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The Paradox of Constraints: How Limitations Fuel Creativity

Click to watch (17:26) or scroll down to read more

Hey there, innovation champions!

 

I’ll never forget my very first performance improv class. The teacher divided our class of twelve into four teams, and gave us 60 seconds to come up with a name for our teams!

 

Panic ensued. “Sixty seconds?! What?!!”

 

The teams wasted no time, and so it was that the Melancholy Rubber Chickens and Hot Garbage battled it out with Awkward Pause and Teamy McTeamface.

 

Could these team names have been better? Probably.

 

But as our teacher pointed out, if he had given us five minutes (or ten, or twenty — or a week!) we would have used up all that time deciding on a name instead of doing improv.

 

The ridiculously tight time constraint forced us to bypass our inner critics and make a decision quickly. Instead of limiting creativity, this limitation actually helped to fuel it!

 

The Counterintuitive Power of Constraints

How many filmmakers break into the industry with independent, low-budget films, dreaming of getting the opportunity to make a big-budget movie, only to disappoint critics and movie-goers when they finally do?

 

The budget constraint, it turned out, supercharged their creativity, and when that constraint was lifted, instead of giving them freedom, they lost their edge.

 

This paradox has fascinated me for years: constraints don’t limit creativity — they fuel it.

 

Consider Dr. Seuss. When his editor bet him that he couldn’t write a compelling children’s book using only 50 different words, the result was “Green Eggs and Ham” — one of the best-selling children’s books of all time.

 

Or think about Twitter (now X) and how the original 140-character limit forced people to distill their thoughts to their essence, creating an entirely new form of expression.

 

These aren’t anomalies. They’re evidence of a profound truth about human creativity that contradicts our intuition: limitations aren’t creativity’s enemy — they’re its catalyst.

 

The Blank Canvas Problem

Have you ever sat down to write, draw, or create something with absolutely no constraints? No deadline, no budget limitations, no brief to follow — just pure creative freedom?

 

If you’re like most people, this scenario isn’t liberating — it’s paralyzing.

 

I call this “The Blank Canvas Problem.” When anything is possible, the weight of infinite choice crushes our creative spirit. We become overwhelmed by possibilities, paralyzed by the pressure to make the “perfect” choice among endless options.

 

I experienced this firsthand years ago when I was trying to reignite my creative practice after a long hiatus. I had all the art supplies, plenty of time (or so I told myself), and complete freedom to create whatever I wanted.

 

The result? Nothing. For months, I created absolutely nothing.

 

It wasn’t until I imposed strict constraints on myself — 15 minutes a day, using only materials I could keep by my bedside — that I finally broke through and started creating again.

 

Constraints Through the Create the Impossible™ Framework

This counterintuitive relationship between constraints and creativity maps perfectly to my Create the Impossible™ framework:

 

1. Play Hard: Embracing Constraints as a Game

The first element of my framework is “Play Hard” — approaching challenges with a spirit of play and experimentation. Constraints transform creative challenges into games with clear rules.

 

When my improv teacher gave us 60 seconds to name our teams, he wasn’t just being efficient. He was turning the naming process into a game with clear parameters that bypassed our inner critics and engaged our playful instincts.

 

The magic of constraints is that they invoke the play state. Think about any game you love — chess, basketball, Wordle. None of these would be fun without rules. The constraints are what make them engaging.

 

Similarly, innovation thrives when we approach constraints as the rules of an exciting game rather than as limitations to overcome.

 

2. Make Crap: Using Constraints to Overcome Perfectionism

The second element of my framework is “Make Crap” — giving yourself permission to create imperfect first drafts rather than waiting for perfection.

 

Constraints are perfectionism kryptonite. When you only have 60 seconds, or 50 words, or a shoestring budget, you can’t possibly be perfect — and that’s liberating!

 

I experienced this when I started creating daily doodles in bed each morning. By limiting myself to just a few minutes and whatever drawing materials I could keep on my nightstand, I bypassed the perfectionism that had paralyzed me for years.

 

The constraint of time and materials forced me to embrace imperfection, which ultimately led to a more prolific and joyful creative practice.

 

3. Learn Fast: Constraints as Learning Accelerators

The third element of my framework is “Learn Fast” — turning every experience, especially challenging ones, into learning opportunities.

 

Constraints accelerate learning by creating clear feedback loops. When you limit your variables, you can more easily identify what’s working and what isn’t.

