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Hey there, innovation champions!

Have you ever noticed how some of your best ideas come when you’re under pressure? Today I want to share a story that completely changed how I think about deadlines and creativity—and how you can harness the power of the pressure cooker to fuel innovation in your tech teams.

The Ten-Minute Song Challenge

The last time I went to music camp, I took a songwriting class. At one point, the instructor gave us a prompt and sent us off for ten minutes to write a song. We were on the hook to share whatever we had when the ten minutes were up.

“Ten minutes?” we all cried. “That’s crazy!”

And it was. Completely nuts. But here’s the thing: everyone actually came back with something.

Now, I won’t say that the verses I wrote were anything worth sharing publicly, but they were more than I’d created in a long time. And without that deadline—and, critically important, the psychological safety that had been established in the group—I guarantee most of us would have sat on that prompt for weeks. Months. Maybe forever without ever doing a thing.

The time pressure got us started.

The Two Essential Parts of Innovation

In creativity and innovation, much of the work comes down to two essential parts: starting and iterating.

In my book, The Creative Sandbox Way™, I talk about ten guideposts that lead to creative flow. Number five is “Just start. Anywhere.” Deadlines can help get you past the starting friction that can keep you stuck. From there, it’s a matter of iterating.

But here’s what I’ve learned working with tech teams: the pressure cooker environment isn’t just about getting started—it’s about creating the optimal conditions for breakthrough thinking.

When Pressure Becomes Your Innovation Ally

Think about it. How many times have you seen your team produce their most creative solutions in the final sprint before a product launch? Or watched a developer come up with an elegant workaround when the original approach hits a wall at 2 AM?

That’s not accident. That’s the pressure cooker effect in action.

When we’re under time pressure, three magical things happen:

First, perfectionism gets pushed aside. There’s no time to endlessly polish that first draft or debate every edge case. You have to move forward with what you have.

Second, overthinking gets short-circuited. You can’t spend three hours analyzing the pros and cons of every approach. You have to trust your instincts and dive in.

Third, collaboration accelerates. Suddenly, everyone’s ego takes a back seat to getting the job done. Barriers between departments dissolve. People start saying “yes, and…” instead of “but what if…”

The Create the Impossible™ Framework Under Pressure

This is where my Create the Impossible™ framework becomes absolutely essential. The three steps—Play Hard, Make Crap, and Learn Fast—are specifically designed to thrive under pressure.

Play Hard means approaching even high-stakes challenges with curiosity and joy. When your team knows they have permission to be playful, even under deadline pressure, innovation flows more freely.

Make Crap is about embracing imperfection when time is tight. Instead of getting paralyzed by the pressure to deliver something perfect, you give yourself permission to create something good enough to iterate on.

Learn Fast becomes your superpower when every moment counts. You’re not learning for learning’s sake—you’re learning to immediately apply and improve.

The Psychological Safety Factor

But here’s the crucial piece that made my music camp experience work—and what makes the difference between pressure that creates innovation and pressure that creates panic: psychological safety.

The instructor had spent the entire week building trust. We knew our “crappy” ten-minute songs wouldn’t be judged harshly. We knew everyone was in the same boat. We knew the purpose was exploration, not perfection.

Without psychological safety, deadlines create stress, not creativity.

With psychological safety, deadlines become launching pads for innovation.

Creating Your Own Innovation Pressure Cooker

So how do you create this environment for your tech teams? Here are three strategies I’ve seen work beautifully:

Strategy 1: Set Micro-Deadlines with Purpose

Instead of just having one massive project deadline, break it into smaller sprints with specific creative challenges. Give your team 30 minutes to brainstorm ten completely different approaches to a problem. Or 2 hours to build the ugliest possible prototype that demonstrates your core concept.

The key is making the deadline short enough that perfectionism doesn’t have time to kick in, but purposeful enough that the pressure drives focus.

Strategy 2: Establish Creative Ground Rules

Before the pressure cooker session begins, establish what I call “Creative Sandbox Rules.” Remind everyone that in this space, there is no wrong. Wild ideas are welcome. Building on others’ ideas is encouraged. And most importantly, volume matters more than polish.

Strategy 3: Celebrate the Iterations

At the end of each pressure cooker session, celebrate what was created—not for being perfect, but for existing. Then immediately move into iteration mode. What did we learn? What surprised us? What wants to be explored further?

