There are two attractions every tourist wants to see when they visit Seattle.

The first one is the Space Needle.
Duh.

The second one is Pike Place Market (NOT “Pike’s Place Market,” please!)

(For the record, parking is impossible at each of these landmarks.)

And I get why people want to visit the market.

It’s cool. Lots to see and do: craftspeople, fish vendors, restaurants, a magic store.

Some years ago, one of the fish vendors (there are several) at the market wasn’t doing well. In fact, they were on the brink of bankruptcy.

So they had a meeting of the entire staff, which probably comprised maybe eight or ten people. And they started asking questions:

• How can we avoid bankruptcy?

• How can we bring in more customers?

• What if we put the fish on sale?

Typical questions. Obvious questions. The type of questions you or I might ask in similar circumstances.

And they were coming up with typical answers. Obvious answers.

Answers that weren’t moving the needle.

But then…

…their newest employee—a 16-year-old part-timer—popped his head up and asked a different question. A bigger question.

An outlandish question.

“How can we become world-famous?”

You can feel the difference, can’t you?

The difference between “What if we put the fish on sale?” and “How can we become world-famous?”

Two VERY different questions.

In fact, the second one is not just a different question, it’s a different magnitude of question.

It changes the entire context of the conversation, doesn’t it?

It completely re-frames the situation.

And opens up possibilities that don’t exist within the frame of the smaller question.

You can’t answer “How can we become world-famous?” with the same thinking you’d use for “What if we put the fish on sale?”

It’s a question that not only moves the needle; it changes the game.

And they did it.

They became world famous.

You’ve probably seen them. Either in-person or on video. Or you’ve read the book. Or you’ve done the training.

They’re the guys who throw the fish.

People travel thousands of miles to see them.

In fact, THEY are the reason everyone wants to visit Pike Place Market! To see the guys from Pike Place Fish throw the damn fish!

Here’s the takeaway: You’ll never get a million-dollar answer by asking five-dollar questions.

If you need a million-dollar idea,
ask a million-dollar question.

The post The Million-Dollar Question Behind a World-Famous Fish Stand appeared first on Innovation Keynote Speaker Bill Stainton.

“Will we still be relevant one year from today? Will I still be relevant one year from today?”

That’s it.

Right there.

That’s the secret, unvoiced fear that I’m sensing from a lot of leaders.

And, if not one year, certainly two.

It’s the relevance question.

Here’s what it looks like:

• You feel like your last truly great idea was years ago.

• You know you should be keeping up with every change, but you feel like you’re falling further behind every day.

• You and your team come up with lots of ideas, but they’re all just variations of the same old ideas, none of them move the needle, and few—if any—actually get done.

And look, I get it. I’ve been there too. In times of rapid change, overwhelm is real. And it’s easy to think everyone else has it figured out…except you.
You and your team.
You and your business.

Ever feel that way? (C’mon…be honest.)

Here’s the secret: So does everyone else.

But here’s the good news: Becoming relevant is actually easier than most people think.

Not effortless.
Not overnight.

But easier.

In fact, most teams that I work with unlock relevance and innovation by making just a few small shifts. Here are three that work for my clients:

1. ASK A DIFFERENT QUESTION.
   Same questions = same answers. Change the question—even slightly—and you change the possibilities.
   Instead of “How do we do this faster?” try:

   • “What would make this unnecessary?”

   • “What would our boldest, scariest competitor do?”

2. BORROW IDEAS FROM OUTSIDE YOUR INDUSTRY.
   Innovation rarely comes from staring harder at your own problems.
   Look at how others—totally unrelated to you—solve their problems.
   Then ask, “How can I apply this solution to my situation?”

3. START WITH VERSION 1.0.
   Too many teams wait for perfect.
   But perfect is slow. Perfect is expensive. Perfect is late.
   Build the small, safe version first—the quick test, the fast experiment.
   Momentum beats perfection every time.

Here’s what I’ve found: When leaders and teams make shifts like these, relevance stops feeling like a moving target. It becomes something manageable. Something doable.

