t's there, however, that we find the dilemma that prompted us to meet with Acapela in the first place. You see, in synchronous communication, each participant can apply 'back pressure'. If someone can't find time with you this week, they have no choice but to try again next week. The topics can only go as fast as your mutual availability. When you move to an async model, there is no such effect. One person is free to load up other people with as many topics and conversations as they want to start. In other words, 'async meetings' can easily imply 'limitless meetings'. Tools like Acapela have the opportunity (as part of their UX) to help a little by nudging people to be judicious when creating a 'meeting'. That said, even with those nudges, teams still need to have good, scalable collaboration norms and culture to really combat this issue. This is one of the most prominent reasons we do what we do.

Butter’s agenda planner, delightful interactions, and integrated collaboration tools let you run super-engaging workshops, trainings, and meetings—without juggling a million tools.

A few years ago, IDEO partner Michael Hendrix acknowledged the superficial way that many organizations use design thinking, which he described as a “theater of innovation.” As he put it: “We get a lot of the materials that look like innovation, or look like they make us more creative. “That could be anything from getting a bunch of Sharpie markers and Post-its and putting them in rooms for brainstorms, to having new dress codes, to programming play into the week. “They all could be good tools to serve up creativity or innovation, they all could be methods of design thinking, but without some kind of history or strategy to tie them together, and track their progress, track their impact, they end up being a theatrical thing that people can point to and say, ‘oh we did that.’” I think many organizations fall into the “theater of innovation” trap. As with any methodology, the potential of design thinking is only as great as how it’s actually adopted.