The Vision Architect | Andrea Kates: Strategies to Get Unstuck to Scale Your Growth

Promising ideas rarely fail because the original concept was weak. More often, they stall because leaders misread what the market needs, cling to an outdated identity, or assume building something is enough to create adoption. This episode breaks down how organizations can diagnose why momentum fades and how to systematically create a new path to growth before a good idea dies on the vine.

A central theme is that early success often creates the very blind spots that block future scale. What made a company strong in one era, market, or business model may become irrelevant when customer behavior changes or new platforms reshape an industry. One example explores a former music CD manufacturer that could not survive by defending its legacy market. Instead, it had to identify its real underlying capability and apply it in a very different category: food packaging. The lesson is clear: protecting the old identity can destroy the future, while reframing core strengths can unlock sustainable growth.

The conversation also unpacks three recurring reasons organizations get stuck: internal priorities that don’t align with external opportunity, market shifts that invalidate yesterday’s business model, and the mistaken belief that product creation automatically drives engagement. Listener takeaway: scaling depends less on invention alone and more on finding a repeatable way to uncover unmet needs, engage partners, and create value others want to participate in.

A practical framework from From Stuck to Scale anchors the discussion. The first step, “envision,” starts with hunches rather than spreadsheets. Instead of forcing teams into premature logic, the process uses visual exercises such as drawing the current state, the ideal future, what’s missing, and what problem to tackle first. This helps teams access signals they can feel but have not yet articulated. Only after that comes testing, analysis, and business design.

Another key concept is organizational blind spots. These show up when assumptions conflict with actual behavior, when customer surveys tell a flattering but incomplete story, or when leadership designs for one market as if all customers think the same way. The solution is not more internal debate. It is structured testing, exposure to outsiders, and involving skeptics who can pressure-test ideas early.

The episode is especially useful for leaders facing stalled growth, market disruption, or a team that cannot yet see beyond its current identity. The payoff is a more disciplined way to surface intuition, challenge assumptions, and build buy-in around a future people can actually commit to.

Highlights

Diagnose stalled growth before promising ideas quietly lose traction
Reframe legacy capabilities into new revenue opportunities
Use hunches to start strategy before spreadsheets narrow options
Expose blind spots with data, skeptics, and market testing
Build adoption by aligning each stakeholder’s incentives
Protect jobs and momentum by optimizing for sustainable reinvention

Important Concepts and Frameworks

From Stuck to Scale — a systematic process for diagnosing where growth stalls and how to move forward
What got you here won’t get you there — past strengths can become future constraints
Envision — first step focused on clarifying the next initiative before analysis
Taking Stock — four-part visual exercise: where you are, what perfect looks like, what’s missing, what to tackle
Windshield moment — shifting from debate to jointly seeing the future
Unknown unknowns — blind spots leaders do not yet know to look for
Blind spot testing — checking where assumptions diverge from data or behavior
Liar’s box — gap between what customers say and what they actually do
Unmet need discovery — systematically identifying adjacent customer needs
Ecosystem engagement — creating shared value for partners, suppliers, and participants
Yes and, no but — pressure-testing ideas through skepticism and expansion
Share of wallet — understanding real competitive behavior across spending choices
SWOT analysis — referenced as a traditional, linear strategy tool

Tools & Resources Mentioned

From Stuck to Scale — book on diagnosing obstacles to business growth
Lean startup — commercialization process for moving ideas toward market
Cologuard — at-home colorectal cancer screening example
Apple Music — example of industry disruption in music distribution
Spotify — example of market change that invalidated old models
Stripe — payment infrastructure example within a growing ecosystem
Midjourney — used to turn audience sketches into a visual collage
Duolingo — example of accessible language-learning behavior
MIT — context for entrepreneurship, pitching, and innovation work
Mayo Clinic — case example of internal alignment versus external opportunity
Exact Sciences — partner in the Cologuard example
Rappi — example of unmet-need discovery and ecosystem expansion
Shell — source of the phrase about changing people when change stalls

Calls to Action

Map one stalled initiative and identify whether the blockage is internal misalignment, market change, or weak engagement.
Run a four-part “Taking Stock” exercise using drawings, not words, to surface the current reality and ideal future.
Test one major assumption with real customer behavior, not self-reported opinions alone.
Bring skeptics from operations, sales, R&D, and data into the same room to pressure-test the opportunity.
Reframe your business around core capabilities, not legacy industry identity.
Tailor the change story so each stakeholder can see how the initiative helps them succeed.

