Ambidextrous Organization are the Future

Be honest with me for a sec…

When someone on your team pitches a totally out-there idea, do you…

A) Say, “Go for it!”
B) Nod politely while secretly hoping they get distracted by emails
C) Send them a 37-slide approval deck to fill out

If you answered B or C—congrats, you’re Kodak.
(Sorry, that was savage—but lovingly savage 🫶)

📸 Kodak, Film, and the Idea That Was Too Cool to Live

Let’s time travel to 1975. Steve Sasson, a nerdy engineer at Kodak, creates the first ever digital camera. No film. Just pixels. Revolutionary stuff.

He shows it to the big bosses. Their response?

🥱 “Cute toy. Now back to selling film.”

They shelved it. Buried it.

Why? Because Kodak wasn’t built for digital dreams. It was built for predictable sales, film cartridges, and printing aunt Susan’s vacation pics from 1992.

The problem wasn’t the tech. The problem was the culture.

🎷 Jazz vs. Symphony: The Corporate Tug-of-War

Running a business has two powerful forces:

1. Innovation – aka jazz: messy, creative, spontaneous. People play around, make mistakes, laugh a lot, break stuff.

2. Execution – aka symphony: structured, repeatable, precise. People wear lanyards, hold meetings, and say words like "operational alignment."

Here’s the trap: Most companies try to blend both into one team.
That’s like asking a jazz band to read Beethoven. It gets awkward fast.

👩‍🚀 Smart Leaders? They Keep the Bands Separate

Companies that actually innovate do this:

🎯 Apple has "Special Projects" that work like secret agent startups.
🎯 Google built Alphabet to keep its wacky moonshot ideas from crashing Search.
🎯 IBM said, “Let’s give innovation its own space—and keep it away from our spreadsheet people.”

They don’t blend jazz and symphony. They bridge them.

🛠️ So What Should You Do?

Let’s make this super doable. Like, snackable.

Step 1: Make a sandbox.
Give your idea people a space to play without being judged by the same rules as your ops team.

Step 2: Don’t kill ideas with 12-person committees.
Innovation hates red tape. Just let them try stuff. Even if it flops.

Step 3: You’re the DJ.
Your job is to mix both tracks—connect the jazz with the symphony. Not easy. But sooo worth it.

💡 Pro Tip: Start small. “Fire bullets before cannonballs,” says Jim Collins. (That’s wisdom, not violence, promise.)

🤓 Want to Geek Out More?

• The Innovator’s Dilemma – Clayton Christensen (a classic!)
  https://amzn.to/4iY93wW

• Great by Choice – Jim Collins
  https://amzn.to/4kdweEu

• Lead and Disrupt – Charles O’Reilly & Michael Tushman

⚡Mini Challenge for the Week:

🎯 Pick one “weird idea” in your team that’s been ignored
🎯 Give it a 7-day test run in a no-rules sandbox
🎯 Watch what happens when jazz gets room to breathe

You don’t need to choose between freedom and discipline.

The best leaders design for both.

Now go build your band. And make sure it swings. 🎶