AS BOOZ ALLEN HAMILTON REFLECTS on its hundred-year history and makes plans for its future, I've been helping to launch a new capability focused on identifying and developing opportunities for breakthrough innovation by gaining deeper insight into "human needs"—unmet psychological, emotional, and functional needs that lie beneath the surface. Based on the lessons we learned about building a team culture that gets insights from empathy, builds on personal strengths, and encourages openness to new ideas, I led an grassroots project to share that culture with the rest of the company.
Drawing from the sticky notes we used at the end of every day to capture our emerging mindset, I created the "pirate" logo (lightbulb representing innovation, sharpies referencing a favorite tool of iterative ideation and prototyping) and a series of printable posters, spreading them through our internal social network (Yammer) under the hashtag #shift. I meant it as an employee-driven manifesto, a friendly but provocative call for people-centered culture change. I intentionally kept the design simple to match the low-fidelity, renegade feel and allow any employee to make their own.
It's been more successful than we expected: some have created and shared their own posters, some have posted them at their client offices, some have used them for their computer desktop wallpaper, some have adopted the #shift logo for their ID badge, many have engaged in thoughtful culture-change conversations on Yammer (tagging them with #shift), and now, thanks to colleague John Scardino, there's a "Shift" eBook in the works, written by people who have taken up the cause for themselves.
