Making Knowledge Actionable: Three Key Translation Moments

Leaders regularly experience pressure to move innovation and change initiatives through their organizations. They face the challenge of transforming organizational changes and innovations from ideas into sustained behavior. In this commentary, I argue that successful implementation requires leaders to engage in a translation process that contains three key translation “moments”. The challenges presented by these translation moments are magnified by the difficulty leaders often have in shifting from one moment to the next. Techniques for handling each translation moment are discussed.