Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
Let's Get Lost
David Schmaltz is a project manager in Takoma Park, Maryland.
Not everything can be usefully “operationalized.” Innovation, in particular, seems to emerge not from business as usual, but from a curious fog. Most of us try to avoid this fog, and our organizations might even encourage us to try to avoid it. Acknowledging that fog, accepting it, can help us discover innovation that our operational eyes rarely see.
The late physicist Victor Frederick Weisskopf said, "What's beautiful in science is that same thing that's beautiful in Beethoven. There's a fog of events, and suddenly you see a connection."
Organizations seem to have an intrinsic need turn every activity into an operation. In their vernacular, they “operationalize.” Activities that resist operationalization risk being seen as irrelevant, inefficient, or just plain bad because they seem, well, so disorganized. This preference for routine might be a social necessity for every organization, though every organization engages in a lot of non-routine activities. These non-routine activities are essential to an organization’s health, but they can also make the people in it feel crazy. Non-routine activities that are acknowledged are commonly subjected to efforts to “routine-ize” them. The rest remain frustrating or unrecognized.
These unrecognized, unacknowledged activities are blind spots. They exist, but are not “seen.&…
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"There is no shame in not knowing; the shame lies in not finding out." - Russian proverb |