This builds the learning mindset that makes future pressure cooker sessions even more productive.

The Innovation Paradox

Here’s the beautiful paradox: when you remove the pressure to create something perfect, you create the perfect conditions for innovation.

When you give teams permission to make crap under pressure, they often create gold.

When you combine tight deadlines with psychological safety and clear creative principles, you transform time constraints from creativity killers into innovation accelerators.

Your Challenge This Week

So here’s my challenge for you: Choose one project your team is working on and create a mini pressure cooker experience. Give them a tight deadline for one specific creative challenge within that project. Establish psychological safety. Apply the Create the Impossible™ framework. And see what emerges.

Remember, innovation in the pressure cooker isn’t about working faster—it’s about working with more focus, more trust, and more willingness to start before you’re ready.

The next time your team faces a tight deadline, don’t see it as a creativity killer. See it as an innovation opportunity. Because sometimes, the pressure cooker is exactly what your breakthrough idea has been waiting for.

Are you ready to turn your next deadline into an innovation launchpad?

Stay curious, stay playful, and keep creating the impossible!

I’d love to hear from you: What’s one time when pressure led to your most creative solution? Click here to let me know!

Senior Leaders: Ready to transform how your team approaches innovation under pressure? Book a complimentary Innovation Strategy Session and let’s explore how the Create the Impossible™ Framework can turn your deadlines into competitive advantages

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Hey there, innovation champions!

“I missed seeing more of you onstage today.”

Those words from my teammate hit harder than any bad review could have. We’d just finished our performance at the California Long-form Improv Festival in LA, and I knew exactly what she meant.

All weekend, I’d been diving in headfirst during workshops — volunteering immediately when teachers asked for participants, taking risks, playing big. But when it came time for our actual show on Saturday night, something shifted. Instead of taking center stage like I usually do — singing songs, embodying memorable characters, driving the narrative — I found myself shrinking to the sidelines, appearing only in tiny bit parts while my own gremlins took the wheel and drove the bus straight into the land of playing small.

What happened?

The guest players from a revered LA group had triggered my comparison trap. My “you’re not good enough” gremlins started their familiar chatter: “You can’t compete with them. Stay in the background. They’re so much better than you.”

But here’s what struck me most about this experience: it wasn’t just my internal struggle that derailed the performance. The cultural dynamics of our team that night failed us all.

This is why culture eats strategy for breakfast every single time — and why understanding the six cultural drivers of innovation isn’t just nice-to-have knowledge. It’s mission-critical for any leader who wants their team to consistently create breakthroughs instead of playing small when it matters most.

The IMPACT Framework: Six Cultural Drivers of Innovation

After working with teams at companies like Google, Meta, and Salesforce, I’ve identified six cultural elements that determine whether your team creates magic or lets their collective gremlins drive the bus. I call it the IMPACT Framework:

I: Imperfection Welcomed
M: Momentum > Meetings
P: Play Beats Pressure
A: All Voices Heard
C: Curiosity Over Certainty
T: Try, Learn, Repeat

Let me break down what happened that night through this lens — and more importantly, how you can prevent similar innovation breakdowns in your own organization.

I: Imperfection Welcomed — When Perfectionism Becomes the Enemy

That Saturday night, my perfectionist gremlins convinced me that anything less than flawless performance would be embarrassing in front of these seasoned LA performers. Sound familiar?

In high-performing teams, perfectionism masquerades as high standards, but it’s actually innovation kryptonite. When team members believe they need to have all the answers before speaking up, when they’re afraid to suggest “rough draft” ideas, when they wait until they’re 100% certain before taking action — innovation dies on the vine.

The most innovative cultures I’ve seen actively welcome messy beginnings. Leaders share their own “crappy first drafts.” Feedback gets framed as learning opportunities, not judgment sessions. Teams optimize for progress over polish.

Think about it: every breakthrough innovation in history started imperfectly. The first iPhone didn’t have copy-and-paste. Google’s original algorithm was built in a Stanford dorm room. These weren’t perfect solutions — they were perfect starting points.

M: Momentum > Meetings — The Energy Killer

Here’s a truth that might sting: your innovation process might be the thing killing innovation. When every new idea requires four meetings and three approvals, when teams spend more time discussing ideas than testing them, momentum dies.

I think about that moment on stage when I hesitated instead of jumping into a scene. In improv, hesitation kills momentum. The same is true for innovation. The magic happens in the flow state, not in the follow-up meeting.

