Letting the Ideas Flow

This past week, I was reading the new book Ideaflow by Jeremy Utley and Perry Klebahn. Both authors are instructors at the design school at Stanford, and Jeremy is a friend and business school classmate of mine.

One of the main points they make in Ideaflow is that organizations must always nurture the flow of ideas. It’s not enough to wait until the organization is stuck to bring everyone into the conference room and say, “Alright, let’s brainstorm solutions to the muck we’re in!”

They write: “Pausing innovation for even a moment has a lasting effect. […] You can't get ideas overnight. You need to keep them flowing in good times and bad. Ideas are solutions to future problems. They represent tomorrow's profits. No ideas, no tomorrow.”

This made me realize a critical connection to strategy: Like idea generation, strategy cannot be approached in a sporadic manner.  

When talking to potential clients about strategic planning, I’ll often ask, “Why do you think the team hasn't been able to solve [the strategic challenge] already?”

The answers vary in the specifics, but the main causes are typically (a) interpersonal dynamics keeping the team from reaching alignment, or (b) the team has stopped strategizing altogether.

When it’s the first situation, the point is typically framed as “differences of opinion” rather than “interpersonal issues that prevent us from having conversations that productively resolve our differences of opinion.”

When it’s the second situation, I’ve almost never heard a leader say they’ve stalled. That’s certainly not what they think they’ve done. 

Instead, the stop is evident with  blank stares in response to questions like:

What do customers say when you ask them for feedback about what they value most in the service, and what else they want from you?

For what specific reasons do customers choose you over competitors?

Can you show me the last few quarterly employee surveys that indicate what they need from the organization?

In what meetings do you regularly discuss strategy?

When there aren’t robust answers to those questions, it’s usually a sign of an organization that’s accidentally stopped strategizing—regardless of whether there’s a stated strategy. 

To be fair, there are often understandable reasons for this pattern. For example, many nonprofits, due to the nature of the challenges they take on, can easily get consumed by the constant need to raise funds, or meeting the inexhaustible needs of the people they serve, both of which keep leaders justifiably focused on the short term.

Regardless of the driver, this can result in current strategy staying fixed in place, the ideaflow dropping to zero, and the realization after a few years that the stated strategy is stale, and doesn’t match the current moment. 

As a kid, my sister and I would sometimes spend several weeks over the summer with my grandparents in Selma, Alabama. Unfortunately, my grandfather—the first Charles Moore—didn’t believe in using air conditioning, even as the temperatures reached oppressive levels. (Oppressive is used in jest, since my experience in Selma wasn’t anywhere near as bad as Grandpa’s growing up in the 1920s and 30s.) 

Instead of using the air conditioning, he’d say that we should “let up the window” to let fresh air circulate and cool the house. 

That sentiment also applies to good strategy ideas—we have to give them a chance to come in. As Utley and Klebahn write in Ideaflow: “You can't consciously choose to make an idea. (Try it, you'll see.) Instead, ideas start arriving once you've identified a clear problem and gathered sufficient raw material for the brain to do its job.”

In organizations, letting up the window is the proactive approach to strategy that enables the fresh air of ideas to come in and circulate. That involves a consistent approach—things like: 

• Having an always-on conversation with customers and those you serve to best understand what they want from you. 

• Executives regularly leaving the office to see operations and customers firsthand, so that ideas don’t get overly filtered before they reach the senior team. 

• Developing an inclusive operating model in which those who directly talk to customers and understand their needs are also directly in on the strategy conversation. 

Most of all, it means managing in a way that creates time and space for individuals and teams to wander.  If every second of the day is scheduled, and if every meeting sticks to the minute-by-minute agenda, the opportunity to see good ideas decreases. 

When these conditions are present, there’s an opportunity to be truly dynamic. Fresh ideas create fresh strategies.