance. Investing in the human resources development is also very likely
to favour their retention, so long as they feel that they are in an organisation where they can
grow professionally and develop their potential.
Ensure the business sustainability. Developing internal talent is not only more profitable
than sourcing it outside, but it also ensures that only those professionals that share the
organisation values will be its future leaders. Further, the availability of many prepared leaders
facilitates a natural selection for the best leaders to thrive and take the top leadership
positions. Therefore, it is not only an investment to boost profitability, but also to reduce risk.
4. Fostering collaboration, innovation, and engagement
In the case of destinations willing to embrace the principles of Tourism 3.0, the main behaviors
to foster within the culture change effort are collaboration, innovation, and engagement.
4.1 Building a culture of collaboration
Recent research in psychology, sociology, and experimental economics suggests that people
behave far more cooperatively than it is usually assumed. During experiments on cooperative
behavior, only 30% behave selfishly, whereas 50% systematically and predictably behave
cooperatively. Some of them cooperate conditionally, treating others in the same manner as
they are treated, but there is never a majority of people consistently behaving selfishly.
Further, Neuroscience also shows that a reward circuit is triggered in our brains when we
cooperate with one another, and that provides a scientific basis for saying that at least some
people want to cooperate, given a choice, because it feels good.
These findings suggest that instead of controlling and setting individual achievement based
incentives to motivate people, companies should use systems that rely on engagement and a
sense of common purpose. Several levers can help executives build cooperative systems:
encouraging communication, ensuring authentic framing, fostering empathy and solidarity,
guaranteeing fairness and morality, using rewards and punishments that appeal to intrinsic
motivations, relying on reputation and reciprocity, and ensuring flexibility.

The majority of human beings are more willing to be cooperative, trustworthy, and generous
than the dominant model has permitted us to assume. If we recognize that, we can build
efficient systems by relying on our better selves rather than optimizing for our worst.
Based upon these assumptions, destinations 3.0 can easily build a culture of collaboration by:
 Inspiring them with a vision of change that is beyond their individual capacity to bring about
 Convincing them that the other collaborators are necessary to overcome the challenge
 Preventing any participant from benefiting unfairly from others’ efforts, balancing the rewards
 Cultivating good relationships among participants through informal gatherings and activities
The success of a collaborative community requires four organizational efforts:
 Defining and building a shared purpose articulates how the group sets itself apart from
competitors and the value it intends to bring to its customers and the society. This should be
agreed upon consultation of members to ensure that they all feel involved in it.
 Cultivating an ethic of contribution is about fostering a set of values that rewards people who
prioritize the advance towards the common purpose over their own.
 Developing processes that enable people to work together in flexible but disciplined projects.
Protocols should be written and revised with the contribution of people involved in the task.
 Creating an infrastructure in which collaboration is valued and rewarded, a platform that
centralizes all generated knowledge applicable to various projects, where it is possible to
assess everybody’s contribution, working as reputation scorecard to reward contributors.
To transform these organisational efforts into results, it is essential to provide a framework for
collaboration allowing the connection between people based on what they know and in the
context of the innovation challenges at hand. This also means giving employees tools to rapidly
identify subject matter experts.
According to Harvard, there are 7 key factors to create a successful cooperative system:
 Communication is an essential component for collaboration, so the system should facilitate
communication among participants by all possible means.
 Framing and authenticity. Framing a collaborative practice will help in engaging the
participants at the beginning, but it will require authenticity to keep them committed.
 Empathy and solidarity. As long as we feel socially linked to our community, we are more
likely to cooperate sacrificing our interest for the group’s benefit.
 Fairness and morality. People want to engage in what is morally correct, for which the
main set of values should be defined.
 Rewards and penalties. Incentive systems should be aligned with the inner motivations of
participants rather than material rewards only. It should be social, rewarding and fun.
 Reputation and reciprocity. A very powerful motivator is the expectation for reciprocity,
which however may lead to corruption. Reputation is the best tool to avoid corruption.
