AZUREY Inc.* is on the brink of collapse. During the COVID-19 pandemic, sales have rapidly declined since consumers were spending less on luxury goods and the forecasts say that the luxury industry will take time to recover from this decline. Jim, the CEO, is working hard to keep the company afloat, putting pressure on everyone to cut costs and raise sales in any way possible. The AZUREY leadership team has done a lot to deliver results for the short-term, and now they want to focus on how to create longer-term value. They are ready to think expansively.

According to Harvard Business Review, 52 percent of Fortune 500 companies have either gone bankrupt, been acquired, or ceased to exist as a result of digital disruption since 2000.

Leaders of large multi-national organizations like AZUREY are scrambling to figure out ways to keep their teams dynamic, innovative, and agile, ready to handle any scenario that comes their way (even a global pandemic!). Board Members and C-Suite executives are considering how to make sure their reign at the top is maintained without being ousted by a digital disruptor and how to stay alive for the next generation. Leaders recognize that after the ‘usual work’ of protecting revenues and slashing costs is done only highly innovative teams can bring their company success in our fast-paced times.

Although it sounds counterintuitive, the best times to innovate can be during the hardest times. It is tempting to focus only on cutting losses during a recession, but those who get ahead do so because they balance today’s needs with simultaneously planting the seeds for tomorrow’s success. Tomorrow’s success comes from innovation. And while Steve Jobs may have coined the phrase ‘think different’ with his iconic Apple commercials of the 1980s, few companies have found systematic processes to truly disrupt themselves and think differently as an operating protocol.

That is where Expansive Thinking can help

What is Expansive Thinking?

Expansive Thinking is an active, collaborative, forward-moving exploration process in which a team seeks to re-imagine challenges and expand the realm of possible innovative solutions. In Expansive Thinking, each idea is connected to the last and assumed to be at least 10 percent right, thereby creating room for expanding the conversation. It requires the team to question the question before seeking any form of a solution. Expansive Thinking is an innovation technique differentiated from other techniques by a unique ‘stacking’ approach, using the contributions of other team members to expand your own thinking, and then having your own expanded thinking returned to the group in order to continue to expand their thinking.

AZUREY’s CEO Jim calls together his Leadership Team and thanks them for having made all the tough revenue-protecting and cost-cutting decisions. Now, Jim adds, it’s time for each person to share how they can contribute to building a successful future for AZUREY.

Jane, an expansive thinker, knows that the first step in bringing true disruption to the team is to reimagine the problem before heading down any solution path. “Can we take a step back to see the AZUREY landscape more holistically? What’s our long-term vision as a company?” she inquires of the team.

“We should be the Apple of fashion, the one everybody else wants to copy because we’re the trendsetter,” Hans responds.

“Yes!” exclaims Mei, “And we want to be a trendsetter with clothing but also with the customer experience.”

“And what I like about that, Mei, is the idea that customer experience is as important or more than the design. How might we differentiate our customer experience so that customers are drawn to us?” Sanjay asks. “If I may add,” responds Matt, the CEO’s Executive Assistant, who is in the room taking notes but otherwise does not typically speak up in strategy sessions, “I’ve had a great experience with my computer repair service, who comes to my house within an hour to fix any problem. What if we had a team of ‘Repair Service’ but for clothing alterations and fixes?”

“Matt, yes! A service that comes to the house. And what if that service also included a stylist who could help style an outfit we have,” Mei adds.

“An available stylist is a great idea! What might it be like to have stylists available for video chats online to help you personalize your look with the clothing? That way, each piece you buy includes a styling package at no charge,” Jane offers.

In listening to build, you are listening for what is right about an idea and never getting stuck in analyzing what is wrong.

Jim smiles. “This could be a huge differentiator from our other competitors’ offerings and has a great opportunity for upselling the client on additional items. Great solution. Let’s have the IT team check feasibility.”

But Jane knows to keep the Expansive Thinking collaboration open to new possibilities. “That is, indeed, one great solution. Let’s keep exploring, there might be even more options. How else might we have opportunities to upsell our clients from their homes?”

Notice that in an Expansive Thinking conversation, people are not sharing their pre-thought-through opinions and ideas. Each must take what the last has shared, and actively think, in the here and now, to come up with a new addition (that may have never been thought about before). That is the way that true expansion and innovation can occur.

How Expansive Thinking is different from what your team is already doing: collaboration, co-creation, and expansive thinking

When speaking about the ways teams can work together, and for the purpose of this article, we distinguish three possible levels of working together. In collaboration, the team is working together mostly to exchange information and get tasks accomplished. Collaboration is about working together simultaneously, but not necessarily elevating the level of work or thinking beyond the task at hand. Much of the work being done in today’s largest organization requires teams to collaborate in order to complete the day-to-day tasks of running the business. The AZUREY Leadership Team will collaborate when they are executing their chosen solutions.

