Innovation In The Workplace

Some of the most valuable learning at work has never appeared in a training manual. It happens when an experienced colleague explains why they reframed a recommendation, what they noticed in a difficult meeting, or how they made a decision with incomplete information. A recent Harvard Business Review piece explores why this kind of mentoring may matter even more in the AI era. As routine work is automated, some of the experiences that helped people build judgment, pattern recognition, and professional instinct may disappear with it. The article’s call to make “invisible thinking” visible is especially compelling. But I think the opportunity goes beyond mentoring alone. We need to redesign how people develop. That means more learning in the flow of real work, stronger multigenerational teams, and managers who explain not only what decision they made, but how they reached it. It also means using AI to help early-career employees contribute at a higher level sooner, while being intentional about how they build the judgment, context, and critical thinking they will need over time. AI may change the traditional training ground. Our responsibility is to build a better one. https://lnkd.in/ganNagEE  

Today’s logical fallacy: the “No True Scotsman.” And it’s everywhere—from boardrooms to breakrooms to the state of the world. “No real leader would show vulnerability.” “No true professional would speak out about that.” “No real team player would question the mission right now.” This fallacy rewrites who counts as “one of us” whenever someone expresses complexity, discomfort, or dissent. It’s not logical. It’s strategic exclusion—often used to protect power, not principles. In business, it shuts down innovation and honest dialogue. In public life, it fractures communities and silences voices. It pretends to defend values. But what it often defends is ego, image, and control. So the next time you hear “No real [blank] would ever…,” ask yourself: Are they protecting what matters—or just making sure they don’t have to be uncomfortable? #socialpsychweekly #leadership #culture #criticalthinking #logicalfallacies #bullying #belonging #businessethics

"My remote workers are probably doing laundry during work hours." I hear this concern from leaders all the time. Let me tell you a dirty little secret: I did laundry during work hours when I was an employee. And I was a better worker for it. Why? Because this concern reveals a dangerous assumption about how knowledge work actually happens. The assumption: Real work only happens when someone is sitting at a desk, staring at a screen, typing on a keyboard for 8 hours straight. The reality: That's not how the brain works. And it's definitely not how complex problem-solving happens. Let me introduce you to something neuroscience calls the focused-diffuse thinking. This is how your brain actually processes complex information and makes meaningful connections. Focused thinking is what you think work looks like: Reading reports, analyzing data, reviewing meeting notes, gathering information from your team. Your conscious attention is locked on understanding specific information. But here's what most leaders miss: Focused thinking is only half the equation. Diffuse thinking is when your brain makes connections between all those focused inputs. This is what leads to those "aha moments," pattern recognition, and breakthrough insights. This is where the real value happens in knowledge work. And diffuse thinking requires doing something that doesn't take conscious focus. Things like doing repetitive tasks like household chores (cooking & cleaning), doing something physical like walking outside without your phone, and taking breaks like napping (💡Thomas Edison famously held ball bearings while napping. When he relaxed enough to drop them, he'd wake up with better ideas). So when your remote worker is folding laundry between tasks? Their brain might be solving that complex problem you discussed in your morning meeting. The idea that work only happens in front of a keyboard is an industrial-age assumption applied to knowledge work. One that treats humans as if they are machines that can be productive and focused for 8 hours straight. This assumption is costing you innovation, problem-solving, and breakthrough thinking. If you want your teams to do their best work, you need to design systems that work with how brains actually function, not against them. This includes building times during work days for people to do focused thinking, collaboration, and dare I say it...downtime to do the laundry. This is especially critical for remote work, where the lack of commute time and office distractions actually creates more opportunities for this natural thinking cycle. But only if you stop measuring "productivity" by keyboard activity. Ready to redesign your remote work approach around how humans actually think and solve problems? DM me.

Simple bulb. Complex maze. You know what gets to me about this image? Every Fortune 500 company has the left side covered. Innovation labs with bean bags and whiteboards. Brainstorming sessions that produce 47 "game-changing" concepts. Strategic off-sites where everyone gets excited about transformation. Decks. So many decks. Then ask: "What shipped last quarter?" Silence. Companies don't have an idea problem. They have an execution problem. Because ideation is safe. It's exciting. Everyone gets to contribute. No one has to make the hard calls about what NOT to do. Execution? That's where you face the bureaucracy. The "that's not how we do things here." The seventeen approval layers. The fear of failure that masquerades as "risk management." There's a concept called Jikko (実行), or practical execution. Think of it as applied Ikigai. The bridge between intention and reality. Not planning to plan. Not strategizing about strategery. Actually doing the work. Jikko, like living Ikigai, requires intentionality: 🔹 Kill good ideas to focus on great ones 🔹 Empower people to decide, not just recommend 🔹 Accept that done beats perfect 🔹 Know some bets won't pay off I've watched companies spend six months perfecting a strategy that the market made irrelevant in week three. I've seen brilliant ideas die in committee while competitors shipped something "good enough" and owned the space. The smart people you hired to build things? They're spending their days in meetings about meetings. The energy that should go into creation gets absorbed by navigation. Everyone wants the lightbulb. Nobody wants to navigate the maze. That's why nothing ships. When execution requires heroism instead of being normal, you don't have a business; you have innovation theater. The lightbulb moment is overrated. The maze is where companies prove whether they mean what they say. #Ikigai Image credit: Visual Growth

