Tania Katan: Human Ingenuity Beats Artificial Intelligence as the Core Driver of Great Companies

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The past decade has seen tectonic shifts in the modern workplace. AI, Covid, remote work, back to the office, competition for great people, played parts in transforming how and why we work. AI doesn’t solve the challenges of such a complex environment, it compounds them. 

Tania discusses why HI (Human Ingenuity), not AI (Artificial Intelligence) should be at the heart of your company strategy. Do you want creativity or pattern matching? She shows why creativity has a critical part to play in transforming your organization in the face of this disruption, while AI gets on with the boring stuff. She explains why creativity can address issues, from skills development, innovation, company/team alignment, and non-engagement in a rapidly evolving world.

You’ll leave with three things you can do immediately that help you create a better, more effective and productive organization.

You’ll learn:

1. Why creative thinking is a business essential – not just a soft skill.
2. How asking better human questions can future-proof teams in an AI-driven world.
3. The power of “what if” as a tool for innovation and unlocking new perspectives.
4. Real-life examples of using creativity to solve emotional, organizational, and operational challenges.
5. How to lead with empathy and values during tough leadership moments like layoffs.

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Transcript

Tania Katan 

How many here have had an idea ahead of its time? Raise your hand, please. Fuck yeah. Best group ever. How many of you thought of an idea for a product and then told somebody about it? And they’re like, I don’t understand it. Keep your hands up. How many of you had a ton of proof that showed that this product or service could actually help heal or uplift human beings? Put your hands up. Yes, me too.

In fact, I was on the BoS stage, as Mark said. Two times before – 2017 and 2018 with the same proof driven idea. And essentially it was, now is the time to let go of logic and limits and double down on creative thinking. The world in BoS was like, yeah, that’s a great idea, but we’re still gonna learn about SaaS marketing funnels, right? Yes. And the world outside of BoS was like, yeah, that is a dumb idea. Oh, I’d like to see the ROI on creative thinking, whatever that is so stupid. Well, the world has caught up with us. The future is now.

Why Creativity Matters More Than Ever

Forbes just released. Did everyone see this article? That creative thinking is the most in demand skill for the next several years. But wait Forbes, did you double down on creative thinking? Bam. We did. Is creativity an essential skill? Who knew the answer to this question before I showed the slide? Anyone? Great. Yes, it is.

Empowers organizations, navigates challenges and unlocks possibilities, which is really effing good. Because for the last 10 years, I’ve been bringing more creativity into less overtly creative work cultures, ideas, processes.

Three Lessons That Changed My Life

And I learned three wild things that compelled me to write an entire book called Creative Trespassing. To quit my job and start my own consultancy called Creative Trespassing.

And those three things are:

• Creativity at work: When we work in a job that isn’t particularly unique and creative, it’s our job to be unique and creative within our work within the world. And in fact, that’s actually what I’m going to talk about, because we’re going to future proof ourselves by stretching our creative muscles, especially in the face of AI.
• Creative problem-solving: Whenever we confront challenges, obstacles or problems with creativity. And by creativity, I mean our innate ability. I will send you studies. To come up with infinite solutions for any problem. We will experience innovations and ideas and possibilities every single time. We’re gonna actually do it today.
• Challenge the status quo: When we dare to challenge the status quo or the old guard who says shit. Like, we’re gonna solve that new problem in the same old way we’ve done it every time. Fuck, oh, my God, it just hurt even to, like, evoke the power of the old guard.

Creativity vs. AI: Our Human Advantage

I’m going to share some stories to prove to you, the on the ground realities of actually leveraging creativity as a powerful way to ask more human nuanced questions. Our biggest differentiator from technology. We’re also going to make unexpected connections, learn how to lead and adapt to moments. And most specifically, because of this specific group, I decided to bring a story that I haven’t shared before. So that all of us are in positions of leadership, entrepreneurship, and have to make scary, fast, high stakes decisions. Can actually use creative thinking, as opposed to assholery. Which sometimes we default to. I know that’s not a word. I just made it up. I’m sorry. OK, but I figured you guys get it.

So, of course, where does the journey start? Shout out a word. Where you think this journey starts? Joanna, what do you got? Just a word. Give me a word. Where would this journey start? Creativity. Oh, nobody likes it. Oh, but the future is now. Oh, but we have to go back in time. Where to start? What’s the word? Anyone? Classroom? Oh, what classroom? Wait, crisis. Crisis, classroom. France? I like France. Yes. It starts with wine. Thanks for. No, okay. It starts with pain. Yay.

