Hey there, innovation champions!

Most innovation efforts don’t fail because teams lack ideas.

They fail because smart, capable people are waiting for permission to be perfect—and by the time they feel ready, the moment has passed.

I’ve watched this pattern stall product launches, kill momentum after conferences, and quietly drain the energy out of teams that leaders genuinely believed were “high potential.”

I know it well, because perfectionism once stopped me cold too.

The Wedding Document I Was Afraid to Make

When I got married the second time, in 2013, I was still running my professional art business.

I ran into a friend at the grocery store who asked if I was going to make my own ketubah—the traditional Jewish marriage contract. These are often elaborate, hand-illuminated works of art.

“Oh, no,” I said quickly. “We’re not having a ketubah.”

She stared at me like I’d just said I wasn’t having a wedding cake.

And honestly, from her perspective, the confusion made sense. I wasn’t just an artist—I was a ketubah artist. These documents were my specialty. Clients hired me specifically for them.

I mumbled something about my fiancé not being Jewish and us not having a rabbi officiate. But even as I said it, I knew those were flimsy excuses. Most of my clients were interfaith couples. That had never been a barrier before.

Standing there between the produce aisle and the cereal, I finally admitted what I’d been avoiding.

I wasn’t opting out because I didn’t want a ketubah.

I was opting out because I was terrified I couldn’t make one that lived up to my own impossible standards.

Perfectionism Doesn’t Look Like Fear—It Looks Like Good Judgment

Here’s the thing about perfectionism: it rarely announces itself as fear.

It shows up as discernment. As “high standards.” As wanting to “do it right.”

That’s why it’s especially dangerous in analytical, high-performing environments. The smarter and more conscientious the team, the easier it is to mistake paralysis for prudence.

That was exactly what was happening to me.

So instead of aiming to make The Perfect Ketubah, I changed the goal entirely.

My only goal was to have fun.

I intentionally removed the pressure for it to be “good.” I allowed it to be a little messy. Even a little crappy. I shared the process publicly, laughed at my missteps, and let myself experiment.

The result?

A ketubah that hangs in our bedroom to this day—and still makes me smile every time I see it.

But more importantly, I relearned something that has shaped every chapter of my work since:

Lowering the stakes doesn’t lower the outcome. It unlocks it.

Why This Keeps Showing Up at Work

Years later, when I began working with corporate teams, I saw the same pattern everywhere.

Engineers who wouldn’t share half-formed ideas in meetings.

Project managers polishing decks instead of testing assumptions.

Leadership teams talking endlessly about innovation while avoiding the small, uncomfortable risks that actually produce it.

When executives tell me, “Our people just aren’t creative types,” I almost always see the opposite.

I see people who care deeply about quality—and have learned that safety lives in certainty.

The problem isn’t a lack of creativity.

It’s an environment that quietly rewards perfection and punishes experimentation.

This Is Why “Play” Is a Serious Business Tool

This is where my Create the Impossible™ framework comes in—not as inspiration, but as infrastructure.

When teams Play Hard, they create psychological safety that allows unfinished thinking to surface.

When they Make Crap, they break the spell of perfectionism and get ideas moving again.

When they Learn Fast, they turn small experiments into real business intelligence instead of waiting months for certainty that never arrives.

None of this is theoretical.

I’ve watched the energy in rooms change in under 90 minutes when leaders give their teams permission to experiment without judgment.

Not permission to be reckless—but permission to start.

What Happened When Analytical Teams Tried This

At the Project Management Institute’s San Francisco Bay Area Chapter Professional Development Day, I stood in front of 125 project and program managers.

No slides. No lecture.

Just structured experiments.

These were professionals trained to minimize risk, control variables, and deliver predictability. Not the audience most people would label “creative.”

And yet, within 45 minutes, the room was buzzing.

One attendee later wrote, “I could actually see the breakthroughs happening—it was electric.”

That same pattern has shown up in my work with teams connected to Google, Meta, Salesforce, NHRMA, and other highly analytical environments.

When the conditions change, the people change with them.

Why My New Book Is Also an Experiment

Which brings me to my new book, Innovation at Work.

While finishing it, a familiar voice showed up in my head:

“How can you publish a book of experiments you haven’t personally facilitated with every possible team?”

It’s a reasonable question—and one I’ve heard echoed by leaders hesitant to try anything that doesn’t come with a decade of internal case studies.

