Tuesday Email: The Power of How Might We

Happy Tuesday!

Every Tuesday I'd like to offer strategies for the week ahead and a thought to fuel your action.

Picture this: You're sitting in a conference room, and someone announces it's time to brainstorm. Half the room immediately tenses up. Eyes dart away. Someone inevitably mutters, "I'm not the creative type."

Sound familiar?

Here's what most people miss: creativity isn't a gift bestowed upon a chosen few. It's a mental muscle that atrophies when we ask the wrong questions.

The difference between breakthrough thinking and mental paralysis often comes down to a single word buried in how we frame our challenges.

Last month, I watched this transformation unfold in one of our innovation labs. A team member walked in, shoulders slightly hunched, avoiding eye contact. When I asked how everyone was feeling, she gave the response I always hear: "Nervous."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because I'm not creative."

She'd convinced herself that creativity was like having perfect pitch—either you're born with it or you're not. For years, she'd watched colleagues throw out bold ideas while she stayed silent, certain her thoughts weren't worth sharing.

But here's what happened next.

We went through a 3.5-hour process that concluded with our brainwriting exercise—eight blank boxes on a sheet of paper, one challenge to solve. Each person gets three minutes to build an idea, then passes their sheet. Eight rounds, eight different minds building on each contribution.

At first, she wrote tentatively, erasing more than she kept. Her shoulders remained tense. But by round three, something shifted. Her pen moved faster. She stopped second-guessing every word.

By the final round, she was leaning forward, completely absorbed.

When we finished, she stared at the eight sheets scattered across the table—each one now filled with interconnected ideas that had evolved far beyond anyone's original concept.

"This is so strange," she said, her voice filled with genuine wonder. "Every single box I wrote felt terrible when I was writing it. But looking at all of these together..." She paused, studying the sheets. "These ideas are actually brilliant."

That moment of recognition—the shift from "I'm not creative" to "We just created something remarkable"—happens because she'd been asking herself the wrong question all along.

She wasn't uncreative. She was just trapped by how she'd been taught to think about problems.

Most brainstorming sessions die before they begin because of three toxic question formats our brains default to:

"Should we..." triggers our inner lawyer, immediately pushing us to pick sides and defend positions rather than explore possibilities.

"Could we..." activates our inner student, frantically searching for the "right" answer instead of discovering unexpected paths.

But "How might we..." opens a different door entirely.

When P&G found themselves blindsided by a competitor's revolutionary soap in the 1970s, they spent months asking, "How do we match them, but better?" Nothing worked. They were trapped in competitive mimicry—like trying to see the world through someone else's prescription glasses.

Everything shifted when they started asking, "How might we create a more refreshing bar of soap?" Suddenly, instead of copying their competition, they were exploring what their customers actually wanted. Ideas exploded. Innovation followed.

Here's the neuroscience behind why this works: The word "might" keeps your brain's default mode network activated longer—the same neural state that generates your best shower thoughts and midnight epiphanies. "Should" and "could" slam shut these pathways prematurely, but "might" keeps them wide open, letting your mind wander down paths you didn't even know existed.

When we suspend judgment during brainstorming, we're essentially keeping all the mental doors unlocked. The second we decide an idea isn't worth exploring, we cut off potential discoveries.

The most breakthrough ideas don't emerge from safe, logical thinking. They come from combinations that initially look ridiculous—until they're placed in the proper context and suddenly become revolutionary.

Think about the last time you held back an idea in a meeting because you worried it might sound stupid. That hesitation? It's your brain protecting you from perceived loss of status. But creativity requires temporary vulnerability—the willingness to sound foolish in the service of finding something remarkable.

What if the next time you face a challenge, instead of asking "What's the obvious solution?" you ask "How might we approach this in a way no one expects?"

Innovation isn't about finding the one genius in the room. It's about creating conditions where everyone's hidden creativity can surface. The landscape of business is changing at warp speed, and the organizations that thrive will be those that unlock the collective creative potential of their entire team.

Stop searching for creativity outside yourself. It's already there, waiting behind better questions.

The next time you face an impossible challenge, remember: you're not looking for the answer. You're looking for all the ways something might be possible.

The best is ahead!

-Matt