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Imagine It Forward: Courage, Creativity, and the Power of Change
| Title | Imagine It Forward: Courage, Creativity, and the Power of Change |
| Writer | |
| Date | 2025-07-03 21:49:53 |
| Type | |
| Link | Listen Read |
Desciption
FROM ONE OF TODAY'S FOREMOST INNOVATION LEADERS, AN INSPIRING, PERSONAL APPROACH TO MASTERING CHANGE IN THE FACE OF UNCERTAINTY.NAMED A 2018 BEST BUSINESS BOOK PICK BY FAST COMPANY AND WIRED UK. Confronting change is incredibly hard, both organizationally and personally. People become resistant. They are afraid. Yet the pace of change in our world will never be slower than it is right now, says Beth Comstock, the former Vice Chair and head of marketing and innovation at GE. Imagine It Forward is an inspiring, fresh, candid, and deeply personal book about how tograpple with the challenges to change we face every day.It is a different kind of narrative, a big picture book that combines Comstock’s personal story in leading change with vital lessons on overcoming the inevitable roadblocks. One of the most successful women in business, Comstock shares her own transformation story from introverted publicist to GE’s first woman Vice Chair, and her hard-won lessons in shifting GE, a 125 year old American institution, toward a new digital future and a more innovative culture. As the woman who initiated GE's Ecomagination clean-energy and its (and NBC’s) digital transformations, Comstock challenged a global organization to not wait for perfection, but to seek out emerging trends, embrace smart risks and test ideas boldly, and often. She shows how each one of us can become a “change maker” by leading with imagination. “Ideas are rarely the problem,” writes Comstock. “What holds all of us back, really—is fear. It’s the attachment to the old, to ‘What We Know.’” As Comstock makes clear, transforming the mindset and culture of a company is messy. There is no easy checklist. It is fraught with uncertainty, tension and too often failure. It calls for the courage to defy convention, go around corporate gatekeepers when necessary, and reinvent what is possible. For all those looking to spearhead change in their companies and careers, and reinvent “the way things are done,” Imagine It Forward masterfully points the way. Read more
Review
This reads like a whole new genre.Candid, personal, and bombast-free, “Imagine it Forward” is a change-agent’s true story from the inner sanctums of a few of the world’s biggest pre-digital companies. And whether or not they admit it, all companies “of a certain age” are writhing as they sort out how to compete in this transformational era.For a decade, Reality TV and social media have been dissolving the polished exteriors that hid the truths inside so many of our institutions, including our families. In “Imagine it Forward,” Beth (and you’ll want to call her Beth too) brings that new, sometimes uncomfortable, transparency to the inner workings of the Fortune 100 C-Suite.The truth needed to be personal, because what is change in a 100-year-old company but individual intra-preneurs battling legions of executives in cultures built for yesterday? And these days, it’s a battle to the death. (See rest of business books) The bureaucrats have the incumbent’s advantages— wallet, Street, inertia, but all the entrepreneurs have is each other and The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. And sometimes the CEO’s support. (The value of which is greatly overestimated. As Martin Sorrell remarked; “You think I say something and my people do it?”)If the change agents are gifted, like Beth, they have gobs of vision and grit and have grown a very thick skin. But that still doesn’t guarantee success. Business has faced challenging eras before—but not the likes of this one. Exponential accelerators in tech and globalization are rapidly converging. The Fortune 100 old-growth forest is being culled quarterly. As are the good jobs.“Change Agents,” as Beth characterizes her people, are the only hope. They take constant arrows, front and back, and like Beth, have probably closed their doors and cried. For all those women and men struggling for change— often in isolation without role models, sufficient support or recognition— this book is a gold mine of advice and a triple espresso of encouragement. Read it and please, carry on!“Imagine it Forward” is deceiving because it’s a good, enjoyable read, but it’s also the most powerful, instructive user’s manual on Change Management I’ve read--specifically because it’s so authentic. Changing established cultures is by necessity personal and conflict-ridden and it’s time to admit out loud.Of course change agents should read this book— but really, so should the rest of the folks in legacy companies who wittingly or unwittingly create the punishing headwinds that make adapting too hard. Everyone needs to be a change agent or change advocate if our companies are going to thrive or even survive.I hope this book encourages other practitioners to come forward with candid stories and advice. I hope journalists dig under the PR to the real challenges in these companies, and I hope everyone starts to appreciate the importance and difficulty, particularly around culture, that’s been silently holding back all the talent and imagination locked in many fine organizations.It seems like everybody in New York, including me, knows Beth. She is active in social media, conferences, and has a seemingly limitless capacity to help almost everyone who asks her. Still, I was unaware of so many of her accomplishments and her personal challenges. I’m especially grateful for her rare confidence and her generosity. She let people see behind the curtain and acquire a bit more of their own confidence and thick skin—knowing that even the biggest and the best are also human.
