Andy Atkins

SKIP TO CONTENT Every strategy, decision, and transformation begins as a conversation. Yet leaders rarely think intentionally about how those conversations unfold. The highest-performing teams steward... Everyone has experienced meetings that miss the mark. They meander. Important concerns go unspoken. Decisions remain unresolved—or worse, the same decisions are revisited again and again.

Everyone has experienced meetings that miss the mark. They meander. Important concerns go unspoken. Decisions remain unresolved—or worse, the same decisions are revisited again and again. It’s tempting to blame agendas, calendars, or meeting overload. But these frustrations point to a deeper problem. Every strategy, innovation, decision, and relationship begins as a conversation. Meetings are simply the place where many of an organization’s most consequential conversations happen.

Curiosity about a problem is at the heart of innovation. What is the unfilled need? What’s possible that we haven’t tried? But there’s another type of curiosity that’s just as important: curiosity about the perspectives of others. What are they seeing that I may be missing? What contributes to their perspective? Popular mythology frequently depicts innovation as the product of solo genius. However, innovators are often collaborators, not loners.