My answer is simple:

The book itself is an experiment.

It’s curated, structured, strategic—and intentionally designed to evolve.

Some of the 52 micro-experiments are ones I’ve facilitated directly. Others synthesize proven practices from innovation, improv, and creative problem-solving disciplines.

What I’m most interested in now is how real teams use them.

What works. What doesn’t. What surprises people.

Because that’s how innovation actually gets better.

A Quick Note About the Book Timeline

If you’ve been following this project for a while, you may have noticed that the launch date has shifted.

That was a deliberate choice.

As the interior design process stretched longer than expected, I had a familiar fork in the road: rush it out to hit an arbitrary date—or practice exactly what I teach.

So I chose the latter.

I slowed the timeline slightly to make sure the book actually does what it’s meant to do: help leaders and teams use it immediately, without friction or apology.

The new timeline is simple:

• Advance Reader Copies go out February 2 (Not on the Launch Team? Join here.) 
• Kindle launch: February 13 
• Paperback release: March 10 

It’s a small delay—and a clear example of what happens when you prioritize learning and quality over false urgency.

An Invitation (No Pitch Required)

If you’re responsible for creating innovation capability—not just a great conference moment—I’ll leave you with this:

Where might perfectionism be quietly slowing your people down?

And what would happen if you lowered the stakes just enough for movement to begin?

Download a preview of Innovation at Work here.

If you’d like a sounding board, you can book an Innovation Strategy Session here.

Or, if you’re simply curious, click here to contact me and tell me where innovation keeps getting stuck in your organization. I read every message.

Sometimes the smallest experiments open the biggest doors.

Next week: More on what actually helps analytical teams move faster when uncertainty is high.

Hey there, innovation champions!

Before I head to Alabama and Arizona to spend the holidays with family, I wanted to share something that could save your Q1 innovation initiative before it even launches.

Because here’s the pattern I see every single year: In January, leaders roll out ambitious innovation programs. By February, they’ve quietly fizzled out. By March, everyone’s back to business as usual, and the expensive consultant’s slide deck is gathering digital dust.

Sound familiar?

The Big Initiative Trap

Years ago, when I was a professional artist, I made very little art that wasn’t for clients. Almost none, really.

Given that I’d gotten into the business because of my passion for creating, I was living a pretty miserable life. Not what I’d bargained for.

Every year I’d make these grand resolutions: I was going to set aside one weekend a month to make art! Or I’d dedicate every Friday afternoon. Or two hours once a week.

Whatever the plan was, it always failed. Which left me feeling more miserable than ever.

Here’s why those big plans didn’t work—and why your Q1 innovation kickoff is headed for the same fate: They require pulling people away from their actual work.

Your team is already maxed out hitting their numbers. Your engineers, project managers, and analysts don’t have time for a two-day workshop, no matter how strategic it sounds. And even if you manage to get them there, what happens the next week when they’re drowning in their normal workload again?

The training doesn’t stick because it lives in a different universe from their daily reality.

The Micro-Experiment Alternative

After years of failed grand plans, I finally tried a radical experiment: instead of going big, I went micro.

I committed to making art for just 15 minutes a day. That’s it.

This didn’t require me to overhaul my schedule or pull myself away from work in some crazy way. After all, anyone can find 15 minutes.

I honestly didn’t think it was going to make much difference, but the results were truly astounding. Not only did I create more art over the span of 11 months than I had in the previous decade, but my creativity was off the charts, because creativity breeds creativity.

It’s like lifting weights or practicing a musical instrument: a little bit, consistently, creates noticeable change. And that noticeable change makes it motivating to keep at it.

How This Applies to Your Team

When I work with teams at companies like Google, Meta, and Salesforce, or associations like Project Management Institute and American Marketing Association, the same principle holds: sustained innovation capability doesn’t come from big initiatives—it comes from systematic micro-experiments integrated into existing workflows.

Think about your analytical teams—your engineers, project managers, researchers. They’re already brilliant at their jobs. But when you pull them out for a multi-day innovation workshop, you’re essentially telling them to put their real work on hold.

Even worse, you’re reinforcing the idea that innovation is something special that happens over there, separate from their daily responsibilities.

What if instead, innovation became part of how they work, not an interruption from their work?

That’s exactly what the 52 micro-experiments in my book Innovation at Work are designed to do.

Why 52 Experiments Work Where Big Programs Fail

Each experiment takes 5-30 minutes. They fit into existing meetings, sprint planning, project reviews—the rhythms your team already has.

