Our sponsor this month is Imagine H2O so our brains are hooked on all things innovation. In his Words on Water podcast interview, Vice President of Programming for Imagine H2O, Tom Ferguson said that innovation can be as simple as a mindset change and that at its heart, it’s a decision to look at the world through a different prism. This instantly reminded us of Kathy Nguyen and her presentation at the 2018 Water Smart Innovation conference. Kathy spoke about how she dramatically shifted the public buy-in of her water conservation program by shifting her mindset and approaching conservation through the prism of her customers. In this episode, we chat about that very shift and why we think it’s an important message for young professionals to hear, as well as anyone that wears their passion for what they do on their sleeve. We also talk about why everyone should have a mentor that scares the crap out of them, why the adage “the way we’ve always done it” kills the culture of creativity and innovation in our organizations that retain the next gen and why if you manage customer service staff that it’s your job to make sure every other manager understands the value your employees bring to the entire organization.