Forget top-down mandates. Real business agility comes from unleashing the innovators within your organization. Over the years at Make, we have spent a lot of time with our customers. Many of them disrupting their industry with new digital first business models. In these conversations, we consistently come across a certain mindset in people using our technology. They are re-thinking how to operate, re-imagining their business. These innovators are the ones driving real change, enabling businesses to stay nimble and agile. Those people are the ones making the difference, empowering them is the key to achieving business agility. So today, let me share with you a recipe that includes what we believe are the key ingredients to unlock this potential in your organization. First, there is the WILL. It’s the drive to innovate. This one is about the mindset. It’s the belief that they can solve and overcome any challenge. Fundamentally it’s their urge to discover, to persevere and to make breakthroughs. And you can impact this by inspiring them. By celebrating those who drive change. By showcasing where transformative solutions like visual automation, AI agents or no-code tools can be used to overcome day-to-day business challenges. It’s about inspiring people through use cases and success stories - to motivate people to achieve more of their own potential. Second, there is the SKILL. People’s ability to drive innovation. Whether people have a highly technical background or are self-taught doesn’t matter. It’s about fostering a culture of continuous learning and adoption of new technology. It’s about allowing your people to spend time on acquiring new skills to drive change, and to reinforce it with supporting these learning opportunities. And third, it’s about your business ENVIRONMENT. The organization around the individual, strengthening the innovators. The right environment is about promoting a culture of innovation, experimentation. Empower individuals. Let them fail fast and iterate. Allow them to challenge the status quo and embrace change. If you bring those ingredients together, you are creating a sweet spot. You are setting yourself up for making business agility a reality.  So, don’t wait for innovation to find you. Start to transform your business by impacting those three aspects for the innovators in your team. What steps are you taking to foster innovation in your company? #businessagility #nocode #automation 

I once watched a CEO dismiss a brilliant strategy in eight seconds. Not because it was wrong: but because it came from the quietest person in the room. The most dangerous thing about stereotypes? They're invisible until they control the decision. Think you're rational? Princeton research shows we form judgments in less than 100 milliseconds. Here's the real cost: • Breakthrough ideas die in silence because the voice was "unexpected" • Future leaders vanish behind "lack of presence" • Innovation suffocates under "needs more seasoning" The business impact is clear: Companies with diverse leadership are 70% more likely to capture new markets (HBR). But stereotypes don't just live in words. They shape careers in micro-decisions every single day. Want real change? Start here: → Pause: "What's really driving my judgment right now?" → Listen: Actively seek out the quiet voices → Structure: Use clear criteria, not gut feelings I've made these mistakes. My teams got stronger when I learned to look deeper than first impressions. 💭 When have you seen silent bias change an outcome?

I am constantly thinking about how to foster innovation in my product organization. Building teams that are experts at execution is the easy part—when there’s a clear problem, product orgs are great at coming up with smart solutions. But it’s impossible to optimize your way into innovation. You can’t only rely on incremental improvement to keep growing. You need to come up with new problem spaces, rather than just finding better solutions to the same old problems. So, how do we come up with those new spaces? Here are a few things I’m trying at Duolingo: 1. Innovation needs a high-energy environment, and a slow process will kill a great idea. So I always ask myself: Can we remove some of the organizational barriers here? Do managers from seven different teams really need to say yes on every project? Seeking consensus across the company—rather than just keeping everyone informed—can be a major deterrent to innovation. 2. Similarly, beware of defaulting to “following up.” If product meetings are on a weekly cadence, every time you do this, you are allocating seven days to a task that might only need two. We try to avoid this and promote a sense of urgency, which is essential for innovative ideas to turn into successes. 3. Figure out the right incentive. Most product orgs reward team members whose ideas have measurable business impact, which works in most contexts. But once you’ve found product-market fit, it is often easiest to generate impact through smaller wins. So, naturally, if your org tends to only reward impact, you have effectively incentivized constant optimization of existing features instead of innovation. In the short term things will look great, but over time your product becomes stale. I try to show my teams that we value and reward bigger ideas. If someone sticks their neck out on a new concept, we should highlight that—even if it didn’t pan out. Big swings should be celebrated, even if we didn’t win, because there are valuable learnings there. 4. Look for innovative thinkers with a history of zero-to-one feature work. There are lots of amazing product managers out there, but not many focus on new problem domains. If a PM has created something new from scratch and done it well, that’s a good sign. An even better sign: if they show excitement about and gravitate toward that kind of work. If that sounds like you—if you’re a product manager who wants to think big picture and try out big ideas in a fast-paced environment with a stellar mission—we want you on our team. We’re hiring a Director of Product Management: https://lnkd.in/dQnWqmDZ #productthoughts #innovation #productmanagement #zerotoone