If relevance is the question, consider this your weekend prompt.

(BTW, if you’d like some help putting these shifts into practice with your team, I’m always happy to talk. Just reach out.)

The post The Question Leaders Are Afraid to Ask Out Loud appeared first on Innovation Keynote Speaker Bill Stainton.

Or that he was even there.

The reveal would be a surprise for Act 3 of my comedy TV show, Almost Live!

Act 3 is roughly 20 minutes into the show.

Which means we had to keep both ends of the horse quiet for 20 minutes. Because otherwise the sharper members of the studio audience would think,

“That sounds/smells like a horse. I’ll bet money they’re gonna bring a horse out here sometime during the show.”

Kinda kills the joke.

Act 3 was going to feature a sketch in which Joel McHale—before he became a big national TV star—would play William Wallace (from Braveheart) and rail on about “Our FREEDOM!”

This was kind of a recurring bit for us, and this time, I thought it would be funny and cool if he rode out on horseback.

Way to go, Bill.

So I called a horse guy.

And that afternoon, he brought a horse to the studio.

I use the term “horse” loosely.

I mean, yes, technically it was a horse. But in a week—two weeks tops—this horse would be coming out of a bottle labeled “Elmer’s.” If you know what I’m saying.

And, like many aging animals (great-grandparents, perhaps), this horse did not have 100% control over its bowels. That became apparent within minutes.
(Side note: It really sucked to be an “Almost Live!” intern that day.)

[Flash forward to Act 3.]

Somehow, it worked. The horse stayed quiet, his intestines stayed quiet, and Joel made a fabulous entrance as the Uniter of Scotland.

So why am I telling you this?

You: “Yes, Bill—good lord, why are you telling us this?!”

Because innovation is a lot like that day with the horse.

From the audience’s (read: client’s) view, it looks polished and intentional.
Behind the curtain? Chaos, cleanup, and crossed fingers.

But that’s how breakthroughs happen: you take risks, make a mess, and trust the process long enough to reach Act 3.

Even if it smells a little questionable during rehearsal.

The post The Horse, the Chaos, and the Secret Behind Innovation appeared first on Innovation Keynote Speaker Bill Stainton.

So there was this time when Julia Child cooked breakfast for me—and I turned it down.

I’d become friends with Graham Kerr, who rose to fame as The Galloping Gourmet, one of TV’s original celebrity chefs.

By the mid-’90s, Graham and his wife Treena had moved to Seattle and were producing a new cooking show in the same studio where I produced my comedy show, Almost Live! Because of health issues, Graham had left behind the butter and cream of his Galloping days and turned to healthy, minimalist cooking.

Then in 1995, he appeared with his friend Julia Child in a PBS special. To promote it, they hosted a VIP-only breakfast in the local PBS studio.

In my case, “VIP” stood for “Friend Of Graham.” (Yeah, I know. Let’s not overthink it.)

When I walked in, the studio smelled incredible. Two cooking stations—one for Graham, one for Julia. Tables with name cards all around.

Graham was busy cooking twigs, berries, small pebbles…you know—healthy, minimalist food.

But Julia Child! Oh my goodness! French toast, fluffy scrambled eggs, and BACON! Oh lord, the bacon.

This was going to be the Breakfast of a Lifetime!

And then I found my name card. I was to be seated right next to…Graham Kerr. My friend.

So when Julia Child herself held out a steaming plate of French toast, eggs, and bacon, I politely declined.

And filled my plate at Graham’s station instead. Twigs. Berries. Small pebbles.

Moments later, Graham sat down beside me—with a plate loaded with French toast, eggs, and bacon.

I stared. “Graham, what the hell are you doing?”

He laughed. “Are you kidding? How can you resist Julia’s bacon?”

I immediately got up, walked back to Julia, and filled up on French toast, eggs, and bacon.

It was the Breakfast of a Lifetime!

Look, I didn’t initially turn down Julia’s breakfast because I didn’t want it.
I turned it down because I thought I was supposed to.

