Creativity Archives - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis
JoAnn, welcome!

JoAnn Garbin
Hi, thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. I’m excited to talk innovation, and I want to hear your backstory. I understand, one of your earliest tech innovations occurred at a mascot-cooling system company. Tell us the whole tale, please.

JoAnn Garbin
Well, it was my company, a brave 22-year-old that I was, and it was an innovation that came out of being a mascot. And if you, which I’ve heard a rumor that you were a mascot, if you’ve ever been in a mascot suit, you know that it takes about two minutes before you’re completely overheated. And I was a mechanical engineering student, and I was, like, “I can solve this problem.”

So, what turned into a senior project with some friends, then after school, became my first company, and I actually managed to sell a few, which was really cool, including to the Seattle Seahawks, which, full circle, I live in Seattle now.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I was a mascot way back in, maybe seventh grade, eighth grade. I was the Holy Family Hornet. So, I don’t think I ever got crazy hot because I was mostly at basketball games, inside airconditioned gyms, as opposed to being in a brutally hot outside baseball, football stadium. Whew.

JoAnn Garbin
And you were in seventh grade, and we seem to be able to tolerate anything when we’re kids.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, that, too. So, how does the cooling system work?

JoAnn Garbin
It was a passive system, which, today, when I look at the tech we use, so this is late, early ‘90s, we, as students, we reached out to DuPont, and they had just come up with this new fanciful material called wicking material, which is now in every sports garment you wear. And we reached out to this Danish company that had something better than ice, what’s called a phase change material, which is essentially a salt that has a higher capacity to absorb heat.

Phase change materials today are also in everything. Like, you can get a cooling vest for your dog that, from like Chewy or the local pet store, that is essentially what my classmates and I designed in the early ‘90s.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s intriguing. And just because I’m full of curiosity, we’ll get into how it could be more innovative shortly. But a phase change material, so does that mean it changes phase from solid to liquid at a different temperature, or it takes more total energy to pull off the phase change, or both?

JoAnn Garbin
Both. And so, the practical advantages of it, is that if I put ice packs against my skin and then put a mascot suit on, that ice melts in minutes, and now you’re carrying around pockets of water on top of, you know, already having this heavy suit on.

But this one, this salt pack that we found back then, if you put it in the Gatorade cooler on the football bench, so just iced water, essentially, it would refreeze.

And then because it had a higher capacity to absorb heat, you could wear it for two or three times longer than an ice pack before you needed to refreeze it.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Well, now I’m thinking about coolers. It sounds like we could probably do a lot better than ice, but I don’t see much stuff, according to America’s Test Kitchen, that freezing packs are performing any better than just normal ice.

JoAnn Garbin
I haven’t done the research since the early ‘90s. But I do know, like, I get meal kits delivered half a dozen meals a week so that I eat, and it comes with non-ice packs.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, the gel stuff.

JoAnn Garbin
Yeah. And the really cool ones are the kind that, once they thaw, they’re biodegradable and non-toxic, so you can just pour them down the sink, so now you don’t have this massive collection of ice packs. We could talk all day about packaging innovation. I’m a total packaging nerd, but I would venture to bet that a lot of those gels are phase change materials.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you’re a packaging nerd, I’m a packaging sucker, “Oh. that looks pretty. It must be a great product.” “That’s what they want you to think, Pete. Be a critical thinker.”

JoAnn Garbin
Well, that’s why YETI can charge what they charge.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s right.

JoAnn Garbin
It’s not that dramatically different than a regular cooler. It just has the brand appeal of being a brand of mountaineers, and they use, this is marketing innovation, “How can I make you feel like a mountaineer? I can sell you the same cooler the mountaineer uses.”

Pete Mockaitis
I remember, I was with my buddy, who is a long-term Nike employee, and we were at the Nike employee store, which is fun because he’s got a big old discount. And I said, “Ooh, I really like this backpack. And it has these grooves in the back. And I wonder if that would facilitate airflow to cool my back down a little when I’m walking on a hot day and I got all that backpack sweat?” And he just said, “Hmm, do you perceive it to?” I was like, “That’s your whole game, isn’t it?”

JoAnn Garbin
That is a big part of it in a lot of products.

Pete Mockaitis
“Do you perceive it to?” Okay. Well, we’re talking more broadly and, hopefully, actionably about innovation. And, boy, you’ve spent decades directing innovation and teaching it and consulting on it. So, can you share with us, for starters, what’s one of the most surprising or counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made in your career about how innovation happens?

JoAnn Garbin
This is something that pops up every time I start a company, I join a company, I have a crazy idea and I start executing, but it’s really shown through in the book case studies, The Insider’s Guide to Innovation at Microsoft Dean Carignan and I, we studied all these cases across Microsoft history.

And, time and again, we go into innovation discovery thinking it’s that lightning strike. It’s that moment of genius where the dots just connect, that’s innovation. It’s totally not. It is the 99.9% of the sweat and effort that comes after that. That is the biggest thing that comes up again and again throughout innovation, that doesn’t surprise me so much anymore, but I think it does surprise people because we just get, again, perception is everything.

We get sold the story that it’s the genius idea, or the lightning bolt, but it’s actually execution. So, Dean and I set out to write a book on how to innovate. And one of the major themes that came out of it is, it’s all about execution.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And what is that, was that Edison, the famous quotation, that, “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”?

JoAnn Garbin
Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
So, execution is where it’s at, and understood. Well, then tell us, what are some of the key places that folks go wrong when they’re executing, “Ooh, we got a cool idea. Let’s go make it happen”? What are some of the common pitfalls?

JoAnn Garbin
There are so many missteps to be made. And then there’s just bad luck, bad timing, bad environment. But if we look at the things we can control, one of the hardest things for the person with the insight, or the idea, to accept is that it won’t be so obvious to everyone else.