 

Think about cooking. If you’re following a recipe with just three ingredients, it’s much easier to identify what went wrong (or right!) than if you’re working with thirty ingredients.

 

The same principle applies to innovation. When you constrain your approach — focusing on one specific customer pain point, using only certain technologies, or limiting your timeline — you create conditions for faster and more focused learning.

 

Strategic Constraints for Innovation

Now, let’s talk about how to intentionally use constraints to fuel innovation in your own work:

 

Time Constraints: The Power of the Ticking Clock

Time constraints are perhaps the most powerful creativity boosters. They force decision-making, eliminate overthinking, and create urgency that bypasses the inner critic.

 

Try these:

  • The 25-5 Rule: Work intensely for 25 minutes on a single task, then take a 5-minute break.
  • The Ridiculous Deadline: Cut your “reasonable” timeline in half. What would you do differently?
  • The 5-Minute Sprint: Give yourself just 5 minutes to generate as many ideas as possible.

 

Resource Constraints: Less Is More

Limited resources — whether budget, tools, or team members — can drive remarkable innovation.


Try these:

  • The Budget Cut: Imagine your budget was slashed by 50%. How would you accomplish your goals?
  • The Desert Island Challenge: If you could only use three tools to solve your problem, what would they be?
  • The Minimalist Approach: How could you solve the problem with the absolute minimum viable solution?

 

Conceptual Constraints: Limiting the Playground

Conceptual constraints limit the types of solutions you can explore, forcing deeper thinking within a specific area.


Try these:

  • The Adjective Challenge: Choose three random adjectives (e.g., “underwater,” “musical,” “ancient”) and incorporate them into your solution.
  • The What-If Scenario: “What if we couldn’t use our current approach at all?”
  • The Impossible Constraint: “How would we solve this if we couldn’t use [the most obvious solution]?”

 

Real-World Application: The NASA Example

Perhaps the most dramatic example of constraints driving innovation comes from the Apollo 13 mission. When an oxygen tank exploded, endangering the lives of the astronauts, the NASA team faced the ultimate constraint:


“The astronauts have only these exact items on board. How do we bring them home safely?”


Engineers on the ground had to figure out how to adapt a square carbon dioxide filter to fit in a round hole, using only the limited materials available to the astronauts: plastic bags, cardboard, and duct tape.


The solution they devised — which literally saved lives — emerged precisely because of these extreme constraints, not in spite of them.


As Gene Kranz, the flight director for Apollo 13, famously said: “I don’t care what anything was designed to do. I care about what it can do.”


That’s the essence of constraint-driven innovation: focusing not on what you lack, but on what you can do with what you have.

 

Your Constraint Challenge

Here’s your challenge for this week: Choose one area where you’re seeking greater creativity or innovation, and intentionally add a constraint.


Maybe it’s a tighter deadline. Perhaps it’s limiting your resources or tools. Or it could be a conceptual constraint that forces you to explore new approaches.


Remember: The most innovative solutions often emerge not when we have more resources, more time, or more freedom — but when we have just enough constraint to ignite our creative problem-solving instincts.


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

I’d love to hear from you. What’s one constraint that has unexpectedly boosted your creativity? Click here to share your story!

Senior Leaders: Ready to help your team harness the power of constraints for breakthrough innovation? Book a complimentary Innovation Strategy Session and let’s explore how the Create the Impossible™ framework can transform your team’s approach to creativity and problem-solving.

The Innovation Renewal Cycle: Breaking Through Creative Plateaus

Click to watch (14:58) or scroll down to read more

Hey there, innovation champions!

 

Have you ever found yourself completely stuck on a project, feeling like your creative well has run dry?

 

I still remember the sickening feeling in my stomach when I got my very first art commission. After the initial excitement wore off, panic set in. I seriously contemplated calling the client to cancel the contract and return their deposit.

 

Who was I kidding? I had no idea how to bring their vision to life!

 

This pattern repeated itself countless times throughout my 15-year career as a professional artist. And it still happens today with every workshop I design, every keynote I write, and every song I compose.

 

The cycle looks something like this:

 

Initial Excitement: “This is going to be amazing!”

Crushing Self-Doubt: “What was I thinking? I’ll never figure this out!”

The Messy Middle: “I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’ll keep trying…”

Breakthrough: “Wait… I think this is actually working!”