That night, we had barely ten minutes to connect as a team — a vocal warmup, one round of “Three Things,” and then showtime. No time to build the trust and understanding that creates seamless collaboration. In organizations, I see this same pattern: teams get thrown together on projects without the relationship-building time that enables breakthrough thinking.

High-impact cultures prioritize action over endless analysis. They create rapid feedback loops. They give teams permission to experiment with small tests before convening committees. But they also understand that momentum requires foundation — you can’t skip the trust-building that enables teams to move fast together.

P: Play Beats Pressure — The Innovation Sweet Spot

Here’s the paradox: the more we wanted to create magic that night, the more pressure we felt. And pressure is creativity’s kryptonite.

Play isn’t frivolous — it’s how humans learn best and innovate fastest. When teams feel safe to explore without judgment, ideas flourish. Pressure shuts that down. Play opens it up.

Those guest players, with decades of experience performing together, were playing. They had the comfort of deep partnership. Meanwhile, I was performing under pressure — trying to prove myself worthy of sharing the stage with these LA legends.

In organizations, I see this constantly. Teams approach innovation like a high-stakes performance review instead of an experiment worth exploring. They optimize for looking smart instead of learning fast.

The most innovative cultures I work with treat ideation like play — curious, experimental, judgment-free. They understand that breakthrough thinking happens in the space between ideas, not in the pressure to have the perfect solution immediately.

A: All Voices Heard — The Guest Player Problem

My teammate was right about something else that night. Those guest players, despite their talent, had inadvertently created a dynamic where certain voices — including mine — got drowned out. In improv, the best teams actively “make each other look good” — they scan the stage to ensure everyone gets to shine.

But here’s the thing: it wasn’t entirely their fault. These players had performed together for decades. They had developed an unconscious rhythm, a shorthand, a way of playing that worked beautifully for them but inadvertently excluded newcomers.

This is psychological safety in action, and it’s the foundation of innovation culture. Research from Google’s Project Aristotle found that psychological safety was the number one predictor of team performance. But here’s what most leaders miss: psychological safety isn’t just about people feeling comfortable to speak up. It’s about creating systems that actively ensure all voices are heard and valued.

In my workshops with tech teams, I see this play out constantly. The loudest voices — often senior developers or domain experts — unconsciously dominate discussions. Long-term team members develop their own communication patterns. Meanwhile, the junior designer with a fresh perspective or the new hire who sees patterns others miss never gets the chance to contribute their breakthrough insight.

Innovation is a team sport, but only if everyone gets to play.

C: Curiosity Over Certainty — The Expert’s Paradox

Here’s where things got really interesting that night. The guest players knew their craft inside and out. They had certainty about what worked. And that certainty, while creating polished performance, also limited exploration.

Meanwhile, our out-of-town team was operating from curiosity — what would happen if we tried this? How might this scene evolve? We didn’t have the confidence of decades of partnership, but we had the openness of not knowing.

In innovation, expertise can become a double-edged sword. The more we know what works, the less likely we are to question assumptions or explore alternatives. Fixed mindsets kill innovation. Curious mindsets fuel it.

The most innovative cultures I work with maintain what Zen Buddhists call “beginner’s mind” — approaching challenges with fresh eyes, even when you’re the expert. They ask “what if?” instead of “that won’t work.” They question assumptions, especially the ones that have always been true.

T: Try, Learn, Repeat — The Missing Loop

Finally, that night revealed the power of trying, learning, and repeating — and what happens when that loop gets broken.

Our team had performed together many times before. We’d developed trust through repeated experiments — some successful, some spectacular failures, all valuable learning experiences. We had a rhythm of trying something new, discovering what worked, and building on those discoveries.

But with new people in the mix, without time to establish trust and communication patterns, that “try, learn, repeat” loop broke down. Instead of experimenting together, we fell back on individual performance modes.

This is the engine of innovation — not just trying things once, but building learning loops. Great teams don’t just experiment; they reflect, adapt, and improve constantly. They treat every project as data for the next iteration.

This connects directly to my Create the Impossible™ framework’s “Learn Fast” principle — but with a cultural twist. It’s not enough for individuals to learn fast. Your entire culture needs to be designed for rapid collective learning, shared experimentation, and building on each other’s discoveries.