Just because you have connected the dots and are so psyched about this doesn’t mean your boss will be, your coworkers will be, your vendors or suppliers will be. And you have to recognize that it does take all of those people to bring something into the world. There’s a great quote in the book by the head of the developer division at Microsoft, Julia Elgluisen. And she says, “If your idea hasn’t made it into the world and isn’t changing someone’s life, it’s not innovation. It’s just a cool idea.”

So, when you frame it that way and realize just how many people it takes, the very first thing you have to do is get them excited about the big vision. Once you do that, and that’s, like, that’s not engineering, that’s storytelling, that’s, you know, passion, that’s meeting people where they’re at and connecting into what wakes them up in the morning, and gets them out of bed, not what gets you out of bed.

So, there’s a whole mechanism and process and tools for doing that. Marketers know this. This is how they get us to buy the YETI cooler. You got to tap into that skillset very early on so that you get the people you need on side with you. And then you got to give them a path forward. You can’t keep people bought in for the long run on a hope and a prayer, right?

You have to lay down stepping stones, little wins, quick value creation, things that return investment to the company right away, but are in the direction of your big idea so that you can point to it and say, “Look at what we just did. Isn’t that great? We’re on our way.” And then you do the next one. And those stepping stones give you the confidence, and your teammates the confidence, that you might actually get to that horizon point you laid out.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like that a lot. And talking about that marketing skillset, it seems that many of the top luminaries, visionaries, billionaires, at the heads of tech companies that are super famous, that seems to be one of the top things they do, is that the storytelling and the framing of their thing. And I’m thinking about the TV series, “Silicon Valley,” and it’s almost sort of like a joke. It’s like, “And we’re changing the world.”

And it’s like, “Okay. Well, you know, it’s a website and people post their pictures and stuff.” It’s like, “Okay, we’re changing the world to be more connected.” And so, it sounds lofty. And yet, at the same time, this storytelling, this framing, it seems to do the trick for investors and for users and for customers to hop on board.

JoAnn Garbin
Yeah, it’s how we’ve communicated since the beginning of humanity. We’ve told stories, and there’s plenty of science and research to support it. Actually, one of my friends just has a new book out called Primal Intelligence, by Angus Fletcher.

And he’s a neuroscientist, and what he calls a professor of story-thinking, and he breaks down why we respond so strongly to stories, and how to construct stories to get people bought in and moving along with you, whether that’s external marketing or internal rallying for the troops and innovation.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, can you share with us any top tips or stories about stories that really got the job done?

JoAnn Garbin
Yeah, one of the favorite examples is the original Nike “Just Do It” commercial. So, if you remember, it was an octogenarian, an 80-year-old marathon runner. And when the commercial starts, they zoom in and he’s running across the Golden Gate Bridge, and he’s shirtless and he’s got this big tattoo on, but he’s this older man and you’re already like, “What is even happening here?”

But you’re brought right into the middle of the action, and then they back up and they explain, “Here is this 80-year-old marathon runner who runs 17 miles a day, but he didn’t start running until he was 70. Just do it.” And now your brain is going, “Oh, what do I want to just do? What’s my future? How do I get there? If he can run 17 miles a day at 80, I can do it, too.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like that. It is, and primal, I think, is the word. It goes beyond an intellectual understanding of, “Ah, yes it’s possible even for someone who was elderly to embark upon ambitious endeavors.” It’s more of a, “Aargh, yeah. Let’s get after it.”

JoAnn Garbin
Yeah. So, Angus knows I love his book, so highly recommend diving into storytelling, story-thinking and all the tools around it.

Pete Mockaitis
Super. Thank you. Well, so could you share with us, perhaps the big idea in your book, The Insider’s Guide to Innovation at Microsoft?

JoAnn Garbin
Yes, of course. Dean and I set out, we’re both innovators at Microsoft. I was leading the data center of the future program in our cloud business. And my background is really as a repeat entrepreneur, figuring out a problem I want to solve, building a team, going out and trying to solve it.

So, I came into Microsoft, this big organization, I’m like, “How the heck does innovation happen here? I’m in an innovation role and nobody can tell me how it happens here for real.” So, I sought out Dean, we got to know each other. And as we started trading what we joke are war stories about innovation, because it’s often a rebel cause or a battle, we started seeing that we had a lot more in common than different.

So that set us on this path of there must be common principles and tools and processes and insights that just cut across industry, time, and business model, right? So, we set out to talk to as many innovators from past and present Microsoft as we could. The company just turned 50, so there was just this massive history of stuff we could dig into.

And we came out, you know, that was our hypothesis, “We’re going to uncover these commonalities.” So that’s what we set out for, and we were very pleased that it showed to be true. We ended up finding four big patterns of innovation.

And we broke it down into everyday things you do, things you do over the years to be continuously and adaptively innovative, how you innovate with everyone, which goes back to that storytelling, and then everything beyond technology, because, too often, we think about the lightbulb and we don’t think about the marketing and the pricing and the supply chain, and all of those things matter.

So, within those four patterns, we identify a set of tools and a way to put them into use together to go from what we call nothing to something to scale.

Pete Mockaitis
And could you give us the one-minute version of what are each of these four big patterns, one minute-ish each. No pressure.

JoAnn Garbin
So, no, no, no, I’ve read the book a few times. Everyday stuff is building up habits. So, you’ll hear this from coaches and leaders alike in all walks of life – musicians, artists, professional sports player. Anybody that has become a master of their craft, they will talk about the habits that they form and that they practice every day, so that what they’re doing isn’t something they have to write a checklist to do or think about doing. It’s just how they function.

