Quick note: Just back from keynoting in Alaska at NHRMA 2025.

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No video this week, as I’m head-down working on my second book, Innovation at Work. I’ve cleared my work calendar to devote every spare minute to book production, which meant making some hard choices!
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Watch for videos to return in a few weeks. In the meantime, enjoy this week’s article!

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Hey there, innovation champions!
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Let me tell you about my own perfectionism disaster.
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After my dance career ended, after many twists and turns, I built a career as a "serious artist." At one point I bought this beautiful blank sketchbook from Italy—gorgeous leather binding, perfect paper—and I was so afraid of ruining it that I didn't draw in it for years. Years! This professional artist and creativity coach, paralyzed by a blank book.
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Finally, in 2023, I got fed up with myself and followed my very own rule from my own book, The Creative Sandbox Way™: "There is no wrong." I started filling that precious book with terrible doodles, rough sketches, half-formed ideas. And something magical happened—instead of sitting unused on a shelf, that book became a permission slip for more creation.
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This is "Make Crap" in action: transforming perfectionism from innovation killer into learning accelerator.
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The Perfectionism Penalty That's Killing Your Speed

Here's the uncomfortable truth about perfectionism: it's not about high standards. It's about fear management dressed up as quality control.
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When your brain perceives the threat of "looking stupid" or "being wrong," it activates threat-detection systems that literally shut down creative thinking networks. All your cognitive resources shift toward error prevention and risk avoidance—the exact opposite of what breakthrough innovation requires.
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This explains why teams can debate theoretical solutions for hours while missing simple fixes that become obvious the moment someone actually tries them. Perfectionism doesn't create better solutions—it prevents solutions from emerging at all.
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The Science of Strategic Imperfection

Stanford research reveals something counterintuitive: teams using rapid, low-fidelity approaches consistently reach better solutions than those focused on polished presentations. Why? Because when you make imperfection the explicit goal, your brain relaxes enough to access the creative networks that perfectionist pressure shuts down.
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When teams operate in what neuroscientists call "explore mode"—the mental state we enter during play—they generate significantly more novel solutions and make unexpected connections between previously unrelated concepts.
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The breakthrough happens when you stop trying to avoid failure and start designing intelligent failures that teach you something valuable.
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When Crap Becomes Competitive Advantage

This principle shows up in every major innovation breakthrough once you start looking for it:
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Before Slack became a $27.7 billion success, it was Tiny Speck—a completely failed gaming company. When their game flopped, instead of perfectly planning their next move, the team started tinkering with their internal chat tool. That willingness to experiment with something imperfect led directly to revolutionizing workplace communication.
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Google Maps exists because someone got curious during a routine meeting and started playing with a satellite mapping tool instead of focusing on the original agenda. That moment of productive "failure" to stay on task accidentally created one of the world's most-used platforms.
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Netflix's streaming model emerged from a "failed" attempt to make DVD-by-mail more convenient. Instead of perfecting the original model, they embraced the imperfect idea of streaming low-quality video over unreliable internet connections.
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The pattern? Breakthrough innovations emerge from permission to explore imperfect ideas rather than pressure to execute perfect plans.
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The Permission Slip Principle in Action

In my work with teams, I've discovered that most innovation barriers aren't technical—they're psychological. People need explicit permission to share half-formed thoughts, question obvious assumptions, and suggest approaches that might not work.
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That's why one of my favorite team exercises is the "Permission Slip Protocol." Everyone writes themselves permission for one specific behavior they want to try but feel uncertain about: "Permission to share ideas before they're fully developed," "Permission to question project assumptions," "Permission to suggest completely different approaches."
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Then the team gives each other explicit verbal permission. It sounds simple, but removing psychological barriers often unlocks capabilities that were there all along.
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The Intelligent Failure Framework

Not all failures are created equal. There's a crucial difference between careless mistakes and intelligent failures that generate valuable learning.
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Careless mistakes: Repeating known bad practices, ignoring obvious risks, or failing due to lack of preparation.
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Intelligent failures: Testing new approaches with uncertain outcomes, exploring unproven but promising directions, or discovering the limits of current approaches through systematic experimentation.
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Teams that learn to distinguish between these two types of failure can embrace productive imperfection while maintaining accountability for execution quality.
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Your Make Crap Reality Check