Key Quotes

"Brilliant early-stage ideas will die on the vine." — Andrea Kates
"What got you here won't get you there." — Andrea Kates
"You can't start with a spreadsheet." — Andrea Kates
"Are we sure?" — Andrea Kates
"They want to want to shift." — Andrea Kates

Chapters
00:58 — Why promising ideas stall before scale
03:22 — Three reasons growth initiatives die
05:05 — Internal misalignment that blocks commercialization
07:01 — When market shifts force a full reinvention
09:18 — Unmet-need discovery beyond the original product
11:46 — Escaping industry identity traps
17:04 — A visual framework for finding the next move
29:43 — How blind spots distort market decisions
34:42 — Using skeptics to stress-test new initiatives
36:20 — Turning buy-in into personal commitment

This Episode's Guest:

Andrea Kates

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreakates/

Website: https://www.andreakates.com/

About the Host

Simon Vetter

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonvetter1

Website: https://simonvetter.com/

Creators and Guests

Host

Simon Vetter

Simon Vetter, known as The Vision Architect, is an international executive coach, professional speaker and author of "Leading with Vision". He helps leaders create crystal-clear vision and practical execution, aligning teams and accelerating performance. His work is trusted by organizations including AbbVie, Cisco, Lennar, Microsoft, Qualcomm, and Siemens. Born in Switzerland and shaped by 27+ years in San Diego, Simon blends Swiss precision with Californian innovation: pragmatic, energizing and actionable for real-world leadership pressure.

What is The Vision Architect?

The Vision Architect is the podcast about crafting bold, aspiring futures that inspires lasting change. It is for leaders facing pivotal moments or crucial challenges - those crucible experiences where big decisions shape the future. Each episode is filled with stories, ideas and tools to intentionally design a meaningful path forward, gain clarity amid uncertainty, and ignite the courage needed for enduring change. It's a powerful conversation about what's next - for your life, career, team, and organization.

[1080] VISION 213 - Andrea Kates
===

Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Vision Architect. Today we talk about innovation and growth strategies. I have Andrea Kates with me today. She is a strategist, former technology CEO in Silicon Valley. She is also an entrepreneur at, residence at MIT, and she leads initiatives around the world for growth strategies, specializing in technology, entrepreneurship, and corporate growth.

[00:00:58] Simon Vetter: She also is the author of From Stuck to Scale: How to Overcome Obstacles to Achieve Business Growth, and we'll dive into that. Andrea, welcome to the episode.

[00:01:11] Andrea Kates: It's great to be here

[00:01:13] Simon Vetter: Let's dive right into the book idea. I wanna unpack that a little bit. Where was the idea born talking about from stock to scale?

[00:01:24] Andrea Kates: From Stuck to Scale started very humbly when I lost a $25 bet. I was the CEO of a SaaS software company that is the backbone for lean startup, which is the commercialization technology process that startups use to go from either zero to one or to advance in their technology development or commercialization.

And we had a cohort of maybe 16 teams at a time, and I was 100% sure and completely confident that I could place the bet on the teams that were gonna win, and the ones that would actually go from early stage idea all the way through to commercialization. And I was very humbled when I learned that what I thought it took and what conventional wisdom says it takes to go from an early stage idea all the way through to scale was actually not what it took.

And I was humbled and baffled, and I thought, "I am going to spend a couple of years digging into what went wrong in my thinking, and how other leaders can really prevent ourselves from going down that same path."

[00:02:37] Simon Vetter: When was that? When did you start, writing?

[00:02:40] Andrea Kates: The, oh gosh, the insight came probably about 10 years ago. It took me probably about three years of in-field research to have enough data to figure out which types of industries, which ways people got stuck, and what the root cause was, 'cause you have to have enough data to really understand. And I also decided to write this book from experience, so these are all clients that I personally have worked with, and these are projects from all over the world, as you said, that are in different markets.

So it took a while to figure out what the patterns were. So I'd say the, the insight to the writing was about five years, and the writing itself was about two years of that

[00:03:19] Simon Vetter: What's the main premise of the book?

[00:03:22] Andrea Kates: So there are two core ideas. One is it's completely unacceptable that really brilliant early-stage ideas will die on the vine. They get to a certain point, and they have a lot of velocity, and they have a lot of potential, and then something happens where they literally just drop off the face of the earth.

They are not getting traction. We have all kinds of ways of saying it, but I find that to be completely unacceptable that, that really important ideas that have huge potential to make an impact just d- just die when we can really prevent that. So that's the first thing. And, and the second thing is that it's this concept that what got you here won't get you there.

That, that if you're a fantastic inventor but you're not necessarily really great at managing large teams, there will come a moment where that comes back to bite you, and your ability to move to the next level of scale will not get you there. And so there's this humility, and we talked about that, where you have to really understand where your blind spots are, who you have to surround yourself with in the next phase of your development, and learn to understand what you don't see, like the unknown unknowns.