The Cultural Transformation Challenge

Here’s what I want you to understand: my performance that night wasn’t just about my individual mindset. It was about cultural dynamics that either amplify or diminish our collective potential.

The same is true in your organization. You might have brilliant individuals on your team, but if your culture doesn’t actively support the six drivers of innovation, you’re leaving breakthrough ideas on the table.

Your Cultural Innovation Audit

So here’s your challenge for this week: Take an honest look at your team’s cultural drivers. Ask yourself:

• When someone shares an imperfect idea, what’s the typical response? Judgment or curiosity?
• How long does it take to go from idea to first experiment? Days or months?
• In your last brainstorming session, who spoke most? Who spoke least? Why?
• Do people feel safe being wrong in front of each other?
• Are you optimizing for certainty or discovery?
• When was the last time your team celebrated a fascinating failure?

These aren’t just feel-good questions. They’re diagnostic tools for your innovation engine.

Because here’s the bottom line: in today’s AI-accelerated world, your ability to innovate consistently isn’t just about having smart people. It’s about creating cultural conditions where smart people can do their best thinking together.

That night in LA, our team had all the talent we needed. But the cultural dynamics — the lack of psychological safety, the pressure instead of play, the individual focus instead of collective support — turned potential magic into a missed opportunity.

Don’t let that happen to your next breakthrough idea.

Ready to transform your innovation culture? Let’s start with one simple shift that can create ripple effects across your entire organization.

Pick one element from the IMPACT framework that resonates most with your current challenges. Maybe it’s creating more space for imperfection, or ensuring quieter voices get heard, or prioritizing momentum over meetings.

Try it with your team this week. Notice what shifts. And remember — the goal isn’t perfection. It’s progress toward a culture where innovation happens naturally, not accidentally.

Stay curious, stay playful, and keep creating the impossible!

I’d love to hear from you: Which element of the IMPACT Framework hit closest to home for your team? Is it the perfectionism trap, the momentum killers, or maybe the challenge of ensuring all voices are truly heard? Click here to let me know!

Senior Leaders: Ready to diagnose and transform your innovation culture using the IMPACT Framework? Book a complimentary Innovation Strategy Session and let’s explore how to turn your talented individuals into an unstoppable innovation powerhouse.

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Hey there, innovation champions!

Back when I was a professional artist, I used to meet once a month with a group of about a dozen fellow calligraphers. Some were professionals, like myself, others pursued calligraphy as an avocation.

Sara, the one who invited me to the group, had been my second-ever calligraphy teacher. And she was not only a professional, she was wildly prolific.

We had a bit of a joke in the group that Sara made 3 pieces before she had breakfast every morning. It wasn’t too far from the truth.

At the time, I was wrestling with some pretty severe creative block, so this prolific energy really baffled me. In fact, I was really envious! I wanted nothing more than to make art at the same rate as Sara, but alas, I would no sooner form the intention of making something than I would tie myself up in perfectionist paralysis knots, stuck in the comparison trap.

It took me awhile to figure out what Sara had learned long before: the key is to let go of aspiring toward perfection. I had been so wrapped up in avoiding making mediocre or “bad” work — not “living up to my potential” — that I couldn’t make a thing. What I really needed was to lower the bar.

Because, as I finally figured out (and this became something of a motto): we need the crap to fertilize the good stuff.

Nature’s Mastery of “Productive Failure”

Years later, when I started studying innovation patterns across industries, I realized that Sara had stumbled onto something that nature has been perfecting for millions of years. Nature is the ultimate innovation lab — and it operates on principles that would make most corporate boardrooms very uncomfortable.

Think about it: An oak tree produces thousands of acorns each season. Maybe 1 in 10,000 will actually become a mighty oak. By corporate standards, that’s a 99.99% failure rate. But nature doesn’t see it as failure — it sees it as a necessary part of the innovation process.

Every acorn that doesn’t sprout still serves a purpose. Some feed wildlife, others decompose and enrich the soil, and some teach the tree valuable information about timing, conditions, and placement. Nature understands something we often forget in our innovation efforts: volume leads to breakthroughs.

But here’s where it gets really interesting for us as innovation leaders.

The Three Principles Nature Uses for Breakthrough Innovation

Nature operates on what I now recognize as the three core principles of my Create the Impossible™ framework — and understanding how nature applies these can revolutionize how your teams approach innovation.

