The problem for many of us is not that we don’t have any good ideas, it’s that we have too many. The same is true of “brainstorming” exercises carried out by teams and organisations. Too many ideas are not effective, it’s just not possible to action them all well. Either too many ideas are poorly executed or too many good ideas are left on the shelf frustrating the people who thought of them and making them feel as though their contribution is not valued.
If you want to be effective when it comes to ideas it is vital to identify the ultimate objective, work out what will make you remarkable on the way to meeting that objective, and formulate a small number of good ideas in order to make progress toward the ultimate goal. Good leaders set up their teams to focus with laser like precision on one thing and then collect a small number of good ideas that will help them achieve that one thing and then implement those ideas.
There are few worse things for morale than soliciting good ideas and then not executing them, and therefore the trick employed by effective leaders is to get just the good ideas that relate to the objective and can actually be put into practice. The same is true of those of us who work alone. The world is full of so many opportunities and it is very probably a “good” idea to pursue all of them. The problem is, you can’t. If you try, you just end up doing everything badly. Effective people know how to say no to good ideas and bad ones. Steve Jobs was famous for turning down really “good” ideas because they did not fit with the objective of Apple. The really good thing was that the people proposing those ideas clearly understood why they had been rejected and knew that if they wanted to pursue them they would need to do it elsewhere.
If you are a leader of many, or of one, then restrict the good ideas. Explain why many good ideas are being shelved. There are two possible reasons and both are valid. Firstly, it’s a good idea but does not fit with the ultimate objective, and therefore should never be adopted. It’s a good idea for someone else but not for us. Secondly, it’s a good idea but it’s time has not yet come for us and so it will be adopted, but in the future. If people are aware of this then it is much more likely that they will come up with ideas that are not only good, but capable of immediate adoption. The worse scenario is for the ideas to be seen as good but never adopted and no explanation given. This just results in disillusionment. How many times have you heard people say “there’s no point putting forward ideas, they never see the light of day”
Good ideas come along all the time, but if you want to be effective you need to say no to all but the great ones. Too many good ideas are not effective and can even have a negative effect if not filtered properly.
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