Instead of requiring a complete culture overhaul on Day One, they build innovation muscle gradually. Week by week. One small win at a time.

Your engineers learn to embrace productive failure not through a lecture on psychological safety, but by running a 15-minute “Learning Autopsy” experiment during their retrospective.

Your analysts discover creative problem-solving not through mandatory “innovation time,” but through a quick “Ask the Opposite Expert” conversation with someone from a completely different function.

Your project managers build adaptive thinking not by leaving their work, but by integrating an “Assumption Audit” check-in at the start of sprint planning.

The best part? Because these experiments deliver immediate, tangible value in their actual work, people want to keep going. The change becomes self-reinforcing rather than requiring constant executive push.

What This Means for Your Q1 Planning

Right now, as you’re finalizing Q1 plans before the holiday break, you have a choice:

You can launch another big initiative that requires pulling people away from their work, investing heavily in facilitation, and hoping it somehow sticks after everyone returns to their desks.

Or you can equip your leaders with a playbook of 52 micro-experiments they can integrate into the work that’s already happening—building innovation capability systematically, week by week, throughout 2026.

The book includes everything you need: complete experiment instructions, remote adaptations, scaling guidelines for different team sizes, integration strategies for existing processes, and even a tracker to monitor what’s working.

Innovation at Work launches January 16 with all 52 experiments organized into the Create the Impossible™ framework: Play Hard → Make Crap → Learn Fast → Create the Impossible™.

If you’re planning Q1 right now and want a resource that actually fits how analytical teams work, join the waitlist at innovationatworkbook.com/waitlist.

You’ll be the first to know when the book launches, and special launch pricing.

One More Thing

If you’re reading this and thinking, “This is exactly what our Q1 needs, but I need to talk through how to implement this strategically for our specific situation”—let’s talk.

I work with organizations to help their analytical teams unlock systematic innovation capabilities. Sometimes that’s through keynotes at annual conferences, sometimes through strategic consulting on innovation capability development.

Send me an email or message me on LinkedIn, and let’s have a conversation about what 2026 could look like for your team.

For now, I’m headed off to enjoy some holiday time with family. I hope you get some well-deserved rest too.

Enjoy the rest of 2025, and here’s to a Happy New Year—when your Q1 innovation approach could be completely different from every failed January initiative that came before.

Happy holidays!

Next week: My New Year’s resolution for innovation leaders—and why 2026 might be the year your team finally cracks the innovation code. Plus, a behind-the-scenes look at why I spent a good chunk of this year writing this book.

Hey there, innovation champions!

“We need to innovate, but we can’t pull people away from their desks.”

If you’re a VP of L&D, a chapter president planning your annual conference, or a research director managing tight project timelines, you’ve said some version of this. Your team needs breakthrough thinking capabilities, but you can’t pause operations for elaborate training programs.

Here’s what I’ve learned working with teams at Google, Meta, Salesforce, and most recently with 125 project managers at PMI San Francisco Bay Area: You don’t need day-long workshops to build innovation capabilities. You need the right micro-experiments embedded into the work you’re already doing.

Let me show you exactly how this works.

Why Traditional Innovation Training Fails Your Schedule

Most innovation programs assume you have luxuries you don’t actually have: dedicated innovation time, multi-day offsites, freedom to “pause and innovate.”

But your reality looks different. You’re managing:

• Conference agendas packed with concurrent sessions and networking breaks
• Team calendars already bursting with sprint planning and stakeholder meetings
• Budgets that can’t absorb lost productivity from day-long workshops
• Leaders who need to see ROI before investing more time

The pressure creates a catch-22: You need innovation capabilities to stay competitive, but you can’t afford to stop competing long enough to build them.

What if you didn’t have to choose?

What Happened in 45 Minutes With 125 Project Managers

When PMI San Francisco Bay Area Chapter invited me to kick off their Professional Development Day, we had 45 minutes to demonstrate what’s possible when you use structured play to build innovation capabilities.

No slides. No lecture. Just my Create the Impossible™ framework in action.

I opened with three phrases, asking everyone to repeat after me:

Be Playful.
Be Imperfect.
Be Curious.

Then we dove into three structured experiments.

Round One: The One-Word Story

Groups of three told stories collaboratively, one word at a time. Then came the twist: one person became the “AI voice,” throwing in random curveballs.

