Some Ideas Stink

I spend a lot of my time in brainstorming sessions -- drumming up new design ideas, thinking through next steps for our organization, leading teams to improve our systems, and the list goes on and on.  It takes a ton of conversation around one idea to come up with anything actionable and worthy of pursuit.  To get one decent idea, we burn through a thousand ideas that stink.

There are a few guidelines that we developed (or stole from somebody...I can't remember who) to help us stay on track during brainstorms.  I figured I'd share two of them with you today:

1. People are awesome, but some ideas are stupid.  Therefore, we criticize ideas, not people.

2. Stupid ideas lead to brilliant ideas, so share your stupid ideas freely!

You might look at the progress of our organization and marvel at how innovative we are, or how creative we appear to be...  But if you got to hang out with us behind closed doors and hear all of the inane conversations we have, and listen to all of the idiotic ideas that we throw out, you would wonder how on earth we have been as successful as we are.  In fact, I'm pretty sure that if you spent one workday with me you would be searching for someone else to shadow the next day, because you would've exhausted all of my ingenius potential in that 8-hour period.

Yes, it's true.  I am not all that creative, and I am not very innovative.  But in some strange way I think that's what makes me remotely good at what I do.  I know good ideas when I hear them, and I recognize ideas that stink.

Luckily for me I am surrounded by people who offer their stupid ideas as freely as I do mine; and they are gracious enough to endure such a process.

You might think that's silly.  We call it progress.