Blue Sky Time: Make Time to Think!

You didn’t get where you are by playing it safe. But when was the last time you gave yourself permission to think big—like, really big? You’ve mastered the day-to-day grind, but the best leaders are carving out time to think, dream, and push boundaries. Are you?

What is Blue Sky Thinking?

Blue sky thinking is brainstorming without limits. When you give yourself permission to problem-solve beyond what's practical or doable right now—no immediate constraints like budgets, timelines, or the realities of your current situation—you’re blue sky thinking.

The Benefits of Taking Time to Think

Blue sky thinking isn’t “thinking big” for its own sake. It creates actionable, innovative ideas that keep businesses competitive, agile, and future-focused.

• Long-term success: There’s a shift when leadership can break out of the immediate, day-to-day fire-fighting and focus on where the business is heading. You start thinking in terms of the next five or ten years, rather than just next quarter.
• Employee engagement and growth: When people feel responsible for their careers and are empowered to think big, they stay engaged and invested. They grow, and your company grows with them.
• Stay competitive: Blue sky thinking keeps businesses exploring new markets, products, and services. You start seeing opportunities in places where, without creative thinking, you wouldn’t normally look.
• Future-proof your business: By pushing boundaries and considering different scenarios, companies are better equipped to adapt when things change. It creates a kind of mental agility, so when the unexpected happens (like a market shift or crisis), there’s a broader toolkit to pull from.

How to Foster a Culture of Blue Sky Thinking

To make this kind of thinking work, your team needs to feel psychologically safe (stay tuned to learn more about psychological safety from my first blog in January!). Safe to toss out ideas that might fail. Safe to challenge the status quo. Safe to make some mistakes. When your team feels like they can take risks without fear of judgment, they’ll be more likely to bring their boldest, most creative ideas to the table.

Your job? Set the tone. Make it clear that new ideas are not only welcome but encouraged, and that it’s okay if they don’t all pan out. That’s how you’ll get to the gold.

• Involve your leadership team: Big ideas don’t come from one person. Get your leadership team involved so they feel ownership of where the company is heading—it’s the Sera philosophy, “My career is my responsibility.” This is a culture mindset that everyone should buy into.
• Bring in outside perspectives: Sometimes, all it takes to break out of your usual way of thinking is a fresh pair of eyes. Hire a coach or bring in consultants who can challenge you.
• Embrace failure: This is the whole point of blue sky thinking. Not every idea will hit, and that’s okay. Encourage your team to take risks and learn from what doesn’t work.
• Do it. Set aside time free from distractions where your team can put the concept of blue sky thinking into practice.

What Blue Sky Brainstorming Looks Like

Blue sky thinking works best when structured but still allows for complete freedom. Here's how the process typically plays out, and what it looks like when done right:

• Set the environment: You need a clean break from the usual, and space to mentally and physically think without interruptions beyond the confines of the day-to-day.
• Pick a challenge, opportunity, or question: Be broad and avoid overly specific questions that box people in, like “What would our business look like if we doubled in size?”
• Let the ideas flow: Get the obvious answers out of the way, then keep throwing out ideas, no matter how wild or out there they seem. Nothing gets shut down.
• Refine and evaluate: Start to pull back and look at what’s feasible. Find the gems in the mix. This doesn’t mean you kill the big ideas—you might break them down and see how they could actually work in pieces.
• Take action: At the end of the session, you should have a mix of ideas—some wild, some doable, and others that spark new pathways. The goal is to take a few of these ideas and integrate them into the company’s longer-term strategy.

The key is that you’ve pushed the team out of their comfort zone, and now you have gotten them used to fresh, forward-thinking to guide future decisions. But it starts with YOU!

The Bottom Line

Blue sky thinking looks like a dynamic, boundary-pushing think session that encourages everyone to throw out wild, ambitious ideas. It works because it creates the space to think big—something most businesses don’t make time for in their regular grind.

Sera Business Advisors, can help businesses like yours foster innovation and build a culture that encourages bold ideas. Ready to dream big? Let's make it happen.

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Sera Business Advisors is a management consulting firm specializing in HR with a business-first approach. Sera fosters growth and strategic development through training programs, an extensive library of proprietary tools, and a deep understanding of business for emerging startups, middle market companies, and publicly traded companies. To learn more, visit seraadvisors.com.