Really hard to do. It's not what we teach in strategy school

[00:04:41] Simon Vetter: Let's talk about those two things. first the idea, and then it, they die on the vine. What are some of the reasons when you have those promising ideas, people are passionate, they think they can overtake a big market. What are some of the main reasons? Give me an overview that makes those ideas die on the wine.

[00:05:05] Andrea Kates: Okay. I'll, I'll give you an example from the book, and these are all stories that I obviously have permission to talk about, and they're all clients that I know well. a, a couple of them are clients I know well from interviews, but most here are ones I've worked with. And I'll give you an example from Mayo Clinic where I talk about the internal forces where there was an opportunity to work with Exact Sciences on the Cologuard project, which is early-stage colorectal cancer screening.

And Exact Sciences had an, a home scratch test that was available large scale that Mayo Clinic didn't invent. So the question was, could they partner together and have one plus one is three? Have the large group of patients that are served by Mayo Clinic actually also have a home capability? So one thing that goes wrong is where the outside forces and the internal priorities don't align.

say you're being rewarded on what did you invent that you brought to market? Well, if you didn't invent it, you may or may not think that it's a priority to bring it to market. So that's one whole category. When there's a large organization that has multiple opportunities for innovation or new ideas, but there's sort of antibodies around it, and so it's really hard to make an objective decision.

And, and the question that I think was brilliant on the part of that team is, what are we optimizing for? You know, are we optimizing for our internal ability to commercialize things? Are we optimizing for serving our patients? and so that's-- so but that's an, a category that's very legitimate, but it'll stop things from happening because there's lack of alignment.

So that's one thing. The second thing is a, case that I talk about, throughout the book, which is Intergraficas, a company that I met the CEO in San Francisco crossing the street after an innovation conference, of all things. And he said, "Uh, what do you do?" And I said, "Uh, I help companies get unstuck." He goes, "Oh, that's great.

We're really stuck." I said, tell me. I've, I've heard everything. What, you know, what's going on?" As we're crossing the street, he tells me what his company is. His company was one of the largest manufacturers of music CDs in Latin America. And as I put my foot on the other side of the street and stepped on the curb, I said to him, "It's hopeless.

Like, you, you will never recoup from this, because what got you here was an industry that's now completely dying. You know, Apple Music, Spotify, all of these platforms, there's no way that you're gonna be able to be profitable again." And he said, "Well, that's an unacceptable answer. We have employees. I have a commitment to this company.

We need to turn this around." So that's the second thing is it's not, it's not your fault at all. The second category is the world changed, and you unfortunately are a victim of that. And once again, as I said, what got you here, which is being fantastic at taking Shakira's music and putting it into a CD and having great art, is not what's gonna get you there.

The punchline is we actually increased their EBITDA five fivefold, and they pivoted in the classic sense, but, using these steps from Stuck to Scale steps, which is a systematic way to assess where they were stuck and figure out how to get unstuck. So that's the second category.

And the third of three, there's lots of them, but I'll just give you three. The, the third category is The very counterintuitive notion that building something is the same as getting other people to engage with it. you know, Like there's that old phrase: if you build it, they will come. Okay.

There's a lot of talk around ecosystems. All you need to do is get partners and get a supply chain and get a lot of support for this. But in point of fact, if you've got, I don't know, whether it's in agriculture, whether it's in fintech, if you can't figure out a way to get people engaged and for them to share in this value that's being created, it's not gonna work.

And as you know from the book, there's a company called Rappi. Rapido means fast, and it started off as a sandwich delivery company in Latin America. I mean, literally, the very first time I heard of these people, who were the founders, there were eight guys literally begging people on the street to download their app, and in exchange they would give you a donut. Should I say that again? A donut. That was the big, that was the big thing. that now is a company that's valued at two billion dollars US, although it's Latin American company. And they went from sandwich delivery to being able to uncover an unmet need consistently, and they figured out that, if you needed lunch, you needed to be able to pay for the lunch.

If you needed to pay for the lunch, you needed something like Stripe, you know, a payment system. If you had a payment system, you needed to be able to also engage the people, you know, the restaurants and the drivers, right? So we know that, but what they're really good at, and what Guido Becher told me as part of the secret sauce that they have, is they have a great systematic way to uncover an unmet need like this.

If Andrea orders sushi for lunch, right, we would, of course, say, "Well, I also should get a drink." Like, of course, that, that makes sense. I have to pay for that. What they uncovered was that I also had a latent need or desire to buy a plane ticket to Tokyo.

[00:10:35] Simon Vetter: you. Hmm.

[00:10:36] Andrea Kates: And so they figured out what these unmet n- needs are, not by saying, "Andrea, do you want sushi and, in addition, a plane ticket?"

