DISCUSSION GUIDE: THE CREATIVE POWER OF MISFITS

1. Who are the outsiders inside your workplace, and how can you make sure they feel heard?

2. When things are going well, what can you do to avoid the fat cat syndrome?

3. What steps can you take to make sure that people are able to surface problems even if they don’t know the solution?

4. If you were going to run Lisa Bodell’s “kill the company” exercise, where would you start?

5. In your job, who are the people working in silos who might benefit from being in the same room—like the technical people and animators at Pixar?

6. Has anyone who lacks credibility ever doubted you—and if so, have you used that as motivation? How can you draw on that experience to position yourself as an underdog?

7. Who is your team’s common enemy?

8. Who would you put in a rapid innovation cell—and which open-minded leader would you want to oversee it?

9. How do you know when you have a just manageable difficulty, rather than one that’s impossible?

10. If there was a podcast episode about shakeups in your workplace, what insights would it highlight?