The RACI matrix almost got it right but still harbors too much ambiguity. In your team’s formal planning, govern only what is worth documenting outside email, and nothing else. Govern with just Five Verbs: Draft, Review, Revise, Approve, Distribute.

Innovation professionals spend a lot of time in meetings. Rethink the relationship between meetings and “real work.” Have a firm grasp of the numerous ingredients of effective meetings.

Documentation is unpopular to build, but once you have it, it’s valuable to your current and future teams. Documentation is valuable for so long, it qualifies as an Asset Portfolio.

Thirty years into use, email continues to be a critical communication channel for innovation teams. But you often suffer from email overload. Know every trait of good and bad usage of email.

Meetings are great opportunities for team members to build upon each others’ ideas. Meetings are critical for alignment. Know every trait of a good meeting in order to maximize them.

Meetings are expensive, so you’d like the quality to rise. You have too many meetings, so you’d like the quantity to fall. Know every trait of a bad meeting in order to minimize them.

Verb Sprawl is a real problem that slows teams down. In planning your team’s work, instead of governing meetings or emails, govern what is worth documenting outside email. Govern with just Five Verbs: Draft, Review, Revise, Approve, Distribute.

Which of your culture traits can you trace to impacting your waste? Consider whiplash, noise, inauthenticity, idle work, idle worker, Reply All’s, Backlog, last-minute cancellations, too many cooks, unused talent, and mismatched collaboration and competition. Fix your culture. Fix your Waste.

Your organization might be caught in meeting gridlock and email overload. You cannot just talk and email your way to success. You must document things outside email. It’s dry, sterile, unforgiving, and ruthless. But documentation keeps its value. A ruthless factory results in a valuable Asset Portfolio.

Use Five Verbs to pace, synchronize, and assign building your project’s Asset Portfolio.

Every organization must welcome and capture ideas for change. A Change Log is a form of Suggestion Box. Let stakeholders know you understand their ideas, and you are prioritizing them among other ideas.

Which of your culture traits can you trace to impacting your variability? Consider how your innovation team writes. Apply your exotic word choice in marketing and poetry, not with your core innovation team. Controlled variability through these five writing strategies makes your team focused and fast.