Strategy sessions often start with “Think out of the box,” this is by far the most ridiculous statement to start any conversation, let alone a workshop, and you ask yourself why?
Removing The Value The Person Brings
The reason is that you’re asking people in that workshop to stop being themselves, to forget about their legacy, to not take into consideration why they were hired for that job in the first place, to now become AI and data specialists, to understand the convergence of technology and think about a brand new business model that’s now becoming formed in the world out there.
It’s a ridiculous statement because nobody can do that. If people could do that, then Shien would have been created by Zara, Mercedes-Benz would have created Tesla, and NASA would have created SpaceX because those boards and those executives are brilliant, with incredible levels of experience in the industries.
Foster The Authentic Value Of Your Team
And this is really where the problem lies – you’re asking people who have been hired to bring about incremental change and stability to a business to now think out of the box and think about totally different ways of doing the same thing they’ve been trained for, educated for, and hired for. It doesn’t work.
And so, if you are doing this in your workshops, please stop. It just doesn’t work. You’re making your staff even more stressed.
Already, people fear the uncertain future with AI here and robotics and technology converging; most people need more clarity about their jobs in the next year or two and how they need to prepare themselves.
Keep your team doing what they’re doing. Make them more comfortable, change their brainwaves, make them more collaborative, imaginative, and relaxed in the security of their current jobs.
Hire Out-Of-The Box Thinkers To Think Out-Of-The-Box
Then, hire a team that is already trained, educated, and employed to be out of the box and to build that tomorrow team that thinks about tomorrow and allows the team today to think about their existing business.
At the same time, you have people with new capabilities, AI, data, robotics, and technology in general to think about the 2 to 3-year horizon ahead.
Workshops and strategic sessions need to change, and organizational structures must change while keeping the lights on and planting seeds for tomorrow.
Note: This blog post is an adaptation of the transcript from the video below which forms part of my video series on AI.
