Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Quote-A-Day: Day 7

A good will never become a one unless we ask, "What's wrong with this?"

Everybody thinks the ideas they generate are better than the ideas generated by anyone else.  It's human nature.  And, for what it is worth, many of the ideas we do generate are actually quite good.  However, what separates a good idea from a great one is being willing to see that your idea isn't perfect, and therefore, to be willing to make your idea stronger by building on constructive criticism received.

With that in mind, I like to offer up ideas with a caveat of "What's wrong with this?" at the end.  This isn't meant to detract from the idea itself, but rather to show that ideas are only as good as the feedback they generate, and my expectation is that every idea I have can be made better by the input offered from someone else.

In addition, asking this simple question is a great conversation generator.  Though we all love to come up with ideas, many of us love even more to identify holes and areas of improvement in the thoughts of others.  What better way to encourage positive argument and debate than to require that every idea generated needs to be critiqued by stakeholders!  As far as I'm concerned, if an idea I have is going to go "prime time" I definitely want to make sure it has been vetted by my peers. :)

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