Commission Exploration

"We hit a snag that threatened to delay launch by 18 months. Over the course of a weekend, a 'swat team' cracked the problem open and saved the day."

I love hearing stories of impact like this. I was talking with an alum and longtime collaborator who runs innovation at a 200+ year old organization. She told me the incredible story of "ideaflow" in action:

The company has a new class of technology coming out next year, but production hit a major snag that threatened to delay launch as much as 18 months (per manufacturing calculations). She said that, inspired by the tools she's learned from us, they decided to invite in a bunch of folks not familiar with the problem (fresh perspective!), told them to drop everything (focus!) and told them "the number of new approaches to solve the problem you generate is the most important metric" (quantity drives quality!). They had very high level executive sponsorship, and were given "permission to provoke the business."

Over the course of a couple of days, the swat team had generated enough meaningful solutions that they could officially declare the emergency over. The product should launch on time, if not ahead of schedule, thanks to the newly assembled team's breakthroughs.

Related: Hire An Assassin

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