That's not how they did it. But they developed a systematic way to uncover large market opportunities and, to my point about ecosystems, to find market partners who could benefit independently as a series of flywheels so that they could put it all together and grow quickly with a trusted environment where everybody wins.

So those are the three th- that are, I think, are the, the classic models of where we get stuck and how we can overcome that to move to scale.

[00:11:16] Simon Vetter: One of the things that I take away is that, that second example is sometimes you can push on doors and they just are stuck. They don't open. And if we keep pushing, they don't open because the market is not ready or the market shifted. And so this other company was really good in anticipating needs in the market.

How do ... What do you recommend to anticipate and get a sense for what does the market need?

[00:11:46] Andrea Kates: Okay, this is really hard for people to do, and here's why. Because we think of industries, we think of ourselves as, you know, and the culture. Let, let me go back to the music business, Intergraficas. These are people who love to go to music festivals. You know, it's very cool to say to your f- to your friends, "Hey, I met Shakira.

We're going to the Latin Grammys." Like, that's very cool. But to, to say that what they turned into, which is very hard to imagine, but we walk step by step through the process of how they determined this would be a very profitable and sustainable business, is they went into food packaging. Now, if you're a person in the company who's been going to music festivals, and suddenly you're going to like, I don't know, chicken nugget festivals, you kind of are gonna resist it.

so once again, y- you're not gonna come to that idea naturally because your culture, the culture of your company can be keeping you in that cool music genre. And believe me, they f- they tried to create Spotify, you know, but somebody had already done it. They tri- they tried everything possible with music and, you know, create, uh, recording studios and they were like, "Wait a minute, we're gonna have to use the core capability we have to manufacture the..."

You know, the, the, the packaging of CDs became really central to packaging safe, healthy, you know, die-free packaging that would pass health regulations for food. And that was what it ended up being, and I'm sure that some of the people didn't wanna stay if they were just 100% music.

But the CEO knew that saving the company and building a new sustainable path in a world that had changed was critical. He wanted to keep the employees. He wanted to keep the company growing. And so yeah, give up music, go to food, and, and, and thrive.

[00:13:48] Simon Vetter: Well, they could keep the employees, but I just keep the company going. And so So they took their capabilities, manufacturing, and applied it into a totally different industry

[00:13:56] Andrea Kates: Yes. But it takes an outsider

[00:13:59] Simon Vetter: Yeah

[00:14:00] Andrea Kates: understand that the thing that they have on their back burner or they have in parentheses, like, "Oh yeah, of course we can create packaging and really great graphics for a Shakira CD," right? Well, wait a minute, that might become your core business

[00:14:16] Simon Vetter: Yeah. And it challenges the, the mindset and decision-making of the executive team because they think music. So how do you help your clients make that shift in mindset and help them open up their perspective?

[00:14:33] Andrea Kates: that is such a great question. Let me tell you that it's not easy. And th- you know, as outside consultants, us telling them will never work.

[00:14:44] Simon Vetter: Mm-hmm. They have to experience it themselves.

[00:14:47] Andrea Kates: Exactly. Exactly. And they're

[00:14:49] Simon Vetter: conclusion. Yeah

[00:14:51] Andrea Kates: 100%. Yes, yes. You landed on it exactly. Th- I picture it like this, you know, if two people are talking to each other, and I think of it like a tennis match.

Like, I give you the ball, you throw me the ball, back and forth, back and forth. What about this? What about that? There's a moment where I call it the windshield moment, where I'm sitting next to you. I'm like, "Simon, we're gonna look at the future of your company," right? And let's look out the windshield together, and what do we see?

You know? For sure we see everybody who's currently employed being able to be employed. These are people that you know well. They're families you know. You don't want to create unemployment in your city. I mean, f- there were a lot of reasons that staying in business was the first thing to optimize for.

The next thing was, let's imagine that we have to shift from our identity as being music to our identity being something else. So we tried cool ideas like 3D printing. So we went down the path of, you know, maybe we could use our expertise to go into 3D printing for dentists, you know, manufacturing something like that.

Then of course COVID hit, and there were a lot of people who needed food delivered. They happened to have done some really good supply chain relationships, so they had a lot of materials, and they found themselves in, in a position where they could produce a lot of CD covers. The problem was nobody wanted a CD.

So then we said, "What else might we do with the resources, the talents, so that we optimize to keep everybody employed?"

[00:16:22] Simon Vetter: And there's, I think you brought up a good word here, the identity. When we grow up in industry, we have an identity as a company to that industry. We also as a person have an identity the way we think about that, and we got stuck with that identity. So how do we open up and start to shift and be open to take on a different identity and, and take o- and that re- means we take on different beliefs and we have to think differently, make different assumptions.

Can you tell about, an example or how, how you help your clients to make that identity shift?