Story Time: Building a Happiness Tracker

So I was hired recently to work with a SaaS startup company called Halo. Founders in here, Rob, can you put your paw up in the back? And they hired me to help them tell better, more emotional stories that connected with their intended audience. They hired me to help get them to market. They just launched a month ago. But most importantly, they hired me for the biggest value I have, which is actually all of our biggest value. And the one we need to really stretch, and that’s our ability to ask better, more human questions.

So I hit the ground running with their team, and they’re all about pain. Let’s talk about pain, pain points, pain scale, just lots of pain. And they were basically trying to identify the pain points of the intended customer. Who here has done that as an exercise? Yeah, everybody, right? It’s a pattern. So it’s an alignment software. They’re like, Okay, the employer has certain pain points, right? An employer is like, gosh, we’re running out of revenue. People are running out of the building, and I’m having a hard time communicating. Maybe that’s a problem, and employees are on the ground feeling like, Well, I’m not valued for the work I do. I’m overwhelmed, I’m overworked, and I don’t have autonomy to bring my best self to work, you know?

So in deciding what the pain points are, and yesterday Jo was talking about people being motivated by the problem, right? And what she aptly did, extra points for everyone, is she also showed the other side of motivation – which is desire. So I’m in this meeting listening to pain points. I know you need to know the pain. Then you can offer a pill, a vitamin, a software, whatever. Great. That’s half of the equation of being human. But the other half is joy, is happiness, is desire, right? And so I started thinking, what if the software works? What if we heal the pain? What if people are communicating better in the workplace? What if they’re more productive because they want to be, they feel empowered, they feel seen and rewarded? And then I thought, well, what if I took all the research that I’d been doing about creativity, joy and happiness from people like Arthur Brooke, Amy Luken at Tito’s Vodka. And I introduced this to the team. And what if, in addition to having a pain scale in app, we had a happiness tracker? What?!

So I went to the team, and I’m like, Hey, I have an idea. What if we did a happiness tracker tool? And they were super unhappy about it. There was some pushback. There was some push down. There was some nudging, some creative tension. It was fucking awesome. It was great because it allowed us to have a full respectful conversation about creating a product for a full, respectful human being in the workforce, right? So after a lot of tension and nudging, we build the happiness tracker. And as you can see, this is for those of you like, happiness is just fluffy. Oh, 10 points for skipping to work. That’s bullshit. There’s some real metrics to quantify and qualify how happiness impacts recruitment, retention, revenue, all of the above positively.

And here’s the deal. I actually don’t know if they’re going to use the feature, but you know what? It doesn’t matter because the process of us figuring out the impact of what make people happy in their place of work, where they spend probably 60% of their time. The process of us reflecting in real time, acknowledging each other, each other’s work styles, seeing each other, listening and arguing respectfully, allowed us to be a happy team for that duration. It really shifted the culture.

So I give you this little there’s the rest of the happiness tracker, and it all started with a tool that you all have access to, and if you hadn’t thought about it before, you’re going to think about it now and stick in your back pocket and keep it with you.

The Power of “What If?”

And it’s the easiest innovation tool. It’s the question, what if? What if allows for possibilities beyond this time and space. What if?

And so we’re going to do a little exercise. I want you to turn to the person next to you. If you prefer, will be somebody you don’t know. But if you know the person, great. And if you’re not sitting next to somebody, sidle up next to him. I’ll give you a second, and then we’ll do the exercise. Go. Get in a ready position. Come on. Come on. Being human is a team sport. Saddle up next to someone.

Exercise #1

We’re gonna start with the what if question. These are just suggestions, okay? Like, what if you could solve a business challenge by doing the exact opposite? What if your product didn’t just solve a problem but created happiness? You see the questions there you can ask your own what if questions.

So what I want you guys to do is each person is going to have a chance to ask a what if question, and then the two of you will come up with possibilities or answers for that question. And they better be outlandish and shitty and mediocre, and every question is right. Okay, so are you ready? Go like the wind. It’s only a short period of time. Go.

Okay, whoa. Based on the exuberance, it seemed like this was maybe a generative exercise, and I’d love to know we have a microphone that will be running around disembodied. It’ll just come from the sky. I’d love to know how that exercise was for you and what you came up with in terms of possibilities. Anyone raise your paws?

