At this point in the project, ideation was not flowing as expected. I ran a few sessions with the UX team, but we struggled to move past safe ideas, and the energy in the room felt restrained. Part of that was contextual: several designers had joined the team just a week earlier, and there wasn’t enough trust yet to openly challenge ideas or propose bold directions. To change the dynamic, I introduced the Worst Possible Idea exercise. The shift was immediate. Once the first deliberately bad idea was put on the table, tension dropped and the conversation loosened. More ideas followed, people started reacting to each other, and the session quickly became more fluid and collaborative. What stood out was how quickly the group moved from joking about terrible ideas to identifying interesting angles worth exploring. We laughed, got to know each other better, and by the end of the session the team felt more comfortable working together. That sense of ease carried over into later ideation sessions, where participation became more natural and confident.