Creative Executive Buy-In

A story about how Shaan's wife, a consultant, used creative exercises to get alignment from resistant executives.

"My wife was a consultant and she would go to these companies - like Yahoo's board meeting with 10 executives. They all think they're on the same page, but only when you ask certain questions do you realize everybody has a different game plan and vision.

She found that people get limited when you ask very literal, logical questions that tap into only the analytical part of their brain. So she developed this tactic called 'the holiday party.'

She had me go to a whiteboard and said 'Let's fast forward - it's Christmas Eve of this year and we're at the company holiday party. Draw what's at that party.' This gets people creative and their guard down. Then she'd ask 'What are you celebrating?' - which is really asking what's the milestone we hit. What's the north star metric we're all cheersing our glass to?

This exercise gets people in the mood for winning because you're working backwards from the assumption that we've won. After identifying the north star goal, we'd then plan how to get there. People brainstorm from a place of certainty and confidence rather than fear and doubt. When you're relaxed, your brain works at a much higher capacity compared to when you're tense."