Completion: “I can’t believe I ever doubted this would come together!”

 

Here’s a little visual that, while tongue-in-cheek, captures the journey perfectly:

What I’ve discovered is that this cycle isn’t a bug in the creative process—it’s a feature. The very discomfort of pushing through those moments of doubt and confusion is exactly where the most innovative solutions emerge.

The Universal Innovation Renewal Cycle

What fascinates me is that this pattern isn’t unique to art. I see the exact same cycle in the tech teams I work with, whether they’re developing new products, solving complex engineering problems, or reimagining their business models.

 

Innovation isn’t a straight line. It’s a series of expansions and contractions, of flow states followed by plateaus.

 

The problem? Most of us aren’t prepared for the inevitable plateaus. We interpret them as failure, as evidence that we’ve “lost our touch” or that our initial idea wasn’t good enough.


But what if these plateaus are actually an essential part of the renewal cycle? What if they’re not obstacles to innovation, but doorways to deeper creativity?


Let me break this down using my Create the Impossible™ framework:

 

Play Hard: Embracing the Plateau

The first element of my framework is “Play Hard”—approaching challenges with a spirit of curiosity and exploration.


When you hit a creative plateau, your instinct might be to push harder in the same direction. To double down on what’s worked before. But that’s like trying to force your way through a brick wall.


Instead, what if you treated the plateau as an invitation to play in a different space? To explore tangential ideas, experiment with new approaches, or simply give yourself permission to wander?


I discovered this by accident during a particularly frustrating art commission. After days of getting nowhere, I put my “real” project aside and started doodling absurd, impossible designs just for fun. No pressure, no expectations—just pure play.


The breakthrough for my actual project came during this playful detour, emerging from a connection I never would have made if I’d kept banging my head against the same wall.


This is why play isn’t just fun—it’s functionally crucial for breaking through creative plateaus.

 

Make Crap: The Power of Productive Failure

The second element of my framework is “Make Crap”—giving yourself permission to create imperfect first attempts.


Creative plateaus often stem from perfectionism. We get stuck because we’re afraid to make something bad, to fail publicly, to shatter the illusion of competence we’ve worked so hard to maintain.


But every master artist knows the secret: you have to make a lot of bad art to get to the good stuff.


When I was teaching calligraphy, I would tell my students they had 500 bad alphabets in them that they needed to get out before the good ones would start flowing. This wasn’t to discourage them, but to liberate them—to give them permission to make those necessary “bad” attempts without judging themselves.


In tech innovation, we call this “failing fast” or “rapid prototyping.” But too often, companies adopt the terminology without embracing the underlying mindset. They still expect each iteration to be better than the last, leading to risk aversion and incremental thinking.


True innovation requires genuine comfort with productive failure—with making something truly crappy as a stepping stone to discovery.

 

Learn Fast: Finding the Pattern

The third element of my framework is “Learn Fast”—extracting insights from every experience, especially the challenging ones.


Creative plateaus are rich with information if we know how to read them. They’re telling us something important about our approach, our assumptions, or our process.


When I’m stuck in a creative project, I now ask myself:

  • What pattern am I repeating that’s no longer serving me?
  • What assumption am I making that might be limiting my options?
  • What am I avoiding because it feels uncomfortable or unfamiliar?


These questions often reveal that the plateau isn’t a sign of failure—it’s a signal that I’ve outgrown my current approach and need to evolve.


In one particularly challenging art commission, I realized I had been trying to force a technique that had worked perfectly in previous pieces but wasn’t right for this new context. The plateau was simply my creative instinct telling me to try something different.

 

Breaking Through Your Next Plateau

So how can you apply these insights to your own creative cycles, whether you’re developing software, leading a team, or solving complex business problems?


Here are three practical strategies that have helped me and the teams I work with:

  1. Schedule Strategic Detours: When you hit a plateau, don’t just push harder in the same direction. Deliberately schedule time to explore adjacent spaces. If you’re stuck on a coding problem, try sketching it visually. If your product strategy feels stale, study an entirely different industry for inspiration.
  2. Create Low-Stakes Experiments: Designate specific projects or time blocks where “failure” is not just allowed but expected. Google’s famous 20% time worked precisely because it created a space where the pressure to succeed was removed, allowing true innovation to emerge.
  3. Document Your Cycles: Start tracking your creative cycles. Note when you enter a plateau and what ultimately helps you break through. Over time, you’ll start to see patterns that can help you navigate future plateaus more effectively.