[00:17:04] Andrea Kates: Well, the first thing that's important is something that's a diagnostic. Because people tend to feel like I think there was a f- movie called something like Everything Everywhere, All at Once. They feel like everything's chaotic. They don't know where to go. Nothing's working. There's usually a lot of pressure.

It feels like an emergency, right? W- you, you start to see things aren't working and, and people are, you know, they don't know what to do.

[00:17:30] Simon Vetter: They get

[00:17:30] Andrea Kates: idea-- completely panicked, and they should be because they know that, you know, once again, if they're a music engineer and they're working for this music company or if they're someone who is, the commercialization person internally at Mayo or if they're working at Rappi and all they wanna do is, deliver sandwiches, they don't wanna do anything other than that.

these are identity issues that means not everybody's gonna come along for this next chapter, right? But the senior leadership team being able to have permission to not just guess, you know, not just have sticky notes on the wall, not just be creative. We can all be creative, but the issue is can we be creative while we're building a sustainable new business line?

And so to your point, we surround the senior leaders with tangible, rational information that-- like the 3D printing. You know, we literally took field trips to see 3D printing. We had discovery interviews with a lot of dentists. We talked to people that were doing 3D printing. You know, we went down the path of being very tangible so that each potential path was something to be considered.

Then you have to go for the culture. you absolutely have to say, "Look, this is a culture that really cares about being cool And so what is it that could be cool about packaging food? Well, it turns out you can have people to your offices and have brainstorming sessions with all of the food designers and chefs.

There's a whole world of cool people in food packaging other than just the health inspectors. So there has to be something that they can relate to, or they're just gonna give you lip service. You know, if they're not into it, they're not gonna be into it. And then there's another phrase that I learned from a client years ago at Shell when I was working with, in the energy industry, and they said, "You know, if you can't change the people, you might have to change the people."

[00:19:27] Simon Vetter: Hmm

[00:19:28] Andrea Kates: Meaning not everybody's gonna be able to come along. If they start seeing that, look, I d- this isn't what I signed up for, that's okay. And this happens a lot, even with Rappi. You know, like if you started off as sort of a mom and pop shop, and then suddenly you find yourself as a multi- country, technology-forward environment, and this is what's happening with AI.

You know, you find yourself in an environment where suddenly the technology capabilities feel like they're overwhelming, and they feel like they're dominating the workplace. Not everybody's gonna wanna work in that place

[00:20:03] Simon Vetter: Let's talk about your process, how to get unstuck. You got five steps, and the first one is envision, to clarify and express the essence of your next initiative. How come you start with envision first?

[00:20:18] Andrea Kates: I think every leader has hunches. I won't even call them hypotheses. That's too fancy of a word. There's something that's either a nagging sense that there's something beyond or a very vague idea. And with things like SWOT analysis and the ways we've been taught to do linear strategy, we need to have the rationale before we're permitted to articulate our hunches

[00:20:47] Simon Vetter: It's interesting. I had a, did a podcast about intuition, that inner knowing, and it's not scientific, it's not rational, it's not analytical, but there's something there that it's hard to explain. But that hunch, what- I like that word hunch, and sometimes it's that inner, almost a inner message that starts to surface

[00:21:13] Andrea Kates: Yeah. it's interesting because I remember years ago I worked with the CEO of a large restaurant chain, and he said, "I want you to come and sit with me at the cash register." And I thought, "What? Like, what, what? I, I'm busy. I can't just sit with you at a cash register." He said, "I just want you to experience something."

This was about 10 years ago. I said, "Okay, fine." And I, and, and you know, it's like, I don't know what he's seeing. I needed to understand, like, what are you seeing here that I'm not seeing? But he had so much experience that he was able to sit there and go, "Okay, what do you see?" And I said, "I don't know. I see people in kind of, you know, picking up kids after their sporting events and wanting to grab some dinner.

I see couples wanting to have a romantic evening away from the kids." He goes, "Yes, there's a collision at our cash register." He just knew that something was wrong. You know, that some people were literally physically at, at 5:00 p.m. about to go out for the first date they'd had as a couple without the kids, and other people are showing up in soccer uniforms with, you know, a bunch of kids that want food in a bag.

He's like, "We need to create a different concept here. we started out as like a, a very proud of our service model, but we need to have a takeout/carryout option because we have a collision right now and we're not serving either customer well." It was a hunch. He didn't know what to do about it, but he had to get my-- he got, had to get me to see things the way he was seeing things, and then we could start to figure out, okay, what might some options be?

And that, that's where the From Stuck to Scale starts. So I think envision is important as the first of five steps

[00:22:52] Simon Vetter: Let's stay, let's stay there for a moment. that hunch. And then I think another important step here is ask and lead with question and curiosity, and not assuming you have the answer right away. So how do you stay in curiosity? And w- what, what's part of that envision process that you go through with your clients?