Stories collapsed and recovered, collapsed and recovered.

Here’s what these analytical minds noticed in just 12 minutes: When they treated surprises as obstacles, stories died. When they treated them as prompts, stories expanded.

That’s the exact adaptive capacity needed for thriving with AI, shifting requirements, and uncertain markets—learned through doing, not through PowerPoint.

Round Two: Imaginary AI Tools

I divided the room into thirds. Each section imagined an ordinary object—a paperclip, a shoe, an umbrella—transformed into an AI assistant for project managers.

Ideas ranged from playful to profound: paperclips that held stakeholders together, umbrellas that shielded teams from scope creep.

What looked like silliness was structured lateral thinking—fast, embodied practice of creative problem-solving they could apply to real project challenges.

Round Three: The Championship Mindset

A Rock-Paper-Scissors tournament where losers became their opponent’s biggest fans. Within minutes, 125 people were laughing, cheering, collaborating.

When asked which felt easier—competing or cheerleading—the vast majority said cheerleading. In complex environments, collaboration beats competition every time.

One participant, Marie Spark, wrote afterward: “I could see the breakthroughs happening—it was ELECTRIC!”

Another noted that after our session, “it was much easier to connect with people for the rest of the day.”

The Framework Behind the Transformation

What you just witnessed is my Create the Impossible™ framework in action: Play Hard → Make Crap → Learn Fast.

Each of those three rounds demonstrated a core principle:

Play Hard = Structured experimentation that bypasses perfectionism
Make Crap = Permission to create without judgment, which accelerates idea generation
Learn Fast = Rapid iteration and pattern recognition that builds adaptive capacity

This is the same methodology that powers all 52 micro-experiments in my forthcoming book, Innovation at Work: 52 Micro-Experiments for Brave Leaders Who Want to Unstick Teams, Spark Ideas, and Build What’s Next.

The difference? Those were three custom exercises for a facilitated client session. The book gives you 52 repeatable experiments you can run with your own team—each designed to fit into existing meetings, each building specific innovation capabilities without requiring you to pull anyone offline.

The Truth About “52 Experiments”

I know what you might be thinking: “52 experiments sounds overwhelming. I don’t have time to implement all that.”

Here’s the truth: You don’t implement all 52 at once. You don’t even implement all 52 ever, unless you want to.

The book is designed three ways:

Option 1: The Crisis Protocol
Facing a specific innovation challenge right now? The book includes 90-minute bundles—curated sets of experiments designed to address particular crises (teams stuck in perfectionism, communication breakdowns, creative blocks). Run the protocol once, see immediate results.

Option 2: The Systematic Builder
Want to build lasting innovation culture? Pick one experiment per week. Run it in your existing team meeting. That’s 15 minutes out of your weekly standup, sprint planning, or all-hands. By the end of the year, you’ve transformed how your team thinks and works—without a single day-long workshop.

Option 3: The Strategic Selector
Need to solve a specific problem? Use the quick-reference guides to find the exact experiment that addresses your current challenge. Run just that one. See what shifts.

The point isn’t to do all 52. The point is to have a systematic toolkit that works within your actual constraints.

Why Micro-Experiments Work When Big Programs Don’t

Remember those three exercises with the project managers? Each one was designed to be small enough to feel safe but powerful enough to create real insight.

That’s the paradox of transformation: Massive change doesn’t require massive time investments. It requires the right small actions, repeated strategically.

Think about what’s possible when you use this methodology:

A 15-minute “Crappy First Draft Showcase” in your Monday meeting breaks perfectionism faster than a full-day workshop on psychological safety.

A 10-minute “Switch Seats, Switch Minds” exercise during sprint planning builds empathy more effectively than hours of lecture about user-centered thinking.

A 20-minute “Ugly Prototype Sprint” generates breakthrough ideas that weeks of polished presentations never surface.

Why? Because doing beats discussing. Always.

Emmanuel Hyppolite, who attended that PMI session, captured it perfectly: “She shared real tools and models (not just buzzwords) that participants could apply immediately.”

Immediately. That’s the difference between business books you read and business books you use.

What Your Team Actually Gets

Innovation at Work isn’t a book you read and shelve. It’s a playbook you keep open at your desk.

Each of the 52 experiments includes:

• The specific business problem it solves
• Exactly how to run it (including scripts for some of the experiments!)
• Why it works (the research and psychology behind it)
• What success looks like
• How to adapt it for your team’s specific needs

Plus strategic implementation guides that show you how to combine experiments for maximum impact—whether you have 15 minutes or 90.