 Diversity. Cooperative systems need to consider motivation drivers other than money. So
long as innovators have various motivations, incentive systems should integrate such variety.
A key success factor for building a culture of collaboration is to have collaborative leaders.
These leaders ask for the others’ opinions, make them feel empowered, encourage
contribution, are capable of managing egos, care about keeping high trust levels, and share
credit with all contributors. These leaders also have strong skills in many areas:
 Mission & goal orientation: defining and communicating the mission and common goals
aligns all stakeholders in the right direction, reducing friction between functional teams.

 Connectors: connecting the core group of stakeholders to other outsider agents expands the
network of potential collaborators and opens their mind to new ideas and opportunities.
 Information sharing: leaders should share their knowledge to guide their peers in taking
leadership roles by teaching and mentoring them into the collaborative leadership culture.
 Fostering understanding: so long as collaborative success depends on trust, leaders have
to show understanding of their partners’ goals in order to bring their goals into alignment.
 Talent attraction: recruiting and mixing people from diverse backgrounds and origins has
been proved to generate great results in terms of innovation, so long as they are well led.
 Collaborative role modelling: walking their talk and setting the right indicators and
incentives, top leaders are those who ultimately create the corporate culture.
 Empower other leaders: leaders should feel comfortable with letting others take their role
when appropriate, so as to let them take ownership and thus increase their commitment.
 Strong hand: showing a strong hand to set direction and leap forward when progression is
stuck in the search for consensus or lack of prioritization.
 Enterprise perspective: having a sound understanding of the overall corporate strategy
and how the joint work they are leading aligns with that strategy.
 Cross-functional perspective: understanding the needs, goals, indicators and incentives of
the different areas, so as to align competing priorities within the operating model.
 Customer perspective: beyond knowing the customers’ needs and motivations, managing
to keep the team focused in enhancing the overall customer experience.
 Self-management: being patient and exhibiting self-control when challenged, without
taking disagreements personally.
 Good listeners: managing to listen objectively and respectfully to many opinions, and
empathizing with peers with different perspective.
 Matrix influence: communicating effectively with different stakeholders and gaining their
support on collaborative projects.
When looking for collaborative leaders, organisations should evaluate the following capabilities:
 Attaining results by influencing rather than directing
 Sharing ownership of the achievements, sharing also credit and rewards
 Delegating roles and letting others deliver results
 Motivating groups whose members do not share the same viewpoints
 Making and implementing decisions in a collaborative way
 Getting results without having direct control over people or resources
4.2 Building a culture of innovation
Managers and employees broadly agree about the values and behaviors that foster innovation.
In accordance with our research, the top attitudes are openness to new ideas and a willingness
to experiment and take risks. In an innovative culture, people know that their ideas are valued
and believe that it is safe to express them and act on those ideas, and to learn from failure.
Leaders reinforce this state of mind by involving employees in decisions that matter to them.
It is broadly thought as well that organisations usually have the right talent or most of what
they need, but that the corporate culture is the main inhibitor that prevents them from
innovating. Defining and creating the right kind of culture is therefore a must to increase the
prospects for successful and sustained innovation.

The top two motivators that promote innovation within an organization are strong leaders
who encourage and protect it, and top executives who spend their time actively
managing and driving it. Further, an innovation friendly organisation should rather have a
horizontal hierarchy, allowing all employees and partners to easily access leaders, who are to
inspire and influence them through role modelling as disruptive innovators to open their
mindsets towards a new set of attitudes:
 Questioning by allowing them to challenge the usual assumptions and the status quo to
consider new possibilities: What has changed with our stakeholders, or the world at large?
What assumptions are we still making about our business that may no longer be valid”?
 Observing how things work in other kinds of businesses, which opens your mind to new
possibilities. It also enables you to spot new patterns and connections that others might not
see – a critical factor for successful innovation.
