One of my favorite quotes is “Common sense is not so common.” Entrepreneurs often assume that "common sense" is a shared language within their business–a guiding logic everyone intuitively understands. But what feels obvious to one person might be completely unfamiliar to another. This quote is an important reminder to reflect on our assumptions about what common sense is when working with people from different backgrounds or when working across cultures. I also find that it can offer profound insights into creating a business filled with innovation and creativity.
Asking “what if? ” is so powerful because it is open-ended, allowing for endless potential and creativity. The process of answering it plants the seeds for new products or services–or practically any breakthrough you’re seeking.
As leaders, it forces us to think about how each team member may think or behave uniquely and have a different common sense to our own. Having this self-awareness allows us to tap into an innovative potential that might otherwise go unrecognized or, worse, squashed. We can embrace different ways of thinking and approaches to work, but we still need something that is common to our teams and organizations–a workplace culture rooted in a shared sense of mission, vision and values.
Because celebrating our differences while also building a shared work culture might seem counterintuitive or challenging to put into practice, leaders may be more inclined to get everyone to follow a specific way of doing things in the name of efficiency. But we can achieve this ideal by fostering a workplace culture where everyone’s unique style–their own common sense–can thrive while uniting everyone around a shared passion for innovation and creativity.
I call this a “what if?” culture and it’s been a key differentiator between diverse teams and organizations that succeed and those that do not.
In my work with global project teams, C-suite executives and international MBA students, I’ve seen the challenges leaders face in designing such a culture. They may have an aversion to things that seem inefficient or out of their ordinary way of thinking and acting.
For example, when the general manager of an automotive parts company told me that a “what if?” approach was inefficient and inherently risky and could never work here, I asked him to consider what assumptions he was making and encouraged him to identify a small group of people from diverse backgrounds who might be open to trying new things.
A pilot program would require minimal resources and could operate under different rules and procedures from the rest of the business, with less risk. He quickly saw that his own common sense was limiting him and preventing him from seeing new possibilities. Other employees’ common sense could help him see new opportunities.
Asking “what if? ” is so powerful because it is open-ended, allowing for endless potential and creativity. The process of answering it plants the seeds for new products or services–or practically any breakthrough you’re seeking.
There are many external and internal facets of diversity. In my experience, three aspects of diversity are vital for creativity:
- Behavioral diversity: Diversity in the ways we act. How we build trust, communicate, view hierarchy and value collectivism versus individualism, etc.
- Cognitive diversity: Diversity in the ways we think. How we each make decisions, the balance of logic or emotion, how comfortable we are with uncertainty, etc.
- Work style diversity: This one is often underappreciated. We need to understand the different preferences for ways of working. It includes those who prefer to work head down versus those who are best in groups; those who are better at strategy versus those who are better at operations and others.
Here are three steps you can take to intentionally design a “what if? entrepreneurial culture that will cultivate creativity and allow your business to thrive.
Step one: understand what a creativity-friendly workplace culture needs
We often assume culture happens organically. Some aspects, such as everyday behaviors, will emerge from the group. However, as a leader, it’s important to establish some fundamental attributes for a creativity-friendly work culture.
You can craft a “what if?” culture by using three key attributes:
- Champion inclusivity
- Cultivate psychological safety
- Embrace ambiguity
Champion inclusivity across different behaviors, ways of thinking and work styles
it’s not enough to recognize ambiguity. We must embrace it and celebrate it as a source for new ideas. There is a world of difference between “we accept ambiguity,” and “we seek out ambiguity and ask what we can learn .”
Diverse teams tend to be more creative, but we also hear stories of diverse teams underperforming. What separates these is inclusion. Diverse teams and workplaces are more creative and innovative only when they are inclusive. Each individual should be encouraged to contribute their unique perspective and bring their authentic self forward. As Vernā Meyers says, “Diversity is being invited to the party: Inclusion is being asked to dance.”
Cultivate psychological safety to encourage smart risks and intelligent mistakes
Psychological safety is essential for innovation. It’s all about getting comfortable with intelligent failures, critiquing constructively, suggesting new ideas and speaking up. When people feel included and accepted, they are more likely to speak up and think, “what if?” because they know their suggestions will be considered and won’t be shot down. Nurturing this helps overcome the groupthink that can hinder the creativity of homogenous groups.
Leaders who trust their teams recognize that each wild idea or intelligent failure comes from an informed and passionate person.
Embrace ambiguity to stimulate creativity
This concept comes from design thinking consultancy company IDEO and it’s also one of their values. I encountered this value when I worked with their online school IDEO U–and I’ve embraced it. The greatest potential for innovation lies in those areas that are uncertain and uncomfortable. Asking “what if ?” in these gray areas generates new ideas.
Embracing ambiguity is about making comfort with uncertainty a core part of your values and culture. By making it a central part of how you operate your business, you are helping your people feel like they have permission to explore and follow leads that they might not otherwise do in a culture where certainty is prized–and uncertainty is to be avoided–with the potential for new discoveries, new ways of doing things, or even new products or services.