So, the first pattern of every day is, “How do you do that as an individual? But also, how do you build that habit-building cycle into your organization?” Because it’s one thing for you to be doing discovery by design as an individual. It’s another thing if you have your entire company doing discovery by design. Or, another one is double-loop learning, where you don’t just iterate on the solution to whatever problem you’re solving, but you iterate on the assumptions that you’ve made about the solution. So, there’s a whole toolbox just to that.

Over the years is, “Great. You have all these habits now, and you have all these ideas.” But if you’ve paid attention at all, disruption comes all the time. So, the idea that you’ve set out five years ago is either dead or dying right now. It’s just not going to be what you can run your company on. So, we spend a whole chapter talking about that pattern of continuous innovation.

It’s the theme of the cover of the book, which looks like an infinity. And we talk about both how to stay on that curve and keep going around and around so that you, like Microsoft, can say you’re 50 years old and have done it a few times. But we also talk about how you get kicked off the curb and you end up in the very deep pool of companies and great ideas that came, died, and disappeared.

Then we have innovating with everyone. And I think, Dean and I talk about this. This is probably the most important of the four because it takes so many people to bring something into reality. And that’s recognizing that change is hard, that most people are not pioneers or cliff divers or adrenaline junkies, that want to be the first one out on the big wave or whatever.

So, you’ve got this whole group of people in your company, you’ve got to figure out what moves them and how to speak to them in their terms, and how to connect with them and bring them into your idea so that it’s their idea too.

And then, finally, is the last one, we have this predisposition to think that innovation is technology, but there’s lots of books beyond ours that talk about all the innovations that have happened throughout history. Most of the value has been created by everything upstream and downstream of the innovation. A simple example, Uber or Lyft, these rideshare companies.

They didn’t create new cars, new scooters, new bicycles. They created a new business model in the sharing economy and how to connect people to the mode of transportation that they need. That’s not technology. Like, their applications aren’t all that wild. It was thinking through the problem from a different angle. There are all these aspects to innovation, and that fourth chapter goes into that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, let’s perhaps zoom into a typical professional, mid-level at a mid-size company, not necessarily a tech giant, and they would like more cool, innovative stuff to be happening more often. Do you have any top do’s and don’ts you’d suggest for right away today?

JoAnn Garbin
Yes. First thing is you have to find your tribe. You’ve got to find other people looking to fix something that you think needs fixing. There is a lot you can do. You got to make time for learning and exposing yourself to what other companies are doing and the new science or tech or marketing. That you can do on your own.

But to really innovate, you’ve got to find other people that want to do it too, because that’s where the magic happens. Right now, it’s Hack Week at Microsoft. So, 70,000 plus Microsoft people are coming together in Hackathon to go from idea to prototype in one week. That started way back before Satya was CEO. He’s the CEO that brought Hackathon into being.

But before he existed, a bunch of people that just felt like the company wasn’t innovating enough at their level, at that mid-level, it was all like big guys coming up with ideas and passing it down the chain for execution, this group started what has now become the garage, but they called it a speakeasy.

And they would just get together and they would brainstorm and they would prototype and they would try things and they would bring other people in and tap into everybody’s skills to propose solutions to problems they saw every day. Again, practice, right? So, they started innovating by innovating. So, find a problem you want to solve, find some friends that want to solve it too and just start trying to solve it.

But then there’s the other side of it. No matter if you’re in anything other than a solo company, you’ve got to get buy-in from leadership. And every single case study, we’ve studied everything I’ve ever done in my career and Dean’s career, you have to have the executive champion. Especially, the bigger the initiative, the more important that becomes.

So, if you’re going to do the speakeasy in your organization, only push that rock up a mountain so far before you find your executive champion who can pull it to the top, because, otherwise, it gets a bit exhausting to keep pushing against what everybody else is looking to the leadership for what’s important.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now in your book, you have many case studies. Could you share, which story do you think is perhaps the most illustrative and full of actionable wisdom for everyday folks looking to be awesome at their jobs? And can we hear that tale?

JoAnn Garbin
Everybody loves the Xbox story. The Xbox story is one of innovating culture. And what’s really cool about that one is that, at the time, this little team was challenged with creating gaming at Microsoft, actually, two teams were spun up to do it and one won out. That was the Bill Gates-Steve Balmer way is put people head-to-head and see who wins. But it was a productivity company. It was SQL Server.

It’s cubicles and, you know, pocket protectors and it’s not the thrill and the excitement of a gaming company. So, this group of people, from the very outset, had to overcome a cultural disconnect with the rest of the company. And they’ve had to do that four more times, if not more, since then, because of all the industries we deal with, gaming has changed the most and fastest. It’s always on the cutting edge of tech. It’s always using the fastest processors and doing the most incredible things.

And so, this little group of folks, back in the day, they first had a challenge, the perceived, things like Bill Gates saying, “I want this to obviously run on Windows. Like, our gaming platform is going to be a Windows platform.” And this group of people saying to Bill Gates, “Hmm, no, it can’t run on Windows. Windows is too bloated and slow. Nobody will want to play our games.”

So, those types of challenges are just so fascinating that you see in practice how having that tight-knit group of people that are passionate and productive in solving the problem can convince somebody like Bill Gates to invest in them.

One of my favorite pieces is, in the early days, they had this role, this middle management role called the business unit manager. And that person owned…

Pete Mockaitis
The BUMs, if you will.

JoAnn Garbin
The BUMs. I love that it was called the BUMs. And they had profit and loss control, right? Like, so each one of them had their own little fiefdom, their own little business. And Robbie Bach, who was the head of Gaming at that point, looked at it and said, “They’re all preserving their own fiefdom. They’re not working together because they want their P&L to look the best, get the biggest bonus, etc.”

So, he blew it up, and he said, “We’re going to have one P&L, the Gaming P&L.” And they got rid of the BUMs. And that changed everything at a critical moment for the organization to be able to come together and innovate cohesively, moving forward, without the inner competition between the teams.

