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Every change starts with a grievance. Theres things people dont like and they want them to be different. At any given time in any organization, there are things that arent working as well as they should. Employee turnover is too high, sales are down, and customers are complaining. For whatever reason, things need to change. Smart leaders know that they cant just stay mired in grievance. If youre only focusing on problems, youll get caught up in an endless to-do list. It is no longer enough to simply plan and direct action, we must inspire and empower belief and that means creating an aspirational vision that can form the basis of a shared purpose. Yet you cant just jump to the vision all at once. In the beginning, the idea is flawed and unproven, the organization isnt ready for it, and it is bound to incur visceral resistance in some quarters. Early on, ideas need to be protected and nurtured until they begin to gain some traction. As I explained in Cascades, the best way to do that is with a Keystone Change. 1. Define the vision A strategy is never created on an empty canvas. While we can make rational assessments about whether we want to pursue a strategy based on low costs, differentiation, or an attractive niche. We can, through investments and divestments, fill in missing pieces on a PowerPoint chart, but the fate of a strategy ultimately hinges on personality and ambition. The success of Apple cant be separated from Steve Jobss ambition to weave technology and design into products that were insanely great. Southwests dominance in the travel industry is a direct consequence of Herb Kellehers mission of being THE low cost airline, which drove everything he did from the planes he bought to which routes he competed on. Vision is inherently aspirational. It shouldnt be reduced to metrics or specific objectives. Martin Luther King Jr.s vision wasnt simply about voting rightsit was about creating a Beloved Community. Microsofts original mission was a computer on every desk and on every home, but when that was attained, it needed to shift to the broader vision to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. When we work with organizations in one of our ChangeOS workshops, we always start by getting the team focused on the initial grievanceor the problem to be solved. Then we ask participants to imagine waving a magic wand: what would the world look like if that problem were fully resolved? That picture is the vision. Yet if your vision is sufficiently aspirational, you cant get there in just one step and thats where the Keystone Change comes in. A good Keystone Change has a clear and tangible goal, usually with a metric attached. It involves multiple stakeholders and paves the way for future change. Once you achieve a successful Keystone Change, youll be well on your way. 2. Start with a majority One of the most common mistakes change leaders make is to try to start with a bang. They come up with a snappy slogan, create a sense of urgency and excitement, then set up a huge launch event to generate energy around the initiative, get off to a fast start, build momentum, and create a sense of inevitability around the initiative. But that approach rarely worksand often backfires. Every new idea starts out weak and vulnerable. While a launch event may create excitement among some, its also likely to trigger resistance before the initiative has any chance to gain traction. Any time you set out to make an impact there will always be some who will work to undermine you in ways that are dishonest, underhanded, and deceptive. So instead of trying to create and maintain the energy yourself, go to where the energy is. Find people who are already enthusiastic and want the initiative to work. Keystone Changes are done with allies. You should never have to convince anyone about a Keystone Change. The urge to persuade is a red flag. It means you either have the wrong change or the wrong people. Thats why when we seek to bring about large-scale change, its important to start with a majority. Once you are in the minority you will get immediate pushback. The secret is that you get to choose where you start. It might be a small, local majority of, say, three people in a room of five. As long as supporters outnumber detractors, you can move forward and gain traction. As I explained in Harvard Business Review, you dont need to convince everyone at once and you shouldnt try. Start with a core team thats already onboard. 3. Iterate towards a successful solution One of the hardest parts of change is accepting that your ideas can only be validated going forward, never backward. You never know if you have the right idea until its tested in the real world and, even then, there could be some confounding factor you may be missing. The truth is that your initial idea is always wrong. Sometimes its off by a little and sometimes its off by a lot. But make no mistake, its always wrong. Thats why it helps to take a Bayesian approach. Instead of clinging to the notion of a right idea, focus on making it less wrong over time. As Rita Gunther McGrath has put it, its no longer as important to learn to plan as it is to plan to learn. We need to be more iterative, see what works, and change course as needed. This is also why its critical to start with a core team thats already on board. Theyll help you push through early setbacks and learn from inevitable failures. If you expect to iterate, then failure is just data. Your job is to collect enough of it to uncover the solution that truly moves things forward. And once you get it right, you have something to build on. We know from decades of evidence that the tipping point for change is typically between 10% and 20% participation. Once you have a proven model, you can start building to that. 4. Scale with a co-optable resource Traditional change management practices focus on communication and traininga holdover from an earlier age, when leaders had more cntrol and the goal was simply to inform and coordinate. Today, however, most change initiatives involve behaviorwhat people think and do every dayand that naturally triggers resistance. To create genuine transformation, we need to get out of the business of selling ideas and into the business of selling success. Thats what a Keystone Changea clear and tangible goal, involving stakeholders that paves the way for future changeallows you to do. The next step is to design a Co-optable Resource that will help empower people to spread the idea themselves. For example, in the ’80s and ’90s, Don Berwick pioneered quality practices in healthcare and founded the Institute for Healthcare Improvement to advance them. Despite clear results, adoption laggeduntil the 100,000 Lives Campaign equipped hospital allies with change kits and how-to guides. That broke the logjam, and quality practices began to take hold. Thats the model for successfully implementing large-scale change: start with a core team of enthusiasts that will help you iterate and achieve a Keystone Change. Once youve gained some traction, help people spread the idea through peer networks by supplying them with a Co-optable Resource so that they can bring in others, who can bring in others still. In the final analysis, transformational change is driven by small groups, loosely connected, but united by a shared purpose. It all starts with a Keystone Change.
