We're still running long meetings that admire the problem, writing plans few people read, pushing decisions up the chain and punishing small failures, so people stop testing ideas of where the customer actually is.

When teams build better habits like spotting real problems, running small tests and making decisions that are closer to the customer, companies move faster, de-risk better and create value where competitors aren't looking.

Consider Checkers Sixty60. In a market many assumed was too price-sensitive for rapid on-demand delivery, Sixty60 kept shipping useful features, expanding store fulfilment and tuning operations. By early September, its sales were already 40% of all Woolworths Food sales1, a scale few predicted for a five-year-old service.

Execution kept pace with ambition in the year to June 2025. Sales of approximately R18.9-billion, service from 694 stores, with 94% on-time delivery and 96.8% fulfilment. That is operational proof that disciplined, low-risk experimentation can compound into category leadership.

Innovation starts by solving customer problems people feel every day. Not abstract visions debated in boardrooms. Sixty60 targeted everyday friction and removed it. Crucially, they scaled through existing strengths including stores, supply chain, data, instead of trying to build a separate business from scratch.

Five Practical Shifts to Disrupt Thinking Across Your Workforce:

  • Build diverse, candid teams. Mix backgrounds and roles, and make it safe to ask hard questions and disagree constructively.
  • Make experimentation routine. Run small, low-cost tests, reward learning from missteps, and use "fail fast" to move forward faster.
  • Apply design thinking. Start with user needs, define the real problem, generate many options without early judgment, then test and refine.
  • Run targeted innovation drives. Invite ideas from every function, and involve suppliers, partners, academics and customers to broaden insight.
  • Challenge the defaults. Regularly question "the way we've always done it," ask "why not?" and explore new processes and technologies.

A Simple Playbook to Start This Quarter:

  • Create a "problem backlog." Each business unit lists its top three customer/productivity frictions; rank by impact and how quickly you can test.
  • Do "Field Fridays." Once a month, every manager, including finance and HR, spends one to two hours listening, observing, or shadowing where value is created.
  • Change what you measure. Add learn rate (validated insights per quarter) and time-to-evidence to the executive scorecard.
  • Upskill leaders for "both/and." Teach managers to balance efficiency and innovation, stability and agility without false either/or trade-offs.

Transformation sticks when new behaviours become the default. When teams define problems precisely, implement low-cost tests, and act on evidence, transformation becomes how the company works every week, in every function.

The Leadership Capability to Make it Stick

Changing how people think and decide is a leadership job. It needs human-centred leadership, design-thinking literacy and practical tools to orchestrate innovation. Those are the outcomes we built into Red & Yellow's Postgraduate Diploma in Creative Leadership.

This one-year, on-campus (10hrs per week) programme develops leaders who can drive innovation, apply design-thinking in commercial contexts and lead positive organisational change, with assignments designed to be applied directly at work.

If you want to turn strategy into momentum and then turn this momentum into measurable results, equip your managers with the mindsets and methods that power daily innovation.

For more information, visit www.redandyellow.co.za. You can also follow Red & Yellow Creative School of Business on Facebook, LinkedIn, or on Instagram.

*Image courtesy of contributor