As anyone who has walked a dog knows, sniffing takes time. My dog can spend a full five minutes in one spot and if I allow her to follow her nose on walks it doubles how long we are gone. Usually, I give it a few minutes and then hurry her along.
But I received a training tip from my veterinarian encouraging me to allow my dog to take its time. “Let your dog sniff,” it read. “Not allowing them to exercise their nose can be a form of sensory deprivation. Being smell-blind may be stressful for them.”
I think of the parallels between allowing time for dogs to sniff and giving employees unscheduled time for creativity at work. Too often, we rush both pooches and staff to “hurry up and do your business” so we can finish quickly and move on to what’s next. But just as dogs can become smell-blind, we cause employees to become creatively-blind when we rush things and don’t allow time for “organizational sniffing” — poking around on new projects, pondering new ideas, or informally interacting with colleagues.
If you keep your staff on a tight leash and don’t allow the freedom for ideas to incubate, you’re focused on quantity instead of quality of thought. Grant them the time to sniff a bit and see what new things they can discover.