And they didn’t know. It was an experiment. They didn’t know if those senior leaders, used to having P&L responsibility, would be okay with it being taken away from them. And once they put it out there and they did the storytelling and the reasons why, and they brought people along, all but one BUM transitioned, one left.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, and I also recall, I saw a YouTube video about the history of the Xbox, and I have all sorts of fun little memories associated with, I don’t know why, I guess it really left an impression, when Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was on stage with Bill Gates, and they presented the first Xbox.

But I heard that, in one of the meetings, a transformational moment, to the point about storytelling and talking about what people really, really value and what moves them, is I heard, and tell me the inside scoop here, that Bill Gates was kind of on the fence, like, “Ah, okay, maybe, yeah.”

And then someone said, “What about Sony?” And then that was pretty transformational in terms of it’s like, “Well, we can’t let Sony just take this. Let’s go. Yeah, we got to do it.” And so, just like that. Can you share about that?

JoAnn Garbin
Yes. So, if you remember the old Microsoft mission statement, it was “A personal computer in every home and office.” Well, they were doing great with the work, and they were doing great at home, to a certain extent, you know, PCs were leading the way. However, you have Sony, all of a sudden, and they own the gaming console, the TV, the radio, like, all of a sudden, the living room is starting to be Sony’s world.

And what Bill and Steve Balmer heard from the team was, “All right, if you don’t want to do this for the opportunity, how about fear? Sony owns the living room. How long is it going to take them to move into the home office?” And that little nugget, that little insight was enough, I’m sure among a few other things, to get them over the hurdle, and say, “Oh, that’s an existential threat.”

And we actually saw that come up in other case studies as well, like the Bing case study. I love the Bing team. I am their biggest fan after I heard their story, just blown away by what they were able to do for the company that nobody even knows about. But one of the biggest things that answered a question that I long had is, “Why does Bing exist? Like, if Google owns 90% of search, pre-AI, why does Microsoft keep investing in Bing?”

But it was for the same reason they started Gaming. Google, owning all of search with no competition biting at their heels, that’s a bad thing for everybody. So, Microsoft has stayed in to just be a thorn in the side of Google for all these years, chewing away half a percent of the market share at a time, so that Google couldn’t just say, “Oh, well, we won search. Let us go win productivity and let us go win these other markets that are the Microsoft bread and butter.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s interesting. The notion of winning dominance, influence, power, it’s a theme or a force or a motivator, I guess it’s primal, it’s emotional and present within some of the leadership there at Microsoft. And then I guess another theme is the being able to just jettison the old stuff that wasn’t working.

Because my understanding now, in the world of gaming, like Microsoft, as far as I know, is winning big with, like, the Game Pass and the monthly subscription. And part of that was they have chilled out a lot on the notion of, “We have to have these exclusive titles because we have to have them by the Xbox because they want the coolest games that are only available on Xbox.”

And now it’s shifted a bit to, “Yeah, we kind of don’t care what device you’re bringing to the table. We would just love for you to have a subscription to all these games, whether you’re playing them on an iPad or a TV or an Xbox or anything.” And it seems to be financially working out quite well.

JoAnn Garbin
Yes. And again, this is business model innovation, right? This isn’t technology. It’s actually decreasing the emphasis on the tech itself, because consoles, there’s only so many you can sell. There’s only so much diffusion of that tech out into the world.

And as Phil says in the book, Phil Spencer, the CEO of Gaming, “When you have 3 billion gamers, is there one device or one business model that is going to be affordable and enjoyable to everyone? No.” And, in fact, most games to this day are played on PC or laptops and mobile, not consoles.

So, it takes a lot of really good innovation discipline to look at your prized thing, like, in this case, a console, and say, “You got us here. You got us to a hundred million players, or maybe even 500 million players, but you’re not going to get us to three billion players. So, how do we get those three billion?”

And flipping those questions around, and it’s not, “How do we get more people to play our games, or play our games on our consoles?” It’s, “How do we get into the hands of three billion players?” Well, let them play games anywhere. Let them play any game. Let them play games with their friends that aren’t on the same technologies.

So, when you turn the problem around and really focus on how to win the gamer, not win the console war, it changes what you bring to market.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, JoAnn, tell me, any final quick tips, tricks, do’s, don’ts before we hear about some of your favorite things?

JoAnn Garbin
I’m going to steal from another friend who I think is brilliant, Michael Gervais. Michael Gervais has a show called Finding Mastery, and he’s the former advisor to the Seattle Seahawks, a theme that keeps coming up. And he’s a sports psychologist for high performance.

And again, we can learn a lot, looking at professional athletes because they’re at the top of their field. And it’s about breaking it down. Like, if you have an intention or a purpose, maybe your life purpose, that’s overwhelming. But if you can take that life purpose or intention and bring it back to, “What’s my purpose today?” and then live into that, “Tomorrow, what’s my purpose? Today, live into that.” And then gradually build that up into a weekly habit, monthly habit, annual habit.

This is the same thing we see in the innovation world of, “If my first instinct becomes curiosity, not assumption, ask more questions, don’t try to answer things right away, I’m going to be a better innovator because that’s just habit.”

So, I would say take whatever big thing you’re trying to do, bring it back down to those stepping stones, or what Michael calls the thin slices, and just start stacking them and make progress. And then congratulate yourself on the progress that you’re making, because that matters. You need to own up to what you do, both good and bad.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

JoAnn Garbin
So, this is not a famous quote unless you happen to be in Goju-ryu karate. But the rules of the dojo that I practiced in with my oldest brother when we were teenagers and into college. They’ve really become guiding principles for me in pretty much everything I do. “Everyone works. Nothing is free. All start at the bottom.”