Ask yourself:

• How often do potentially breakthrough ideas die because someone decides they're "not ready yet"?
• What percentage of your team's time is spent perfecting plans versus testing imperfect solutions?
• When did your team last try something knowing it might not work, just to learn what would happen?
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If your team defaults to planning and polishing rather than testing and learning, perfectionism is probably costing you breakthrough opportunities.
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The Create the Impossible™ Framework Building

Make Crap is the second principle of my Create the Impossible™ framework because it builds directly on the psychological safety of Play Hard. Once teams feel safe to explore, they need permission to fail productively.
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But here's the key: making crap isn't about celebrating mediocrity. It's about creating the conditions where excellence can actually emerge through iteration rather than imagination.
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What's Coming Next Week

Next week, I'll show you how teams transform failures into intelligence through the third principle: Learn Fast. Because permission to fail is just the beginning—the real competitive advantage comes from systematically extracting learning from every experiment, setback, and unexpected outcome.
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The goal isn't to fail for its own sake. It's to fail forward faster than your competition can succeed backward.

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Ready to help your team transform perfectionism into productive failure? My forthcoming book Innovation at Work: 52 Micro-Experiments for Brave Leaders Who Want to Unstick Teams, Spark Ideas, and Build What’s Next includes the exact methods for embracing intelligent failure that drives breakthrough results. Join the early access list for insights and preview content.
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Did you see the two cover designs my designer whipped up?

Thanks to everyone who voted in the poll over on LinkedIn.
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I love the fresh, unexpected layout of #1, and the color vibrancy of #2. And a colleague created a prompt for ChatGPT from those preferences, and came out with this new draft:

I just sent this to my designer with my notes, so stay tuned for an updated version soon!
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This is the design process at work, which is a mirror image of (ahem) innovation at work! 🤩
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​Grab your preview content right here.

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🎧 Fresh Podcast Drop!

Can lowering the bar actually help you lead better? (Spoiler: YES!)
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I had the joy of joining Carol Stewart on her Quietly Visible Podcast to talk about what it really means to embrace creativity, imperfection, and self-compassion as a leader.
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In our conversation, we covered:

💡 Why creativity is so much more than painting or music
🌀 How perfectionism differs from the pursuit of excellence
🤝 Why self-compassion is rocket fuel for innovation
🌱 Practical tools introverted leaders can use to thrive
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If you’ve ever caught yourself waiting until things are “perfect” before sharing your ideas, I think you’ll love this one.
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👉 Listen to the episode on Spotify​
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P.S. Know a team that could use a jolt of creative courage? Hit reply—this is exactly the kind of transformation I help clients create.

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This Week's Doodle: Creative Self-Defense

Ever since I started making spontaneous, abstract, improvisational art (aka doodles), one of my goals has always been to surprise and delight myself.
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To find something new in what I was doing, rather than just repeating familiar patterns.
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And yet, as an artist, I also want to maintain a sense of "voice."
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It's a delicate balance—staying true to what makes you uniquely you while pushing beyond your comfort zone to discover what's possible.
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This tension between consistency and experimentation? It's the same challenge every innovative leader faces. Your teams need the psychological safety of knowing "how we do things here," but they also need permission to surprise themselves.
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The magic happens when you create conditions where both can coexist. Where experimentation doesn't threaten identity—it amplifies it.
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Ready to build that balance in your organization? Join the waitlist for my forthcoming book Innovation at Work—52 micro-experiments that help leaders create psychological safety for breakthrough thinking: https://innovationatworkbook.com/waitlist​
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That's it for this week!
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Creatively yours,
Melissa

​P.S. When you’re ready to build a culture of thriving innovation, so your team can Create the Impossible™, here are three ways I can help:

1) Download my FREE Innovation Culture Assessment to evaluate where your team stands

2) Download the first 50 pages of my book, The Creative Sandbox Way™, to reconnect with your creativity

3) Click here to schedule a complimentary Innovation Strategy Session

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