[00:23:16] Andrea Kates: in from Stuck to Scale, there are actual sheets. There are actual tools that people use, and , there are lots and lots of them, and they're intentional. And so in Envision, there's one that seems so simple, and it's called Taking Stock.

And all you do, it's a four-quadrant piece, but it's where are you today?

And guess what? You, you're not allowed to use words. And I don't know about you, I'm a terrible artist, like the worst. But where are you today? And I saved the picture of what, of what Nicholas did when he, when we did that. And where we were today was that he was... In the first step, he was just in a world of music. And I said, "Okay, you know, you just have to draw where you are. Don't, don't over-science it." And then where would you like to be, which is what would perfect look like. And perfect, same thing, it's a drawing. These are hunches, and the worst ar- the worse artist you are, the better, right? Because in your sense, you just write down in, as a, as a really bad drawing what would perfect look like.

Well, interestingly, there was nothing in his perfect that had music in it,

[00:24:28] Simon Vetter: I-

[00:24:28] Andrea Kates: which I found quite interesting. He wanted to be global. He wanted to be able to keep his employees, employed, right? He wanted to keep-- His father had actually started the company. He didn't want to let down the vision of his father.

so there were a lot of things that were in the perfect. So it's where are you today and what's perfect. That's a hunch. What's missing can be a couple of points. And so, you know, in this point, it was expertise outside of the music industry, exposure to new technologies. That was missing, right? And that's also a fear a lot of times.

And then what do you wanna tackle? And the-- and it's very powerful to say this sent-sentence: " I wanna tackle discovering a revenue source in an industry that is not on the decline."

[00:25:19] Simon Vetter: Hmm. I did an exercise with a management team. I had also four quadrants. What's going well? What's the success today? What's the success in the future? What does that look like? What gets in the way to get there? And what are the inherent strength and capabilities we can apply? And they were not able to use words.

They had to draw things.

[00:25:41] Andrea Kates: Very similar.

[00:25:43] Simon Vetter: it helps to access a different part of the brain. And here's an interesting part of what I found. People start drawing, there were three, four different teams, and they started to draw things together, and they didn't argue. They started to say, "What do you think? How should I do this?"

And it created a sense of we are in this together. And when you start to talk about rational things, we should do this or should do that, people start to get into argumentation. And this visual exercise created a different dynamic of conversations. Have you seen th- similar things like that?

[00:26:24] Andrea Kates: 100%. And I have a friend who does this now with AI. He has a, a thing he's done at, like, South by Southwest and all of these places where he'll, he'll have this sketching happen, and then he turns it into, like, a big Midjourney collage of an entire audience of 1,000 people. And as you said, it's a way of getting in touch with these hunches because if we try to be too rational, we have already talked ourselves into something that might not be the only option as soon as we put it in that square box.

And I don't want you to think that this is something that you just do kind of as a fun exercise, as I'm sure yours is not either. This is literally the unlocking of possibilities. And when I talk about windshield thinking, and when I talk about these things, what comes next has to be a lot of spreadsheets and analysis, but you can't start with a spreadsheet.

If you have a, a moment where you need to take someone like Andrea and sit her down at a cash register and show her the collision at the cash register and get me to see the world the way you're seeing it, that's very different from coming in, giving me a spreadsheet for what it's gonna look like to put a shovel in the ground and build a quick casual restaurant.

That's very, very different. And I believe that we, you and I, and, and people like us have earned the right because we have track records of growing multiple million-dollar initiatives and growing, you know, hundreds of millions of dollar initiatives. we can help people trust the fact that this is the way to start the process of articulating and systematically exploring what they want to optimize for and what the options are.

That's, that's what I think

[00:28:08] Simon Vetter: The other thing from our conversation is we gotta allow people to have hunches. Yeah. And just say, "Okay, good. What's your hunch? What's your intuition? What do s- do you think?" And just make that part of the discussion instead of just shutting it down

[00:28:23] Andrea Kates: I like that. And you have to have enough gravitas. See, because,to be honest, a lot of people that start with an exercise like this are not necessarily people who have... And I'm not being judgmental, but I'm just saying there's a world of people who will do this, but not necessarily have been in the boardroom, not necessarily have worked with companies like you and I have, you know, these major companies all over the world, whether it's Fujitsu or General Motors or For- I mean, major companies that have made substantial decisions starting out at this point.

and to be honest, I think that's why a lot of us are tempted to start right away with, the plan, right? SWOT. Let's do a SWOT

[00:29:02] Simon Vetter: Excel, revenue projections, and that's important, but that's, again, we gotta start with the idea, the picture, the-- So I wanna talk about this concept, what got you here won't get you there. My mentor, Marshall Goldsmith, wrote the book, and, I met him 25 years ago. I used his approach in helping leaders create positive, lasting change in leadership behavior.