Remember, every great innovator from Einstein to Jobs experienced these same cycles of expansion and contraction. The difference isn’t that they avoided plateaus—it’s that they learned to recognize them as a natural and necessary part of the creative process.


The plateau isn’t your enemy. It’s the silent partner in your innovation journey, forcing you to question your assumptions, explore new territories, and ultimately break through to solutions you could never have planned in advance.


So the next time you feel stuck, remember: you’re not failing at creativity. You’re simply in a renewing phase of the cycle. Embrace it, play with it, learn from it—and watch as the breakthrough emerges when you least expect it.


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

 

I’d love to hear from you. What’s your go-to strategy when you hit a creative plateau? Click here to share your story!

Senior Leaders: Ready to help your team navigate creative plateaus more effectively? Book a complimentary Innovation Strategy Session and let’s explore how the Create the Impossible™ framework can transform your team’s approach to innovation cycles.

The Leadership Blind Spot: How Your Habits Shape Team Innovation

 

Click to watch (16:26) or scroll down to read more

Hey there, innovation champions!

 

I used to think being a good leader meant having all the answers. Knowing exactly what to do in every situation. Being the smartest person in the room.

 

Boy, was I wrong.

 

Back in November, when I was faced with a choice — do I start up a grassroots democracy group, or not? — I certainly did not have all the answers. The path ahead was foggy at best, completely dark at worst.

 

It would have been so easy to just say no. To wait until I had more clarity, more resources, more certainty.

 

Instead, I leapt into the void, and you know what? I still don’t have all the answers. But the remarkable team that has sprung up around me inevitably figures it out together.

 

And this experience has taught me something profound about leadership and innovation that I never fully understood before: Your habits as a leader — how you show up, how you respond to uncertainty, how you interact with your team — shape the innovation potential of your entire organization far more than any formal innovation strategy ever could.

 

Let me show you what I mean by introducing you to our accidental “innovation team”:

 

W is our operations expert, always über-organized and keeping us on track with systems and processes. They’re also our number one worrier, always pointing out how things could go wrong. (And thank goodness, because this necessary perspective helps us plan accordingly!)

 

X is the advocate for our organization’s health, always reminding us that “overhead expenses” (like comfortable meeting space for our monthly member meetings) are not a “necessary evil,” but essential for a happy, healthy organization.

 

Y is always thinking about how what we do is a model for others. They keep us focused on the bigger picture and how our actions impact the broader community.

 

And me? I’m a big-picture thinker who also tracks a ton of details. And you won’t be surprised to learn that I filter everything through a lens of connection, fun, play, and joy.

 

The Blind Spot: Your Innovation Habits

We say very often that we’re building the plane as we fly it, and because we’re growing so fast, we’re having to build out systems, processes, and policies while we use them. Y recently quipped that we’re also writing the user manual for the plane at the same time!

 

But here’s what fascinates me: Our ability to innovate on the fly isn’t random. It’s directly shaped by the habits that each of us brings to the table as leaders.

 

A meeting typically looks like this:

 

W will ask why something was done a certain way (before we had established systems, processes, and policies, and perhaps even a leadership team!)

 

I’ll share the history.

 

W will suggest that we reverse course.

 

X will suggest an alternative option.

 

Y will “yes, and” that suggestion, and offer another idea.

 

I will “yes, and” that suggestion and bring in additional context.

 

W will revise their thinking and offer more suggestions.

 

And so on, until we find ourselves innovating a solution that everyone agrees is a win-win for all!

 

This pattern repeats itself again and again. And I’ve realized it maps perfectly to my Create the Impossible™ framework:

 

Play Hard: Creating Space for Creative Collision

The first element of my Create the Impossible™ framework is “Play Hard” — embracing a spirit of exploration and playfulness in your approach to challenges.

 

In our team, this happens naturally because of the habit patterns we’ve established. When W brings up a concern and X counters with an alternative perspective, we’re not shutting each other down — we’re playing with possibilities.

 

This habit of “yes, and-ing” rather than “yes, but-ing” isn’t accidental. It’s something I consciously model as a leader, and it’s now become a team habit.

 

Think about your own leadership habits for a moment. When someone brings up a concern or a wild idea, what’s your default response? Do you immediately point out the flaws? Or do you build on their thinking, even if you ultimately go in a different direction?

