“Wildcards”

One of the skills that I talk about that’s really important for people to have is agility. And to be quite frank, I think that’s an often overused word now but it’s a good one. Being able to be agile or to pivot or turn on a dime, that’s just kind of the nature of the beast now. So how do you teach people to be able to do that in a way that can be really successful versus draining – like another change, another pivot?

And one of the techniques that we use is called Wildcards. It’s very simple and here’s how it works. You get people into small groups again and you give them a similar challenge. So it could be how could we become the most innovative company in the world in the next year? And of course you give them, let’s say, ten minutes to start to ideate. After about seven minutes of that time, you stop them and you say, “Oh my gosh, I forgot something. You actually don’t have a year to achieve this, some changes have happened.” And each table or group gets a wildcard. Group One has half the time to achieve the same goal. Group Two has half the money, Group Three has half the resources, and on and on. Each group is given a different wildcard but they still have to achieve the same goal: can they do it?

The answer always is yes. They often come up with a better idea because they’re more resourceful and they learn that agility is not such a bad thing.