Interview with Joe Jackman
Joe Jackman is CEO of Jackman Reinvents, a business and brand transformation consultancy, speaker, and author of The Reinventionist Mindset, Learning to love change and the human know-how of doing it brilliantly.
Tell us about your background. Who are you and from where are you?
I was educated in industrial design, began my career as a designer, and eventually became a creative director. This time was when I came to understand strategy and how it impacts design and, ultimately, business outcomes. I evolved as a strategist over the years, to the point where I left consulting to become EVP of Marketing at Canada’s largest publicly-traded retailer.
As a first-time CMO, it was here I realized how truly difficult it is to bring about meaningful change in large corporations, particularly at a time when change was coming faster than ever before. I saw an opportunity to re-engineer how strategy is shaped and cohesively brought to life across channels by bringing together the essential disciplines: Research and customer insight, business analytics and strategy, brand strategy, customer experience design, and rapid activation.
The resulting model enables companies to take strategic, transformative actions much FASTER than was the case previously, and up the odds of transformational success. I founded Jackman Reinvents in 2008, and have since partnered with over 40 companies, helping to return them to growth and relevance through a rapid reinvention process.
What themes does your book explore, and what do you hope the readers will take away from it? Is there a particular feeling or experience that you wish to evoke in the reader?
The Reinventionist Mindset focuses on learning to love change and the human how of doing it brilliantly. Seeing change as a good thing, learning how to not only get comfortable with it but ‘pro athlete’ good at it, these are the key takeaways. Through behind-the-scenes stories of business transformations, from Dave & Busters to Staples and Old Navy, five principles of a human-centric approach to making change possible are revealed to the reader. It’s a must-read for anyone intent on becoming their most powerful.
What prompted you to be an author, and did you have a specific inspiration in mind? Were you influenced by a particular person, artist, or genre?
It was never my intention to become an author. In reinvention after reinvention, I simply started taking notes on what was working; the ways of thinking and behaving that caused people in tough situations to step up and get on with successfully transforming their companies. I began sharing the lessons learned — what eventually evolved into a set of principles on how to up the odds of success in transformational situations — with clients and my team.
At some point, I was encouraged to write a book on the principles and where they came from. Thus getting to the heart of what it means to become a “reinventionist,” a term I made up.
I have always been inspired by those who have challenged the status quo and taken calculated risks to change the world in one way or another. Jobs. Musk. Churchill. Chanel. Mandela. Bowie. In the business literature world, I am a fan and have been inspired by the authors Jim Collins and Malcolm Gladwell.
If you could compare your book to any other existing works, which ones would it be, and why?
The book is a synthesis of themes relevant to today’s business leaders: disruption and innovation, design thinking, and change management. Its human-centric approach, first-person storytelling narrative, and practical ‘how-to’ style make it unusual and compelling among books on business transformation.
Tell us about your latest work and what inspired you.
Having gone through the pain and challenge of a massive corporate transformation as a senior executive at a large company, I believed there must be a better way of making business change. By subsequently working closely with the leadership teams of more than 40 companies, five principles — what I collectively call the Reinventionist Mindset — emerged as the ‘secret sauce’ for getting back to growth and relevance. They are:
- Seek Insight Everywhere
- Embrace Uncertainty
- Create the Future Now
- Obsess the Outcome
- Make Momentum Together
Together, as the book reveals, they are the game-changers of change itself.
How can your readers contact you? Or buy your books?
Readers can connect with me via my website at joejackman.com or follow me on social media @thehumanhow.
The Reinventionist Mindset by Joe Jackman is available through all major booksellers, including Barnes & Noble in the US, Indigo in Canada, as well as Amazon.
I also recently launched The Reinventionists: Podcast Conversations on Change. This podcast is now available on Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player.