Play Hard: Nature’s Endless Experimentation

Nature is constantly playing. Think about how a river finds its path down a mountain — it doesn’t analyze, strategize, or hold committee meetings. It simply explores every possibility, following the path of least resistance while testing countless variations.

Mushrooms experiment with spore release patterns. Birds try new migration routes. Even viruses are constantly playing with mutations (though that’s perhaps not the best example for team dynamics!).

But here’s what’s brilliant: nature’s “play” is purposeful. Every experiment serves the larger goal of adaptation and survival. In your teams, this translates to creating environments where experimentation isn’t just tolerated — it’s celebrated as essential research.

The Innovation Application: Just as nature experiments relentlessly, your teams need permission to try approaches that might not work. When Google implemented their famous 20% time, they were essentially mimicking nature’s approach to innovation through play.

Make Crap: Nature’s Embrace of Imperfection

Here’s something that might blow your mind: nature’s first attempts are always “crap” by our perfectionist standards. The first feathers weren’t perfect flying machines — they were probably just fuzzy insulation. The first eyes couldn’t see clearly — they could barely detect light from shadow.

But nature doesn’t abandon an innovation because the first iteration isn’t perfect. It builds on each “crappy” version, gradually refining and improving. Evolution is essentially a massive “make crap” laboratory that’s been running for billions of years.

Take the human eye — often held up as a marvel of design. But did you know it has a massive blind spot where the optic nerve connects? And the blood vessels run in front of the light sensors, creating shadows? By engineering standards, it’s pretty poorly designed. But nature doesn’t care about perfect design — it cares about “good enough to work and improve.”

The Innovation Application: Your teams need to embrace their “blind spot” prototypes and “shadowy” first drafts. Sara understood this intuitively — she knew that her morning sketches might be terrible, but they were necessary steps toward her masterpieces.

Learn Fast: Nature’s Rapid Iteration Cycles

Nature is the ultimate rapid learner. When conditions change, organisms that can adapt quickly survive and thrive. Those that can’t… well, they become extinct. It’s evolution’s version of “fail fast, learn faster.”

But here’s the key insight: nature doesn’t just learn from its own experiments. It learns from everything around it. Trees share nutrients and information through underground fungal networks. Bee colonies use dance to communicate food sources. Wolves learn hunting strategies by observing other packs.

Nature has created the ultimate learning ecosystem where information flows freely and every participant both contributes to and benefits from the collective intelligence.

The Innovation Application: Your teams need mechanisms for rapid learning and knowledge sharing that mirror nature’s collaborative learning networks.

Your Team’s Innovation Ecosystem

Think of your organization as an ecosystem. Just like a forest, your innovation environment needs the right conditions for different types of ideas to flourish.

In a healthy forest, you’ll find:

• Pioneer species (like your rapid prototypers and early adopters)
• Established trees (your reliable implementers and refiners)
• Decomposers (your constructive critics who break down failed ideas into valuable insights)
• Pollinators (your connectors who spread ideas between teams)

The magic happens when all these roles work together in a supportive environment.

Creating Your Innovation Conditions

So how do you create these natural innovation conditions in your tech environment?

For Play Hard: Create “acorn time” — dedicated periods where your team can experiment without pressure for immediate results. Just as nature overproduces to find what works, give your teams permission to generate volume without judgment.

For Make Crap: Implement “evolutionary sprints” where teams start with intentionally imperfect solutions and iterate rapidly. Remember: nature’s first flight wasn’t from bird to Boeing 747 — it was from tree-gliding to slightly better tree-gliding.

For Learn Fast: Establish information-sharing networks that mirror nature’s mycorrhizal fungi — create connections between seemingly unrelated teams so insights can flow freely across your organization.

The Compound Effect of Natural Innovation

Here’s what I’ve learned from studying both Sara’s artistic practice and nature’s innovation patterns: small consistent efforts compound into extraordinary results.

Just like Sara’s daily creative practice eventually led to her prolific output, nature’s continuous small experiments accumulate into major evolutionary breakthroughs. The key insight is that both Sara and nature understood something most of us resist: consistency matters more than perfection.

Think about it — nature doesn’t wait for the “perfect” moment to innovate. Every season brings new experiments. Every generation tries slight variations. This relentless, gentle persistence is what creates those miraculous adaptations we marvel at.

Your Nature-Inspired Challenge

This week, I challenge you to observe one natural system and identify how it approaches innovation. Maybe it’s how your local park adapts to seasonal changes, or how weeds find creative ways to grow in impossible conditions, or how birds collaborate during migration.

