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How Busy People Can Make Time for Innovation
Read time: 3 minutes
Welcome to Future-state Thinking, my weekly newsletter where I give actionable content, insights and tools for business and personal growth from my experience as an innovator and entrepreneur.
If you’re looking for my Cheat Sheets and Infographic PDFs, the vault is at the bottom of this email!
Hi Reader,
More than ever, people are more overloaded, leaving little room for innovation.
According to HBR, employees report spending nearly nine hours a week on email and 7.5 hours in meetings, innovation may seem like a luxury that only a few can afford.
However, leaders can help create structures and environments where innovation becomes a regular part of the workflow. Here’s how to balance the demands of daily operations with the need for innovation.
Identify and Clear “Process Debt” to Unlock Time for Creativity
Process debt refers to outdated or inefficient processes that slow teams down and drain time away from more valuable work.
These processes may have been necessary at one point but have outlived their usefulness, creating bottlenecks that make it harder to focus on innovation.
Arvind KC of Roblox said, “When you hire brilliant people who want to be creative and innovative, you don’t need routines to help them be innovative. You need to remove the routines that prevent them from being innovative.”
Roblox uses “Bureaucracy Busters,” an internal tool that allows employees to highlight processes that waste time, and managers review and eliminate those that receive the most votes.
Actionable Tip: Conduct regular audits of your team’s routines, focusing on tasks that consume the most time but add the least value.
Adopt a system – either a simple online form or a regular review meeting – where team members can flag inefficient processes. This will create space for more strategic, innovative thinking.
Practice Subtractive Thinking: Less Is More
A common challenge for busy professionals is initiative overload—the accumulation of too many projects that stretch teams too thin.
Leidy Klotz, author of Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less, notes that humans have a bias toward adding new tasks, responsibilities, and projects rather than eliminating outdated or less impactful ones.
This results in innovation being crowded out by maintenance work.
In organisations, this mindset leads to a pileup of initiatives that strain resources.
To counter this, adopt a culture of subtraction where each new project is balanced by removing an old one. This will prevent burnout and allow more focus on the projects that matter most.
Actionable Tip: Before green-lighting any new initiative, set a rule to pause or stop an existing one. Review your project list regularly and identify low-impact initiatives that can be removed to make way for more innovative work.
Prioritise Innovation at the Leadership Level
Top-down prioritisation is essential if innovation is to thrive. Leaders must set innovation as a strategic goal and clearly communicate this to their teams.
In his work on integrative thinking, Roger Martin highlights that prioritising innovation requires clarity from leadership on which types of challenges need new creative solutions.
Michael Porter’s concept of strategic priorities also underscores the need for focus. Innovation should not be an afterthought, or something squeezed into leftover time; it must be placed at the forefront of strategic decision-making.
Carter Busse of Workato made “innovation and creativity” the top goal for his IT team, which improved their efficiency and sparked creative breakthroughs in automation and process optimisation.
Actionable Tip:
- Make innovation a measurable team goal.
- Consider dedicating 10-15% of team resources to experimental or future-facing projects.
- Include innovation metrics in performance reviews to ensure it’s being given the time it deserves.
- Separate innovation from day-to-day work
The operational demands of business (often called “1-to-10 work”) differ significantly from “0-to-1 work”, which involves creating something new.
Marco Zappacosta, CEO of Thumbtack, emphasises the importance of creating a separation between invention (0-to-1) and optimisation (1-to-10). This distinction is vital for preventing day-to-day tasks from stifling creativity.
At Thumbtack, teams focusing on invention are given apparent freedom from the usual performance metrics that govern operational work. T
his allows them to pursue bold, innovative ideas without being constrained by the need for immediate results.
The separation helps teams shift their mindset, encouraging creative risk-taking and long-term thinking.
Actionable Tip: Establish a dedicated time for innovation, such as quarterly “innovation sprints” where routine tasks are paused, and teams focus exclusively on creative work. This separation can also be practised during quieter periods in the business cycle when there are fewer operational pressures.
Use Micro-Innovation: Small Bursts of Creativity
For many professionals, large blocks of time for innovation can be hard to find.
The DUCTRI Playbook suggests that micro-innovation intervals—short, focused periods of creative work—can still drive meaningful innovation without disrupting the workflow.
Incorporating micro-innovation activities, such as walking for creativity or short brainstorming sessions, can be incredibly effective.
These short bursts of creativity activate divergent thinking, allowing teams to explore ideas without the burden of operational deadlines.
The key is to engage the subconscious in problem-solving, often leading to “aha” moments when the mind is resting.
Actionable Tip: Block out 30-minute sessions for innovation-focused thinking each week. Encourage employees to engage in activities like a brief walk, brainstorming, or using lateral thinking exercises to generate new ideas. Over time, these small efforts accumulate into significant creative outputs.
Reduce Meeting and Communication Overload
Meetings and excessive communication can be significant barriers to innovation. Studies show that people spend up to 7.5 hours a week in meetings and nine hours on email. Limiting meeting length and attendance can free up valuable time for strategic thinking.
Actionable Tip: Use the “two-pizza rule” for meetings (coined by Jeff Bezos): if a meeting requires more people than can be fed by two pizzas, it’s too big. Keep meetings under 30 minutes and focus on decision-making rather than status updates.
⚡️ Call to Action
Identify one routine or meeting that you can eliminate this week to make time for innovation. Start small, with 30-minute weekly innovation breaks, and build up from there.
Innovation isn’t about waiting for the perfect time; it’s about making time.
P.S. Want to unlock your innovation and impact potential even more?
There are a few ways we can help:
- Grab your super handy resource. Join the waitlist for our new DUCTRI Playbook for a new way to inspire curiosity, unleash creativity and ensure clarity when implementing solutions.
- Adapt to hyper-disruption. Join the waitlist for the new DUCTRI Mater Course. Where driven professionals become skilled human-centred innovators and change-makers.
- Need help now? Contact me here for design thinking consulting, workshops and training (limited availability).
Source: How to Give Busy People the Time to Innovate by Eric Athas
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P.S… As promised on LinkedIn, click the button for my cheat sheets on innovation, strategy, and more!
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