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Hey there, innovation champions!
The Call That Changes Everything
You know the moment.
A leader above you — maybe the CEO, maybe the board — decides it’s time. “We need to be more innovative. We need a culture where people take risks, generate ideas, move faster.”
And somehow, you’re the person who gets the mandate.
Maybe it comes with a budget. Maybe it comes with a timeline. Maybe it comes with exactly zero additional support, a team already at capacity, and a calendar that was already full.
What almost never comes with it: a playbook.
The Gap Nobody Warns You About
Here’s what I’ve observed across organizations that have handed their leaders innovation mandates and then watched what happened:
The gap isn’t motivation. Leaders want this to work.
The gap isn’t talent. The teams are capable.
The gap is between intention and infrastructure.
Most innovation initiatives are designed like events — a workshop, an offsite, a speaker who fires everyone up for 90 minutes. And then Monday morning arrives, and the team is back in their regular rhythm, with no new habits, no ongoing structure, and no way to keep the momentum alive.
By February, the energy has faded. By Q2, the initiative is quietly shelved. The leader who was handed the mandate has less credibility than before, because they tried something and it didn’t stick.
You may have seen this very pattern play out before.
And here’s the thing: it’s not a people problem. It’s a design problem.
What Actually Works
The organizations that successfully shift their innovation culture — really shift it, not just for a quarter — do three things differently.
First, they treat innovation as a practice, not an event. This means small experiments, run consistently, built into the rhythms teams already have. Not a separate initiative that competes with the work. The work is the innovation.
Second, they build psychological safety before they ask for bold moves. You can mandate creativity all you want. But if people don’t believe they’re genuinely safe to try things and fail, they will smile in the meeting and keep their head down afterward.
Third, they give people a framework — not a theory, but an actual operating system. Play Hard → Make Crap → Learn Fast isn’t a motivational poster. It’s a sequence that turns “be more innovative” into something teams can actually do on a Tuesday afternoon.
The Map
If you’re holding an innovation mandate right now, I want to offer you something concrete.
Depending on where you are and how deep you want to go, here’s how leaders typically work with me:
Start with the book. Innovation at Work gives you and your team 52 micro-experiments — most under 20 minutes — designed to build innovation as a practice inside the work you’re already doing. It’s the DIY starting point.
Run a keynote or workshop. A 90-minute session with your team gives everyone a shared language, a shared experience, and a first experiment they’ve already run together. That’s the foundation.
Go deeper with a consulting engagement. If you have a mandate and a genuine 90-day or year-long runway, I work with organizations to build the infrastructure — the manager activation, the ongoing lab sessions, the internal champions — that make the change stick.
You don’t have to figure this out alone.
The Invitation
If you’ve been handed an innovation mandate and you’re staring at the gap — let’s spend 30 minutes together. No pitch, just a real conversation about what you’re facing and what might actually move the needle.
Book a complimentary Innovation Strategy Session →
Or click here and tell me: what’s the biggest obstacle standing between you and the innovation culture your organization needs?