Then ask yourself: What would our team’s innovation process look like if we approached it the way nature does?

Remember, nature doesn’t innovate despite uncertainty and constraints — it innovates because of them. Your next breakthrough might be hiding in the very challenges you’re trying to avoid.

Nature has been perfecting the art of turning impossible into inevitable for millions of years. Isn’t it time we started taking notes from the ultimate design lab?

What natural innovation pattern are you going to explore with your team this week? I’d love to hear what you discover!

Stay curious, stay experimental, and keep creating the impossible!

I’d love to hear from you: What natural innovation pattern resonates most with your team’s current challenges? Click here to let me know!

Senior Leaders: Ready to transform your organization’s innovation approach by learning from nature’s ultimate design lab? Book a complimentary Innovation Strategy Session and let’s explore how the Create the Impossible™ framework can help your teams achieve breakthrough innovation naturally.

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Hey there, innovation champions!

I’m about to tell you a story about a poster I created in April 2016, but here’s the thing — I almost didn’t share this story because I wanted it to fit perfectly with summer momentum. I kept thinking, “But it wasn’t summer! How can I make this work for a mid-summer newsletter?”

And that’s exactly the kind of perfectionist thinking that keeps us stuck.

So here I am, modeling my own principles in real-time. Because the truth is, this April story contains everything you need to know about maintaining momentum when the world around you says “slow down” — whether that’s summer heat, vacation schedules, or any other seasonal excuse our brains cook up.

Let me paint a picture for you: It’s April 2016, and I’m sitting in my home office with this vision — a poster of my 10 Creative Sandbox Way™ guideposts that I desperately wanted to create. For two years, I’d been carrying this idea around like a heavy backpack, always finding reasons why “now wasn’t the right time.”

Sound familiar? If you’re like most of the brilliant minds I work with, there’s always something that makes innovation feel impossible. Spring’s too busy, summer’s too slow, fall’s too intense, winter’s too dark.

But here’s what I discovered that transformative April day: sometimes the very excuse we’re using is exactly the perfectionist trap we need to break free from.

The April That Changed Everything

That particular Tuesday in April, I was procrastinating on the poster project yet again. My gremlins were having a field day: “It’s not the right time,” they whispered. “You should wait until you have more inspiration. Maybe summer when you have more creative energy.”

But then something clicked. I realized I was doing exactly what my Creative Sandbox Way™ was designed to combat — letting perfectionist thinking keep me stuck.

So I did something radical. I applied my own framework to the very framework I was trying to create.

I reminded myself: There is no wrong (Guidepost #1). I told my gremlins to take a vacation of their own (Guidepost #8). And most importantly, I decided to just start. Anywhere (Guidepost #5).

The result? I created that poster in one weekend. Not because the conditions were perfect, but because I stopped waiting for the “right” season and used my framework as fuel instead of excuse.

(Want one? You can download a printable version of my Creative Sandbox Way™ Guideposts + my Imperfectionist Manifesto right here.)

The Mid-Summer Innovation Paradox

Now, fast-forward to today, and here’s what’s fascinating about innovation during any “slow” season — whether it’s summer heat, spring overwhelm, or any other time when conventional wisdom says to pause: while everyone else is slowing down, the most creative breakthroughs often happen when we lean INTO the discomfort rather than away from it.

My April poster breakthrough taught me something crucial that applies perfectly to summer momentum: innovation doesn’t wait for perfect conditions. It thrives when we stop making excuses about timing.

This connects directly to my Create the Impossible™ framework:

Play Hard: Any season’s energy — including summer’s informal vibe — creates the perfect playground for innovation. When usual rigid structures relax, that’s when magic happens.

Make Crap: The “lazy” days of summer (or any slower period) are ideal for rapid prototyping without the pressure of perfection that “busy seasons” often bring.

Learn Fast: With fewer formal meetings and processes during slower periods, summer creates space for the kind of experimental learning that drives breakthrough thinking.

The Science Behind Seasonal Innovation

Neuroscience tells us something counterintuitive: our brains are actually primed for creativity when we’re slightly outside our normal patterns. Whether that’s summer heat disrupting our usual routines, or simply breaking free from “it’s not the right time” thinking like I did in April.

