The marker cap clicks. It is a sharp, plastic sound that cuts through the hum of the air conditioning, which is set to a precise 68 degrees, though it feels like a damp cave. I am holding a Sharpie that smells faintly of almonds and bad decisions. Around me, 18 people are leaning over a mahogany table that likely cost more than my first three cars combined, staring at a blank whiteboard with the intensity of surgeons about to perform a heart transplant. But we aren’t saving lives. We are ‘ideating’ for the third time this quarter. That song is back again-the bass line from a synth-pop track I heard in a taxi 48 minutes ago-looping in the back of my skull, rhythmic and annoying, matching the steady tap of my foot against the expensive carpet.

He is staring at a stack of neon orange sticky notes as if they contain a secret language he will never master. He leans over and whispers that the light back at the station needs cleaning, a job that takes 8 hours of focused, physical labor, yet here he is, being asked to ‘disrupt the paradigms’ of middle management.

The Scripted Contribution

We are told to write one idea per note. No judging. No self-censorship. The facilitator, a woman named Chloe who wears a vest with exactly 8 pockets, tells us that there are no bad ideas in this room. This is the first lie of the morning. There are plenty of bad ideas. In fact, most of the ideas being scribbled down right now are catastrophic, born from a desperate need to appear productive while simultaneously avoiding any actual risk.

He has done it. He has contributed to the theater.

The Highest Paid Person’s Opinion

I’ve seen this play out 28 times in the last year. The room fills with color. The whiteboard becomes a mosaic of discarded thoughts. We categorize them into ‘buckets.’ We vote with little red stickers. And then, the Highest Paid Person in the Room (the HiPPO) stands up. He looks at the 498 ideas we’ve generated, smiles a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, and points to the one idea he had before the meeting even started. He calls it ‘the most viable path forward.’ The neon mosaic is photographed, uploaded to a cloud folder that will never be opened again, and then unceremoniously dumped into a recycling bin.

This is the core of the frustration. It’s not that brainstorming is inherently flawed; it’s that we’ve turned it into a safety valve for corporate anxiety. When a company feels stagnant, they don’t change the underlying structure or fire the incompetent leadership. They buy $88 worth of snacks and call for a brainstorm. It gives the illusion of democracy while maintaining the autocracy. But visibility is not influence.

The Weight of Execution

I remember a project back in 2008 where we spent 58 days brainstorming the name for a new software suite. We had lists that stretched across three offices. We hired consultants who charged $1288 an hour to tell us that ‘blue’ was a soothing color. In the end, the founder named it after his dog. The cynicism that follows these sessions is a thick, oily film that you can’t just wash off. It breeds a specific kind of internal rot where the most creative people simply stop trying. They learn to provide the expected performance-the ‘innovation theater’-while keeping their real insights tucked away in private notebooks where they can’t be contaminated by the ‘yes, and’ crowd.

The Lighthouse Question

Reese K. finally speaks up. The room goes quiet because his voice has the gravelly resonance of someone who talks to the wind more than people. He asks, ‘If we spend all day deciding which way the wind might blow, who is going to keep the light burning?’ Chloe, the facilitator, blinks. She doesn’t have a slide for this. She tries to pivot, saying that the ‘light’ is a metaphor for our brand identity, but Reese just shakes his head. To him, the light is a 1008-watt bulb that keeps people from dying. To the rest of the room, everything is a metaphor. Nothing is allowed to be just a task that needs doing.

“

To him, the light is a 1008-watt bulb that keeps people from dying. To the rest of the room, everything is a metaphor. Nothing is allowed to be just a task that needs doing.

I find myself staring at the clock. It’s 11:38. We have 22 minutes left before the ‘catered lunch experience.’ I realize I’ve been tapping out the rhythm of that taxi song for the last 18 minutes. I wonder if anyone else noticed. Probably not. They are too busy ‘clustering’ the ideas into a Venn diagram that looks like a three-eyed monster.

The Intoxication of the Beginning

We are addicted to the start. The beginning of an idea is intoxicating because it has no failures yet. It’s perfect and weightless. Execution, on the other hand, is heavy. It’s where the 88 small mistakes happen. It’s where the reality of the budget clashes with the fantasy of the whiteboard. Most people in this room are terrified of execution because it’s the only place where you can truly fail. In a brainstorm, you are always a genius. In the real world, you are just a person trying to make a piece of software work at 2:18 in the morning while your eyes burn.

Returning to Tangible Reality

As we stand up to break for lunch, I watch Reese K. walk straight for the door. He’s not staying for the artisanal wraps. He’s going back to his tower, back to the 588 steps he has to climb, back to the salt and the grease and the tangible reality of a light that actually works. I feel a pang of jealousy. He deals in lumens and oil, while I deal in ‘synergy’ and ‘pivot points.’

It’s just a quiet plea for competence. I put it in my pocket. Maybe I’ll take it home and stick it on my own wall, away from the 18-pocket vests and the mahogany tables.

The Endless Thump

That song is still there. It’s the part where the vocals drop out and it’s just the drum machine. Thump-thump-click. Thump-thump-click. It sounds like a heart, or a clock, or the sound of 108 people in a building all pretending they know what they’re doing while they wait for the weekend to save them. We walk into the hallway, the smell of lukewarm coffee following us like a ghost. Another session finished. Another 288 sticky notes destined for the shredder. We feel like we’ve moved mountains, but when we look outside, the horizon hasn’t shifted an inch.

I wonder if the HiPPO knows. I wonder if he sits in his office and laughs at the theater of it all, or if he’s as much a victim of the ritual as we are. Probably the latter. It’s easier to believe in the process than to admit that we are mostly just guessing in the dark, hoping that if we use enough bright colors, the darkness won’t notice us. Reese is already in his truck. He doesn’t look back. He has work to do. Real work. The kind that doesn’t require a consensus or a dot-voting system. I wish I had a lighthouse. Instead, I have a 48-page report to write about what we ‘learned’ today, knowing full well that the only thing we learned is how to sit still for 188 minutes without screaming.