Audience Member 

So the question was, what if we took BoS and we actually got in contact with SpaceX and we actually have the conference as we’re orbiting, how cool would that be, right? And we figure we could actually go about this, like, I mean, the guy’s on Twitter all the time, right? So, like, we could actually all reach out and connect to him, and we can actually make this happen, and we can call it BoS in space.

Tania Katan 

I love it. Give a round of applause to BoS in space.

Audience Member 

It’s really interesting actually, that you said that, because in working in marketing for a lot of years, people always talking about, like, launching a campaign, launching a product, launching I love a real launch. Let’s go. Let’s do this. Love it. Thank you. Anyone else?

Audience Member 

So we’re a banking software and we kind of discussed. We’re not even customers of our own product, you know. And so it would be kind of interesting what innovations we might be able to come up with if our company promoted reaching out to banks that have our software. So we feel the own pain points of our customers before our customers even feel it.

Tania Katan 

Wonderful. So leading with the human part of what that the technology augments. Yeah, beautiful. Thank you. Anyone else want to share? You don’t have to not winning anything. I’m not Mark. My toes are intact. Oh, yeah. And then in the middle,

Audience Member 

What’s up Tanya? The super quick thing that we came up with was the second one. What if your next big solution came in the form from a junior employee or whatever? And I think that one really speaks to creating a culture where people can be not dissident as the right word, but can share ideas. So I think that’s the big opposite of what most people do. Create a space where, hey, what’s the craziest idea you have, and let’s see what we can do.

Tania Katan 

Beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. And in fact, you know, a practice that I’ve done with other companies who, sort of, like a lot of companies are hierarchical. And even if they’re flat, they’re hierarchical. And so one thing that we do is we engage everybody who works in the facility, from the people who are working in janitorial services to the people who are like in the C suite and everybody in between. And so having that diversity in thought and ideas generates like a really full whatever you’re looking to solve. So thank you for that. I saw one this gentleman.

Audience Member 

Hey, Tanya. So if we really want to, and we’re not talking about infrastructure services, but if you really wanted to put your money where your mouth was in terms of value, what if billing of your application was by the minute, making sure that you’re delivering value every second of that minute?

Tania Katan 

Whoa, holy shit. I don’t want to work with you, but I think it’s cool. My consultancy is closed if you call for that project. But open note, that’s great. Though, but it is really put it’s saying, like, Okay, we are valuable. We’ll show you how, and we’re not gonna bullshit around. I’d love it and give everybody and you send in the mail a timer.

Audience Member 

Yeah, and don’t worry if you’re a customer of ours, we’re not.

Tania Katan 

That’s wonderful. Thank you. Anybody else? OK, we can move on. Any more paws? OK, we have more exercise to do. Thank you for everybody who shared, everybody who participated. Appreciate you.

Does everybody know Edward de Bono? Fuck, you guys have so much to learn. So he was sort of the forefather of lateral thinking. Think about it in terms of divergent thinking. Again, we are hardwired to come up with infinite solutions to any problem. So anyway, without creativity, there would be no progress, and we would forever be repeating the same patterns. Who repeats patterns? What AI, oh and Jo, okay. Okay, so moving on. We’re going to make unexpected connections.

Unexpected Connections & Human Solutions

So for those of you who don’t know, I created this campaign in 2015 while working with a company called Axosoft. And in 2015, there was no chatGPT, there was no co-pilot, no smart assistant. It was just me and my dumb notebook with coffee stains on it, trying not to get fired on my second month at work. When my boss asked me the following question. She said, Tanya, could you come up with a solution for the lack of women in technology? And I was like, oh, yeah, sure, I’ll do that. That sounds awesome. And I did something very human. I went to the bathroom and cried. And then when I came out, who has been asked impossible questions on their second month of work? Yes, first week, first day. So then I doubled down on humanity. I was like, I can only be more human from here out.

And I actually connected with my colleagues. I connected with friends. I had conversations about why women weren’t in the tech space, why there was a lack of nonbinary folks, people of color, and why is this happening. And then I double down on humanity. I brought in the whole human community. I started remembering all the classes I took in college. I was like women’s studies and theater and contemporary art and anthropology and all that stuff. And then I was remembering spiritual teachers like Pema Chodron, who reminded me that to be human. To be fully alive, fully awake is to be pushed out of the nest, over and over again.