A study published in Organization Science found that mild disruption to routine — like working in a slightly different environment or breaking free from “seasonal thinking” — can actually enhance creative thinking by preventing our minds from falling into predictable patterns.

When we’re too comfortable with our excuses (whether seasonal or otherwise), our brains default to familiar neural pathways. A little disruption to our usual “this isn’t the right time” thinking? That’s when new connections form.

The Poster That Started Everything

Back to my April story — because it illustrates something crucial about maintaining momentum when we think conditions aren’t ideal.

Once I started creating, the “perfect timing” excuse became irrelevant. I was in flow. I played with lettering styles and colors, made what felt like terrible first attempts, and learned rapidly from each iteration. The poster I created wasn’t just a visual representation of my guideposts — it became living proof that they worked, regardless of season or circumstance.

That poster went on to become one of my most popular downloads, shared thousands of times across social media, printed and hung on office walls from Silicon Valley to Singapore. All because I stopped waiting for the “right” time and started creating anyway.

Your Mid-Summer Innovation Toolkit

So how do you harness momentum when everything around you says “slow down” or “wait for better timing”?

1. Embrace Seasonal Disruption as Creative Fuel Instead of fighting summer’s different energy (or any seasonal shift), use it. Whether it’s the heat making you think differently, or vacation schedules forcing you to work in new ways, let the disruption enhance your creativity.
2. Create Seasonal Sprints Use any slower period to your advantage. Design short, intensive creative sessions — 25 minutes of focused innovation followed by a break. These often produce more breakthrough thinking than hours of traditional brainstorming during “busy” seasons.
3. Play with Whatever Season You’re In Every season has its own energy that’s innovation gold. Summer’s playful vibe, spring’s renewal energy, autumn’s harvest focus, winter’s introspective depth — they all offer unique creative advantages if you stop fighting them and start using them.

The Momentum That Matters

The real secret to maintaining momentum isn’t about fighting seasonal rhythms or waiting for perfect timing — it’s about recognizing that innovation doesn’t pause for weather, schedules, or “someday when conditions are better.”

Some of history’s greatest innovations happened during what seemed like the “wrong” time. Steve Jobs conceptualized the iPhone during a summer retreat. Lin-Manuel Miranda got the idea for Hamilton while reading a biography on vacation. I created my breakthrough poster on a random April weekend when I stopped making excuses.

Your breakthrough idea doesn’t care if it’s July or January, April or October. It only cares that you create the conditions for it to emerge — starting with dropping the “perfect timing” excuse.

Your Challenge This Week

Pick one project that’s been sitting in your “someday” pile — your version of my poster project. This week, apply the Create the Impossible™ framework:

• Play Hard: Approach it with curiosity rather than pressure
• Make Crap: Create the worst possible first version
• Learn Fast: Iterate quickly without waiting for perfect conditions or timing

Remember, the best time to start isn’t someday when conditions are perfect — it’s right now, with whatever season, weather, or circumstances you’ve got.

The most serious business is play, especially when conventional wisdom says to wait for better timing.

Stay curious, stay playful, and keep creating the impossible — no matter what the calendar or thermometer says!

I’d love to hear from you: What project have you been putting off that you could tackle with some mid-summer momentum? Click here to let me know!

Senior Leaders: Ready to help your team harness this mid-summer innovation energy? Book a complimentary Innovation Strategy Session and let’s chat about how the Create the Impossible™ framework can transform your approach to seasonal productivity.

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Hey there, innovation champions!

Back when I was a professional artist, after years of making art for clients, I knew I needed to get back to making art just for the joy of it. And I knew the path to get there was play. But here’s the thing—I’d completely forgotten how to play.

Sound familiar? If you’re like most of the brilliant tech minds I work with, you probably haven’t thought about play as a business strategy. But stick with me, because what I discovered changed everything.

The Rules That Set Me Free

This is a story I’ve told a thousand times, but it never gets old because the transformation was so profound. There I was, a recovering perfectionist who had spent years following everyone else’s rules about how art should be made. I hypothesized that if I—ever the rule-follower—created some “rules” for myself, I could trick my brain back into the mindspace of a little kid.

Lo and behold, it worked! Those rules became the 10 guideposts that now form the backbone of my book, The Creative Sandbox Way™. But more importantly, they eventually evolved and distilled down into what I now call the Create the Impossible™ framework.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that these same principles had strategic business applications. Revolutionary ones.

