This week, I’m sharing the Innovative Behaviour Stack, 10 innovative behaviours I that are vital when doing innovation capability workshops, or when designing new people product, customer and employee experiences.

In today’s email

• Why your onboarding fails before it even launches (and what to do instead)

• How to get your team out of idea mode and into delivery mode

• The #1 behaviour every People Product team overlooks

100+ Tactics to design progressive People Products

^{Want to design better products, services, and experiences for your customers and employees? Want to move faster from problem to product? The People Product OS digital deck is perfect for you, its all my tips and tricks for designing services, products Interactions and experiences for the likes of Dyson, HSBC, and TalkTalk}

The Innovative Behaviour Stack

The difference i’ve observed between companies that have great ideas and them that have great solutions… isnt how they come up with the ideas its how they behave to get them.

Getting great ideas isn’t a problem, having great behaviour is

In People Product Innovation, it’s easy to obsess over frameworks and new ways of saying the same thing. But what makes or breaks your onboarding, EVP, or internal mobility redesign is how your team behaves while building it.

I’ve spent 15+ years redesigning people products onboarding, alumni networks, growth, and hiring. The teams who deliver high-impact work? They don’t just run better sprints. They act differently. You can feel it in the room.

These are what I call The Behaviour Stack 

Ten observable behaviours that turn good ideas into people experiences that land.

This isn’t theory It’s field-tested, and it works… because I have ran this with companies from start up through to large FS and Tech around the world.

Ignition Behaviours

These behaviours create the spark. They set the tone, open the mind, and give early ideas a fighting chance.

1. Nurture: Protect fragile ideas

Most people ideas don’t fail because they’re bad. They get killed too soon.
Smart teams treat early thinking like seedlings wobbly but full of promise.
They hold back judgment, even if it breaks “the way we do things.” by applying the dream vs distil mindset discussed in The Insightful innovator.

2. Curiosity: Ask better questions, give autonomy

When curiosity is missing, teams rebrand old stuff and call it new.
Curious teams interrogate assumptions and explore what’s really going on.
If no one’s asked, “Is this even the right problem?” lately, you’ve probably stopped being curious as a team.

3. Playfulness: Let go to go further

Play opens the room. It disarms fear.
One team ran onboarding like a music festival, lanyard, playlists, headline talks. It stuck. Fun isn’t fluff. It’s emotional memory. The idea of a music festival onboarding wouldn’t have come about. If playfulness wasn't in how we design from the get-go

Exploration Behaviours

These behaviours stretch the thinking, invite new perspectives, and start to make the abstract real.

4. Novelty: Look outside your BAU world

Great teams borrow from everywhere product design, museums, theme parks.
They bring in new metaphors, new mechanics. If your idea feels familiar, it probably is. We need to do more safaris to tap into all three tiers of ideation. Adding a tinder swipe mechanism isnt innovation.

5. Apprentice Mindset: Be the newbie

You maybe heard the quote 

“In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities, and in the expert's mind, there are few”

Experts repeat what worked last time where Apprentices explore and challenge the legacy thinking by asking why, why not, how can we, why couldn’t we.
The best teams know when to switch roles. How do you know when your applying this mindset when you hear something like

“I don’t know let’s learn”

It beats “here’s best practice” every time.

6. Realness: Show, don’t slide

Ideas die in PowerPoint its a facts
Real teams prototype early, test fast even if it’s scrappy. They make the idea feel real as soon as possible. Tactical prototypes beat ideas on paper every time be buy what feels real.

Activation Behaviours

This is where momentum builds, risks are taken, and teams start making it real , together.

7. Momentum 

Keep it moving, Innovation dies in backlog the best team believe simply in test one thing, ship a rough version and get feedback.

Repeat

Good is better than perfect nearly every time

8. Courage

Real courage calls out gaps between words and actions and builds something better some time it to say what others won’t.

Some time it can sound like

• “this doesn’t feel like us”

• “Team I think we have this wrong”

• “I dont think we understand the challenge enough”

“I think we are all in group think”

No courage? No progress.

9. Commitment

Own it, even if it’s not yours
You don’t need full agreement. You need ownership.
“I didn’t suggest it, but I’ve got it.” That’s the glue. Amazon have a disagree and commitment policy… ie I disagree with what your saying but not to be a blocker I will commit on driving the solution, outcome

Culture Building

One behaviour to shape them all. The quiet architect of trust, tone, and traction.

10. Cool cues: Show people how you want them to show up

Culture isn’t your values on the wall.

It’s how people behave when the pressure’s on.

 Signalling is what leaders, facilitators, and teammates do , intentionally or not , to set the tone. If you say “be creative” but punish half-formed ideas, you’ve just signalled the opposite.

One People team I worked with did this brilliantly.

They began every sprint by co-designing “how we’ll behave” feedback styles, playfulness levels, bravery zones. It changed everything. Signalling is the difference between lip service and lived culture. Get it right, and every other behaviour stacks stronger.

One behaviour is good, The stack is better.

Each of these behaviours matters on its own.
But the real power? Comes when they stack.

• Playfulness without Courage? You’ll have fun, but no breakthroughs.

• Courage without Commitment? Ideas spark, then fizzle.

• Curiosity without Realness? You’ll spin in circles, never landing anything.

High-performing people teams layer these behaviours intentionally.
They know which ones come naturally, and which ones need nudging.

The stack becomes their default operating rhythm, baked into how they think, design, and deliver.

Self-Check: Which Behaviours Are Missing in Your Team?

Ask yourself:

• Are you still designing the same onboarding product expecting a different result (You probably need more Novelty)

• Do we prototype fast or plan endlessly? (You’re probably missing Realness and Momentum)

• Do we keep things safe and polished? (Where’s your Courage?)

• Is your team full of experts but nobody learning? (Apprentice Mindset is likely dormant)

Are your behaviours signalling creativity or fear?

Where This Stack Fits in People Product Innovation

This framework works across your entire people product lifecycle below are some blends ive found work really well, again though they should all be at play:

• Talent Acquisition & Employer Brand: Curiosity, Realness, Signalling

• Candidate Experience & Selection: Courage, Novelty, Commitment

• Employee Onboarding: Nurture, Playfulness, Momentum

• Growth & Development: Apprentice Mindset, Realness, Curiosity

• Turnover & Reengagement: Courage, Commitment, Novelty

• Alumni Experience: Signalling, Momentum, Playfulness

• EVP Design: Realness, Curiosity, Signalling

Whether you’re fixing something broken or building something bold , this stack gives you a behavioural blueprint for doing better work, together.

I use this stack to build innovation capability and people product in HR, EX, and People teams especially when they’re designing onboarding, EVP, or end-to-end people journeys.

If you’re thinking, “This is what we need but don’t know how to apply it internally, then lets chat via a reply here or a DM on LinkedIn

Thanks for reading if you’ve got thoughts to share just hit reply I always enjoy hearing from you Speak soon, Danny

🙋‍♂️ About the Author

I’m Danny Seals. I help teams design employee and customer experiences people actually remember want and need

For the last 15+ years, I’ve blended design thinking, service design, innovation strategy, and behaviour change to help organisations rethink how they work, what they offer, and how they show up.

I’ve led projects like launching a People Experience Lab in a bank, redesigning EVP for a global brand, building new HR strategies, and running capability sprints that stick.

You get the experience of a big agency without the price tag, the fluff, or the ten layers of sign-off.