Techniques for Overcoming Creative Blocks in Teams

Most creative teams don’t fail because they lack ideas. They fail because they keep repeating the ones that already worked (hear me out). It’s subtle. Feels smart. Feels efficient. The numbers are solid. The system hums along. But if you zoom out, you start to see it for what it is: Stagnation wearing a high-performance costume. I’ve led teams where this exact thing happened. Everything looked fine on the surface — until reach started dipping, engagement fell flat, and the content just felt… tired. We fixed it with something simple: A once-a-month Content Hackathon. How It Works: • Monthly or quarterly, dedicate a full day to pure content experimentation. • Start with brainstorming—what haven’t we tried yet? • Limit the output—each team member creates no more than two experimental pieces (quality over quantity). • The rule: No safe bets. No recycled ideas. The content must be something the team has never done before. • Wrap-up: At the end of the day, review all the content as a team. Vote on the best idea, and celebrate the winner. Pro Tip: Add an incentive. People push harder when there’s something at stake—whether that’s a cash prize, team recognition, or just bragging rights. Some of our best-performing ideas came out of those days. Not from following the formula. But from breaking it on purpose. Most teams live in the comfort zone of what already works. But if you're serious about growth, you need to make space for what hasn't been proven yet. Because content that works is easy to scale. But content that leads? That changes your brand? That only comes from the part of the process most teams never touch.

I’ve been a huge fan of Tom Fishburne for years since we were classmates at Harvard Business School. Tom started drawing cartoons on the backs of HBS business cases, which evolve to become his famous and insightful Sky Deck cartoons.  I was always on the lookout for them. I invite my connections across all industries to subscribe to Tom’s insightful newsletter. Last week’s issue particularly resonated with me. Tom highlighted that labeling an idea as polarizing can quickly kill it, as businesses usually avoid such ideas in favor of safer, more universally appealing ones. However, there’s power in polarization. Trying to appeal to everyone often results in appealing to no one. In a cluttered world, the last thing a company can afford is to create indifference. Several years ago, I was helping the innovation group of a large carrier and saw firsthand the graveyard of idea killers. Many innovative ideas, often originating from those in the field who directly experience pain points, did not make it past the first round of evaluation. To help this carrier effectively evaluate innovative ideas and develop a repeatable process, we implemented a few key strategies: 1. Idea Champion Program: We assigned champions to promising ideas to advocate for them, gather feedback, and iterate on the concepts. 2. Cross-Functional Evaluation Committees: We created committees with members from various departments to ensure diverse perspectives in idea evaluation. 3. Fail Fast, Learn Faster: We encouraged a culture where failure is acceptable as long as we learn from it quickly. Prototyping and piloting ideas in controlled environments helped us make informed decisions. 4. Customer-Centric Approach: We focused on ideas that directly addressed customer/staff pain points, involving these stakeholders early in the development process. 5. Regular Review Cycles: We established regular review cycles for all submitted ideas to ensure they received proper attention. By implementing these strategies, we helped the carrier create an environment where innovative ideas could thrive. This process not only brought new solutions to the market but also fostered a culture of creativity and continuous improvement. Remember, the goal is not to avoid polarization but to harness it. Great ideas often provoke strong reactions, and that’s where their power lies. By creating a structured process to evaluate and nurture these ideas, we can ensure that they have the opportunity to make a significant impact. https://lnkd.in/eWfV_a-t

The death of a great idea often happens within seconds of its birth. Someone shares a creative thought. Then the immediate response:  "We don't have budget for that" or "That would never work because..." I've watched brilliant possibilities disappear this way for years. Then we implemented one rule in our company that changed everything:  No decisions during idea generation. We completely separated ideation from evaluation.  Different meetings. Different mindsets. Different purposes. The results were stunning.  Teams that struggled to find solutions suddenly had too many to choose from. People who rarely spoke up became fountains of creativity when freed from immediate judgment. This isn't just about having more ideas. It's about creating psychological safety where people's weird (their unique genius) can emerge. The best solutions often start as "crazy" thoughts that would never survive immediate scrutiny. Give your team's imagination room to breathe before the practical considerations take center stage. What might emerge if you created a truly judgment-free zone for ideas? #CreativeLeadership #TeamInnovation #NewWorldOfWork #LoveYourWeird