The Pivot That Changed Everything

Just a year after I published The Creative Sandbox Way™, I pivoted from working with individual artists and creatives to working with teams and organizations. Though it took a while to gain traction, and here’s one reason why: I was selling my process—play and creativity—rather than selling the outcomes and value I created for clients.

Then came the breakthrough moment during the pandemic.

When Facebook Called

A contact from a research team at Meta reached out. The team had gaps around communication—their brilliant insights weren’t having the impact and influence they deserved. Plus, they needed a serious morale boost during the depths of social distancing.

Could I help? Why, yes. Yes, I could!

I designed what would become one of my flagship programs, Communicating for Influence™. The manager was initially resistant to how play-based the activities were—they were drawn from the world of improv. When I clarified the specific outcomes each activity was designed to deliver, she grudgingly gave approval, though not without skepticism.

The result? She was thrilled with the skills and common language her team developed. She recommended me to her colleagues, and over six months I worked with five other research teams, and several more in the years since. Participants saw behavior change AND said they were “the most fun meetings I’ve attended all year!”

This is the power of play in driving real business results.

The Science Behind the Magic

But play and fun aren’t just drivers of engagement—they’re drivers of breakthrough thinking. Let me share why this works at a neurological level.

When we play, we bypass our inner critic. That harsh voice that usually says “That’s a terrible idea” or “What if this doesn’t work?” gets quieter. Play activates flow states and enables divergent thinking—the kind of thinking that leads to breakthrough innovations.

I remember a day-long retreat I led for a nonprofit. At the three-quarter mark, we had a deep and challenging conversation that the team had been struggling to navigate for months. But here’s the key: it was sparked after a period of playful activities out on the lawn.

Need to get unstuck? We often try to power our way through problems, but that’s rarely effective. There’s nothing like play to free up our thinking and unlock new pathways to solutions.

The Create the Impossible™ Framework in Action

This is where my three-step framework comes alive:

Step 1: Play Hard 

Not “go to Vegas and party” play, but embrace your inner four-year-old. Be open to experimentation. Follow your curiosity.

In that Meta program, we used improv games like “Time Traveler”—imagine explaining a smartphone to someone from 500 years ago. Suddenly, complex technical concepts became accessible.

Step 2: Make Crap 

Give yourself permission to create terrible first drafts. The nonprofit team’s breakthrough came when they stopped trying to craft the perfect solution and started throwing out wild, “crappy” ideas. One of those “terrible” ideas sparked their most innovative program.

Step 3: Learn Fast 

Turn every experience into rapid learning. Each “failure” becomes data. Each experiment teaches you something valuable.

The Meta teams didn’t just communicate better—they learned to iterate their approach in real-time.

Why Fun Isn’t Frivolous

Here’s what the research tells us: Fun builds the exact capacities we need to compete in today’s market.

Adaptability. Collaboration. Quick thinking. Innovation.

When teams embrace play:

• They generate more creative solutions
• They communicate more effectively
• They build psychological safety faster
• They adapt to change more readily
• They collaborate across silos more naturally

Fun isn’t frivolous—it’s strategic.

Your Innovation Challenge

This week, I want you to try something. Pick one challenge your team is facing—something you’ve been trying to “power through” with traditional brainstorming.

Instead, approach it with play.

Maybe start your next meeting with a quick improv game. Or reframe your challenge as a puzzle to be solved rather than a problem to be endured.

Give your team permission to suggest “crappy” ideas without judgment.

Watch what happens when you create space for play. I guarantee you’ll be surprised by the quality of thinking that emerges.

The Bottom Line

Innovation doesn’t happen in sterile environments where everything is serious and buttoned-up. It happens at the intersection of connection, communication, and creativity.

And the fastest way to get there? Through play.

As I always say: Play is not the opposite of work. Play is how we make work more effective.

So, are you ready to Create the Impossible™ through the power of play?

Let me know how your play experiment goes. I’d love to hear about the breakthroughs you discover when you give your team permission to have fun while they innovate.

Stay curious, stay playful, and keep creating the impossible!

I’d love to hear from you: What’s one work challenge you’ve been trying to “power through” that might benefit from a more playful approach? Click here to let me know!

Senior Leaders: Ready to turn your team’s serious work into breakthrough innovation through strategic play? Book a complimentary Innovation Strategy Session and let’s explore how the Create the Impossible™ framework can transform your approach to innovation.