 

The habit of building rather than blocking creates a play space where innovation naturally emerges.

 

Make Crap: The Power of Imperfect Solutions

The second element of my framework is “Make Crap” — giving ourselves permission to create imperfect first drafts rather than waiting for perfection.

 

Our grassroots organization embodies this perfectly. Our initial systems were, frankly, pretty crude. Our first meeting agenda? A hastily scribbled outline. Our first communication system? A basic email list.

 

But instead of waiting until we had everything figured out, we jumped in and started creating. We embraced the messiness of growth.

 

This wasn’t accidental either — it was a direct result of leadership habits. By openly acknowledging when something I’d created wasn’t working well, I modeled that it was safe for others to do the same.

 

When was the last time you, as a leader, openly acknowledged creating something that wasn’t working? That habit — of normalizing imperfection as part of the process — creates psychological safety that’s essential for innovation.

 

Learn Fast: The Habit of Adaptation

The third element of the Create the Impossible™ framework is “Learn Fast” — turning every experience, especially “failures,” into learning opportunities.

 

In our democracy group, this manifests in our habit of constant reflection and adaptation. When something doesn’t work as expected, we don’t waste energy on blame or defensiveness. Instead, we immediately shift to “What can we learn from this?”

 

Again, this isn’t by chance. It’s a leadership habit I’ve intentionally cultivated — responding to setbacks with curiosity rather than frustration.

 

Think about your own response when things don’t go as planned. Do you immediately look for who’s responsible? Or do you ask what this experience can teach you?

 

The habit of approaching challenges with curiosity rather than judgment creates an environment where innovation can flourish even from setbacks.

 

Breaking Blind Spots: Transforming Your Innovation Habits

The fascinating thing about leadership habits is that they’re often invisible to us. They’re the water we swim in, the air we breathe. We don’t notice them because they’re just “how we do things.”

 

But these habitual patterns — how we respond to ideas, how we handle imperfection, how we approach setbacks — shape our team’s innovation potential more profoundly than any formal innovation process ever could.

 

So how do you transform these often invisible habits to foster more innovation? Here are three practical strategies:

 

1. Audit Your Responses

For one week, pay close attention to how you respond to ideas from your team. Note your initial reaction, both verbal and non-verbal. 


Are you building or blocking? Look for patterns in when you tend to block rather than build.

 

2. Practice Public Imperfection

Find opportunities to share your own works-in-progress with your team. Be explicit about what’s not working well. This normalizes imperfection and creates psychological safety for others to do the same.

 

3. Reframe Setbacks in Real Time

The next time something doesn’t go as planned, practice reframing it as a learning opportunity in the moment. Ask “What can we learn from this?” before any discussion of what went wrong or who’s responsible.

 

The Invisible Revolution

What’s most powerful about transforming your innovation habits is that it creates ripple effects throughout your organization without requiring massive change initiatives.

 

When you consistently build on others’ ideas rather than blocking them, team members start doing the same with each other.

 

When you openly share imperfect work, psychological safety increases across the organization.

 

When you approach setbacks with curiosity, a culture of continuous learning emerges.

 

These habits create the conditions where breakthrough innovations can flourish — not because you’ve mandated innovation, but because you’ve created an environment where it naturally emerges.

 

Remember: Your team doesn’t innovate because of what you say. They innovate because of what you do, consistently, day after day. Your habits are the invisible revolution that transforms your organization’s creative potential.

 

So, what innovation habits are you modeling for your team today?

 

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

 

I’d love to hear what leadership habits you’ve found most effective in fostering innovation. Click here to share your story!

Senior Leaders: Ready to transform your leadership habits and unlock your team’s innovation potential? Book a complimentary Innovation Strategy Session and let’s explore how the Create the Impossible™ framework can help you develop habits that foster creativity and breakthrough thinking across your organization.

 

Beyond the Bottom Line: New Ways to Measure Innovation

Click to watch (13:10) or scroll down to read more

Hey there, innovation champions!

 

I recently found myself reflecting on a challenge I see across the tech world: we’re trying to measure 21st-century innovation with 20th-century metrics.

 

Innovation leaders often face the same frustrating question: “But how is this impacting our bottom line?”

 

It’s a fair question, but traditional financial metrics like ROI, revenue growth, and cost savings tell only a fraction of the innovation story. They’re like trying to judge an iceberg by the 10% you can see above water.