Now, you talk about this concept on the organizational level. Give me a sense of organizational blind spots. What are those? How do you uncover them? how do they get in the way that really keeps people stuck?

[00:29:43] Andrea Kates: Yeah. There's a big project that I did for a large automotive company. I won't mention who it is. They're not in my book, but I worked with them for four or five years, and it was a, a project around mobility in China and in the US, and it had to do with biometrics. And for people who are listening who don't know what that means, it's facial recognition, it's thumbprints, it's clapping your hands and the car knows that means that it should open the trunk.

It's voice recognition. It's all of the things that in some cultures is, fine, but in our culture in the US, the phrase of security can sometimes mean like Big Brother or sur- surveillance, right? And so there was a blind spot around how to use biometrics in the automotive industry for their Chinese customers versus their American customers.

in, in China, this was also about three or four years ago. In China at the time, you would go through an airport in five minutes, you know, facial recognition was, very common. the ability for Andrea to be giving my own opinion on Simon's reputation through their apps, that's, that's very common in China.

And so the blind spot that the organization had, and it's a large-scale project, you know, millions and millions of dollars, was that biometrics needed to be designed differently for two different users. And, you couldn't just automatically assume that Andrea in the US wanted facial recognition to open my car door, even if it was much more, convenient.

And so that's a really clear example of how we can't get out of our own way. We need outsiders to help us understand, and we had to have a lot of data. We did a lot of research in both markets, testing these hunches to make sure that it was worth investing in a large way in automotive companies, you know, a very significant investment, and it had to be fueled by logic.

But you can't start off with logic. You have to start off with a hunch that then becomes an experiment, that then becomes a removing the blind spots, that then becomes a game plan

[00:31:58] Simon Vetter: Yeah. That whole concept of blind spots, again, how do you differentiate it's an assumption or it's something that's real? how do you do that?

[00:32:08] Andrea Kates: Okay. my very first career was in market research and qua- you know, the, the analysis of, of data and being able to figure out what consistent data patterns were, right? When there was, confluence or there was alignment. So the first thing that happens is a blind spot is when the reality is not matching the data.

It, it, it's so easy to see after the fact, right? So you, you say something and then you dig in and f- and realize that that's not consistent. So, you say, "Oh yeah, let's think of something they call share of wallet, which is if I'm selling something to Simon, say I'm selling,a soft drink or something, right?

Most humans drink 64 ounces a day, so I just sold you whatever soft drink and then someone says, "Oh, that's great. What's our competition?" It's like, there's no competition. But then we discover that 32 ounces you bought from us, 32 ounces you bought from somebody else, so we do have competition. So there's a disconnect between what we think is going on and actually when you dig into the data what is going on.

So that's a blind spot. It's like, oh my goodness, I didn't even realize he was buying bottled water or he was buying, I don't know, boba tea or something had come into our market suddenly to remove our market dominance. So, so that's a blind spot, and that's one you can uncover with data, you know, where you just make sure that you're telling the truth.

the second is, inadvertent things where we have customer surveys, for instance, right? Those are a great place for blind spots because we all wanna believe that the customers are loving everything. But it turns out there's, something called a liar's box, right? Which is an inadvertent,- Like if I say, "Do you eat healthy?"

And you go, "Yeah, yeah, I eat healthy." Great. That's very different from, "What did you eat for breakfast?" And the answer is pizza.

[00:33:59] Simon Vetter: Yep. Yeah,

[00:34:01] Andrea Kates: So that liar's box is another thing. People don't mean to be lying to you, but they think in their minds that they're being healthy, but actually their behavior was they ate pizza for breakfast, right?

so there are all kinds of ways, and I outline them in the book, of, being able to check yourself. And, my question is always, are we sure? and, like, let's imagine that we're completely wrong on this really important thing. Here's a way for us to test it. And so we have, as you know in the book, blind spots and ways to test for them.

One thing that I do always, and we were talking about quadrants, and people have all kinds of ways of putting people in categories. I always make sure that I have the biggest naysayers in the room.

[00:34:42] Simon Vetter: Mm-hmm

[00:34:43] Andrea Kates: So sometimes you can have people who are into, like, social proof, right? Like the salespeople.

And there are people who, who find social proof, that's their-- that's what they lead with, right? Some lead with, like, big picture. Some lead with, like, operations and logistics. We hate when those people are in the room 'cause they're gonna really scrutinize all of our new ideas. And then there's the data and the R&D people that are gonna go, "That's not how gravity works. Like, no, that-- we, we can't possibly do that. That physically cannot work." I, for the blind spots check, make sure that I have representation from all four of those mindsets. there's an exercise that we do, "yes and, no but," which comes from stand-up comedy.