Co-creation is the next level of a team working together, this time usually with a focus on creating something new, such as a new process, program, or product. Co-creation asks the team members to contribute their inputs, ideas, and expertise, and the team then considers all of the pieces together to create a solution to the stated project aim. In collaboration, the end goal is usually clear and known. In co-creation, the end goal or the steps to get to the end goal may not originally be clear and the task is for the team to use co-creation to create clarity and next steps together. Cocreation is still a solutions-oriented thinking process. If the AZUREY Leadership Team had responded to Jim’s original request for solutions, this would have been a co-creation moment.

Expansive Thinking takes working together to a whole new level. It opens the door to creating exponential vs. linear growth of creativity because it is focused on the development of an open-ended, ambiguous, not-yet-imagined future and it is not focused on finding concrete next steps at the end of a one-hour meeting. Expansive Thinking is about growing each other’s ideas to the point where new puzzle pieces are invented. If there is no new information generated then there is no true innovation, only iteration. And disruptors bring true innovation, without the baggage of “what is” or “this can’t be done” or “we’ve tried this before”.

Collaboration, Co-creation, and Expansive Thinking are all important ways of working for every organization; the key is to use the appropriate one of these ways of working for the situation your team is facing, and to be able to use it properly. When your team needs to execute and ‘get stuff done’ while working against ambitious deadlines, collaboration can help you do so efficiently. When your team needs to imagine next steps to a problem, co-creation can help you do so efficiently. But when you need to truly innovate, Expansive Thinking protects your team from simply iterating.

Top 5 ways to cultivate Expansive Thinking on your team

Many leaders are intrigued by the idea of Expansive Thinking but are unsure how to facilitate this new way of working. How would Jane be able to successfully facilitate a full Expansive Thinking exercise with the Leadership Team to bring them beyond a collaboration or co-creation? In our experience, working both internally in large multinational organizations and as external Executive Coaches, we have discovered one foundational element and five factors that innovative leaders can use to successfully cultivate Expansive Thinking in their teams.

The Expansive Thinking foundation is ‘listening to build’

The key to success in Expansive Thinking is developing a particular way of listening to the other team members. ‘Listening to respond’ is the most common method of listening. We are listening to find discrepancies, find commonalities, add our unique perspective, and/ or prove our expertise. Listening to respond can lead to conflictual or competitive behaviors that are not conducive to Expansive Thinking. Those leaders who have attended communications trainings may have learned how to practice ‘listening to understand’; the place where we are seeking to understand the intent of what the person is saying with empathy, minimizing judgment or addition of our opinion to the conversation.

Expansive Thinking requires a third level of listening: ‘listening to build’. With this level of listening, you go beyond personal understanding and seek to systemically build upon the last speaker’s contributions so that the next person’s idea may also be expansive. This listening asks you to actively consider what new information you could add from your personal knowledge, experiences and creativity that could grow the concept being discussed in the room. The key element is being open to diverse exploration and seeing new opportunity in what others say. In listening to build, you are listening for what is right about an idea and never getting stuck in analyzing what is wrong with an idea. It is seeing beyond your own expertise and acknowledging future potential. Expansive Thinking cannot occur until all team members are able to listen at this level and the easiest way to develop this skill is simply through practicing using this open, ‘yes and’ mindset. Listening to build is often most successful when a neutral ‘guardian of the process’ is there to help ensure the team stays in ‘listening to build’ mode.

The five factors needed for cultivating Expansive Thinking

Find the right group of contributors, with a focus on contribution, perspectives, a service mindset, creativity. Everyone should be able and willing to provide diverse and knowledgeable contributions and perspectives. Each team member should have a service mindset where no one individual’s thoughts or ideas are considered ‘more important’, but rather every individual on the team contributes in service of growing the greater innovation idea. There is not room for passengers at this stage, and free-riding is to be called out and eliminated – each team member must actively grow the contributions to the goal. When creating your team, creativity is more important than harmony. Your team of contributors does not necessarily need to be a fixed team in your organization; they can be a mixture of members pulled together just for this exercise.

Go out and find a wild card, who brings the outsider advantage, not being limited by prior experience, and courageous enough to offer contributions without first checking for ‘harmony’. When creating your group of contributors, most leaders call on ‘the usual suspects’, or their normal go-to team contributors. To find truly Expansive Thinking and innovation, leaders need to make a conscious step to pull in the ‘wild card’, or the person(s) not usually called upon to contribute to this team. The wild card brings with them the outsider advantage, ensuring you are not restricted to traditional thinking and constraints of your expert knowledge. The wild card should not be an expert in your area of expertise so that the person can ask fresh questions and challenge assumptions. The wild card doesn’t know that an idea can’t be done and so they are free to propose beyond. A key here is to ensure that the wild card is welcomed and allowed to be heard and considered - not silenced for being “different” from the others. There is no value in asking the wild card to fit in to the other team members. If a team is unable to add a diverse wild card member, you can still ensure unique ‘wild card’ considerations by using a perspectivetaking exercise. Ask the team: what would a flight attendant think about this? A zookeeper? A construction worker? A refugee? A 5-year-old? An elephant? Though those perspectives may not seem immediately relevant to the discussion, that’s exactly the point. The perspectives they would have will help to expand ideas considered.