 

Today, I want to share some “below the waterline” metrics that tell a more complete story about innovation efforts – metrics that can transform how you understand, communicate, and accelerate innovation in your organization.

 

The Invisible Value of Innovation

When I talk with leaders about what they’re really trying to achieve through innovation, their answers rarely start with financial outcomes.

 

Instead, I hear things like:

  • “We want to stay relevant in a rapidly changing market”
  • “We need to attract and retain top talent”
  • “We want to build capabilities that future-proof our organization”
  • “We’re trying to foster a culture where people are energized and engaged”

These goals are crucial for long-term success, yet they don’t show up neatly on quarterly financial statements.

 

Let’s look at some alternative ways to measure innovation that capture this fuller picture of value, using my Create the Impossible™ framework as a guide.

 

Learning Velocity: The Speed of Knowledge Creation

The first element of my Create the Impossible™ framework is “Play Hard” – creating space for experimentation and discovery. But how do you measure the value of play?

 

One powerful metric is what I call “learning velocity” – the speed at which your team is generating new insights.

 

This isn’t about how many experiments you run, but about the rate at which you’re increasing your understanding of your customers, your market, and your capabilities.

 

Here’s how to measure it:

  1. Knowledge Assets: Track the creation of new insights, tools, or approaches. These might be documented in playbooks, design patterns, or capability models.
  2. Learning Reviews: After each project or sprint, document what the team learned. Over time, you can track how quickly your knowledge base is growing.
  3. Question Evolution: Notice how the questions your team is asking evolve over time. Are they becoming more sophisticated? Are you asking questions today that you couldn’t have formulated six months ago?

Relationship Resilience: The Strength of Your Connection Web

The second element in my framework is “Make Crap” – creating psychological safety for people to share imperfect work. This builds what I call “relationship resilience” – the strength of the human connections that enable innovation.

 

Here’s how you might measure it:

  1. Psychological Safety Metrics: Regular surveys assessing whether team members feel safe taking risks, sharing incomplete ideas, and making mistakes.
  2. Collaboration Networks: Using network analysis to map who’s working with whom across organizational boundaries. Are connections growing stronger and more diverse over time?
  3. Idea Transparency: Track how early in the development process ideas are shared. Earlier sharing indicates greater trust and potentially more diverse input.

Research consistently shows that teams with high psychological safety and diverse collaboration patterns tend to be more innovative. When people feel safe to share early-stage ideas and work across boundaries, breakthrough thinking becomes more likely.

 

Adaptation Capacity: Your Organization’s Flexibility

The third element of my framework, “Learn Fast,” is about building your organization’s capacity to adapt. This might be the most valuable outcome of innovation work, yet it’s often completely unmeasured.

 

Here’s how to capture it:

  1. Response Time: How quickly can your organization react to external changes? This might be measured by the time it takes to formulate a response to a competitor move or market shift.
  2. Experiment Cycle Time: How long does it take from identifying a need to running an experiment? How much has this time decreased?
  3. Pivot Capability: How effectively can teams change direction based on new information? Track instances where teams successfully adapted their approach based on feedback or changing conditions.

Organizations with high adaptation capacity can respond more quickly to threats and opportunities – a critical advantage in today’s rapidly changing environment.

 

The Ripple Effect: Innovation’s Broader Impact

Beyond these metrics that map to my Create the Impossible™ framework, there’s another set of measurements that capture innovation’s ripple effects throughout an organization:

  1. Talent Magnetism: Are you attracting and retaining creative talent? Tracking application rates for innovation-focused roles and retention rates of team members can reveal how your innovation culture strengthens your talent position.
  2. Decision Quality: Are you making better decisions faster? Innovation capabilities often improve an organization’s overall decision-making.
  3. Strategic Optionality: Has innovation increased your future options? Innovation often creates new strategic possibilities that weren’t previously available. Tracking your “option space” – the range of possible future moves – can quantify this value.