So there's "yes and, no but," and then bigger picture. And so with each of the people, I always ask them to start with "no but." So it's like, "Okay, here's this idea. We're gonna have a fast casual restaurant to accommodate the soccer moms and dads that are bringing the kids home from sports." It's like, "No, that's a stupid idea.

You know, we're a date night restaurant. Why would we do something like that?" You know, et cetera. So people are really good at the "no but," and that's a way to get the blind spot. And then the "yes and" is like, "Well, wait a minute. If we could make the margins work, if we could improve our supply chain, if we could create meals that were going to be able to be delicious when they put them in a bag, then that might work."

And that is the begin of the unlock

[00:36:09] Simon Vetter: once we have that vision, that path forward, and we have clarified that, one of the things you say is we have to make everybody involved the hero of their own story Can you elaborate on that?

[00:36:20] Andrea Kates: I, I don't know if you've ever been taught to do an elevator pitch. I work with MIT, as you know, as the entrepreneur-in-residence, and we work with teams all over the world, and part of the, discipline is to teach people how to pitch.

[00:36:32] Simon Vetter: Mm-hmm

[00:36:32] Andrea Kates: And the way we teach in a pitch competition or, or an investor night or pitch night or whatever it is, the one thing we forget is that they don't care about what we care about.

And , the worst thing in the world when you're in the real world trying to get people to engage and activate, to actually get on board with this new idea, whatever it is, is to get them to care.

[00:36:57] Simon Vetter: Mm-hmm

[00:36:57] Andrea Kates: And we never use the word care in business. It's too soft. But unless people really care, they'll vote for it, but they're not gonna do very much to make your priority their priority.

So I say we have to stop doing these elevator pitches that are one size fits all, and we have to instead get to understand, like, Simon, what is it that's gonna make you feel, I don't use the word like a hero, but you know, what do you care about? And if this is somebody in supply chain, they might really care that they're able to find really efficient and well-optimized processes, that they're able to justify selection of vendors.

That feels like a buzz kill. But in point of fact, if we can tell the part of our vision to them in a way that solves those problems, they're gonna go, "Oh my goodness, I get to achieve my KPIs with this new initiative? This is magic. How can I help?"

[00:37:58] Simon Vetter: So there is a storyline that we all have to agree. But then the story told might be different for each person. And one of the things I always say, at the end, it has to be personal. The person has to be bought into it, and they might use different words, different ways to express it, that same storyline.

Is that what

[00:38:19] Andrea Kates: I love that. I love that. You know, there's a, there's a book that I just read that, that, that I really like, about, you know, it ha- has to do with beyond knowing. So like I always say I want to want to be fluent in Spanish. Okay. it's very inexpensive to learn Spanish. It's probably free. You know, you can go on Du- Duolingo.

There are people who will do all kinds of conversation. There are a million ways for me to be fluent in Spanish. So what I say is, maybe I don't really want to be fluent in Spanish. Maybe I want to want to be fluent in Spanish, and I think that's what happens with our, quote, "getting people engaged" in new initiatives.

They want to want to shift from being a cool guy who goes to music festivals to being a person that puts, KFC in a new bucket. They wanna be that guy, but they're not

[00:39:12] Simon Vetter: Yeah. Yeah. It has to resonate on a personal level. Yeah

[00:39:16] Andrea Kates: That's right. So, so now let me tell you what that looks like. Oh, you care about innovation and being cool or, you know, being involved in things that are innovative. Hey, what if we did chef's night? What if we had a bunch of the best chefs in Latin America to come to our offices and envision ways that we could package all their cool...

And sous vide, and we can use new packaging. Hey, that could be a win-win

[00:39:39] Simon Vetter: Yeah. The other thing what I found is that conviction about being part of it has to resonate with the person's identity So it kind of go- goes back full circle is what is my identity and then how do I somehow shift my identity, my beliefs to be excited about this, this path moving forward? And it, it requires flexibility, adjustability, pivoting, and, and I think that's what we are all are challenged to do in these days

[00:40:07] Andrea Kates: I think we are really well aligned on that because I-- and once again, these are all, these are, you know, I've, I, I, I work the, at MIT, it's a very technology-oriented, very quantitative-oriented, very, data, evidence-based environment. And so these words like commitment and identity, they're not the words that come forward first in most business conversations

[00:40:32] Simon Vetter: Andrea, wonderful speaking with you. Thank you so much. I'm sure you, we can find you on LinkedIn. A big thank you and look forward to further conversations. Have a great day. Thank you