And then I was reminded of poets, Maya Angelou. Bam! She reminded me that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. And I was feeling excited, you know, bringing all of the human community in, and a little scared. I went to the doctor, and I went to the mountains, and I looked to the children, and I drank from the fountains. And there were more than one answers to this question, there’s pointing me in a crooked line. Oh, thank you so much. Best indigo girls joke ever. And I realized, in all seriousness, that in order to I didn’t solve a problem, but in order to come up with a delicious full possibility to a question like that. I had to engage all of humanity in solving it with me. So, OK, oh my gosh. What happens next? I don’t know. This is exciting for everyone.

So I did something. I thought about it. So obviously, I come from theater and scene. And when I went into technology at Axosoft, I didn’t know anything about software, B2B, SaaS. I thought AI was something Mark said at the pub. “AI, I’d like another pint.” Thank you. That was just for Mark. I really didn’t know anything. I was out of my depth. And I thought, what if I entered the space out of my depth at this moment? And maybe I was scared to ask questions. And maybe I was scared to come up with a big idea or even try.

ChatGPT Collaboration Gone Hilariously Wrong

What would I do? And I’d probably shy away, and I’d work with my friend, Chat Chat. You know, Chat Chat, it’s her French name. Chatgpt, she’s awesome.

I’m like, what would I if could chatgpt? Could generative AI and I generate a campaign that could move people, that could even start a movement? And so we did an experiment, and I’d like to show you what happened. I’m not going to read it all. Don’t worry about it. Can you come up with a succinct, powerful image and text for me to post on social media that both addresses the issue with the lack of women in the tech space as well as shows the reality of how women do have the rights to work in tech and beyond. Would you like to see what Chat Chat came up with?

So Chat Chat says, here’s the image I created based on the concept. And I ask, why are there flowers in the image? But Chat Chat, she’s smart, OK. I’m not gonna read the whole thing. She just says, the flowers are in the image because basically, we want to include an organic element. Fair, right? That’s cool. And I’m like, Oh, do the flowers have anything to do with being a woman? Would you choose a different, organic thing if it was a male empowerment campaign? And then she goes on.

Okay, so we have a you can read a little bit of our dialog. So I go deeper, and then she goes deeper. So then this was so much fun. I’m so glad you enjoyed. I was like, tickled. And I’m like, Should I bring this out of my office? Oh, yes. So I’m like, okay, so why do they all have long blonde hair and seem to be white or translucent? And how will women of color or non binary folks, etc, see themselves? But you know what Chat Chat she says? You are absolutely right again. And then she’s like, let me try harder. And then she does that.

It’s a pyramid of people. And I write curious about the symbolism of a peak or mountain or pyramid shape, and the history of these shapes being associated with masculinity, what with the penis? Just concerned that subconsciously, people might see this and think, penis. Oh my God. Then I finally get to the I get to it. I’m like, Are there any campaigns that have already done this? And Chat Chat says, Dove’s Real Beauty, which you guys probably know is actually really good campaign to celebrate diversity of shape and size and embracing the body we were born in. Nike, dream crazier. I don’t know what that is. We’ll move on.

But anyway, the last one references, It was Never a Dress. And the point of all the shenanigans, all this mishegoss, is basically that I needed. We needed human beings to express a human problem that impacted us greatly. Like going to the clients that you’re serving instead of just reading the data from the software that you sell and understand it deeply. Innovation comes from creating something new by connecting ideas that others haven’t seen before.

Please raise your hands if you know my friend, Gisele Mota. Please raise your hands if you’re gonna look her up and watch her TED Talks. What? Yes, great, wonderful. That’s all I needed.

She’s a forerunner in web three and all that. And and also started this thing called the Nifty Collective, where to ensure that people with invisible disabilities are seen in web three and beyond.

Exercise #2

This is a partner one. I know you guys are higher achievers, so you read everything, just turn to the person next to you, and then I’ll help you out.

So, this is a switch. I’m going to say, so you’re going to have two minutes each, and I’m going to go switch, and then you’re going to switch. So one person is going to start, and they’re going to express a company a problem they’ve actually had in their company. If it’s a big problem, you might get a big surprise. And then how would you solve that problem with zero budget? These are just suggestions to get you thinking about innovative ways to solve it. So when I say switch, the other person is going to come up with their problem from their company, and then you’re both going to put aim all your genius at solving it in weird, wacky and wonderful ways. Does that make sense? Okay? Are you ready? Go.

