If you understand your organization, you’ll recognize the small ideas your leadership really wants.

The ‘what if we could’ ideas.

These are the ideas your boss or manager or owner wants to test but doesn’t dare ask for since it might be seen as micromanaging.

This becomes especially valuable as companies grow beyond the size where owners can personally know everyone.

Keep track of these ideas because they often surface in various projects. They’re leadership’s pet peeves and concepts that are hard for them to ignore.

Try asking them directly: “Tell me about some ideas that you’ve had for our products that you think we need or should test?”

Remember that listening doesn’t always mean acting. Understanding these ideas gives you valuable insight even if you don’t implement them all. Sometimes leadership just wants to be heard not necessarily have every thought turned into a project.

I remember listening to a presentation by techno/drone/dub artist Andreas Tilliander.

He told the story of how after an update of his MPC the displays had reversed the indicators of which sounds were playing and which were muted. He discovered this while performing on stage at a concert in Japan.

The odd thing that happened was that the crowd went mental for the performance when he distilled the tracks to their most basic form.

Sometimes we need less to be impactful.

Past generations entered the workforce as blank slates learning everything on the job.

Today’s graduates arrive armed with skills and experiences ready to deploy immediately. From social media expertise to video production to any digital online navigation.

This creates different expectations about advancement speed and compensation that reflect our new reality.

… then guide them to where you want them to be.

This matters most in one on ones and small group workshops. Match their energy first, then lead them to your destination.

Look at great performers and presenters. They rarely start cold. There’s usually an opening act or crowd work to set the mood.

When you’re solo, you’ll need to do both parts: match their current state, then guide the change.

There’s an improv technique where performers embrace a “yes and” spirit to keep stories flowing. Without it, scenes die quickly and become harder to continue.

It’s not about literally saying the words but embodying the mindset. When performers hear something odd or unexpected, they adapt and build on it rather than blocking with “no” or “yes but.”

This mindset works beyond improv. Whether in sales conversations, colleague discussions, or daily life, choosing “yes and” over “yes but” opens doors instead of building walls. It shifts us from defensive reactions to constructive dialogue.

Maybe the solution to feeling like an impostor isn’t to get better at pretending. It’s to stop pretending altogether.

Being a professional is always being an impostor, we always do things out of our comfort zone.

Imagine if we spent that energy on the work instead of the performance.

People are not resources. Their time and energy is. Money is your third resource.

Too often we chase perfection. We filter out the “bad” ideas before they see daylight, thinking we’re saving time.

But innovation rarely comes from perfect ideas. It comes from collisions between different thoughts, good and bad alike.

Think of it like improv: “yes, and…” We need more raw material to play with. More ideas to bounce around, even the “bad” ones.

We say it worked better when we were all in the same place. That we were more innovative. More in tune.

But I think we’re nostalgic for a time when we didn’t have options. We could only have workshops together in conference rooms.

That’s where everything happened. The aha moments. The breakthroughs.

That correlation is what makes us think it was good. But it was the only thing we had.

I’m thinking a bit about preparing vs planning. Especially when it comes to building new things aka innovation.

Planning can be rigid and lead us down specific paths. The idea of knowing the destination and just going along.

Preparing is about setting the stage, building capabilities and staying flexible.

3M, the company behind every agile coach’s favorite accessory (the Post-it), prepares for innovation by giving employees 15% of their time to experiment and spot opportunities. One such opportunity was the failed adhesive experiment that lead to a somewhat sticky mess that made up the adhesive for post-its.

This approach to culture set the stage for innovation to emerge naturally rather than forcing it through rigid plans.

Another example is Design Sprints, a five day workshop that originated from Google Ventures which purpose is to verify a new idea. Planning handles the schedule, the five days and their structure. But the real magic comes from preparation: identifying the right challenge, finding the right people to interview, and selecting the right participants. Without proper preparation, even a perfectly planned sprint won’t lead to meaningful innovation.

While planning is crucial for execution, preparing is key for innovation.