Why we need less ideas and more thinking, less brainstorming and more experimenting
Living in corporate America, the forecast is always brainstorms. Everyone has ideas, all the time, and everyone must express them, all the time. There is of course no shortage of self-help books on how to generate the “best” ideas with countless “aha” moment recepies. The shower has become the conference room for internal brainstorms. Corporate America’s new favorite branch of science, neuroscience tells us that in the shower, or on long walks on the beach, the tentacles of the coffee-addicted, anxious, and calendar-obsessed conscious brain of the average corporate worker tend to relax allowing our unconscious deliberations and ideas to surface and enter the conscious dimension. My yogi tells me that only if I can relax my conscious brain through meditation or breathing exercises I will unlock the idea factory of my brain and live happily ever as a walking ideation machine. But what happens when everyone is obsessed with generating and communicating ideas to others? In the echo chamber of ideas, who is doing the hard part of experimenting, executing, and implementing?
In today’s age of “everyone wants to be a leader” would anyone even implement or execute an idea that’s not their own? Not to even mention that some of the greatest discoveries and innovations in history were not original ideas but rather better executions of existing / old ideas. Facebook is Myspace but better executed, implemented and delivered. The same goes for various other inventions and discoveries including most Apple products. The idea like one’s DNA matters, but so does the implementation of that idea or to keep up with the metaphor the nurture and upbringing of that DNA. We even vote for the candidates with the best ideas knowing full well that rarely their ideas get implemented, getting lost in the idea chambers of government and congress. When was the last time a presidential candidate didn’t have ideas on how to reform the tax code and the tax code actually changed drastically? How many of us have voted for the charismatic candidate with “fresh” or “unique” ideas as opposed to someone who is a boring but a relentless bureaucrat to push policies through action? How many movements from the Arab Spring to the Occupy Wall St movement have completely failed not because there was a lack of ideas but simply because the execution was a disaster with no clear focus?
We need less ideas but more thinking, experimentation, and reflection. We need more experimentation of ideas as opposed to just ideation for the sake of ideation. Too many managers or executives are solely becoming idea generators, with ideation as the means and the end of their job. “Only if I had the perfect idea, we could grow our business many times over” is as misguided and naive as the reactionary mindset that panics and acts without much thinking or reflection.