Oh okay, switch. Switch, if you haven’t already. Switch and work on your partner’s problem. Okay, just another 30 seconds to wrap it up. Sorry, okay, so we have a microphone going around. I would love to know who would like to share? Just put your hands up and the microphone is coming to you. Yes?

Audience Member 

I actually promised I will not be speaking anymore today, after the morning thing. But anyway, so the problem which I was describing yesterday, my clash between CPO and CRO. I like that third option if my team would be 10 years old, because I would send them out somewhere, like on the field and have them fight, you know.

Tania Katan 

Excellent. Get your team to fight in the field. Go on, tell me more, yeah.

Audience Member 

And you know, it would just like they would bend their frustrations and emotions, you know. And I think that this would like clear the air and we could move on so.

Tania Katan 

I love it. Great. I said to come up with a wonderful, outlandish idea. Maybe kickball could be an option, but fighting to the death would be fun to watch. I mean, I’m in.

Audience Member 

We were also discussing things like paintball and stuff like that, you know.

Tania Katan 

Wonderful. A round of applause, please. The 10 year olds are fighting, and then get working it all out, and then coming back to the office and asking for hot chocolate. I like this. Okay, thank you. Who else would like to share? Come on. What is this? Is this shy? Should I not make eye contact and then you’ll. Okay, that’s fine. It’s for you anyway. Tar right. No, no. Tanya is far left, actually. Real, really? Okay,

Audience Member

So the problem statement was, we have a lot of engineers, and we’re a SaaS company who has a lot of feature backlog from our customers and all we care about is delivering features. And so our engineers, like this is kind of boring. So the idea we came up with was, what just throw it all away. And to all of our tell all of our customers we don’t care about all this. Why don’t we just make you five times the amount you pay us next year, and we’ll call it a deal.

Tania Katan 

Yes. So we’re gonna make you five times the amount you made last year, and we’re gonna cancel all the features.

Audience Member 

Five times the amount they paid us. So we’re giving them 5x, so 20x ROI. That’s not good about the features.

Tania Katan 

Yeah, fine. I celebrate that. Give a round of applause. Fuck the features. What other software conference can you say fuck the features and people clap? Only here at BoS. Anybody? In the middle.

Audience Member 

So we have a customer that relies heavily on SEO, and we have a keyword called infant sleep training that Google has blacklisted as a medical term. So that means all the government sites and health sites are above us now on the search engine. So we used to be number one for seven years, and now we’re dropping and dropping, and we don’t know what to do. We didn’t come up with a solution.

Tania Katan 

Wait, seriously? What does your software do? Like, why didn’t? Why are those words.

Audience Member 

It’s a digital product of it’s like, essentially babies sleep videos to teach parents.

Tania Katan 

So, you just change it into babies fighting. Does anybody have a like, an on the spot outlandish, weird idea, not that weird, but outlandish. Anyone? Okay, how about what’s your name, and raise your hand for one second.

Audience Member 

Yeah, Nick.

Tania Katan

So everybody sees Nick, if you really, if you can think of some ideas, will you find Nick? Oh, somebody has something in the back, in the way back. Okay, yeah, yeah, all right, okay, that’s ideas happen here at Bos. You’re welcome. Okay, yeah, anywhere in the front where somebody where’s your paw? Great.

Audience Member

I just wanted to Yes and that because I’m pregnant and about to have a baby, and so I’m anticipating a lot of late nights. So thank you. Worked really hard to get here.

Tania Katan 

Sorry, stop it right now.

Audience Member 

But I feel like in the middle of the night, like all my friends with kids are saying, like in the middle of the night, they’re always looking for something to distract them from their misery. What if you were the solution that distract them from their misery in the middle of the night? Like be on Spotify. Be on YouTube, like be the escape.

Tania Katan 

Give a round of applause to this amazing human having another human at the same time. Okay, thank you. Anybody one more No, no. Great. Moving on. Bam, okay.

Story Time: Leading with Values During a Furlough

Who here has had to lay off furlough or fire employees? Who here has been laid off, furloughed or fired? Me too. Both, like it’s a circle of work life. Hakuna Matata means no work, no it doesn’t mean no worries. It’s horrible. So I changed this. I added this in the final hour. I’m going to share a story I have never shared before and might never share it again.

But when I was thinking about BoS and I was thinking about entrepreneurs and being an entrepreneur, and all of the shitty problems we have to solve fast that could be potentially harmful and hurtful to people, products, and processes. I thought I’m going to include this story. So there you have it. So I worked at a global science and tech company as the Senior Vice President of Marketing, and the mission of this company was to create a healthier planet and healthier people by eliminating single use plastic. Chef’s kiss, right? It was an awesome company, and I started a job. They were about to go public. It was probably the best scientists in the world convening. We were all mission driven. We were just like, let’s save the planet. No more micro plastics and all this stuff. And we were just just moving fast and having a lot of fun and feeling really good.

And then all of a sudden, the energy in the office kind of shifted. It got slower, and there were town halls where they said words we had never heard before, like lean. And the board said, and maybe now’s not the right time to go public, and you could feel a shift. Has anybody been in that situation where you were like, hyper growth, everything was excellent, then caught up from you? Anyone? It feels shitty, and everybody could feel it, and the morale was down.

And then finally, I got the email from my boss. It was on a Sunday, and my boss was like. Here’s the deal, on Tuesday morning, when all of your team and all the SVPs teams come to work, you’re going to ask them to leave their computer and leave. And I was like, that I just, it was horrible, like, that was, like, the shittiest thing ever, and I didn’t know what to do. And I didn’t know if I should write something or express something or speak up, because it was done, right? Like the board had decided it. Everybody decided it, it was done. But I decided that if I didn’t say something, I would feel horrible. So even if they didn’t do anything about it, I had to say something just from just to sleep at night.

And so I wrote on Sunday night, I did some research, and then I wrote an email, and I’m going to read the email to you, and I think it’s important.

First of all, I totally understand that the decision to execute furloughs immediately on Tuesday has been made by the company. That said, as a conduit of this decision and leader, the lack of advanced notice to employees is antithetical to our mission of creating a healthier planet and healthier people. I know you know this, but I have to say it. At a time when the company and the economy is experiencing turbulence, trust is our only capital.

In doing a little bit of research on ways in which companies have carried out successful furloughs in order to maintain that trust with employees, two themes emerged:

1. They communicated with employees one week or more in advance that the furlough was going to happen.
2. They came up with creative ways to furlough employees that had less impact on their paychecks and livelihood, ie three days paid, two days not spread out over a month or two.

I’m writing this because I know firsthand how important and impactful the company is because of its employees, and in its next iteration, it seems a worthy cause to consider the importance and impact that advanced communications can have on building trust with employees. Thank you for listening. I really appreciate you.

So the my boss, at the time, knew this. They didn’t want to do this, and it was just horrible. And so I felt at least like I spoke up and I sent it to the boss on Sunday night. And on Monday, end of day, I got an email from my boss, and it said. We are changing the furlough from Tuesday to giving every employee a week in advance notice and informing everyone. And my only hope was that, I think I believe that maybe my boss took it to the board and the executive team, and they made that decision. And having a week to be honest with employees, and also, you know, it wasn’t lost on me that here we had a framework. You know, I loved how Jo was talking about sort of frameworks for engaging people. You show the obstacle and then you heal it.

We had a framework in our mission statement. The mission statement was, we want to create a healthier planet and healthier people if we eliminate plastic. And I took that framework to write this email, and I inserted something else that was toxic, and it’s a way of firing furloughing and letting people go without any notice. Total surprise and shock to their lives and their livelihood. And that’s not cool.

And so this to me, I was telling a friend this story, and that’s why I included it, because she’s like, that’s a creative practice. It’s basically disrupting a pattern that’s everybody has accepted is like, that’s normal. You just get your shit in the morning, pick up your computer, and nothing is ever said about it again. So I just wanted to share that with you, and we’re going to do one final exercise, because, and I really want this one, I want you to dig into a little bit, because you all, unfortunately, will all be on one end of the equation, whether we’re letting people go or being let go of and it’s not awesome. But it can be better. And I want you to lead a better way of doing this.