And that’s the trap I see a lot of leaders fall into—
confusing playing by the rules with doing the right thing.

• Innovation rarely comes from rule-followers.

• It comes from people who know when the rules are really rules…
  and when they’re just suggestions.

The real innovators are the ones who can smile, push back their chair, and say,
“Actually, I’ll have what she’s cooking.”

The post The Day I Turned Down Breakfast with Julia Child (and What It Taught Me About Leadership) appeared first on Innovation Keynote Speaker Bill Stainton.

Corn on the cob.

Growing up in Lancaster County, PA, we ate a lot of corn on the cob during the summer.

And, inexplicably, each person in my family ate it differently.

My dad—for reasons that I’ll never understand—would grab both ends of the corncob in his hands and, with cinematic effort, break it in half.

My mom ate hers in rows, like a typewriter (which you can see in museums and old-timey black-and-white movies).

I ate mine in circles around the circumference, gradually moving from left to right.

I can’t remember how my older sister ate hers.

But my younger sister would just go at it with wild abandon, and no plan whatsoever. A bite here… and then a bite WAY over there. Randomness at its best.

So here are my questions to you:
Which one of us was right?
Which one of us was wrong?

The answer to both questions: Nobody.

Because in the end, the goal was the same—to eat the corn.
We just had different methods of getting there.

And that’s innovation in a nutshell (or cornhusk).

Innovation isn’t about “the one right way.”
It’s about finding a way that works—maybe better, maybe faster, maybe more fun.
It’s about testing approaches, learning, and adjusting.

Too many teams get stuck waiting for the perfect process before they start.
They want consensus, alignment, and a step-by-step plan.
And I get it. Those things give us confidence, safety, a sense of certainty.

But innovation rarely starts that way.

It starts when someone—like my sister—just dives in.

So the next time your team faces a new challenge, stop obsessing over who’s “right.”
Try a few bites from different angles.

You might just find a better way to eat the corn.

The post How My Sister Ate Corn (and What It Taught Me About Innovation) appeared first on Innovation Keynote Speaker Bill Stainton.

That seems logical, doesn’t it?

But here’s the problem: you can’t actually train a crocodile from 20 feet away.

At some point, you have to get close enough to risk getting bit.

(I’m just guessing at all of this, by the way. I have no idea how to train a crocodile…or if they’re even trainable. Honestly, it’s not a very good metaphor. I just liked the opening sentence, and decided to go with it. But let’s pretend the metaphor works, and move on to the point, okay?)

(Where were we?)

(Oh, yeah…)

At some point, you have to get close enough to risk getting bit.

Innovation works the same way.

You can’t lead your team to new ideas from a safe distance.
You can’t delegate curiosity.
You can’t outsource the messy part.

Real innovation means getting close to the chaos.
The failed experiments.
The awkward questions.
The uncomfortable feedback.

That’s where the real learning happens.
That’s where the transformation lives.
That’s where the needle starts to move.

Want to start small?
Pick one thing this week to experiment with—something so small it couldn’t possibly fail big.

• A new question to ask.

• A new process to try.

• A tiny risk to take.

Because those small experiments? They’re how innovation muscles get stronger.

Many (most?) leaders want innovation without the risk.
They want to “train the crocodile” while keeping their shoes dry.

But the teams that actually innovate?

They’re the ones who wade in.
Carefully. Intentionally. But fully.

Because you can’t tame what you’re not willing to approach.

The post You Can’t Train a Crocodile from 20 Feet Away appeared first on Innovation Keynote Speaker Bill Stainton.

I mean, it wasn’t working. We had a new host, and the fit wasn’t great. We weren’t attracting any (or many, at least) “name” guests. We were losing in the ratings to—of all things—a public affairs talk show on the ABC affiliate.

And I didn’t know how to fix it.

The big problem was the interview segments. The caliber of the guests didn’t help, but adding to that was the fact that the new host just wasn’t a good interviewer.

During the summer hiatus, I racked my brain for solutions.
Can we increase the budget to attract better guests?
Can I find training for the host?
Can we somehow change the structure of the interview segments to make them better?

