Some of my most profound lessons in leadership, inclusion, and structured creativity didn’t come from classrooms they came from trying to co-create across cultures, time zones, and personalities.
At the height of my time working as Global Program Coordinator for the Museum for the United Nations (UN Live), I was tasked with a project that truly tested my ability to lead innovation through collaboration.
We had facilitators spread across 23 global locations. People in Alaska reported to me that they were nine hours behind. Meanwhile, I reported to my boss in India, who was four and a half hours ahead. It felt like I was always either catching up or trying not to miscalculate Zoom meeting times, especially in March and October when times change in the CET time zone. Yet, this wasn’t the hardest part.
The real challenge was building something meaningful together.
The project was called “Global We”, a climate change awareness initiative that would be featured in physical and digital “portals” around the world. It had to be relevant in Lagos, powerful in Copenhagen, understandable in Alaska, and urgent in New York. But with people from such different backgrounds, the biggest tension wasn’t time, it was ideas.
Everyone brought something brilliant. But brilliance can become overwhelming when there’s no structure. Left unchecked, it turns to friction: which idea is better, whose voice is louder, which region’s story feels more important. The risk? We’d drown in addons and details, and miss the core.
That’s where design thinking saved us.
I learned early on in the project that the one thing that always brought us back to alignment was the problem. We would often pause the Miro board, turn on my mic, and remind us all: “Let’s go back to what we’re solving.”
The problem was simple, but urgent: People do not understand the real effects of climate change, and this ignorance is shaping behaviours that put our planet at risk. That was the core. The user needed to walk away from each program with more than inspiration, they needed a shift in awareness.
The more we anchored on this, the less we argued over content length, visual metaphors, or cultural preferences. It was never about whose region had the best idea, it was always about what would shift the understanding of a 14-year-old girl walking into a portal in Lima, Accra, or Jakarta.
That’s what design thinking teaches us. Not just to generate ideas but to frame problems clearly, and return to them when the room gets noisy. It teaches us that innovation doesn’t come from adding more, but from staying grounded in what matters.
And it’s the same principle I now use to lead programs at Skilled For Work .
Whenever a team member brings a new idea, whether for our curriculum or marketing, I ask, “What problem are we solving?” Not to diminish their creativity, but to refine it. Because once the problem is clear, the solution becomes obvious. Without clarity, even the best ideas can become distractions.
So, whether you’re managing global teams, building curriculum, or designing interventions, I’ll leave you with this:
Don’t fall in love with your idea. Fall in love with the problem.
That’s how you stay grounded. That’s how innovation moves forward.
Dr Aderinsola Adio-Adepoju
Sustainability | Innovation & Entrepreneurship | Global Opportunities | Employability Skills