Daniel Pink Module 3: Creating Space to Innovate

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One way to institutionalize a mindset toward growing an organization rather than maintaining it is more simple than any CEO could imagine, says New York Times bestselling author Daniel Pink.

And not only is it simple, but it can also help spur innovation within organizations, Pink says.

Ready? “[Carve] out a certain amount of time,” he says, “[and] put it on your calendar.”

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In fact, Pink recommends two breaks. First, take a page from George Shultz, the former U.S. Secretary of State who served under President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Shultz famously instituted the “Shultz Hour,” where for one hour every week, he would close his office door, sit at his desk with only a pen and a pad, and quietly reflect on strategy.

“The only people allowed to interrupt him during that hour were his wife and President Reagan,” Pink says. “He would work on the business rather than in the business. He wasn’t putting out today’s fire. He was thinking about what the business is about.”

Take a walk. No, seriously…

There are benefits to doing this, says Pink. “Systematically taking breaks improves people’s performance on nearly everything.”

The problem is leaving it to one’s discretion, where Zoom calls, emails and other distractions can hinder you from taking a break. “Treat your breaks with the same sanctity with which you treat your Zoom meetings.”

This is why Pink not only suggests using your calendar item to block out that weekly hour but also recommends an additional respite: Every afternoon, take a 15-minute walk break. Go outside with someone you like — leaving your phone behind — and talk about something other than work.

“I’m not even joking about this,” Pink says. “[This] would be transformative for American productivity and worker wellbeing.”

Pink says ideas like this tend to fall on deaf ears because many leaders opt for the seemingly more-productive route: Answer the email. Send the Slack message. But Pink contends that now is the time to try new methods of productivity.

“Leaders today have to act much more like scientists,” he says. “What do scientists do? They have hypotheses, they test the hypotheses, see what happens in that test, they refine their hypotheses. That’s what it is.”

‘What could I do?’

Another way to create space to think, says Pink, is to switch from asking yourself a limiting question like “What should I do?” to “What could I do?”

Pink gives an example that many leaders face today: returning to the office. “I have these long-term leases for all this office space, and now half my team is working remote. What should I do?” Pink asks.

Research from the University of Virginia suggests that reframing the question from “should” to the more inviting “could” opens the door to more ideas and better solutions.

Rethink how you brainstorm 

Bringing this back to innovation, Pink says this “scientific” reframing toward hypothesizing and testing can be applied to brainstorming. Rather than gather people in a room to shout out ideas and shoot each other down, have employees generate ideas separately and asynchronously.

“And then you evaluate them, you discuss them synchronously and together,” Pink says. “There’s some evidence that that’s a better way to do it. But that’s an experiment that people can try.”

Related Resources 

Daniel Pink on ‘Beyond Resilience’

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