The experiments are organized around the Create the Impossible™ framework:

Play Hard (Experiments 1-13): Break through perfectionism and creative blocks
Make Crap (Experiments 14-26): Accelerate prototyping and idea generation
Learn Fast (Experiments 27-39): Speed up learning cycles and iteration
Create the Impossible™ (Experiments 40-52): Build lasting innovation habits

You don’t need to understand the framework to use the experiments. You just need 5-20 minutes and a willingness to try something different.

The Same Methodology, Now in Your Hands

What I demonstrated with those 125 project managers—structured play that creates breakthrough thinking in minutes, not days—is what you get with every experiment in the book.

The same methodology. The same framework. The same philosophy that doing beats discussing.

Just systematized so you can run these experiments yourself, with your own team, on your own schedule.

The Book Launch Is Coming (And You Can Get It Early)

Innovation at Work officially launches February 10, 2026. But if you join the waitlist now, you’ll get exclusive early access—including notification of the $0.99 Kindle special.

Even better: Join the Launch Team and get:

✨ The complete book on January 5 (five weeks before the public)
📖 Exclusive bonus materials not available anywhere else
🎯 Behind-the-scenes updates on the launch
💡 First look at all 52 micro-experiments before the world sees them

Your part: Read it (or skim the experiments most relevant to your challenges), write an honest review, and post it on Amazon January 19-21. That’s it.

The timeline:

January 5: Your advance reader copy arrives
January 16: Submit your review via simple Google Form (I’ll format it for you)
January 19-21: Copy/paste to Amazon
February 10: Official launch day 🎉

This isn’t “more work”—it’s early access to the exact toolkit you need to build innovation capabilities without disrupting operations.

Ready to get your team innovating without pulling them away from their desks?

→ Join the Launch Team here for early access + exclusive bonuses
→ Or join the waitlist to be notified when the book launches (plus get the $0.99 Kindle special alert)

Next week:  I’m sharing one complete micro-experiment from Innovation at Work—a 15-minute intervention you can run with your team before the holidays. Consider it a preview of what’s possible when you have all 52.

Hey there, innovation champions!

The CEO of PMI San Francisco Bay Area had a problem. Her members—project managers who pride themselves on precision, process, and predictability—were facing an uncertain future with AI. 

Would AI take their jobs? How could they position themselves as strategic partners rather than task executors? And most pressingly: how do you prepare people for a future you can’t predict?

“I want people to think differently,” she told me in our discovery call. “The future is unknown and evolving. Instead of adapting, how do you adapt first and lead from there?”

Here’s what she wasn’t asking for: a motivational speech about embracing change. What she needed was practical—a way to help analytical minds access skills they didn’t know they had.

The Buffet Line Confession

“You know, I never thought of myself as creative.”

The project manager standing next to me in the buffet line at PMI’s Professional Development Day said it matter-of-factly, like he was commenting on the weather. He wasn’t apologizing or making excuses. He was simply stating what he believed to be true about himself.

When I poll audiences during my Creating the Impossible keynote, I ask how many people have ever thought of themselves as “not creative.” Invariably, the entire room raises their hands. Every single person.

This may be especially true of analytical, technical types trained to focus on precision and process. But here’s what surprises people: I spent my college and grad school years believing I was a “non-creative person.” Even now, after decades of making my living as an artist and creativity instigator, those self-doubt gremlins still show up.

That’s how strong the cultural programming is that tells us creativity belongs to other people, not us.

What Happened When We Gave AI Superpowers to Everyday Objects

Earlier that morning, I divided the 125 project and program managers into small groups. Each team imagined that they received an everyday household object—a shoe, a paperclip, an umbrella—magically endowed with AI superpowers.

Not just regular AI. Superhero AI.

AI shoes that could walk in other people’s footsteps. Paperclips that could hold teams together, not just papers. Umbrellas that could shield teams from scope creep, not just raindrops.

Their task: come up with as many ways as possible that their magical AI assistant could make their lives as project managers easier, more efficient, or more fun. They had just a few minutes.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure how it would land. Would this group of technical professionals rebel against an activity that required imagination? Would they cross their arms and wait for something more “practical”?

Quite the opposite.