But those middle three, I see them again and again. And it just reminds me, when I’m not the best at something, I’m like, “Everybody starts at the bottom.” You got to do the practice, do the work, move up. “Everyone works.” You don’t age out of doing the work. You don’t get promoted up above the work. Everyone works and, “Nothing is free.” There’s always a tradeoff. There’s always a cost. You have to determine whether it’s one that’s suitable for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite tool?

JoAnn Garbin
My favorite tool is the question. I love, like, if I’m stuck on anything, I get a couple people together and we throw a hundred questions at it, and I never have walked out without some forward progress.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that’s beautiful. We had Hal Gregerson talk about question-storming and how transformative that can be to unblock things. So, it’s cool.

JoAnn Garbin
It’s one of my favorite practices. I talk about it in the book, and I’ve taken the class with Hal.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. And is there a key nugget you share that folks really love and quote back to you often?

JoAnn Garbin
It’s, “Say it ugly.” So, this is a mantra my teams use to remind ourselves that there’s no ego, there’s no holding back, no toes are going to get stepped on. Say it ugly. Put it on the table. We’ll pretty it up together. Because if you keep it stuck in your head, it’s not doing anybody any good. So just get it out quick and often.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

JoAnn Garbin
We’re everywhere at this point, except TikTok, haven’t really.

Pete Mockaitis
You do some dances, get them worked up, some choreography.

JoAnn Garbin
Yeah, pull out the old mascot-ing moves. LinkedIn is our favorite platform, not just because Microsoft owns it, but because we are predominantly a business conversation. So, Dean and I are both on LinkedIn. The book is on LinkedIn and you can follow us there.

But we also have our website, InnovationAtMicrosoft.com, and we have a free Insiders Group where we share articles and new bonus chapters for free in the book. And we intend to keep it free forevermore. So, if you just want a place to go and continuously learn about innovation and meet other innovators, we would love to see you there.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

JoAnn Garbin
Be honest with yourself. That’s the final call to action. Taking in all these things about building habits and thin slices and stepping stones, like really wake up every day and be honest with yourself about what brings you joy. And if you don’t have it right now, start laying those stepping stones down toward it.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. JoAnn, thank you.

JoAnn Garbin
Thank you. Really appreciate you having us on.

Pete Mockaitis
Zorana, welcome!

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Thank you for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to dig into your wisdom and talk creativity. And I think it’s important that we address, right at the beginning, if professionals listening, say, “You know, I’m not really in one of those really creative roles,” what do you say to that? How does learning about creativity help every professional become more awesome at their jobs?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
It helps a lot because creativity is not just for creative industries. It’s not just for R&D. It’s not just for artists. Creativity is really for everybody. And one of the favorite examples of creativity that I encountered in my consulting work was actually a supervisor in the food services unit of a large hospital. Now do you expect it there?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, no, that doesn’t sound like we’re creating TV or plays or anything in such a role.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
No, but he was really influential because he has created a completely new workflow for his workers, and that really improved their health outcomes. They were not as stressed and frustrated in their work. It was easier.

They did not have aches and pains from reaching for things, but also it made it safer for the patients they are serving because it was easier for the workers to do the job and food is part of treatment. Everybody was winning in the process of something that this particular supervisor created.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s nifty. So, the creation was kind of rearranging where the stuff was in the process flow by which we move the food and the ingredients and the serving items?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Yeah, it was completely rearranging where things were, where the individual orders for tickets of what’s supposed to come on a tray were, and where individual food items were placed.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it feels like this could be a TV episode on HGTV or one of those restaurant turnaround situations. I could visualize how that could be transformational, and then maybe someone is crying toward the end because of the dramatic turnaround that has unfolded with this makeover.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
It could be. It could be. It certainly made them more awesome at their job.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, I was just going to ask for an inspiring story, and that’s a cool one. Can we have another?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Well, I think that, really, whatever you are doing, you can do something creative. I’m a scientist and I oftentimes get the question, “What is your creative outlet?” with an assumption. Well, creative outlet should be something artistic, but my creative outlet is my science and communicating about my science.

We can use creativity in everyday life. I remember a couple of years ago we had one of the really impossible seeming problems of how to arrange our summer travel. Our child was young, there were these constraints from my end, from my husband’s end, and he completely transformed this seemingly impossible puzzle problem into something that was more interesting to deal with, and that we approached in a different way when he said, “Hey, let’s take this as a creative problem.”

What happened with this challenge is that our thinking changed from, “This is an impossible problem. This cannot be assembled into a coherent puzzle,” into, “Well, how do we play with the pieces, move them around so that they end up snapping together?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, emotionally, that sounds a whole lot more fun and uplifting and edifying. But, well, now we’re in suspense, what was the ultimate solution here?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
So, what happened was that, because of different sets of travel for work for my husband and for myself, I ended up traveling with our son, who was young at the time, to Croatia where I grew up for him to see grandparents, stayed there for a week.

Then my husband came, joined me there, and ended up staying there with the child while I ended up traveling for my own work purposes. So, all was possible to do. And even, in the meantime, my husband and I went on just two of us, a trip together.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, fantastic. Well, well done. And I really like what you had to say about science being a creative outlet. I am the kind of dork who will read the full text of many scientific journal articles. And it’s actually fun to peer inside the brains of the researcher. I was just reading one about a human randomized control trial about a yoga intervention.

And so, you can tell they were really racking their brains for “What’s the control here?” Because there’s consequences. Folks could feel disappointed if they’re into yoga, and they say, “Actually, you’re in the control group. You’re not doing any yoga.” And that could skew the results one way.

And so, they were very clever, they said, “Okay, we’re going to teach them about the history of yoga and some of the language and words and context and background, and then tell them that, after the education, they’ll get a chance to do the exercises.” And that seemed to be as satisfactory as they could come up with, and there was some real creativity there.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Yes, certainly, there’s lots of creativity in designing the studies and coming up with questions, and seeing how different pieces fit together and in communicating that in coherent and persuasive ways.

