Spiro Comitis

I've watched teams pivot to a standstill. Strategic U-turns, new priorities every quarter, direction changes pretending to be agile. The morale loss and emotional load are paralysing.

Everyone celebrates adaptability. Nobody tracks what it destroys.

Change has a cost. Too much change is all cost, no benefit. That's change fatigue.

"Adaptability Theatre" - when endless pivots masquerade as agility

Businesses hanker for one right answer. And fast.

It's why creativity eludes them.

Creativity can be measured if you define success as novel, useful ideas delivered quickly; the issue isn't measurement itself, but how incentives reward safe bets over experimentation.

KPIs that pretend creativity is predictable are the fastest way to kill it.

How do you measure creativity?

Stop trying to make creativity predictable.

Creativity is about connection

Between people and between ideas

Instead most businesses create even more silos

Another team off working on another initiative

What do most businesses do when they're looking for new ideas?
They organise.
Then six months later?
No new ideas, just prettier PowerPoints

99.99% of businesses will never innovate
Because they are designed to stifle creativity
And when they try to fix this, they make it worse

A challenge for you this week:
Before you start any document or powerpoint
Start with a sketch, or bullets, or mindmap on paper
And see if it feels any different

When I start in a notebook
With pen and paper, not technology
My thinking is clearer

The creative brain works better in analog media
There is science to support this
But empirical evidence is enough

I've always thought designers were cool
I love how they think about form and function
How they blend creativity and practicality

My rule of thumb for powerpoint: be able to explain your bullets one layer lower than what's on screen

Write out your slide slides in long form.
Can you explain each sentence?
Where does it get clumsy?
Where can't you say what you want to say?
Where are your gaps?

One of the best ways to test the quality of your thinking is with long form writing. If you can't explain your thinking in words, your thinking is muddled. It can be quite a struggle to get thoughts out of your head and onto paper.

Powerpoint is dangerous
It encourages half-baked ideas that look complete

If you read what everyone else reads,
You'll think what everyone else thinks
If you want breakthrough thinking - change your inputs.
So rather be intentional about what you consume

Every idea you've ever had was influenced by something you consumed
Every breakthrough, every thought
They're all remixes of your inputs

Original thinking doesn't depend on genius
It depends on what you feed your brain

You are what you read
Most people consume the same content
Then wonder why they have the same ideas

Don't rely on any one experiment working
Declare victory if we learnt something
All this learning pays off in the long run
As all the small wins compound

Creativity needs experiments
To learn from the mistakes we make
When the stakes high we stifle trying anything new

Big games need big bold moves?
So why do we play it safe?

My notebook: Sketches of flying cars
My presentation deck: Bar charts showing 5% efficiency

The higher the stakes are the more we revert to the mundane.

Here's the cheats version for editing your next doc
Delete 10% of the words. Don't add anything - just cut.
Watch it become sharper and clearer.

When was the last time you iterated anything?
Not tweaked. Not spell-checked.
But tore down and rebuilt.

We misunderstand how excellence works.
First drafts are terrible

The ideas that are clear in your head?
They're half-baked on paper