The Navigator Collective’s resident behavioral psychologist Joshua Haddock, LMFT, opens up about self-doubt, impostor syndrome, and using Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) to see the bright side.

In this piece, Paul Sears, Founder & CEO of The Navigator Collective interviews Sarah Harrison, MBA, Founder & Principal Consultant of Order of Operations, LLC. Sarah is an experienced operations professional and author of "Streamlining Success: Avoiding Common Pitfalls in Operations Management." Sarah shares her insights on leveraging AI to enhance business operations, informed by her extensive career in operations.

Our Founder & CEO, Paul Sears, recently had the pleasure of joining the Gloria Bailey Ray Show, to chat about The Navigator Collective’s viewpoints on AI in culture. Gloria and Paul discussed and debunked common misconceptions about AI, tackled the critical issue of bias in AI algorithms, and envisioned a world where great ideas can come from everywhere, regardless of an individual’s background or training.

Workshops can be incredible spaces for innovation, but they’re also prone to biases that can derail. It’s crucial to spot them and steer the group back on course. Heres how

Think AI will propel your team? Think again.

While AI gives your team a speed boost, the real power comes when you create a psychologically safe environment that unleashes creative risk-taking.

In today's high-pressure marketing & communications world, not giving your team access to AI is a bit like the tortoise hoping the rabbit didn’t learn anything from the last race. et giving access to AI without meaningful training is about as risky as handing a set of Ferrari keys to an unlicensed driver.

I continue to read pieces about ageism, particularly in creative industries. And many fear AI is a culprit. But as a power user and AI trainer—I know full-well that AI is nowhere near replacing human creativity

But what it can do is partner with humans to dramatically enhance creativity, and unlock it from all corners. We just need a radical re-think about how that’s supposed to happen.

I’m a huge sci-fi geek. Especially dark, dystopian stories. Movies like The Terminator, The Matrix, Blade Runner, I Robot, Ex Machina - I love them all. But when it comes to really thinking about AI and its impact on society, I’m 10,000x more optimistic than my taste in movies would suggest.

Today at The Navigator Collective, we’re excited to launch our new identity!

We’ve been working with a brilliant design team for the past few weeks to bring this new look to life. As soon as we saw the first iterations, we loved the vibrant color, the approachable hand-drawn shapes, and the powerful storytelling.

In today’s blazing-fast marketplace, companies are hitting a wall when it comes to innovation. The pace of play is only accelerating, and financial markets are raising the stakes to get it right, fast. The traditional model of relying on a small group of professionally-trained creatives and innovators is starting to show its age. How can new AI-enabled approaches flood the R&D pipeline with great thinking?

Creativity isn't just for the creatives; it’s a skill that lives in all of us. Unfortunately, what we’ve learned from others—and even our own inner talk track—can dim the spark. But there’s a fix: cognitive restructuring, a psychological technique that helps us change our thought patterns and let our creativity shine. Here are 5 key steps:

The creative process – it's a bit like team-cooking, isn’t it? Everyone brings their own ingredients. When it’s time to decide what goes into the pot, things too often get heated. Without care, the pot can boil over, leading to hurt feelings and dissatisfaction among team members. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Living with ADHD often feels like the lifelong square peg, perpetually trying and failing, to fit into the round hole of social norms. Yet, what if the traits seeming to hold people back were actually their greatest strengths? The narrative around ADHD is ripe for disruption – from viewing it as a barrier to recognizing it as a superpower.

By embracing ADHD's unique gifts and adapting our approaches, we can cultivate fertile ground for innovation. Here are four ways we can meet with people ADHD where they are.

In the dynamic world of creative innovation, embracing LIMA (Least Intrusive, Minimally Aversive) principles from behaviorism, can revolutionize how groups ideate and innovate together. In Part 1, we talked about the first three layers of the LIMA pyramid. Now, in the long-awaited follow-up, we will highlight the top 3 layers: differential reinforcement, negative punishment and extinction, and the dreaded positive punishment.

Agencies can’t escape the relentless and often unrewarding process of pitching. Studies show agencies can sink 7-figures before landing a client. And we all know there’s no silver medal. The process creates huge financial pressure as well as soft-costs: disruptions to client work, lost trust, and impacts to staff morale. How can agencies break the vicious cycle of spec-pitching and get into a much more virtuous one?

Innovating is like navigating a complex sea of inputs and ideas, turning data into direction, and seeking sunken treasure in the deep. Believe it or not, four little letters from the behavior science used to train dogs can actually help make everyone less seasick: LIMA. It stands for “Least Intrusive, Minimally Aversive.” In the ideation and innovation process, least intrusive might be something like everyone knowing they will be allowed to finish their sentence. Minimally aversive might be something like no one, ever, being told an idea is bad or wrong. So how do we make the leap from LIMA in dog training to LIMA in the innovation process…and still get wickedly-good ideas? 

In today’s wild business environment, everyone in an organization needs to feel at ease sharing their good, bad and ugly ideas. Yet, unchecked implicit biases freeze people out. It’s time to shift away from old-school lecture-based training techniques, and focus on experiential-learning and group problem-solving focused on putting the principles into immediate practice.

Brainstorming should be a fertile ground for limitless creativity and rapid innovation, but sadly not all brainstorms achieve this goal. All too often, the format of the session itself can inadvertently stifle participation, favor certain personality styles over others, and yield uninspired ideas. Here are five types of brainstorms that fall short of their potential, typically resulting in a smaller number of underwhelming ideas.

Innovation flourishes in diverse environments where individuals feel empowered to share their ideas freely. Unfortunately, too often in group ideation settings, introverted, analytical and neurodivergent individuals feel overshadowed by their extroverted and expressive peers. Cultural differences often come into play as well, making some participants less comfortable publicly taking creative risks than others. Discover how to apply Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) to help create accelerate innovation.