Pete Mockaitis
So, your book is called “The Creativity Choice: The Science of Making Decisions to Turn Ideas into Action.” What’s the big idea here? What is the creativity choice?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
There actually isn’t the creativity choice. That is a title that was a little provocative, but there isn’t one creativity choice.

We start with a single choice, but then we have to make many more, because it is not as if, “Okay, you made one choice, and now you are done.” It is recommitting to the process of choosing creativity, choosing the challenging option, the original option that could produce something of interest and something truly awesome repeatedly.

Pete Mockaitis
So, the A choice, or a key choice, from which many subsequent choices flow is just that we are going to try to create something new and different here, as opposed to just kind of continue on going with the flow.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Exactly. So, the first choice is the one, “Okay, you have an idea. Now you are deciding to do something with it.” Oftentimes, people have lots of ideas, but don’t do anything with them, don’t develop them, don’t have performances or products that come out of them. It stays in the realm of imagination and fantasy. You know, you meet over coffee with your best friend, you talk about your ideas, but it stays there.

And we oftentimes ask the wrong question of, “How did you come up with that idea?” Where, really, the more difficult question is, “You had that idea. How did it happen? How did you take something that is just in your mind into something that is in the real world?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well said. Absolutely. It’s funny, I had the idea for Airbnb along with a friend, and then again with another friend, because we were in consulting and/or accounting, and seeing, “Hey, there’s a lot of travel, a lot of empty bedtime in this apartment. Maybe that should really turn into money somehow. This could really be a thing.”

But we proceeded to do nothing about it after we, I think we chatted with a Hyatt executive that we knew, and he said, “Oh, man, that’s a liability nightmare. Random people inside your house and vice versa. There’s going to be crimes. There’s going to be problems. It’s going to seem…” It’s like, “Okay, yeah, you’re probably right.” And then just never did anything with it. But the Airbnb folks have done pretty well for themselves by pursuing it.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Oh, I had the fabulous idea also. I am very small, so I get cold all the time. I live in New England and I had this idea to create a coat that, would from the outside, look just like a wool fancy fashion coat, and then the inside, have heaters so that you are always warm. Never did anything with it.

Pete Mockaitis
Did somebody else?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Apparently, it seems that it’s starting. So, there are now coats you can buy with heaters. On the outside that don’t look up to my standards, but it’s just a matter of time at this point.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood, yes. Well, so then, you make the argument that creativity is more about decision-making than self-expression. Can you expand on this?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Oh, I think it’s about both. So, creativity is about self-expression, in some ways that creativity happens. So, in the arts, there’s lots of self-expression. In the example I shared before with developing a new workflow, it’s not really about self-expression, it’s about solving a problem. And in other domains of creative work, it may be about something different, but throughout, no matter what is the psychological process by which something is done, the constant is this making of choices.

So, at any given point, you are facing a choice whether you will do something that is more commonplace, similar to something you have done before, or something that will be different, but still can work in some important ways, still effective for whatever you are after. And there are many choices along the way.

Like, I’m a scientist, there are choices of what research question you’re going to ask, how you’re going to ask it, what kinds of measures you are going to use in addressing it, in asking the question, how you will set up your studies. Will it be an experiment? Will you go into observing something that happens in the real world outside the laboratory? So, these are all choices that have consequences for what you end up doing.

Pete Mockaitis
Understood. And I’m curious then, since you and I have both had ideas we have not pursued, what are your pro tips for wise decision-making amongst our ideas in terms of what are the best practices or processes by which we discern whether to go ahead and go after something versus just let it lie?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Well, it is really hard to get going. It is hard to get going. There are lots of uncertainties in this process. There’s an uncertainty of what psychologists call intellectual risk, a risk whether you can make it happen, whether you have what it takes to develop your idea and to build it. And then there are social reputational risks, “What are other people going to say?”

And in the example that you have mentioned with you invented Airbnb, you actually went to somebody, and that somebody told you all the reasons why it couldn’t be. And so, these are the risks, social risks of embarking on something, and they can stop you in the tracks. Well, what do you do for that not to happen?

Well, maybe you could have talked to more people, and maybe different kinds of people that is not just somebody who is an executive in Hyatt and who has a self-interest in business as usual, but maybe some other kinds of perspectives.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I didn’t even think about that. Was he torpedo-ing our idea on purpose? I think he’s a pal. I think it came from the heart. But you’re right. Why not say, “Oh, that’s a great point, liability. Let’s also talk to some people in insurance to hear if that’s the kind of thing that there is insurable against and how that even works”? Because it’s not like a home or auto or life policy that I know about. It’s a whole other thing. And then I could get educated there.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Yeah, exactly. And there are actually things like Airbnb in different parts of the world, existed in some shape or form before. So, you could learn from experiences there. I grew up in Croatia and there is a great tradition of renting rooms in houses, in private houses. Didn’t exist here in the US, but maybe you can learn from other perspectives and from other ways of doing it. So, that is one big barrier.

Another big barrier is we don’t feel confident. We don’t feel that we can picture 10 steps ahead, and this feeling of, “I don’t have the self-confidence for it,” can be in our way. But when we say that we are making this assumption, we are making an assumption that you have to be 100% confident to try anything out.

Well, if we take an analogy with fuel, confidence being fuel of getting you started and getting you going, well, you only need enough fuel to go for a few miles until that first little task along the way, and then you refuel. You refuel by realizing, “Well, I was able to do something. Therefore, chances are I can do another task along the way,” breaking one big thing into smaller chunks.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, little steps, one bit at a time, gathering input from other sources, seeing what’s next, not getting overwhelmed. I like that. I also want to hear your perspective on putting more of an emphasis on problem finding as opposed to problem solving. How do you think about that?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
If you want to say it in, like, one sentence, problem finding is a way to problem solving. When psychologists called this process that happens in creative work problem finding, they made our communication a little bit more difficult because it suggests that, “Okay, you find a problem and then you solve it kind of step by step.” They didn’t really mean that.