Aaaaaargh!!! Please, just cancel the show. Put us out of our misery!

Think, Bill, think….

The late-night desperation thought: It would be so nice if we could just eliminate those stupid interviews altogether!

But then…how would we fill the time?

Audience participation?
Live music?
Something else?

Aaaaaaaargh!!!

Another late-night desperation thought: It would be so nice if we didn’t have to fill the time!

But then we’d only be a half-hour show.
A half-hour of just comedy.

The one part of the show that was working.

The jokes were working. The sketches were working. That’s what we did best.

So…WHAT IF…we just focused on what we did best—and dropped the rest?

What if we became a tight, funny, half-hour show?

Well, if we did THAT…then maybe…just maybe…we could move out of our miserable Sunday 6pm time slot, and—again, maybe, just maybe—move to the much more comedy-friendly time slot of Saturday at 11:30pm (if—and it’s a big if—we could convince NBC to let us push Saturday Night Live up to midnight, so that we could be its lead-in—something that nobody else in the country was allowed to do).

[A bunch of stuff happens.]

Season 6.
Saturday. 11:30pm.

You tune in to the Seattle NBC affiliate.

And you don’t see Saturday Night Live.

You see my show. Almost Live!

That’s our time slot for the next 10 years.

And during those 10 years, we were never—NEVER—less than #1 in the ratings.

Sometimes (often), innovation isn’t about adding new things.
New features. New functions. New bells and whistles.

Sometimes (often), innovation is about letting go of what’s not working, and focusing on what you do best.

Because, in the end, innovation isn’t about doing more.
It’s about daring to do less, better.

The post When Doing Less Led to #1 appeared first on Innovation Keynote Speaker Bill Stainton.

I was sure of it. Every sensation in my body confirmed it. My instructor and I were going to die.

Then I heard his calm voice:

“Trust the instruments.”

I was not yet a licensed pilot, and during this training session I was flying “under the hood.” This means I was wearing a weird plastic device that blocked me from seeing outside the plane, so my only reference was what the instruments on the panel were telling me.

My instructor would give me instructions like:

• “Ascend to 7,800 feet on a heading of 250, and then fly straight and level.”

• “Descend to 6,500 while maintaining a 30-degree left bank.”

• “Initiate a steep turn to the right, maintaining altitude, and hold the turn until I tell you otherwise.”

Now, here’s the weird thing:

When you initiate a steep turn in an airplane, you feel it. But if you stay in that turn long enough, your body—particularly your inner ears—acclimates to it.

And so it feels like you’re flying straight and level.

So when your instructor tells you to fly straight and level, it feels like you already are.

And when you do what the instruments say you need to do to actually fly straight and level, it feels like you’re intentionally entering into a death spiral.

I mean, it really, REALLY feels that way.

So, at that moment, every fiber of my being was screaming,

“You’re going to crash!”

But the instruments—the actual data—said otherwise.

And that’s when I realized my senses were lying to me.

When you stay in a turn long enough, your body gets used to it. You feel straight and level, even when you’re banking hard toward disaster. The only way to correct course is to trust the instruments.
To rely on something outside your own perception.

And that’s not just true in aviation.

It’s true in business.
It’s true in leadership.
It’s true in innovation.

Because when you get too comfortable with how you’ve always done things, you stop noticing the warning signs.
You mistake routine for stability.
Familiarity for safety.

And that’s when you can drift off course—thinking you’re flying straight and level the whole time.

So maybe the question isn’t,

“How comfortable do I feel right now?”

Maybe it’s,

“Am I still flying straight and level—or have I just gotten used to the turn?”

The post Trust the Instruments appeared first on Innovation Keynote Speaker Bill Stainton.

And then…I dunno…letting it crawl up and down your arm?

My feelings about it are as follows: NO @#$!%^& WAY!!!

So I’m not quite sure why I celebrated one of my birthdays a few years ago at the Victoria Bug Zoo in Victoria, BC.

