Ngugi heads up a small product team in Upper Hill, Nairobi, and has come to value brainstorming for the teams he leads.
He books two hours with calendar invites for his team and fills whiteboards during the sessions with idealistic words such as “maximise,” “innovate,” “create value.”
He then asks his team to return to their desks with lofty instructions to “think bigger.” However, a few weeks after each session, nothing ever seems to move. Engineers ponder interpretations while designers try to feel inspired by the themes of the meetings, but nothing materialises. Meanwhile, the sales and marketing teams beg for new products that customers can actually try out.
Ngugi means well, yet his “blue-sky” afternoons keep producing dreams instead of deadlines, results, or staff morale.
Amina, on the other hand, runs a scrappy logistics startup in Kilifi and works from a completely different playbook. When meeting her team, she frames her goals as concisely as possible.
Each time, she defines an innovation mission in a single sentence naming the customer, the desired outcome, and the measure that will prove progress and success. She limits brainstorming sessions to precisely thirty minutes.
All discussions are anchored to that mission sentence and end with clear task owners and one specific deadline. Amina then sets a simple weekly scorecard that shows incremental movement toward the goal—valuing progress over lofty visions—and celebrates those gains. Her team ships rough prototypes to clients, gathers blunt feedback, and refines and iterates.
The office buzzes with excitement not because the staff are chasing dreams, but because they know exactly what they are building next.
Author Amantha Imber argues for this kind of sharp, precise goal-setting. Her research and practice guide leaders away from random, unbounded brainstorming and instead toward clarity at the organisational, team, and individual levels.
The evidence shows that “blue-sky” sessions waste time and actually drain team energy rather than generate it. Conversely, clear missions and well-defined objectives lift both creativity and execution. Employees who understand a company’s goals, and their own role in achieving them, display greater innovation than peers working without that clarity.
Building on Imber’s work, newly published research by Fazal Ayaz, Muhammad Taimur Khan, and Nasir Ali examines how leadership style affects productivity and burnout.
Their analysis finds that transformational leadership drives sustained corporate output and lowers burnout by cultivating vision, cohesion, and creativity. While transactional, task-focused leadership may boost short-term efficiency, it also raises strain unless paired with sustainable practices.
That balance matters for any firm seeking fresh ideas without exhausting its staff. Brainstorming clarity without staff care morphs into pressure, and pressure without purpose undermines innovation.
Additional research by Sajjad Ahmad, Wing Keung Wong, Sheza Riaz, and Asif Iqbal adds a human resource perspective to productivity.
Their field evidence shows that employee motivation increases when organisations clarify responsibilities and measure performance fairly. Too often, companies rely on subjective measures after team brainstorming.
While productivity follows motivation, it grows exponentially when staff are also granted autonomy as a sign of management’s trust.
So what should managers in East Africa actually do? Start by writing a concise innovation mission that names a customer and specifies a result that customer would notice.
Keep it short and concrete. Second, translate that mission into two short-term team goals and one personal goal per member.
Third, conduct weekly progress checks showing what advanced, what stalled, and what the team will stop doing. Fourth, celebrate at least one win each week—no matter how small—to keep momentum high.
Fifth, back this up with humane, specific HR policies and fair KPI measures. Sixth, give staff autonomy over their methods for achieving the goals.
Why does this matter? Because pep talks alone don’t work. Motivation fades within 48 to 72 hours. Employees need tangible systems that help them enhance both their individual and team productivity.
Have a management or leadership issue, question, or challenge? Reach out to Dr. Scott through @ScottProfessor on X or on email [email protected]
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