I worked with leaders of a pharmaceutical company and asked, “What if a sumo wrestler was your customer?”
They thought it was a joke, but I asked them to imagine how their products or services might need to change. They began thinking about what a sumo wrestler needs that’s different from other consumers. One conclusion? Sumo wrestlers care a lot about being in the public eye and their public image.
This led the executives to think about how their current products and services are made for customers who are not as muscular. Their existing marketing didn’t take into account their customers' physical appearance very well. And that in turn led to a discussion about how to market some of their medications differently, focusing on public image, particularly for customers with different physiques.
They quickly saw the power of "what if?” to develop new solutions or marketing approaches by thinking in ways outside their comfort zone, even if the question initially seemed trivial. They would not create products or services for sumo wrestlers, but the uncertainty and discomfort that came from thinking outside their comfort zone led to innovative possibilities.
But it’s not enough to recognize ambiguity. We must embrace it and celebrate it as a source for new ideas. There is a world of difference between “we accept ambiguity,” and “we seek out ambiguity and ask what we can learn .”
Make this difference explicit and frame situations when the team says, “We don’t know how to do this” as not a roadblock but the start of a new process of exploring “what we don’t know” more deeply to look for opportunity.
Building on the psychological safety you’ve already established invites everyone to respond to ambiguity with open minds rather than with fear.
Step two: understand your team members’ behaviors, ways of thinking and work styles
Now that you know the essential elements of a “what if?” culture, you can build it by getting to know your people better.
To implement this culture, we need to measure those three facets of diversity–behavioral, cognitive and work style–both individually and collectively. We often think that a diverse work culture is purely subjective, but it can be quantified.
Here are two tools I’ve used with global project teams and MBA students to measure and understand their diversity.
Use a questionnaire to understand workstyle preferences
The easiest way to get information is just to ask! So, ask your team members to rate themselves from one to 10 on the following scales:
- Introvert ←→ Extrovert
- Operational ←→ Strategic
- Early bird ←→ Night owl
- Thinker ←→ Doer
- Does best work solo ←→ Does best work in groups
For example, a score of one indicates a very introverted person while a 10 indicates a very extroverted person. No value is attached to these scores–a 10 isn’t better than a four. Asking each team member to rate themselves gives insight into their individuality and preferred working styles and behaviors. Its real value emerges when you take all the evaluations and plot the scores for the entire team. This creates a visual map of the team’s work style diversity.
Use Culture Maps to understand behaviors and ways of thinking
One of the best frameworks to understand individuals, groups and countries' cultural tendencies is the book “The Culture Map” by Erin Meyer. Meyer defines cultures in eight dimensions: communication style, leadership, decision-making, disagreeing, trust-building and others.
Although the Culture Map framework was created for teams and national cultures, it effectively understands any team's behavioral and cognitive diversity, even when everyone is from the same country.
When I run this activity with teams in Japan, people are often surprised at the differences between Japan's cultural norms and their personal scores. The Culture Map shows their individual uniqueness and collective diversity.
As with the work style questionnaire, assess each team member on how they rate themselves on the eight dimensions of the Culture Map. They can either self-evaluate or take an online questionnaire that more objectively evaluates them. As with the workstyle survey, use this to build an image of each individual and a map of the entire team by plotting everyone’s scores.
These two exercises can generate data to help you better lead your team and show you how to design your “what if?” culture top-down based on the existing bottom-up diversity.
Step three: put it into practice
We now have a sense of the culture we want to build and insights into the people who will work in it. It’s time to develop your “what if” culture.
Understanding is different from doing. To embed your new cultural values and get people to adopt “what if?” behaviors and begin practicing them, there are two things you need to do to turn the new culture into reality.
First, make the attributes of the culture explicit. Incorporate them into your vision or embed them in your values. It’s crucial that leaders model this behavior.
Second, recognize and affirm this behavior in others. Reward team members who take those smart risks, ask “what if?” embrace ambiguity and get results and support those who are trying. When people see their peers rewarded, they’re more likely to follow suit, reinforcing the new culture.
Support those trying to exemplify this behavior by connecting them with those who have gotten results. Even unsuccessful attempts can be celebrated by sharing lessons learned, helping others avoid similar mistakes. Set up a weekly newsletter, blog, or podcast highlighting their stories–successful and otherwise–to all employees.
Align your culture and your compensation schemes. This reinforces the “what if..?” culture and turns it into behaviors and norms practiced by everyone.
No one gets excellent ideas in isolation; people work best in teams. To maximize innovation, we must foster a 'what if?' culture–one that embraces multiple viewpoints, encourages everyone to question assumptions and sees differences as a source of innovation rather than a roadblock.
By fostering a 'what if?' culture that values inclusivity, psychological safety and comfort with ambiguity, leaders can transform teams into engines of innovation fueled by diverse perspectives.