So this is, I want to take this exact equation in your groups. And if you and do it exactly like this, even if you’re not experiencing a 30% cut, but you will, or you have. So you’re facing a critical moment and need to cut costs by 30%. The easy choices, layoffs or cutting the budget, or all that stuff. But you’re here at BoS, you’re better than easy. You’re forward thinking. Look at your mission statement, your values, and come up with a creative, mission driven solution to this challenge.

Exercise #3

So I really want you to work with each other. We’re just gonna literally take a few minutes and then and then switch. You guys are all adults and really smart human beings. So switch when you’re ready to but address one of your your current companies first, and then switch and address the other. Okay, you’re ready? Okay, go for it. Dare you. I double dare you.

All right. Wrap it up. Just for now. Remember, this is a longer conversation that can go on beyond this moment in time.

Okay, I’m curious. So whoever would like to share. I’d also be curious to know how that felt to engage in an exercise in thinking about sort of future casting something that is not awesome to do. I’m curious about the process. And then what you came up with? Anybody raise your little paws?

Audience Member 

Okay, so I have a bit of a first of all, I have to make an admission. I was faced with exactly this situation, except it was 40% after when COVID hit. And so what I said to the employees, I said, look, let’s go for I’m going to pay you all for four days a week. And for anybody who continues to work five days, I’ll do my best, but I can’t guarantee that I’ll pay back that money if we, if we, when we get through this. And then I started working on how I’m going to find the other 20% before I had to tell them it really over to three days a week. And what was the couple of interesting things. One, not so interesting, but the circumstance was that, I mean Canada. So the Canadian government came up with a furlough program that sort of filled in the gap, and I didn’t end up having to laugh anybody. But the other thing was that I, when I said that, a certain number of employees went for four days a week and worked four days a week. And a certain number went five days a week, and sort of try. And it was kind of a, it kind of, you know, it sort of revealed something I didn’t, didn’t, didn’t know existed, you know. And I noticed the pattern from there between those two groups. Anyway, there you go.

Tania Katan 

Thank you for sharing, and I’m so give a round of applause please. Yeah, yeah. And the patterns you probably noticed, it seems like, connected to the culture that maybe was created so that people felt like they wanted to show up, regardless of whether or not they could be paid. That they knew they were being paid in lots of ways, and money was just one of them. So thank you for sharing that. Anybody else want to share? Yes, in the back.

Audience Member 

Both of us had the same idea and have executed the same idea, where we took everybody above a certain threshold. Mine was salary, his was position, and asked them to take a pay cut for a period of time. And then I ended up paying that money back six months later, and he ended up doing like a stock grant kind of thing for that compensation.

Tania Katan 

That’s wonderful, please. A round of applause for that sucker. And that’s beautiful. That’s beautiful, and it’s beautiful that that people acquiesced, or kind of went along with it. And here’s for all of us in here, because I know a lot of us get paid some money. When somebody knocks on our door and asks us to take a pay cut, consider that everybody else. It’s, it’s kind of leveling out for a moment in time. So it’s an act of kindness. So that’s awesome. Thank you. If you’re hiring, I’m more inclined to work with you then working every second to prove my value. So Okay, anybody else want to share? Is there anybody else? No. Where? Who’s my friend? No. Okay. All right, that’s it. We’re gonna move on.

Creativity is Not Optional

This is the last quote I got for you kids. Here’s the deal. People are all like, ooh, creativity. It’s, I’m not a dancer, I’m not a painter. It’s like, you’re dancing around the issue, and you’re painting a weird picture right now of the future. Thank you. I just came up with that, okay, but you guys inspire me. But it’s true, it’s there’s actual power in it. I hope I was able to be a little illustrative about the power of creativity.

And so just to triple down, Harvard’s with us.

As technology continues to advance, those who can harness their creativity will not only survive, but basically lead the charge in shaping the future.

So I just have a final question for you. So again, years ago, when I wrote a book creative trespassing, which you can buy anywhere but buy an audible. Let me read you to bed. I have a good voice. I do, though, and actually it’s jam packed with exercises. Not just to get your creative juices flowing with your teams, but actually to sustain creativity as a cultural shift within your companies.

So my final question to you is, are you willing to shape the future together with more creativity and humanity? Okay, let me try it again. Hang on. If you’re willing to shape the future together with more creativity and humanity, stand up if you’re able to.

Okay, on the count of three, we’re going to clap together as a commitment to shaping and leading the future together with more creativity and humanity and the fullness of everything those two words mean. 123. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Mark Littlewood 

That was amazing.

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