Here we are again. You at your screen. Me at mine. We’re in a meeting. We know we’re in a meeting because there’s a slide deck, a 12-point agenda, and that one person who keeps saying, “Let’s circle back,” as if our good ideas are lost puppies that need retrieving. We’re in the business of busyness, where the most common response to a new idea isn’t “tell me more,” but “we don’t have the budget for that,” or “that’s not how we do things here,” or my personal favorite, the silent, soul-crushing stare that says, “I am too important for your shenanigans.” We build entire cultures around the word “no” because it’s safe. It’s predictable. It keeps the train on the tracks, even if that train is heading straight for a cliff called irrelevance. We’re so focused on not failing that we fail to risk. We fail to grow. We fail to do the one thing that separates the trailblazers from the trail-followers: we fail to play.
I’ll never forget the time I walked into a room that was supposed to be a high-level strategy session, and I was immediately uncomfortable. There was no agenda. No PowerPoint. The AV guys looked confused, like, “Is there a union problem? What just happened here?” The facilitator, a woman with the calm demeanor of a bomb disposal expert, just smiled and said, “Alright, the first rule is ‘Yes, and…’” My corporate-trained brain immediately started short-circuiting. Yes, and what? And where is the ROI on this? And who’s taking the minutes? It felt like the entire room was having a shared anxiety attack. We are business people, after all. We plot, we plan, we strategize for the next five years. We don’t… play. The discomfort was the point. Growth is uncomfortable. It requires disrupting your current form to stretch into uncharted space. And that day, the uncharted space was a simple improv exercise.
The exercise was the case study. The challenge was to build a story, one sentence at a time. The first person started with, “I want to propose lime green cat suit Fridays.” The impulse in the room was a collective, internal groan. We were thinking of HR violations, dress code policies, the sheer audacity. But the rule was “Yes, and…” So the next person, a stoic CFO I’d only ever heard discuss margins, took a breath and said, “Yes, and we’ll stock Chanel splints in the desks of all C-suite execs for when our fashion risks lead to fabulous stumbles.” The room exploded. Not just with laughter, but with energy. Suddenly, we weren’t just accepting an idea; we were building on it, transforming it, making it ours. We weren’t just a room of executives anymore; we were a team of creators. This is what I’ve learned as a Grammy Nominated Spoken Word Artist Sekou Andrews: the power isn’t in the perfect first line, it’s in the willingness to build on it. It reminded me of a Harvard Business Review study I read about carpenters getting the most radical ideas for new respiratory masks not from other carpenters, but from inline skaters. The more distant the field, the more novel the ideas. “Yes, and…” is the bridge to that distant field.
This isn’t just an actor’s trick; it’s a disruption mindset. It’s the secret sauce that the world’s best innovators use, whether they call it that or not. Diversity and inclusion? That’s saying “Yes, and…” to different perspectives, creating a team that’s less like a monolith and more like a mosaic—a chocolate and chipotle of talent that creates a combustion of success. Customer feedback? That’s saying “Yes, and…” to their needs, co-creating the future of your product instead of just pushing your own agenda. What I do on stage as a Motivational Poet isn’t just Spoken Word Poetry; it’s a demonstration of this principle. It’s about taking the energy of a room and saying “Yes, and watch where I take it.” It’s what transforms a simple spoken word performance into one of the most inspiring experiences an audience can have. This is the work of a Vanguard Artist in the boardroom: teaching a culture to welcome disruption with open arms, because that’s the only way to beat disruption to its destination—you.
So, the next time you’re in a meeting and you feel that familiar urge to shut an idea down, I challenge you to do something different. Take a breath. Find the spark in their suggestion, no matter how small, and fan it. Be the one to say, “Yes, and…” You don’t need to be the best or a top-ranked comedian. You just need to be willing to be a collaborator instead of a critic. You have to be brave enough to embody what you’re talking about, even if it feels different to the audience. Because the goal isn’t to get to the end of the agenda. The goal is to get to the beginning of what’s next. The goal is to move from a culture of “Why didn’t I think of that?” to a culture of “Why didn’t I think like that?” Stop trying to have the perfect plan and start creating a safe space to fail forward. Because you win some, you learn some. And with a “Yes, and…” mindset, you never truly lose; you just find a more interesting way to win.