They mean problem finding is a process of exploration. You identify a big umbrella problem and then you are approaching with curiosity and experimentation what it could be under that big umbrella thing. And you are asking the question in different ways in the process. You are arranging it and rearranging it in different ways.

If you are designing a website, you try it one way and then you move different things around, so you can see it visually as moving pieces. Sometimes it’s physically moving pieces in different places. Like, in studies, we sometimes arrange it so that people can physically manipulate objects versus they cannot physically manipulate objects in the process of design. And if you cannot physically manipulate objects, well, you are going to be less successful in it in the end.

Pete Mockaitis
Very good. Could you give us some more examples of that in practice?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
So, to give you an example from a research study, one of my favorite research studies of all time, actually, it was a study of art students. And researchers invited them into the lab and said, “Your task is to make a drawing of a still life.” And they give them lots of different objects. There were more than 30 objects on a big table. They could choose whatever they wanted.

And the researchers observed what these art students were doing. And they found out that those who were judged to have produced the most original, most creative drawings in the end, did not just take a bunch of objects, arrange them, and then spend a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of detail into the minutiae of creating the drawing itself.

Rather, what they did is they played with the objects. They would physically lift them up, feel them, weigh them, compare them. If they had mechanical parts, play the mechanical parts. Think of why are they playing the mechanical parts? They’re never going to be seen on the 2D drawing, right? You’re not going to see what this toy is capable of doing or how it moves.

But if you did that anyway, it ended up being more creative in the end. You’re getting more feel of what the objects are, what their potential is, what it could suggest. And if you didn’t try just one possible arrangement of objects, but try different ones, sketched a little bit, came back and rearranged them, your end product is more creative.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that really resonates. And I’m thinking of how that can work even in a more abstract sense. Like, if I’m working on a thing, I’m thinking about a thing over time, and then I’m just exposed to more stimuli, like just things, environments, ideas, perspectives, it’s like they just collide.

And it’s really, really handy and beautiful in terms of, like, what can someone use to lean on when their ankle is sprained. It’s like, “Well, lots of things. It doesn’t have to be a cane per se. It could be a baseball bat. It could be a wood, for example. It can be a broom.”  And so, it’s interesting, and these ideas did not even occur to me until I actually had that problem in mind, and then bumped into those objects in the environment.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Yeah, that’s a great example in everyday life. There are examples in the world of work. There was a study that analyzed 1.2 million companies in the United States, big database with lots of information about companies. And they wanted to see, out of those 1.2 million, what will happen to startups, depending on what point they scale up and whether they engage in this problem finding, this construction and reconstruction of what you’re actually doing.

And they found that those companies, those startups that scale after two years, as opposed to in the first six months or 12 months after being founded, are 20 to 40% more likely to survive. That is a huge difference. That is a huge effect. And the reason for that was that they engaged in lots of testing, testing of their ideas, seeing how it worked, going back to the drawing board, and not scaling until they figured it out a little bit more.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Very good. I’d also love to hear a little bit about the emotional groove, if you will. Because sometimes I feel like I’m in a spot where ideas are just flying left and right, quick, quick. And other times, I am just bone dry, got nothing. What’s behind this? And is there a way we can kick ourselves into high creative gear?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Yes, there is. What you are describing there is the fact that how we are feeling influences how we are thinking. And the good news is that we can use those connections to our advantage. So, what you noticed is that there are times when ideas are flowing and flowing and flowing, and you are feeling positive and you’re feeling energized. And when you are in these kinds of moods, you can very quickly come up with ideas.

But at other times, ideas are not coming. and everything seems stupid, right? Well, it turns out that those kinds of feelings are also useful. They’re just not useful for coming up with ideas. They are very useful for critical thinking. And if we take creative work as not just coming up with ideas, but also developing them, making them into best products we possibly can, then you see how this could be helpful.

So, you are feeling happy, energized and upbeat. You come up with lots of ideas. At a different time, you are feeling down, you are feeling gloomy, you are feeling maybe grumpy. You can very much evaluate, successfully evaluate those ideas, find all the problems potentially with them, and then problem solve around those problems. We need both.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Yes, so the grumpiness is just like, “Oh, I’m out of luck. There’s no value in this grumpiness,” but, oh, no, perfection. Critique away now. You’re in the groove for that.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Exactly. And you can use it to your advantage. So, for instance, I am not a morning person. People know to stay away from me in the morning. And so, I use that to my advantage. In the morning, I can really tear apart things that I have written before. I can find all the things that are not clear, all the things that are flat, that fall not quite just right. And I can mark them. I can solve problems around them. And that is something that you need in creative work too.

Pete Mockaitis
So, that’s a great perspective there, is match the work you’re doing to the mood you find yourself in. That’s really cool. And I’m also curious, is it possible to make the shift? I am in the grumpy mode, but what is needed from me in the moment is creative, generative mode. Do you have any tips or tricks to manage our own emotional states to find that groove?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Yeah, the good news is that we have more agency in relation to our moods than we seem to, and then we oftentimes believe we do. And a very powerful tool there is how we think about the situation. We assume that situation, emotional reaction, one comes immediately after another, but there’s something that happens in between, actually.

And what happens in between is how we think about the situation. And if we think about the situation as a threat, it’s something that is one way or another dangerous to us or can put us at a risk, then we are going to have less control over it, and it will be experienced in a more negative and unpleasant way.