Putting It Into Practice: The Innovation Dashboard 2.0

So how do you actually implement these alternative metrics in your organization? Here’s a practical approach:

  1. Start with Purpose: Before choosing metrics, clarify what you’re really trying to achieve through innovation. Is it adaptability? Future-proofing? Cultural transformation? Then select metrics that align with these deeper purposes.
  2. Balance Leading and Lagging Indicators: Traditional financial metrics are lagging indicators – they tell you about past performance. The metrics I’ve described are leading indicators – they predict future success.
  3. Create a Multi-Dimensional Dashboard: Develop a dashboard that shows traditional metrics alongside these alternative measures, telling a more complete story of innovation’s value.
  4. Visualize the Connections: Help stakeholders see how these alternative metrics connect to financial outcomes over time. For example, show how increased learning velocity eventually translates to faster product development.

Your Innovation Measurement Challenge

So here’s your challenge for this week: Identify one “below the waterline” metric that would help tell a more complete story about the value your innovation efforts are creating.

 

Maybe it’s a measure of learning velocity. Perhaps it’s something that captures your growing relationship resilience. Or it could be an indicator of your organization’s adaptation capacity.

 

Whatever you choose, start tracking it alongside your traditional metrics. You might be surprised at the insights it reveals and the conversations it sparks.

 

Remember: What we measure shapes what we value and what we achieve. By expanding our innovation metrics beyond the bottom line, we open up new possibilities for creating the impossible.

 

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

 

I’d love to hear from you. What’s one alternative metric you’re using to measure innovation in your organization? Click here to share your story!

Senior Leaders: Ready to transform how your organization measures and communicates innovation value? Book a complimentary Innovation Strategy Session and let’s explore how to create a more complete picture of your innovation impact.

Innovation in the Age of Anywhere Work: Creating the Impossible Across Distances

Click to watch (19:27) or scroll down to read more

Hey there, innovation champions!

 

Picture this: It’s December, I’m sitting in a living room with eleven other people, launching what we think will be a small local community action group. Our stretch goal? 50 members.

 

Fast forward just three months, and we’re suddenly 220+ members strong, with multiple teams, projects, and a communication stream that one member aptly described as “a firehose.”

 

Sound familiar to any startup founders out there?

 

But here’s where it gets interesting. Unlike most modern organizations, we have the luxury of being able to call an in-person meeting and actually make it happen fairly easily. For distributed teams across different time zones and geographies, that’s simply not an option.

 

So what happens to innovation when you can’t all be in the same room together? Does creativity suffer? Do breakthrough ideas become harder to find?

 

After experiencing this rapid growth and working with tech and marketing teams across the globe for years, I’ve discovered something surprising: Distance doesn’t have to diminish innovation. In fact, with the right approach, distributed teams can actually out-innovate their in-office counterparts.

 

Let me show you how, using my Create the Impossible™ framework.

 

Play Hard: Building Trust Across Distances

The foundation of innovation in distributed teams isn’t fancy technology – it’s trust. Without the organic trust-building that happens naturally in physical spaces, we need to be intentional about creating psychological safety across distances.

 

One of the most powerful moments in my community group came during a simple phone call with a leadership team member. We were discussing a challenging situation, and because we had established deep trust, she felt completely comfortable challenging my perspective and offering wildly different approaches.

 

That conversation sparked an innovative solution neither of us would have discovered alone.

So how do you build this kind of trust in distributed teams?

 

First, create intentional spaces for connection before diving into content. In my distributed client workshops, I always start with connection activities that might seem “inefficient” but actually lay the groundwork for innovation.

 

One simple activity I love is “Rose, Thorn, Bud” – each team member shares something beautiful in their life right now (rose), a challenge they’re facing (thorn), and something they’re looking forward to (bud).

 

These moments of human connection create the psychological safety necessary for people to share their wildest ideas without fear of judgment.

 

When people feel safe to take risks without fear of embarrassment or rejection, creativity flourishes – regardless of physical location.

 

Make Crap: Embracing Digital Imperfection

The second element of my Create the Impossible™ framework is “Make Crap” – giving ourselves permission to create imperfect first drafts rather than waiting for perfection.

 

This becomes even more crucial in distributed environments, where the temptation to only share polished work is stronger. Without the casual “Hey, what do you think of this?” moments that happen naturally in offices, distributed teams need to intentionally create spaces for sharing work-in-progress.

 

In my community action group, even though we don’t have a dedicated digital channel specifically for half-baked ideas, we’ve cultivated an environment where people feel comfortable saying, “This is just a thought, but what if we…?” This willingness to share incomplete thinking has been vital to our rapid growth and problem-solving.

