How to unlock fresh thinking and team performance by design, not luck
Innovation isn’t about lucky lightning bolts.
It’s about leaders creating the right conditions for better thinking to thrive.
But here’s the reality in many organisations:
Teams aren’t short on ideas. They’re short on permission, space, or support to explore them.
If performance is stalling, ask yourself: “Are we creating an environment that encourages innovation or accidentally shutting it down?”
What’s Really Getting in the Way?
From conversations with CEOs, COOs, and improvement leads, we see three common blockers again and again:
Thinking is de-prioritised
“We don’t have time to think.”
Under pressure, teams stay in delivery mode. Without reflection, innovation gets squeezed out and only the urgent survives.
Fear of failure is high
“If I get it wrong, it’ll come back to bite me.”
Where mistakes are punished, people play it safe. Even when bolder thinking could unlock huge value, the risk feels too high.
Old paradigms go unchallenged
“We’ve always done it this way.”
Routines become ruts. Curiosity fades. The default becomes the limit.
Want to Shift That? Start With Better Questions
Innovation begins when someone dares to ask a question that opens up new thinking.
Ask these questions with your team:
- What possible tasks could help us achieve our goal?
- What possible resources could help us achieve our goal?
- Who could we possibly involve to help us achieve our goal?
- What possible assumptions might we be making?
These questions change the direction of the conversation and create space for possibility.
A Practical Way to Turbocharge Creative Thinking
Here’s one approach we use in Go M.A.D. Thinking to unlock innovation faster:
Use Creative High-Quality Questions
Instead of asking standard “how do we fix this” questions, use more imaginative prompts that explore new perspectives.
Here are a few to get you started:
Think like someone else
“What might the world’s greatest expert advise us to do?”
Zoom out with distance or time
“If we viewed this from 10,000 feet, what might we see differently?”
“What would future-us wish we’d done today?”
Use magical thinking
“If you had a magic wand, how could you make this problem disappear?”
“What’s the most outrageous idea we haven’t dared say out loud?”
Flip the logic
“What would definitely not work?”
“What’s the worst possible way to solve this?”
These questions may sound playful, but they unlock serious thinking.
And when used well, they spark energy, insight, and ownership.
The Role of Leadership: Create the Conditions
Innovation doesn’t need a huge budget.
It needs:
- Time to think
- Permission to explore
- Recognition of effort, not just outcomes
- A culture where questions are encouraged, not shut down
Final Thought
You don’t need to be the most creative person in the room.
You just need to ask the kind of questions that unlock creativity in others.
Start small. Stay curious. Create space for innovation to emerge.
