The ‘Best’ Ideas Can Break Your Heart

Falling out of love with your brilliant ideas

Great ideas, are wonderful, aren’t they? We love coming up with them, we’re excited by them, and we’re proud to share them with others so they can love them too. Picking our favourites and pushing them to be number one is simply human nature – especially for A-type personalities like me. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in marketing and advertising, an industry where A-types and the love for brilliant ideas thrive.

But what if this brilliant idea you love is ultimately not the best idea? Seriously, this is not a rhetorical question. I ask this question because after a lot of years in creative agency leadership, I’ve come to this conclusion: The best ideas are rarely the one we fall in love with first, and the ramifications of not challenging every idea can be a recipe for failure.

Think about it. Just because something seems like a great idea in the moment doesn’t mean it’s the right idea later. Yet that’s what we often do, especially in brainstorms – a mainstay of the agency world – where a group of us are assembled in a room, fed tasty snacks and drinks, and have an hour or so to be creative. We collectively come up with ideas, bandy them about, build on them, and then pick the one(s) we love most. The love affair begins, and that’s the problem.

The trouble with love

The thing with love is it tends to happen in the heat of the moment. It can be fleeting, it can be blind, and it notorious for clouding our logic. Ouch! Pardon the cynicism, but it’s true. We need to remind ourselves that the fundamental purpose of a creative idea is to be a logical solution to a problem. It is not to be loved or hated, but to spark further discussion, validation, ideation and ultimately the best ideas. Because if we don’t, we risk making poor business decisions for our clients. You know, the ones who pay us to solve their problems, and keep paying to solve more problems?

Ideation is a process. A process that should take longer than an hour no matter how many people you throw at it. I firmly believe that the most effective creative process is an iterative one. I can get all ‘creative innovation’ on you, but I won’t. Suffice it to say in my experience, I’ve never regretted spending too much time questioning, challenging or even just thinking about an idea.

The pitfalls of idea loving are many, but the biggest one I’ve both seen and experienced is it can waste valuable time, energy, and resources by prolonging the pain of not addressing the (business) problem that needs to be solved. That, my creative professional friends, is what we are paid for, is it not?

Start falling out of love with your brilliant ideas.

Let me be clear, we all do it. There’s no shame in falling head-over-heels with an idea. I’m one of the biggest faller-in-lovers I know. The key is to be able to snap out of it, to start recognizing when you’re defying the logic of what a great idea is. Here are some symptoms to look for:

• It’s getting complicated: Shouldn’t a great idea make things easier?
• You’re defending its honour: Why is that?
• You’re tired of feeling like the smartest person in the room. Time for a reality check?

If this is sounding a lot like past relationships that didn’t work out, then my point has been made. Love makes it personal, and when it’s personal it’s about you. This is not about you. It’s about your client, their business challenge, and how you and everyone involved is there to address and help solve their problem.

Three ways to avoid heartbreak

1. Be fickle: Although not often seen as a positive attribute, in this case it’s the perfect word. When it comes to attaching yourself to ideas, being comfortable with changing your mind, not committing to one thing, and moving on to better options is precisely the kind of behaviour you need to be open to.
2. Be logical: Always question your logic. Without logic, there’s no means to objectively validate whether an idea is good or not. Validation will be the final measure of performance, so quantifiable results are a must.
3. Be focused: Focus on what you’re trying to solve for your client, based on the business objectives. If those business objectives have not been made clear, focus on establishing them before anything else.

I cannot deny that falling in love is a wonderful feeling. On a personal level, I’m fortunate to have been very lucky in love, and as a result I am a hopeless romantic. Conversely on the professional side I’ve learned many times over that falling in love with ideas is dangerous for one important reason: It puts us in a position of defense, to protect something that we’ve decided is dear to us. When, really, it’s just an idea. It’s not even real… That is until we love it.

Be careful out there. Until next time.

Sean Patrick | Wiseguy