 

For tech teams, this might look like:

 

  • Creating a dedicated digital space where unfinished ideas are welcomed
  • Starting meetings with an explicit invitation to share “terrible first attempts”
  • Using collaborative tools to collectively iterate on ideas together

 

Remember: Innovation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It emerges from collision and iteration. And in distributed teams, we need to create intentional spaces for those collisions to happen.

 

Learn Fast: Creating Feedback Loops Across Time Zones

The final element of the Create the Impossible™ framework is “Learn Fast” – turning every experience, especially “failures,” into learning opportunities.

 

This becomes both more challenging and more critical in distributed teams. Without real-time feedback, learning cycles can slow down dramatically.

 

In my rapidly growing community group, we’re still developing many of these processes, but we’re already seeing the value of documenting our journey and decisions. This documentation isn’t just about record-keeping – it’s a learning tool that allows us to reflect on what’s working and what needs adjustment.

 

For distributed teams, implementing effective feedback loops might include:

 

  1. Simple Reflection Questions: After meetings or project milestones, consider posing questions like: What worked well? What could be improved? What will we try next time?
  2. Regular Learning Reviews: Schedule dedicated time to reflect on what your team is learning, separate from project status updates.
  3. Accessible Documentation: Make your team’s processes, decisions, and learnings available in shared spaces where everyone can access and build upon them.

 

These practices help ensure that insights don’t get lost across time zones and that teams can learn collectively despite physical separation.

 

The Innovation Anywhere Playbook

Now, let’s put this all together into a practical playbook for fostering innovation in distributed teams:

 

1] Leverage Technology Thoughtfully

Be strategic about creating different spaces for different types of interaction:

  • Synchronous video for emotional connection and complex problem-solving
  • Asynchronous channels for reflection and idea development
  • Shared documents for collaborative exploration

 

2] Create “Collisionable Hours”

Innovation often emerges from unexpected collisions between ideas and people. In distributed teams, we need to intentionally create these opportunities:

  • Designate specific times when team members across time zones can connect
  • Create virtual spaces where informal conversation is encouraged
  • Pair people from different functions for regular “collision conversations”

 

3] Establish Clear Communication Norms

Without the context of physical space, distributed teams need explicit norms:

  • Which channel is appropriate for which type of communication?
  • What response times are expected for different types of messages?
  • How should people signal when they’re in “deep work” mode versus available for collaboration?

 

4] Maintain Open Communication

Foster an environment where ideas can flow freely:

  • Implement an open-door policy for sharing thoughts and suggestions
  • Listen attentively to team members’ input and provide constructive feedback
  • Celebrate and share creative successes to motivate the team

 

Remember: The goal isn’t to recreate the office experience online. It’s to leverage the unique advantages of distributed work to create something even better.

 

The Power of Distributed Creativity

What I find most fascinating about distributed innovation is that, when done right, it can actually unlock creative potential that might remain dormant in traditional settings.

 

Without the conformity pressure that often exists in physical spaces, distributed team members may feel more freedom to express unconventional ideas. The nurse working from her home office might feel empowered to challenge the CEO’s perspective in a virtual meeting in ways she might not in a boardroom.

 

The asynchronous nature of distributed work also allows for deeper reflection. Rather than being put on the spot to respond immediately to an idea, team members can sit with concepts, process them fully, and return with more thoughtful contributions.

 

And the diversity inherent in distributed teams – not just cultural diversity, but diversity of environments and contexts – can spark connections that wouldn’t emerge when everyone is sharing the same physical space.

 

Your Distributed Innovation Challenge

Here’s your challenge for this week: Identify one small way to enhance innovation across your distributed team.

 

Maybe it’s creating a dedicated space for half-baked ideas. Perhaps it’s implementing a “no slides” rule for one meeting to encourage more authentic communication. Or it could be as simple as starting your next virtual gathering with a human connection moment before diving into the agenda.

 

Whatever you choose, remember that innovation isn’t about location—it’s about creating the conditions where creativity can flourish.

 

Stay curious, stay playful, and keep creating the impossible—no matter where your team members happen to be!

 

I’d love to hear from you. What’s one strategy you’ve used to foster innovation across distributed teams? Click here to share your story!

Senior Leaders: Ready to transform your distributed team’s innovation potential? Book a complimentary Innovation Strategy Session and let’s explore how the Create the Impossible™ framework can revolutionize your team’s approach to creativity and problem-solving.

 

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