Within seconds, the room erupted. Groups were laughing, building on each other’s ideas with “yes, and” energy, channeling their inner improv instincts. Ideas flew fast. The creativity was electric.

The Shift That Changes Everything

In the debrief afterwards, the energy in the room had fundamentally changed. Participants noted how the collaborative mindset actually accelerated idea generation, and how the playful approach made creativity feel accessible rather than intimidating.

But here’s what the comments and Recommendations I received on LinkedIn revealed about the real transformation:

“She reminded us that creativity is not fluff but a true leadership capability,” wrote one senior project manager.

Another noted: “Innovation and leadership aren’t just about systems and tools but also about play, trust, and creativity.”

This is the shift that changes everything for analytical teams facing an AI-driven future.

Because here’s what the PMI CEO understood: the technical skills that made project managers valuable in the past—managing timelines, coordinating resources, tracking dependencies—are exactly the skills AI will handle increasingly well. The skills that will differentiate humans are the ones that can’t be automated: creative problem-solving, cross-functional collaboration, adaptive thinking in uncertain conditions.

These aren’t soft skills. They’re strategic capabilities that determine whether your next initiative succeeds or stalls.

Why Technical Teams Actually Have an Advantage

Here’s the counterintuitive truth I’ve observed working with teams at Google, Meta, Salesforce, and other analytical organizations: technical teams often innovate better than “creative types” when given the right framework.

Why? Because they already have the discipline, systems-thinking, and attention to detail that creative work requires. What they’re missing isn’t capability—it’s permission and practice.

The reframing exercise we did at PMI works because it provides structure (you have constraints: this specific object, this specific superpower, this specific time limit) while creating psychological safety (it’s playful, low-stakes, everyone’s doing it together).

That combination—structure plus safety—is what allows analytical minds to access creative problem-solving without feeling like they’re being asked to suddenly become “creative people.”

They don’t need to become someone else. They need to recognize what they already have.

What This Means for Your Next Innovation Initiative

If you’re leading a team that needs to think differently—whether that’s adapting to AI, solving complex technical challenges, or breaking through innovation plateaus—the traditional approach of bringing in “creativity experts” to inspire your people often backfires.

Analytical minds don’t need inspiration. They need practical frameworks that help them systematically access capabilities they didn’t know they had.

This is why past innovation initiatives haven’t stuck. It’s not that your people can’t innovate. It’s that they’ve been told innovation requires them to fundamentally change who they are.

The project manager from the buffet line? By the end of the session, he was discovering that creativity had been there all along. Not in spite of his analytical training, but enhanced by it.

Your Next Move

If you’re curious about what systematic, practical innovation looks like for analytical teams—and how to build these capabilities without the fluff—I’ve created a preview of my forthcoming book, Innovation at Work: 52 Micro-Experiments for Brave Leaders Who Want to Unstick Teams, Spark Ideas, and Build What’s Next.

The preview includes the framework I use with technical teams to help them access creative problem-solving in 90 minutes, not months.

Download your free preview here

And if you’re planning a conference or professional development day where your members need practical tools for thriving in an AI-driven future, send me a message. I’d be glad to explore whether this approach might work for your event.

Next week: I’m sharing the 90-minute innovation framework that works when you don’t have time for day-long workshops. Plus, why micro-experiments beat massive transformation initiatives—and how to implement your first one in 15 minutes.

Hey there, innovation champions!

Here’s irony for you: there were years when I was making my living as a professional artist, when I made very little art.

Oh, I sold a lot of art, but most of it was prints of art I’d created in previous years. I spent most of my time fulfilling orders, customizing designs on the computer, then printing them out, packing and shipping.

Believe me, it was not what I’d signed up for when I envisioned the artist’s life!

I was performing the role of artist without actually creating art.

And here’s what really stung: from the outside, my business looked successful. Revenue was good. The workflow was smooth. But I knew the truth—I was going through all the motions of being an artist while the actual creative discovery had completely stopped.

Sound familiar?

The Performance vs. The Practice

I just got back from leading my annual 5-day creativity retreat—an immersive experience where participants (including me) get to focus entirely on whatever creative project calls to them. It’s heaven! We get so much done!

But here’s what I learned years ago: the magic of those five days evaporates fast when you return to “reality”—work, family, the routine of regular life.

That’s when I challenged myself to simply play for fifteen minutes a day.

The goal: whatever I did had to be pure play, pure experimentation, completely unrelated to making money!