 Networking and permitting to gain radically different perspectives from individuals with
diverse industry or cultural backgrounds. Connecting with different realities is critical to open
one’s mindset, and this is a necessary step towards fostering an innovative culture.
 Experimenting and testing new ideas. Resisting time pressure for quick solutions is the first
step, so it is better to think about new solutions before time is pressing. Once the underlying
assumptions are challenged, it’s time to try new combinations and procedures.
 Associational Thinking— drawing connections between questions, problems, or ideas from
unrelated fields—is triggered by questioning, observing, networking, and experimenting, and
is the catalyst for creativity.
To make innovation thrive, leaders have to be committed, walk their talk, encourage risk-
taking and unconventional thinking, and push people to explore beyond their comfort zone.
The leaders’ behavior is the main key success factor in the development of a new culture, as
they shape others’ behaviors. Many strategies can contribute in building an innovative culture:
 Embracing innovation at the leadership level. Assume that innovation is a key driver of
the corporate strategy that needs to be fostered throughout the organisation. Reflect on
attitudes to promote or to change for the leaders to engage management levels.
 Identifying new potential leaders. Look for individuals who already act, to some extent,
as network brokers and improve their coaching and leadership skills so they can further
improve the performance of other people involved in innovation tasks. Give them recognition
and further empowerment to lead innovation projects to set an example for the rest.
 Creating opportunities for quick success. Especially at the beginning, it is good to have
some innovation projects which are likely to be successful in the short term, so as to make
people see positive results and boost engagement. A first positive experience is critical to get
them involved in an innovative culture.
 Providing a sense of empowerment. Everybody needs to know that it is encouraged to
question current practices and to bring in fresh new ideas, for which they are to be rewarded.
Ultimately, listening to a wider range of insights than you normally hear is the key to
promoting original thinking. Everybody’s contribution should be welcome.
 Defining the innovation goals and strategy. Choose the innovation that drives growth
and helps meet strategic objectives, communicating clearly the expected outcomes. When
senior executives ask for innovation in the gathering of consumer insights, the delivery of
services, or the consumer experience, they tell employees the type of innovation they expect.
 Setting innovation performance metrics. Performance indicators should encompass
mainly financial and behavioral metrics. They can also set metrics to foster outsourcing ideas,
like requiring a minimum of ideas from outer sources or other innovation friendly behaviors.

 Designing innovation networks. Since new ideas spur more new ideas, networks generate
a cycle of innovation. By focusing on getting the most from innovation networks, leaders can
therefore capture more value from existing resources. Decentralizing networks enhances
collaboration and performance for the innovation challenges.
 Creating a culture of originality. Many people are capable of creating new ideas, although
they need the right environment to do so. By giving employees opportunities and incentives
to generate new ideas and setting a meritocratic system, considering the top performers’
opinion for the evaluation of new ideas, organisations boost their innovation performance.
 Cultivating cohesion and dissent. Make dissent one of your organisation’s core values.
Create an environment where people can openly share critical opinions and are respected for
doing so. Despite sounding contradictory, a combination of the two is what brings novel ideas
to the table while keeping enough harmony in the organisation to facilitate cooperation.
 Prioritizing organisational values. Give people a framework for choosing between
conflicting opinions and allowing the best ideas to win out. Values need to be rank-ordered
so that when employees face choices between competing options, they know what goes first.
 Leveraging incoming talent. Empower and encourage new hires to challenge “the
company way”, so as to bring a new perspective. Their experience may bring in new ideas
and approaches, and also contribute to broaden other employees’ mind. It is interesting to
hire talent coming not only from competitors but also from other innovative industries.
 Mentoring participants to broaden their mind. Innovative thinking requires open mindset
to start. This is not only necessary for the innovators themselves, but also for the rest of the
organisation, to prevent them from becoming innovation anti-champions and sabotage
innovation efforts. This mentoring is to make them consider innovation positive for them too.
 Educating in the tolerance to failure. Embracing failure is an unavoidable step to succeed
in any venture, and so it is for the innovation efforts. Many cultures regard failure as a
shameful fact in the performance track record, but organisations focused on and successful
with their innovation efforts embrace failure as a natural part of the process.
