Episode #147: Good Idea Finding

We find it frustrating when we have good ideas or suggestions but all we receive is rejection or even worse criticism of our ideas. Part of it can be the culture of the organization. When someone savages our contribution they cancel our idea creation ticket right there. However my crazy, unworkable, ridiculous, stupid idea might be tweaked by you into something really valuable. Without my nutty offering though, you would not have seen the better possibility. This is the problem with ripping into people for not putting up perfect ideas from the start – they stop starting and remain silent instead.

There should be two distinct stages involved in creative idea creation. Green Light thinking is a metaphor for the traffic lights showing green, meaning to proceed. Red Light thinking means to stop. Generating ideas is what we do in the Green Light stage and evaluation is taken care of in the Red Light thinking stage. The important point is to not mix the stages together.

Critiquing ideas as they are being formed dampens the amount of involvement and contribution from everyone. Some people are fast and others are slow in how they process ideas. The more considered idea generators see the other contributor’s ideas being flayed alive and they deduce they should just park their idea. They wisely keep it to themselves because they don’t want to go through that indignity. They often have the most valuable ideas because they are deep thinkers, but their ideas never emerge.

We need as large a volume of ideas as possible in the Green Light stage. Time is always limited, but the object is to get the ideas out first, with no commentary. Allow people the full freedom to put their ideas forward. Once the ideas have been generated, we should share the content. This is where the magic of cross- pollination occurs and we see one idea trigger something unrelated. We go again and generate further ideas. We need to guarantee the freedom though, to provide that spark, unworkable as it may be in and of itself. It has a different role – it is a catalyst for more creative boundaries to be stretched.

Let’s forget mixing Green Light and Red Light thinking and give our team the advantage of creativity that is fully supported and nurtured. Let’s create a dominant culture which is inclusive and welcoming of everyone’s contribution. If we can do this, we will win the innovation contest of who proceeds and who disappears in business.