And, because I know I’m “pressure prompted,” I also committed to sharing whatever I created in those studio sessions—the good, the bad, the ugly, the incomplete—in a daily newsletter I called “The Artspark.” Just a snapshot of whatever I was working on.

Honestly, I didn’t expect this “tiny and daily” practice to amount to much, but it surely had to be better than nothing.

What I discovered blew my mind: I created more art that year (actually, in the 11 months from February through December) than I had in the previous decade!

That permission to play—and critically, to make crap—was utterly transformative. I went from paralyzed by perfectionism to prolific, buzzing with creative ideas (creativity breeds creativity, it turns out!) and having fun, to boot!

When “Innovation” Becomes Performance Art

Now, let me ask you something.

How much of your team’s “innovation work” looks like my print-fulfilling days?

Lots of activity. Polished deliverables. Smooth workflows. But no actual creating happening?

Just like I was PERFORMING the role of artist while not CREATING art, many teams are PERFORMING innovation while not actually INNOVATING.

The symptoms look different, but the pattern is identical:

• Teams invest months in innovation consultants and frameworks, but behavior doesn’t change
• Brainstorming sessions produce predictable ideas dressed up in new language
• Leadership gets frustrated that “innovation initiatives” aren’t translating to business results
• Everyone’s going through the motions, but nobody’s actually experimenting

I call this Innovation Theater. And it’s costing you more than you think.

The Diagnostic: Three Warning Signs You’re Stuck in Innovation Theater

Warning Sign #1: Your Team Perfects Presentations Instead of Testing Prototypes

When I was fulfilling print orders instead of making art, I was busy. I was even profitable! But I wasn’t growing. I wasn’t discovering. I wasn’t creating.

Same thing happens with innovation theater. Your teams spend weeks polishing slide decks about potential ideas instead of spending days testing rough prototypes with real users.

The work looks impressive. The deliverables are beautiful. But it’s performance, not practice.

Your smartest people are perfecting presentations while competitors are shipping rough prototypes and learning what actually works.

Warning Sign #2: “Innovation Time” Requires Pulling People Away from “Real Work”

Here’s the objection I hear most from leaders: “We can’t afford to take people away from their desks for a series of workshops.”

And you know what? That objection is valid… if innovation requires months-long programs separate from actual work.

But here’s the thing: when innovation is truly embedded, it doesn’t look like “time away.” It looks like a 15-minute experiment at the start of your Tuesday standup that shifts how your team approaches problems all week.

Think about my art practice: I wasn’t taking sabbaticals. I was taking 15 minutes a day. And those micro-moments compounded into transformation.

Warning Sign #3: Your Team Waits for Permission to Experiment

Earlier this year, I worked with 125 project managers at a PMI professional development day. Forty-five minutes. Three structured experiments. No slides.

One participant wrote afterward: “I could see the breakthroughs happening. It was ELECTRIC!”

Know what made it electric? Not my permission-giving. It was watching themselves discover they could handle uncertainty, build on “bad” ideas, and turn constraints into creative fuel.

But here’s what I noticed: many of those analytical professionals—people whose entire job is managing complex projects—had never been given structured permission to play with possibility. They’d been to plenty of innovation training. But nobody had given them tools to do innovation as part of their actual work.

What This Actually Looks Like in Practice

Let me tell you about a research manager at Facebook who reached out during the pandemic.

Her team had a problem: brilliant insights that weren’t landing. They buried key findings in mountains of data, used incomprehensible research jargon, and took an adversarial tone that turned colleagues off. Their valuable work wasn’t having the impact it deserved.

Plus, morale was in the tank. Everyone needed a boost.

I designed a program called “Communicating for Influence” using play-based methods—structured experiments drawn from improv that helped the team practice new communication patterns in low-stakes ways.

The manager was skeptical. “These activities seem awfully… playful for a team of researchers,” she said.

When I clarified the specific behavioral outcomes each activity was designed to deliver, she grudgingly gave approval.

The results?

Within weeks, engagement with their communications skyrocketed. Team morale improved dramatically. And critically, behaviors actually changed—participants were applying the tools in their day-to-day work.

But here’s what really mattered: within six months, five other Facebook managers reached out asking for the same program. Word had spread fast because participants didn’t just see better outcomes—they reported these were “the most fun meetings I’ve attended all year!”

That’s the difference between innovation theater and actual innovation practice. Theater looks good in the moment but fades fast. Practice creates behavioral change that spreads organically.