It was one of my decade birthdays, and on my decade birthdays I try to do at least one thing I’ve never done before. Over the years I’ve gone whale watching and skydiving, visited China, and done a few other coolio things.

On this birthday, I decided I was going to get over my fear once and for all—and hold a damn tarantula.

Seemed like a good idea at the time.

And that’s how I found myself at the Victoria Bug Zoo, staring eyeball to eyeballs with my nemesis: a spider the size of a salad plate.
A small salad plate, to be fair. But still…

Now, at the Bug Zoo, you don’t just jump straight to holding a tarantula. No, you have to warm up first.

• Giant hissing cockroaches.

• Giant millipedes.

• Giant walking sticks.

(Why does everything here have to be Giant?)

Oh, right. The scorpions weren’t giant. They were just…scorpions. Another animal that had never been on my “too cute NOT to hold” wish list.

But you know what? Once they were in my hands and on my arms, none of these creatures seemed particularly creepy!
In fact, it was kind of fun!

So by the time I got to the tarantula, I wasn’t just ready…I was eager.

“There are some tarantulas in here that even we don’t touch,” said the docent (or whatever they call themselves).
“But this one here is basically the golden retriever of tarantulas. He’s harmless and very friendly.”

And he was!
To the point where, after letting him crawl all over me, I didn’t want to give him back!

Sometimes the things you avoid the longest turn out to be the things you end up loving the most.

We build them up in our minds. We tell ourselves stories about how terrifying or impossible they’ll be.

And then, when we finally do the thing, we realize we were never afraid of the thing itself.

We were afraid of what we thought the thing would be.

That’s true for innovation too.

New ideas, new tools, new ways of doing business—they can feel like tarantulas at first.

Big. Hairy. Dangerous. ️

But more often than not, once you actually try them, you realize…

Oh.

This isn’t so scary.

In fact, it’s kind of fun.

So maybe the next time you catch yourself saying, “No @#$!%^& way,” that’s exactly the thing you should explore next.

Because that’s where the breakthroughs are hiding.

So consider this:
Maybe the tarantula isn’t the problem.
Maybe it’s the story you’ve been telling yourself about it.

The post The Tarantula, the Terror, and the Truth About Innovation appeared first on Innovation Keynote Speaker Bill Stainton.

A little history: From roughly 1989 to 1998, author Salman Rushdie was actively in hiding because of an Iranian fatwa against him. During that time, he occasionally gave interviews—but always in secret, with no public notice.

Which is how, one Tuesday in 1998, I found out that Salman Rushdie had done an interview with a KING-TV news reporter two days earlier…on the set of my TV show, Almost Live!

WHAT A MISSED OPPORTUNITY!

If only I had known!

I mean, the promo writes itself, doesn’t it?

“Hi, I’m author Salman Rushdie. I can’t tell you where I’ll be this Saturday at 11:30pm, but I can tell you what I’ll be doing: watching Almost Live! on KING-TV!”

We’d done funny promos before with other celebrities: Michael Jordan, Davy Jones of The Monkees, Terry Jones of Monty Python.

This would have been fabulous.

But I didn’t know he had been there.

Missed opportunity.

Fast forward to 2003. The University of Michigan.

I’m at a private reception for Salman Rushdie. (My sister, who taught there, had an “in.”)

I’m introduced to Salman, we chat for a few minutes, and then I casually (and by “casually” I mean awkwardly) recount the promo idea I’d had five years before. I finish by saying, “So…is that something you would…”

“In a heartbeat!” he said, before I’d even finished.

Salman Rushdie is a performer at heart, with a wicked sense of humor.

If only I’d known he’d been in the building.

The problem wasn’t a lack of creativity—it was a lack of connection.

Rushdie was on our set, and we never knew.

How many great ideas inside organizations meet the same fate because departments don’t talk, or information gets stuck in silos?

Innovation thrives where communication does.

The more connected we are, the more creative we become.

As I say in my keynotes, “It’s all about connecting dots!”

The post The Brilliant Idea That Never Happened appeared first on Innovation Keynote Speaker Bill Stainton.