 Creating an incentive system. This is a key strategy to creating trust and engagement. It
should not only reward all participants according to their contribution, but also create a
framework to build contributors’ reputation, which is eventually taken into account when
choosing the appropriate team members for certain projects or to decide upon promotions.
 Manage innovation inhibitors. Fear of failure, vertical hierarchy, mistrust and fearful
environment, rewarding short-term performance over long-term oriented plans, closeness to
new approaches are –among others- cultural attributes that prevent innovation from thriving.
Incentive systems oriented towards these behaviors are usually one of the main inhibitors.
Beyond the strategies to create a culture of innovation, leaders need to bear in mind that the
key mindsets to build such culture are trust and engagement. As Steven Covey noted,
“trust is not some soft, illusive quality that you either have or you don’t; rather, trust is a
pragmatic, tangible, actionable asset that you can create –much faster than you probably think
possible”. Developing and nurturing trust within your organisation is likely to lead to more
efficiency, improved teamwork and a better work environment. There are many courses of
action that may contribute to building trust among the members of the organisation:
 Demonstrate trust through employee empowerment. Articulating the corporate values
is necessary, but consistently living those values by walking your talk is what actually builds
trust. Empowering employees is an actionable and impactful way to show your trust in them.

 Commit to transparency and communication. Honest and open communication also
helps in building trust. Be sure that your organisation has an effective way to share
information with employees and be transparent with them as well when they demand it.
 Create systems for failure. You want your employees to be active and take initiative. So
long as failures are unavoidable at some point, it is important that those who take initiative
do not fear it, but rather take the opportunity to learn from every failure to leap forward.
Apart from trust, engagement is another key mindset to develop in order to reach high
performance, both in terms of innovation outcomes and in the overall results.
4.3 Fostering engagement and high performance
Engagement comes naturally from motivation, which has to be sustained by leaders through
trust, fair rewards, mission alignment and empowerment to develop new ideas and initiatives.
All together creates not only loyalty and commitment, but also engagement, so long as the
organisation members have or develop a certain passion for what they do. These ingredients
combined are the key elements of a high-performance culture. Performance-based cultures
unify employees in a way that their relationships overcome hierarchical or geographical
distance, making them feel and behave like within a family.
Commitment makes employees behave more like business owners, showing accountability and
taking personal responsibility for the overall performance and not just their area. A high-
performance culture has to be aligned with strategy. Such cultures usually share two features:
 Behaviors related to high engagement. Employees are committed to their work and
purpose of the organization, focused on ambitious results regardless of the effort needed.
 Behaviors that align with the organisation’s strategy. The way work gets done
promotes the organisation’s mission, goals and the strategy designed to realize them.
One of the key ingredients to boost engagement and high performance is passion for the work
and for the organisation. There are many ways to build passion within the organisation:
Spotting Passion from the outset. Identifying enthusiastic professionals, right in the
recruitment process is a first step to nurture the organisation with the necessary passion.
These may be spotted through their initiatives in getting a position within the organisation, the
way they talk about their job and their vision on their future job, the questions they ask, etc.
Leaders inspiring passion. So long as the leaders’ behavior shapes most of the employees’
behaviors, senior executives should be the first ones who convey passion to their younger
peers. A good way to help them in creating an emotional connection between the brand and
the team members is by telling stories about how the brand promise can be delivered.
Workspace that inspires passion. Despite the need for individual work spaces, it is also
convenient to have open spaces that favour collaboration and let employees help each other
with brainstorming and getting past problems even if everyone is working on different
projects. All rooms should be bright and colorful with natural or ambient lighting.
Passion for the company. The organisation can inspire passion in its members mainly
through its mission. As in the case of destinations 3.0, triple bottomed business models,
focusing not only on financial goals, but also on social and environmental ones are likely to
engage and inspire passion in their employees, so long as they address their concerns.