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E-Commerce
Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. For much of the past three years, Lennar, Americas second-largest homebuilder, has pursued an aggressive strategy: prioritize sales pace and market share, even if it meant slicing deeper into margins through price cuts and heavy incentives in the currently housing affordability strained market. That approach helped the company keep homes moving in softer Sun Belt markets like Florida, Texas, and Arizona. But now, after reporting its weakest gross margin since 2009, Lennar is signaling its ready to shift gears. On Fridays earnings call, co-CEO Stuart Miller told analysts that Lennar will pull back just a little bit on its sales-over-margin strategy after seeing profitability erode further in the third quarter. For Lennar, this is an opportune time to pause and let the market catch up a little bit, Miller said. Even though mortgage rates began to trend downward towards the end of the quarter, stronger sales have not yet followed. We have certainly begun to see early signs of greater customer interest . . . [but] this is just the right time for us to pull back just a little bit. The numbers show why. Lennars average selling price, net of incentives, fell to $383,000 in Q3 2025down 9.2% from the same quarter last year, and 22% below the 2022 peak of $491,000. Some of that 22% decline reflects outright price cuts or the construction of smaller homes, but much of it stems from a surge in incentive spending, particularly mortgage rate buydowns. In fact, Lennars incentives averaged 14.3% of the final sales price last quarter, the highest level since 2009, according to John Burns Research & Consulting. On a $450,000 home, that works out to more than $64,000 in concessions. Sales volume was difficult to maintain and required additional incentives in order to achieve our expected pace and to avoid building excess inventory, Miller acknowledged. The incentive-fueled push succeeded in keeping sales moving, but it came at a steep cost. Lennars gross margin slipped to 17.5% in the third quarter, also the lowest since 2009. That appears to be the line the builder doesnt want to cross. Accordingly, we’re going to begin to ease back our delivery expectations for the fourth quarter and full-year in order to relieve the pressure on sales and deliveries and help establish a floor on margin, Miller said. Florida has been one of the toughest markets. Elevated levels of unsold new and existing homesparticularly in Southwest Floridaforced Lennar into deeper discounting. On a year-over-year basis, its Eastern division, which is primarily Florida, posted the sharpest drop in average sales prices at 8.5%. Still, Miller struck a cautiously optimistic tone: Inventories have been moderating, and that has started to build a more stable environment. Looking ahead, Lennar says mortgage rates hold the key to stabilizing weaker Sun Belt markets. If the 30-year fixed can settle below 6%, the builder believes affordability will improve enough to spark stronger demand. We are optimistic that if mortgage rates approach the 6.0% level or even lower, we will soon see some firming in the market, Miller said. For now, Lennar is tempering its aggressive market-share push and refocusing on profitability. The way that I would think about what we’re doing is we’re running a marathon and partway through, we’re just taking a moment to take a breath, Miller said. That pause may not last long. With its leaner cost structure and expanded investor marketplace platform, Lennar is positioning itself to pounce once demand firms, Miller told analysts on Friday. But in the meantime, the weakness across the Sun Belt has been made clear: Home prices net of incentives, once soaring, are now down more than 20% from their peak for one of Americas biggest homebuilders.
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E-Commerce
Get your popcorn (and maybe a plate of salmon sashimi) ready: Fat Bear Week, the annual competition to crown the rotundest brown bear at Alaskas Katmai National Park, is back for its 2025 season. Since 2014, Katmai National Park has hosted a March madnessstyle competition inviting the public to vote on their favorite bear from 12 of the parks most robust residents. This year, the Fat Bear Week tournament and voting will take place September 2330, and the champion will be crowned on September 30. The competitions junior division just concluded, and its winner, 128 Jr, will join 11 other contenders in the main bracket. Heres what to know about the competition, how to watch the bears, and where to cast your ballot: What the heck is Fat Bear Week, anyway? If youve never participated in Fat Bear Week, you might be left wondering why a sizable chunk of the internet is getting amped up about livestreams of bears. The answer is that, right now, Katmai National Parks brown bears are in a state of hyperphagia, a period of time when their bodies satiation cues are dimmed in order to encourage them to bulk up as much as possible before winter. Ever since the park turned this biological process into a livestreamed competition more than a decade ago, its fostered a cult fanbase on Reddit, Twitter, and now TikTok. Last year, more than a million votes were cast in the bracket. This is my superbowl, one commenter wrote on the parks Tiktok announcement of this years season. BEST WEEK OF THE YEAR, another added. In an interview with NPR, Matt Johnson, the preserves interpretation program manager, said theres a lot for fans to look forward to this year. “This year’s salmon run was extraordinary, with salmon numbers surpassing anything seen in recent memory,” Johnson said. “As a result, the brown bears of Katmai are well-nourished and looking for other things to do besides scrapping with each other for food.” Where to watch In order to get acquainted with this years contenders, its important to see them in their natural habitat. Katmai National Parks website includes a page dedicated to various livestreams located across the park, including an underwater salmon cam, a mountain view, and a scenic waterfall perspective. How (and when) to vote During the days of the competition, voting is open from 12 to 9 p.m. ET on the parks website. Youll be shown source images of two bears, demonstrating how each contender transformed from their trimmer summer physiques to their current fall figures. Then, simply select whichever bear you think came out on top. The contenders The full Fat Bear Week bracket will be revealed later today. Currently, it seems likely that past champions including 128 Grazer (mother to the junior champion 128 Jr) and last years victor 747 will make a reappearance. Fans are also holding out for the return of beloved superstar 480 Otis, who was missing from the competition last year and has yet to be spotted in 2025. here I am, just a girl, crying for Otis once again, one commenter lamented on the parks recent TikTok sharing that Otiss whereabouts are still unknown. i have rooted for Otis every year, and even if he doesnt show up again I will still root for him. Wherever he is, a fellow fan added.
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E-Commerce
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