Noise-cancel your space, so that the team can really dive deep, without distractions, and beyond ‘just doing’. Put on the equivalent of noise-cancelling headphones on your team’s Expansive Thinking time to keep the noise out and get rid of outside distractions. If a team member checks even just one email, they’ve lost the thread upon which to build for the conversation. Mindfulness techniques can help team members to slow down and stay present. Expansive Thinking spaces should be created to remove temptations to focus on ‘human doing’ and create a space for “human being’. Be sure to set clear expectations that the clock is not ticking for how quickly the team finds a solution. In fact, for Expansive Thinking, just the opposite is true because most ideas do not come from what is most readily available in your minds, but just the opposite. It is your seventeenth idea that is going to be more innovative than your seventh (and will disrupt the competition because they likely stopped at the fourth idea).

Don’t just ‘think different’ ‘explore different’, in order to avoid judgment and really tap into the creativity of doing what is unusual. Instead of calling on your team’s rational thinking to look at a familiar situation differently (which can be difficult), try tapping into the creative parts of your brains. Artistic and creative thinking allows us to access thoughts that go beyond facts and logic to tap into a deeper level of awareness. We have used methods with our clients such as painting, Lego®, acting, storytelling, and dance to create new understanding of where our limitations are and help facilitate Expansive Thinking. Yes, these methods feel most uncomfortable which is exactly where the expansion comes from. It is breaking out of the usual mode of operation that provides new insights. Telling stories, for example, can help our team members to surpass the ‘judgment’ part of their brain that gets defensive and looks for errors and inconsistencies; by using stories, we can move from ‘what doesn’t work about that’ to ‘I can see how this relates to my situation’.

Stay problem-oriented instead of solution-oriented for longer than feels comfortable, breaking free of the desire to be efficient straight away. Whereas most teams are looking to solve problems quickly, an Expansive Thinking team is focused on understanding the depths of problems in new and interesting ways first. Be sure to set clear expectations that the outcome of Expansive Thinking time is not a quick solution; it is an expanded understanding of the problem and an expanded understanding of the potential solution options. Expansive Thinking is like ‘creating choices on steroids’, and only after these new choices have been explored should the team move into critical thinking. Putting an emphasis on staying in this exploration space helps to foresee potential products or solutions that customers do not yet even know that they want. However, be careful not to stay so long in the expansion phase that the vision comes to no action. Central to the concept of Expansive Thinking is that your new thoughts and ideas are ultimately executed this is not a purely conceptual thought exercise.

The more of the factors you successfully use, the more your team will advance.

How to close Expansive Thinking

Expansive Thinking is an opening exercise that could go on indefinitely if not carefully facilitated to close. There are two closing opportunities within any Expansive Thinking cycle: after (re)defining the problem and after finding innovative solutions. Expansive Thinking should be considered one half of a pair, with Critical Thinking being the other necessary half in order for Expansive Thinking to be successful in delivering innovation.

Closing opportunity number one is after the problem exploration, when a natural result should be a new and deeper understanding of the problem. The team should agree upon their new understanding of the problem before opening Expansive Thinking for the potential solutions phase. Closing opportunity number two is after the solutions ideation phase. In our experience, the first half of an Expansive.

Thinking session should be of ideas that feel ‘easy’ any of your competitors could also easily come up with them. Once those top-of-mind ideas have been run through, that is when the opportunity to dig deeper and find new ideas comes out. You should spend at least as long struggling to find new ideas as you did discussing the more common ideas. This second half is where your true innovation potential lives.

The output of your Expansive Thinking should not be a plan of how to bring the idea to life, it should simply be the agreement that the idea selected is one you will pursue, and a discussion of next operational steps is the end point. That is when collaboration or co-creation can take over again, creating a robust understanding of what is needed to take the ideas from the Expansive Thinking conversation and assess their feasibility. That, in turn, is the foundation for implementation plans and activities, because also in Expansive Thinking a vision without execution is hallucination, as attributed to Thomas Edison.

As for AZUREY, Expansive Thinking allowed them to go way beyond the typical ‘layoff employees and give price discounts’ options and explore new ideas that would stabilize success for the long-term. AZUREY pioneered an AI application that helps clients create unique outfits specific to what is in their own wardrobes and which of course allows in-app purchases to upgrade your wardrobe with AZUREY’s newest styles.

Expansive Thinking will allow your team to create more innovative solutions, helping you to outperform competitors and to overcome any sort of major disruptions

It’s obvious in the 21st century that the rules of business have changed. As Henry Ford said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Disruption is not about solving incremental challenges, it is about redefining the field of play, and not listening to what the majority around you says. Expansive Thinking will allow your team to create more innovative solutions, helping you to outperform competitors and to overcome any sort of major disruptions.