How to Make ?? Bad Ideas ?? Good
Nick Richtsmeier
Solving growth for ventures dependent on trust | Unapologetic generalist | Allergic to convention
TL;WR*
Companies that foster psychological safety have?67% more engaged team membersand?50% higher productivity.1?So why are executive team's biggest decisions often the least safe place to think hard?
The boardroom can be toxic place for creative thinking. Everyone gathers, we've got problems to solve. Uninvited,?our brains' two biggest foes enter the chat: Fear and Ego. Old arguments get rehashed, positions entrench, and silent dissent keeps our true problems under the radar.??
When we circle up with our clients to break apart and put back together the big brain opportunities and challenges, we use our Rules of Engagement to spur on the one magic catalyst for growth: bad ideas become good ones.
Read on to get the step-by-step method to letting creativity problem solving thrive.
* "Too Long; Won't Read" - for those of you who opened this email with unsure if you're going to read it or not.
Disagree to Agree
We've all been in that room. scattered snacks and cold coffee mugs litter the table. Laptops are open surreptitiously "taking notes" as a cover for checking Twitter or Sportsbook. A whiteboard full of scribbles and poorly drawn diagrams covers one wall. The vague smell of cynicism and stir-craziness fills the air.
"So we're all in agreement then?" A beleaguered facilitator gestures broadly.
Slight nods, vacant smiles, and an overly zealous "YES" fill the silence.
By all appearances significant decisions have been made here, the kind that will propel the company into its next month, its next quarter, or maybe even farther.
But appearances are deceptive. The room is actually full of unspoken doubts, political motivations, well-intended self-protections, and the all too prevalent "passive dissent" where silence is assumed to mean agreement, when it actually means the opposite.?
All that unconvincing head-nodding is an agreement to disagree. And sometimes--in the worst cases--an agreement to sabotage the decisions later.
It's not that the idea we're all "agreeing" to is a bad one. In fact there have been very few truly bad ideas at today's meeting.?
And that's the real problem.
Loving Bad Ideas
Bad ideas are the unsung heroes of business strategy. They break new ground, they create safety, they open up space for the ideas we need.
There are bad ideas; just like they are stupid questions. But they are often the disguise that transformational ideas come in. The transformational ideas come hidden, testing the leaders to ensure that it is safe to break into a different future.
We have to ask the stupid questions. The childlike questions. Pluck from our brains the dumb ideas. And we have to do it in the safest places. Places where trust is not competency but care. Is this a place where I. can be wrong, unsure, or even ridiculous?
We have to trust each other enough to let the bad ideas come, take off their masks and lead us to the next place.
领英推荐
The best ideas always come under mask. They are testing the room. Like a secret shopper they are finding out whether this company should be given access to the very best ideas brewing outside the margins.
Ground Rules for Psychological Safety
Innovation. Peak performance. Breakthrough. And of course, their thematic core: creativity. They all depend on psychological safety to foster an environment for deep inspiration and agreement.?
Facing hard business questions triggers our fear and self-protection, sending us to our usual corners of silence, combat, or coercion. All creativity killers.
Because our work is about the Business of Creative, helping service businesses move from one place to the next, we have had to build expertise in Psychological Safety. Whether you are in our Brandbuild Accelerator or one of the onsite workdays we use in our Enterprise engagement, we need to make big, creative decisions together.?
Below are our Rules of Engagement for the most important conversations your business needs to have:
In one of these client exercises, one less-than-optimistic team member said,?"When we got this agenda, my immediate reaction was, 'why the f*uck are we talking about this? I was worried this whole meeting was a bad idea. We have more important things to do. But now I get it, and I'm ready to move forward."
He recognized what looked like a bad idea.?But hiding behind it was a good one. He followed the Rules of Engagement and let ideation be messy. Even though his second comment was?"I have a visceral reaction to the word 'messy'."?
Nick responded as he often does, "That's interesting. Tell me why?"?
"I like everything in its place," he replied.
Nick responded, "Are you willing to go on this ride with us today?" And of course you know how this story ends. He did, and?he was the best leader in the room. Unlocked the truly unexpected solutions. Often by acting against type with great curiosity. If we would have fought him like he wanted to fight the agenda, the whole day would have been lost.
Instead, we let the process of curiosity do its work. And to his credit, he did, too.
It happens like this a lot. The biggest arm-crossers become the biggest contributors to creative thought. Just like in the fairy tales:?the frog is really a prince, the haggard witch is really a beautiful queen, the?bad ideas are revealed to be good.?
Great ventures thrive by questioning their internal biases, understanding that where we are is not where we’re going, and knowing that our greatest strengths can also be our Achilles heel. The foundation of legendary brands is empathy, a skill the requires reflection and self-interrogation.?
Psychological safety is essential for the efficacy of our work together. We cannot create without the freedom and the encouragement to be wrong.
1?Accenture:?Why psychological safety at work matters to business
?The Business of Creative.
The power of the creatives arts -- storytelling, design, wordcraft, persuasion, and innovation -- are the birthright of every business owner. But they remain hidden in plain sight for most service businesses.
We translate success between executives and marketers to grow service brands and the people who lead them.
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2 年From the first day of school, fish are taught to climb, elephants taught to swim, and lions taught to eat broccoli. It’s all programming and conformity. Trained to pass standardized tests so districts can secure funding. Then we finally get to college, the chance to study and pursue what WE want. Unless we have a view or belief that is different from the culturally accepted norm. Then there is ostrasization and mockery. The “strong” are able to stand against the tide while many others simply sit down and close their mouths for the sake of passing a class. Is it no surprise that when we enter “corporate America,” it’s no different? Toe the line. Live within the red tape. Regurgitate a list of values and corporate mantras, values that never filter down to choices and mantras that are nothing more than slogans for a T-shirt or team training days. Again, we are stuffed neatly into boxes where conformity is celebrated and creativity is stymied. Instead of creating a culture where employees are encouraged to further develop their strengths, they are encouraged to “improve upon their weaknesses.” I’ve rambled on long enough….