The Real Cost of Innovation Theater

Innovation Theater doesn’t just waste time and budget.

It trains your smartest people to perfect slides instead of test ideas.

It creates cynicism. Your team stops believing innovation is possible. They see it as corporate theater they have to perform in.

Most importantly, it misses the fundamental truth: Innovation isn’t something you do separately from work. It’s how you approach work.

What Actually Works: The Immersive + Daily Combination

Remember how I said the 5-day retreat magic evaporates without daily practice? And that daily practice is powerful, but occasional immersive experiences supercharge growth?

The real power is combining both.

Your team needs:

The Immersive Experience: Those periodic offsites, intensives, or focused workshops where people step away, see new possibilities, practice new behaviors in a concentrated way, build relationships, and return energized.

The Daily Practice: Micro-experiments woven into actual work. Five to twenty minutes during regular meetings. Small-stakes chances to practice the behaviors that drive real innovation: welcoming “bad” ideas, building instead of critiquing, testing quickly instead of analyzing endlessly.

When you just do the immersive work, the learning fades. People return to their desks and old habits take over within weeks (or days).

When you just do the micro-experiments without deeper skill-building, you miss the relationship development and strategic framing that make change stick.

Together? You get systematic capability building that transforms how teams work.

From Theater to Practice: Your Next Step

Here’s a simple diagnostic you can run this week:

Look at your last three “innovation initiatives.” For each one, ask:

1. Did it produce new behaviors or just new vocabulary?

Are people actually experimenting differently, or just using innovation buzzwords? If your team talks about “failing fast” but still won’t share work-in-progress, that’s theater.

2. Was it ONLY big time investments, or did it include ongoing practice?

Immersive experiences are powerful—they create breakthroughs, build relationships, and develop skills fast. But if the learning stops when people return to their desks, that’s theater. Real innovation practice embeds what was learned into regular team rhythms with micro-experiments that keep the momentum going. If your initiative didn’t include both the intensive AND the ongoing practice, that’s the red flag.

3. Did it give people tools to experiment themselves, or just frameworks to talk about experimentation?

Can your team run their own quick tests, or do they need consultants to facilitate every session? If they can’t experiment without external support, the capability hasn’t transferred.

If you’re seeing patterns that worry you, you’re not alone. Most innovation initiatives fail because they’re designed as performance, not practice.

The good news? Small, systematic experiments—the kind that feel like creative play but function like business strategy—can shift this fast.

Your Innovation Toolkit Awaits

Want to move from innovation theater to innovation practice?

My new book, Innovation at Work: 52 Micro-Experiments for Brave Leaders Who Want to Unstick Teams, Spark Ideas, and Build What’s Next (coming early 2026), gives you the complete playbook.

Inside, you’ll find:

• 52 micro-experiments you can run in 5-20 minutes during regular meetings
• Crisis protocols for teams stuck RIGHT NOW
• Strategic implementation guides showing exactly how to embed innovation practice into your workflow
• Remote and in-person adaptations for every experiment

Get a free preview with sample experiments at innovationatworkbook.com/preview and discover the specific tools that can transform your team from performing innovation to actually doing it.

For event planners: Tired of innovation keynotes that inspire for 60 minutes then fade? My sessions give your attendees tools they’ll use the next day—and your leadership team will see the difference in weeks, not months. That’s the kind of ROI that makes you look brilliant for booking the speaker.

For leaders ready for comprehensive transformation: If you’re a Director, VP, or Chief Innovation Officer who knows your team needs more than a book—you need strategic partnership to diagnose what’s really happening and design the right intervention—let’s talk.

Book a complimentary Innovation Strategy Session where we’ll dig into your specific challenges and explore whether systematic micro-experiments, a strategic immersive program, or a combination makes sense for your team.

Because here’s what I learned from those 15-minute art sessions and what those Facebook research teams discovered: transformation doesn’t require massive organizational change.

It requires permission to play, tools to experiment, and systematic daily practice.

Your team already has the creative capacity. They just need the structure to access it.

And the choice is yours: continue the theater, or start the practice.

Next week: “Why Technical Teams Innovate Better Than ‘Creative Types’ (When Given the Right Framework)” — Think analytical minds can’t be creative? Turns out, technical professionals have a hidden advantage when it comes to innovation—they just need the right container. I’ll show you why your engineers might be your secret innovation weapon.