Читать книгу Jump Start Your Brain - Doug Hall - Страница 14

Ideas, when they first occur, aren’t full-blown finished products. They aren’t born one second then standing up and walking the next. Thomas Edison didn’t conceive of the light bulb on Monday morning then flip the switch that afternoon.

Newborn ideas are fragile, like babies. Most newborn ideas are ugly, wrinkly little wretches. If the newborn is your own, you’re predisposed to think it’s a thing of wonder and beauty. But it’s going to need a whole lot of nurturing before anyone else will think so because it’s not his or hers. They need nurturing, protecting, patience, loving, commitment. They require you to sit up with them at night, fret over their futures, watch them grow. And like babies, they can’t be hurried. They grow and develop in time.

The “virtual no” kills 100 times more ideas than brain dead bosses ever will.

By virtual no I mean the internal sensor that judges, “It’s not reasonable, it’s not practical, the boss won’t like it, it’s not even possible.”

With my clients it’s common for project team members to say that management has rejected specific ideas. However, when I ask their management why it rejected the specific idea, I get a blank stare. What has happened is the project team has killed the idea through the “virtual no”—they’ve anticipated that the idea would be killed and thus never presented it to management.

Adults are so accustomed to censoring themselves that censoring a newborn idea is almost an involuntary action. In time the difference between a genuine and a virtual no becomes blurred.

Admittedly, like babies, newborn ideas are often ugly. They may appear to be wretched little mutants that ought to be hidden away.

Don’t hide them.

Newborn ideas seldom arrive as completed entities. How many gawky Little Leaguers have grown up to hit home runs in All-Star games? How many former finger painters have created works that hang in the world’s great art museums?

“You’ll increase your creative potential once you begin to value your own thoughts.”

– Richard Saunders

Give Newborn Ideas a Safe Place to Grow

“I thought of that” doesn’t count. It takes courage to bring a real new-to-the-world idea out into the light of day because you’re going where no one else has been.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this marketing expert or that claim that, at one time or another, they’d conceived of the very same idea that happened to be on the table at the moment.

I would ask them what happened to the idea. “Aaaahhhh,” they’d say. They’d decided to put the brakes on it. They didn’t trust it. It was too different, too impractical, too something. They filled in the adjectives of their choice.

But all they’d had was the illusion of an idea. A figment.

Ideas only become real when you invest your energy into making them happen.

Don’t make the same mistake. Give your newborns a safe place where they can be protected from the whims of ruthless Real World Adults. If you, your team, your company or your family is too ready to kill a newborn idea, try this:

When an idea sprouts in your mind, write it down on a scrap of paper. Then put it in a newborn incubator. This can be a folder, a shoebox, or an empty mayonnaise jar—any quiet safe place where your idea can have a chance to grow straight and true. Add other newborns as they occur to you.

At the same time, tuck your ideas away for refinement in the soft, warm folds of your subconscious. Then, after a few days or maybe even a few weeks, go back to your newborn incubator and sort through the occupants.

Every idea that travels through your cranium has some merit, even those of a seemingly hopelessly hair-brained nature. But it often takes time to discern their value. If you give them room to incubate, you’ll be amazed at their potential.

Which leads me to the next self-evident truth: