SmartOrg, Inc.

Before your next brainstorming session, try this 3-minute exercise to get those creative muscles warmed up! It's called Thirty Circles. I got this idea from IDEO U, and it's a great reminder that creativity is a muscle we can strengthen with the right exercises. It pushes your thinking by turning simple circles into something unexpected! Here’s how it works: Step 1: Give everyone a sheet with 30 blank circles (you can create a template or let people draw the circles themselves). Step 2: In 3 minutes, ask people to turn as many circles into recognizable objects as they can. They don’t have to fill in all the circles—just focus on as many as they can. Step 3: Compare the results. See how many circles each person filled in and look for the variety of ideas. Are the ideas similar, or did people come up with something unique and unexpected? NOTE: Check out the variety of ideas in the picture attached to see how different and creative the results can be! This exercise isn’t just a great warm-up. It also shows the importance of balancing?speed?(getting lots of ideas quickly) and?variety?(coming up with truly different ideas). If you focus too much on speed, you might just end up with variations of the same idea. But when you combine both, you open up a wider range of creative possibilities. Start your next session with this 3-minute warm-up and see the difference in people's thinking afterwards! What's your go-to warm-up? Let me know in the comments. P.S. Did anyone catch that there were only 24 circles in my template? Whoops haha numbers + me have a love/hate relationship ??

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Most strategy frameworks are incomplete. That’s why I built my Business Strategy Canvas—a practical tool inspired by Roger Martin’s Playing to Win Strategy Cascade. I’ve used Martin’s framework in dozens of strategy engagements, but I noticed two key gaps that kept coming up in conversations with leadership teams: 1?? The Organization Question: Every strategy discussion eventually leads to: “Do we have the right organization to make this work?” → The right capabilities, resources, processes, structures, talent, leadership, culture, data, systems,...? → Can our current organization execute this strategy, or do we need a new one? Instead of tackling this question after the strategy is designed, I built it into the canvas from the start. This allows leaders to assess strategy alternatives more effectively and preemptively address organizational changes. 2?? The “How Will We Do This” Problem: Even the best strategy means nothing if it can’t be executed. Leaders and people throughout the organization always ask: “How will we make this happen?” I made this explicit in the canvas as a bridge to execution. This ensures: ? The strategy is actionable, not just theoretical. ? Leadership teams check feasibility when comparing strategic options. ? There’s a clear connection between strategy and execution. The result? A practical, execution-ready strategy framework that eliminates the usual blind spots. Would you find this useful in your strategy work? Let me know in the comments. Share to help someone in your network. Follow Marc Sniukas for more actionable insights to create winning strategies for your corporate, business, and team. PS: This canvas is probably incomplete too...but I found it to be a very good starting point! ??