But if we shift how we look at the situation, and say, ‘Hey, right now, I’m about to give an important presentation, but I’m feeling nervous. If I’m really being truly honest, I am feeling anxious right now.” But if you say to yourself, “Hey, yes, you are feeling anxious. However, you are feeling anxious not because you are not prepared, not because you are not ready for this, but because you truly and deeply care about it. This is important to you,” you are going to do better.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. So, the interpretation, the meaning that the frame we’re putting on, it makes a world of difference. I suppose at times, it’s perhaps easier said than done to choose an empowering, useful, effective frame. Any pro tips in the heat of battle?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Yeah, you’re right. Sometimes, we just cannot make that happen. And at those times, an emotion can already happen, we are already experiencing something unpleasant and something that seems to be getting in our way. Sometimes the only thing we can do with those instances is to choose how we react. So, what our physical reaction is going to be like. That can be influencing the activation in our body by taking a deep breath, by taking just one moment before we react.

I give a lot of talks, and sometimes you get unexpected questions. And when you get unexpected questions, you can start to feel your body getting jittery. So, you take a step back and take a breath. Taking a breath can make you seem thoughtful to the audience, but it’s also going to calm your physical reactions. And as your physical reactions calm, your emotional ones do too.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. I also want to hear your take on creativity and AI. What are the best ways to engage with it and the worst ways to engage with it as we do creative stuff?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Oh, the worst ways. The worst ways are the easiest.  The worst ways is you ask ChatGPT or whatever is your AI of choice, a question. You copy paste that answer and you are done.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
And you are laughing at it, but you are laughing at it because you wouldn’t do it like that.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, those who have, I’m thinking about attorneys and others have faced severe consequences of the negative variety.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Exactly. So, it is a chuckle for us here in the conversation because we wouldn’t do it, but people are doing it. So that’s clearly the worst-case scenario. What are better ways of using AI is a little bit of a sparring partner. I oftentimes use AI when I’m writing, and I don’t necessarily use anything it produces. It is more of asking a question, “How could this chunk of text be said in a different way, be expressed in a different way?”

And I have heard stories from writers who are using it in a similar way, never actually taking the output itself, but having it as inspiration, as a jumping point, as, “Oh, I didn’t think of it to put it that way.” And it could be in opposition to it, or in agreement with it as a different perspective.

So, engaging with AI as a tool, where it could be a conversation partner that has a perspective of having swallowed the internet, can be something to make you think, make you think in a different way, make you arrange what you’re doing in a different way.

You are the one asking the question. Always remember you are the one asking the question, which brings us back to what we talked about earlier of creativity and the importance of problem finding in creativity. You are always the one doing the problem finding when working with the AI agent. It can give you answers, but you are the one asking the questions, asking the questions in a different way, formulating it and reformulating it to find different angles.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like that a lot. And I think that often what AI will produce is the opposite of novel and innovative and kind of the most obvious standard issue, “This is what the internet says, response on a matter,” which can be helpful.

It’s like, “Oops, I overlooked that.” And also, it gives you, what I find is my experience is like a lot of great reminders, like, “Oh, of course, I should have thought of that. And because you mentioned that, this makes me think of this other thing.” So, a sparring partner is a great way to put it.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Yeah, “It makes me think of this other thing,” is really interesting. Sometimes we do that with other humans. It’s just, this AI is readily available at any time, and it has the knowledge of the whole internet so it can be useful in that way, even if it is to point to you the usual commonplace ways of looking at something. And the usual and commonplace is not creative, but usual and commonplace can be a starting point from which you make something creative.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, beautiful. Thank you. Well, Zorana, tell me, any other top things you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
The one that I want to mention is, “How do we make creativity reliable? How do we ensure that we are not a one-hit wonder?” and in the context of your job, that you are sustainably and reliably and sometimes on demand, doing creative things.

Pete Mockaitis
Tell us.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Well, the secret is it’s not secret. The key is in the social nature of creativity. When we are creating, when we are doing something, even if the act itself is solitary, like writing a book, I was the only one writing it, but there are social influences on it. There are the voices of colleagues who you interacted with and from whom you have learned. There are those lessons from having read, in my case, journal articles and books that influenced your thinking that became part of what you write and what you do.

And then there are those social influences that create an infrastructure or an ecosystem of the job. And when that climate, that job climate is one that is favorable to creativity and innovation, then it can really flourish and not just once, but sustainably.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
It is by Frank Barron, a creativity researcher from the 1950s and ‘60s, and he said that creative individuals are occasionally crazier, yet adamantly saner than the average person.

Pete Mockaitis
And can you share a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
One study that I find very intriguing is a study where people have looked at the influence of instructions on creative thinking. So, there was a standard test of creative thinking, but one group of people was given the standard instruction, “Come up with as many ideas as you can.” And the other group, that same instruction plus three words, “Please be creative.” And those three words made a bunch of difference. When we ask people to be creative, they rise to the occasion.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
My favorite book on creativity, since we are at the topic, is a very old one. I like to uncover things that are sometimes forgotten. And it is from 1975 by Rollo May, and the title is “The Courage to Create.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Make it a habit to learn what works for you. So, to learn that, yes, all the advice out there says, “Write first thing in the morning,” but if it doesn’t work for you, don’t do it that way. Create your own way that works for you, depending on who you are as a person.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a particular nugget, a sound bite, a Zorana original that you’re really known for?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Creativity is social even when it doesn’t feel like it is.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Well, my website is Zorana Ivcevic Pringle with dashes in between, and that is the best way to find how to reach me, or all the information on what I’m doing and how to stay in touch.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do have a final challenge or call to action for someone looking to be awesome on their job?

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Look around you. If you have a point of frustration, it is telling you that something could be done differently, and that it is ripe for problem solving.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Zorana, thank you.

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Thank you.