Beyond high performance, one of the key benefits of employee engagement is turning them
into brand ambassadors. Strong brands are not only created by marketing departments. They
need the cooperation of the organisation’s employees to deliver the brand promise effectively,
and employees are those who hold the highest public trust, above Public Relations department
or company leaders. Therefore, employees are like the first clients to be convinced, and the
best way to gain their buy-in is to care about their concerns, right in the mission definition: not
only their personal growth, but also the social and environmental challenges of the community.
Transforming employees into brand ambassadors may be achieved through these three steps:
1. Promote Self Discovery & Personal Branding. When the employees can be the best
version of themselves at work, productivity and retention increase. When they realise that
the organisation cares about their personal growth and well-being, they are likely to regard
it like their second family and engage further in the mission. Helping them discover their
strengths and integrate them into their work is essential to your team’s success.
2. Make Brand awareness a priority. Leaders have to educate their teams on the brand
values and live the brand by walking their talk, so they can learn from your example. It is
convenient to create stories that illustrate how the brand promise is delivered, not only for
the clients but also within the organisation. Stories are the best conveyors of values, so
long as they help the audience identify with the characters that represent the brand values.
3. Connect the personal and the corporate. Successful firms help employees develop their
personal brands, integrating their individual features with the corporate goals. It’s called
applied personal branding. When employees know what makes them unique, and
understand the corporate brand goals, they can apply their unique skills to achieve these
goals. Each individual needs to determine how he can deliver the corporate brand promise.
A strong brand requires employee engagement, which is driven by integrating the personal
brands of your people.
Envisioning Tourism 3.0 Ltd. invites all readers to share their opinions on the exposed visions
and methods in the blog www.envisioningtourism.com. Readers’ reviews and contributions are
very appreciated, as they help us to improve the quality of our contents as well as extending
the explanation of our visions whenever necessary. You are welcomed to participate in
depicting how Tourism 3.0 may shape the future destination models, marketing and
development strategies.
References
 Robert J. Anderson, William A. Adams. “Mastering Leadership”. Wiley, 2016.
 Joanna Barsh, Maria M. Capozzi, Jonathan Davidson. “Leadership and Innovation”. The
McKinsey Quarterly 2008 Number 1.
 Jim Hemerling and Julie Kilmann. “High-Performance Culture. Getting it, keeping it”. The
Boston Consulting Group. June 2013.
 Keith Ferrari. “Managing Change, one day at a time”. Harvard Business Review: July-August
2014, Pages 23-25.
 Adam Grant. “How to build a culture of originality”. Harvard Business Review: March 2016,
Pages 86-94.

About Envisioning Tourism 3.0 Ltd.
Envisioning Tourism 3.0 Ltd. is a consulting firm building thought leadership in
strategy innovation for tourism destinations, designing innovative business
models, intelligence and marketing systems to envision how tourism
destinations may embrace the trends labelled under “The vision of tourism
3.0”, encompassing collaborative models, open innovation, human spirit
marketing, product co-creation, storytelling and culture shift towards
innovation and collaboration, among others.
 Jon R. Katzenbach, Ilona Steffen, and Caroline Kronley. “Cultural Change that Sticks”.
Harvard Business Review: July-August 2012, Pages 110-117.
 Herminia Ibarra, Morten T.Hansen. “Are you a collaborative leader?”. Harvard Business
Review: July-August 2011, Pages 69-74.
 Yochai Benkler. “The Unselfish Gene”. Harvard Business Review: July-August 2011, Pages
77-85.
 John Abele. “Bringing minds together”. Harvard Business Review: July-August 2011, Pages
86-93.
 Laurence Prusak. “Building a collaborative Enterprise”. Harvard Business Review: July-
August 2011, Pages 95-101.
 John P. Kotter. “Essential reads for Global Readers”. Leading Change: Why transformation
efforts fail. Pages 5-13. Harvard Business Review. Special Edition. 2010

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