The Physics of Creative Dynamics: A Beginner's Guide to Orchestrating Team Encounters

Physics is experience, arranged in economical order. - Ernst Mach

As a creative leader with a fine arts degree and a childhood shaped by my father, a physicist and mathematician, I’ve always lived at the whole-brain intersection of art and science. This broader awareness and balance has informed my career, helping me connect creativity to business strategy. Whether it’s orchestrating innovation or aligning a team to deliver commercial value, I see the process as a finely tuned system—one that can be both analyzed and designed, like the rides I’ve been lucky enough to experience during my time at Disney.

Team dynamics, much like a roller coaster, require deliberate planning to ensure the ride is both exhilarating and productive. On good days, it’s as smooth as gliding on the Mark VII monorail. On tough ones, it’s more like careening through Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. But just as Disney Imagineers meticulously craft every turn, drop, and loop of attractions like Space Mountain, creative leaders can shape team interactions to balance creativity, collaboration, and business outcomes that leaves a smile on everyone's face once the close encounter has concluded.

The Initial Lift Hill: Building Potential Energy

Think of the iconic clickety-clack of Space Mountain’s climb. It’s the perfect metaphor for the early stages of team interaction, where potential energy builds in the face of undefined user needs and project goals.

Team Activities: Empathy Mapping + Team Chartering

Start with an Empathy Map to align on user needs and perspectives. This fosters curiosity and builds a shared understanding of the problem. Follow with a Team Charter Canvas to define team roles and responsibilities while establishing psychological safety.

Why It Matters: Like balancing the weight on an Expedition Everest train, a diverse team of veterans and fresh thinkers generates creative tension—critical for building momentum. Without trust and clarity, however, potential energy never converts into forward motion.

The First Drop: Converting Potential Energy into Kinetic Energy

That heart-stopping first drop on Big Thunder Mountain? It mirrors the excitement—and sometimes terror—of turning initial ideas into actionable momentum.

Team Activities: Crazy 8s Ideation + Prioritization Matrix

Use Crazy 8s to spark rapid ideation. Team members sketch eight ideas in eight minutes, embracing unfiltered creativity. Then, evaluate those ideas using a Prioritization Matrix (Impact vs. Effort) to identify the best starting points.

Why It Matters: Like the gravity that pulls you into Big Thunder’s exhilarating descent, a well-defined problem statement—grounded in rigorous understanding and prioritization—keeps the team moving forward. Early wins build confidence, creating the kinetic energy needed to navigate more complex challenges.

Banking the Turns: Managing Creative Forces

The smooth, banked turns of Radiator Springs Racers are designed to keep you on track while building excitement. Teams need similar structure to channel their energy effectively.

Activities: McKinsey’s Three Horizons Business Strategy Framework

Now a boardroom classic framework and still useful. Apply the Three Horizons Framework to balance short-term and long-term thinking:

Horizon 1: Focus on immediate, incremental improvements.

Horizon 2: Explore adjacent innovations.

Horizon 3: Envision disruptive breakthroughs.

After brainstorming within a single horizon, share insights across horizons to align your future visions with commercial priorities.

Why It Matters: This framework ensures teams stay focused on both immediate goals and future possibilities. It’s the difference between a smooth banked curve and derailing into workshop chaos. But prepare to pivot, at the rate of disruption with GenAI, the 3rd horizon may become reality in 5 days rather than 5 years.

Loops and Inversions: Shifting Perspectives

The cobra roll on Rock ’n’ Roller Coaster flips your sense of up and down—a perfect analogy for moments when teams need to challenge assumptions and reframe the problem.

Activities: Reverse Brainstorming + Business Model Canvas

Ask your team, “How can we guarantee this project fails?” Then flip those failure points into success strategies. This is both reverse engineering, and working agreements operating as one laugh-out-loud-worthy activity. Use the Business Model Canvas to test how these strategies align with customer needs and commercial goals.

Why It Matters: These perspective shifts push teams to innovate while keeping their ideas grounded in business realities. As much as I love Rock ’n’ Roller Coaster’s loops, I’m still getting used to calling California Screamin’ the “Incredicoaster.” Some things take time—but intentional reframing can work wonders.

Airtime Hills: Moments of Creative Liberation

The weightless moments on Big Thunder Mountain’s camelback hills evoke the freedom teams feel when constraints are lifted.

Activities: Magic Circle + OKRs Drafting

Facilitate a brainstorming session where the team first captures in a big circle shape post-its of all the problems, constraints and fears of failure, and then one by one places these limitations outside the bounds of the now defined “Magic Circle”, a place where anything is possible and Never Neverland becomes your business strategy playground to ideate boundlessly. Seriously try it, it works. Afterward, draft OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) to tie those magical ideas to measurable business outcomes.

Why It Matters: This phase allows teams to dream big while remaining grounded in delivering commercial value. Like the carefully engineered airtime hills on Expedition Everest, these moments feel freewheeling but are supported by solid structure.

Managing Friction: Maintaining Momentum

Like the controlled friction on Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, teams need a balance of tension and flow to sustain creativity.

Activities: Start/Stop/Continue + Risk Matrix Analysis

Use Start/Stop/Continue to identify productive and unproductive friction points. Then, apply a Risk Matrix Analysis (Likelihood vs. Impact) to address high-priority risks.

Why It Matters: Some friction is necessary to spark innovation. This phase ensures it’s productive rather than draining, keeping the project moving forward while minimizing unnecessary tension.

The Brake Run: Reflection and Learning

That final brake run on Space Mountain is where you catch your breath and reflect on the ride. Teams need a similar moment to process their journey, dissipating the kinetic energy from the ride.

Activities: Retrospective with the Four Ls + Commercialization Ansoff Matrix

Use the Four Ls to structure your retrospective:

Liked: What worked well?

Learned: What insights were gained?

Lacked: What was missing?

Longed For: What could be improved?

Follow with a Commercialization Ansoff Matrix (Market Fit vs. Scalability) to evaluate the project’s success and identify future opportunities.

Why It Matters: Reflection is where cognitive integration occurs and next steps are collectively committed to. Teams connect their fresh creative artifacts to measurable business outcomes, ensuring on-target insights fuel the next journey.

Ride On: Experiment with Intention

Growing up with a physics-focused father, I learned early on that even the most chaotic systems have rules and structure. My fine arts training taught me to see beauty in the abstract. These dual influences shaped my belief that the best innovation emerges from balancing the analytical with the imaginative. I can't help but seek out Wicked Problems, and after designing and leading over 1,000 workshops, I’ve become a walking encyclopedia of activities designed to reconcile them.

No matter if your project feels like a high-speed roller coaster or a gentle ride, success is rooted in the intentional balance of these forces. By orchestrating team dynamics with the precision of roller coaster engineering and the creativity of Disney Imagineering, you can align the power of innovation with the clarity of business strategy.

Great leadership, like great rides, doesn’t happen by accident. It requires curiosity, structure, and a willingness to adapt—sometimes even resisting the urge to make everything perfect right away.

So, whether you're at the start of your journey or in the midst of a challenge, remember: the best results come when you embrace the balance between creativity and structure. Keep experimenting, stay open to the unexpected, and trust that, just like a roller coaster, the best rides are the ones where art and science come together to create something truly exhilarating—and ready to launch into the world.

And hey, if you find yourself struggling or feeling unsure, don’t worry—you're not alone. I'm still getting used to calling California Screamin' the Incredicoaster. It takes time, and that's all part of the fun.