Ideas are organisational junk food
Ideas are like junk food. Tasty morsels of mental potato chips. Cheap. Easy.
It’s common to binge on the infinite benefits of generating ideas. There’s an insatiable (and mostly-unquestioned) logic that encourages us to have another idea, and then another. We install suggestion boxes or, these days, buy expensive idea-capturing apps. We run ‘innovation committees’. We appoint ‘Directors of Entrepreneurship’.
We stack our plates high with ideas. We stuff ourselves full of them. We might even feel good for a moment — it feels great to have ideas! But, ultimately, for the most part they are unhealthy junk. Undigestible crap.
Rarely though is the problem too few ideas. More ideas is just more waste. Like a junk food addiction, more often the problem is the undisciplined pursuit of more — and more and MORE.
Appetite is finite. You can’t keep shoving ideas down people’s throats. Nor can you encourage ideas and then keep saying ‘no’. You can’t tempt people with junk food only to deny them. Gorging on ideas wastes time, saps morale, and distracts attention. It causes indigestion and, eventually, organisational constipation.
We don’t need more ideas. Most organisations are already full of ideas, really great nutritious ones. We need more focus, more thinking. We need to choose carefully what we put on our plate, and on the plates of others. We need to slow down, chew. We need time for ideas to work through the system, to be fully digested.
This isn’t to reject innovation, it’s to encourage ‘conscious consumption’. Most organisations need fewer initiatives and more initiative.
More ideas isn’t (always) the answer.
Dr. Denry Machin is an educational consultant specialising in teacher training and new school start-ups. His most recent book, ‘International Schooling: The Teacher’s Guide’, can be accessed here.
