Embry explores the intersection of spoken word poetry and corporate change management, emphasizing the importance of empathy and understanding stakeholders’ perspectives to drive successful innovation. He also discusses common leadership blind spots, such as losing touch with frontline employees and over-relying on purely rational models rather than acknowledging human emotions during organizational shifts.
Stepping into Their Shoes
Your upcoming FEI Summit session is called, “Lessons in Change Management from a Spoken Word Poet Working in Corporate Innovation.” The innovation community, of course, grapples with a lot of uncertainty and the session is going to delve into empathy and this change management focus, which can be challenging for innovation executives. But you also add spoken word poetry to the mix and leverage that in change management.
“I joke with people all the time that I am a poetry spitting nerd that just happens to hang out in corporate America,” says Embry. “When they hear that, they ask how do those things go together and how does that fit with research and how does that fit with innovation? But there’s a lot of overlap. As a poet, I’m really trying to understand the audience and what they’re going through and the way that they’re viewing the world. Then I share a poem with them that influences them to understand, feel, and do something differently.”
Embry continues, “When I started working in corporate America, I realized it’s very similar but instead of having an audience we have stakeholders. It’s really trying to step into the shoes of our stakeholders, view things through their eyes, what are their questions, their thoughts, their fears, their concerns. If I could do that then I could create communications and interventions to get them to understand, feel, and do something. At the end of the day, the whole thesis of this entire session is understand people first and then you can move them.”
Reframing the Conversation
It’s fascinating to leverage spoken word poetry in this unique way. What do you find challenging from a poetic perspective when focusing on innovation processes and transformation. How do you turn these initiatives into successful ones? What do you feel is an example of a successful time you’ve used it?
“In my role, I’m responsible for leading all the AI initiatives across our market research organization, so all of our business units,” Embry relates. “I needed to introduce this AI tool to about 70, maybe 80 market researchers. Market researchers are a tough audience. Their entire job is asking questions and poking holes in things. I knew it would be tricky going into it. I’m probably two minutes, maybe three minutes into talking about this AI tool and the questions and the pushback start right away. There’s so much skepticism. Now normally what a lot of people would do is they would then allow that to become an argument and it would be, hey, let my rationale overcome your skepticism. It would be headbutting back and forth.”
He continues, “But I didn’t do that. I go back to this poetic, empathetic approach before I ever began talking to them, when I was preparing for this, and I really put myself in their shoes and I said if I was them and I’m a project owner and the world is asking me to move faster and I have all this pressure on me and AI swirling around, what are the questions and what are the thoughts, how am I going to be viewing the world? I knew that the skepticism would come. Instead of bumping up against it and being across from each other, I went and I stood beside them and I said you’re asking all the right questions. Right away, that lowers the defenses a little bit. I want to take this a step further. I understand my success and my job is getting us to leverage AI.”
“With that said, I never want you to blindly follow anything that I say or do. You are a market researcher, you are supposed to be objectively skeptical. That’s what I always want from you. You could see the wall coming down a little bit more. I said, let’s be honest for a minute. Qualitative research, can we all agree that that’s a great approach? Can we also agree it’s not the right tool for every situation? We know this isn’t the best tool for everything.”
“This is when I bridge over to AI,” adds Embry. “I say in the same vein, AI is not the answer for everything. This AI tool is not going to solve all of your problems. We’re going to talk about where it fits, and where it does not fit. I’m going to continue to encourage you to be objectively skeptical about these things. But the key is to be objective about it and not throw out the entire idea just because we have questions. By being able to put myself in their shoes, by being able to see the world from their eyes, by being able to write what that would look like and understand and anticipate their frustration, their questions, I was able to reframe that entire conversation and get people willing to embrace something quite a bit different than what they were used to.”
Understanding the Room
Let’s talk about some of your tactics and process. You’ll ask an innovation leader to write from someone else’s point of view, look from a different perspective. What do you find are the blind spots or the resistance points that you encounter?
“There are a few that come to mind,” Embry says. “The first one, and we need to be honest about this, is leaders may not always know the people doing the work. What I’ve experienced in my almost twenty-year career is that people move up the ladder, they lose touch with the folks on the front lines who are doing the work day in and day out. As you lose that touch, you lose that understanding of what they’re going through and what they’re doing. That’s the first blind spot. People assume that they understand and know more than they actually do.”
“That begins to take us over to this other potential area,” he says. “Oftentimes when we try to view the world from someone else’s point of view, we approach it as if that person is entirely rational, almost like a robot. And we say, well if I was in their position, here are the rational one, two, three things I would be thinking. But we know that humans are not rational. We are emotional creatures. Part of my encouragement is that we need to go deeper. It’s not just the surface level questions. It’s really to dive into the feelings. What are they afraid of? What are they nervous about? What are they super excited about? Let’s get into something a little bit rawer. If we can get people to get there then they can have a more honest assessment of what’s really going on and they can find a better way to connect with the person.”
A Different Paradigm Shift
When you have these innovation leaders going through these exercises, what’s one practice or mindset shift that you hope they take back to their teams?
“What it all boils down to is you really need to understand people to be able to move them. And so really spending the time to understand them, to look at the world through their eyes, that’s what this entire FEI session is all about,” Embry says.
How does this approach differ from traditional change management frameworks?
“In full transparency, the change management frameworks, they’re good ones. There are some really great frameworks out there,” Embry says. “In my experience, the breakdown happens when you go from ideal framework to execution. The mistake that we often make is as humans we get focused on our own goals, our own thoughts and it becomes all about how can I make you change? What do I want to achieve? My little pivot is to start from a different spot. Instead of saying what do I need to achieve, I step into their shoes. If I were them, what would I need to hear so I would understand, feel, and do something differently? That small pivot is a huge paradigm shift and will lead you to a different way of thinking every time.”
FEI Innovation Summit Spotlight: Bringing Empathy as a Practical Tool
The FEI: Innovation Summit will be held October 5-6, 2026, at The Colorado Convention Center, Denver. The summit will be co-located with TMRE.
The session, “Lessons in Change Management from a Spoken Word Poet Working in Corporate Innovation,” will be presented by Andrew Embry, Senior Director- Insights Innovation and Capabilities, Lilly MR HIT Team at Eli Lilly and Company.
Most change efforts fail not because the idea is wrong, but because no one takes the time to understand the people being asked to change. In this interactive session, spoken word poet and innovation leader Andrew Embry blends poetry and change management to make empathy a practical, actionable tool — not a soft skill. Through creative exercises like perspective-taking and writing from someone else’s point of view, you’ll learn how to intentionally shape what people think, feel, and do. Expect an engaging, slightly uncomfortable experience that challenges corporate norms, invites authenticity, and equips you with a simple practice to apply before your next initiative: understand first, then design.
Click here for more information about the FEI: Innovation Summit