High-pressure, fast-paced work environments are like hot sauce on the brain—they keep everything on fire. While leaders might thrive on this continual state of excitement and ambition, expecting all employees to sustain this intensity is unrealistic. Such an environment can lead to: → Burnout → Disillusionment → High turnover But what if you’re on a mission to change the world or accomplish big things? How can you cultivate a culture of innovation that also supports a sustainable workforce? ⦿ Flexible Schedules: Foster innovation with flexible hours and remote work options, as demonstrated by Google. ⦿ Clear Boundaries: Limit after-hours work and communication to avoid burnout, a strategy championed by 37signals. ⦿ Promote Well-being: Invest in wellness programs and mental health resources, like those offered by Asana. ⦿ Create Innovation Labs: Set up dedicated spaces or times for experimentation and creativity, like 3M's famous 15% rule. ⦿ Encourage Regular Breaks: Implement mandatory downtime, similar to Slack's "no meetings" Fridays, to boost creativity and reduce fatigue. ⦿ Mentorship Programs: Pair employees with mentors to nurture growth and support, following the model used by Pixar Animation Studios to encourage creative collaboration. wearemotto.com

After spending three decades in the aerospace industry, I’ve seen firsthand how crucial it is for different sectors to learn from each other. We no longer can afford to stay stuck in our own bubbles. Take the aerospace industry, for example. They’ve been looking at how car manufacturers automate their factories to improve their own processes. And those racing teams? Their ability to prototype quickly and develop at a breakneck pace is something we can all learn from to speed up our product development. It’s all about breaking down those silos and embracing new ideas from wherever we can find them. When I was leading the Scorpion Jet program, our rapid development – less than two years to develop a new aircraft – caught the attention of a company known for razors and electric shavers. They reached out to us, intrigued by our ability to iterate so quickly, telling me "you developed a new jet faster than we can develop new razors..." They wanted to learn how we managed to streamline our processes. It was quite an unexpected and fascinating experience that underscored the value of looking beyond one’s own industry can lead to significant improvements and efficiencies, even in fields as seemingly unrelated as aerospace and consumer electronics. In today’s fast-paced world, it’s more important than ever for industries to break out of their silos and look to other sectors for fresh ideas and processes. This kind of cross-industry learning not only fosters innovation but also helps stay competitive in a rapidly changing market. For instance, the aerospace industry has been taking cues from car manufacturers to improve factory automation. And the automotive companies are adopting aerospace processes for systems engineering. Meanwhile, both sectors are picking up tips from tech giants like Apple and Google to boost their electronics and software development. And at Siemens, we partner with racing teams. Why? Because their knack for rapid prototyping and fast-paced development is something we can all learn from to speed up our product development cycles. This cross-pollination of ideas is crucial as industries evolve and integrate more advanced technologies. By exploring best practices from other industries, companies can find innovative new ways to improve their processes and products. After all, how can someone think outside the box, if they are only looking in the box? If you are interested in learning more, I suggest checking out this article by my colleagues Todd Tuthill and Nand Kochhar where they take a closer look at how cross-industry learning are key to developing advanced air mobility solutions. https://lnkd.in/dK3U6pJf

We’re watching AI destroy creative thinking in real time. Thousands of action figure images flooded social media with generative AI slop last week, all spawned by people mindlessly repeating the same prompt. The week before, it was the Studio Ghibli prompt, and next week, it’ll be another example of generative AI lemmings following the crowd off a cognitive cliff. Creative, original thought has become a rare, high-value capability. Discovery requires experimentation, so when people condition themselves to follow trends, they turn off the most valuable parts of their minds. The ability to direct and manage experimentation means never waiting to be told what to do. We can figure it out ourselves. AI tools make following trends and creating copies cheap and easy. That’s true for more than just social media posts. Most marketplaces, from coding to advertising, are seeing a rise in generative AI slop. In that competitive environment, who is more valuable, an expert at jumping on the latest trend or the person who can start them? There’s value in both, but people outsourcing their creativity to AI has led to a glut of trend followers and a shortage of trend makers. Businesses must innovate to survive, so they need people who see trends coming, not those who wait to be told what’s next. The next wave of upskilling and high-value training develops cognitive capabilities like creativity.