Half-baked ideas

It's easy to look at someone's achievements - a published book, a killer website, an institutionalized process adopted by a company, and assume they're simply brilliant people. Perhaps they are, but don't assume that any idea they produce started as anything more than a half-baked idea. The outcomes are a journey and often barely resemble the initial thought.

Would you like to see your ideas become something greater? Think of it this way: every journey begins with a single step. It doesn't even have to start in precisely the right direction. If you have an insight, take that first step. Write it down and acknowledge that it's something more than just a fleeting thought - it's something worth saving and coming back to. Great ideas often start out with just a feeling - an intuition that something needs more investigation. Malcolm Gladwell's Blink explores this concept with a simple illustration: art experts can often identify hoaxes on first sight, even if they struggle to identify precisely what is wrong with the copies after closer inspection. It's a feeling they get that tells them something is wrong. Similarly, your insights are more likely to appear in the form of a "hmmm" rather than an "a-ha!" moment.

And where to go from there? I keep a running list of "good" ideas. "Good" is in quotes for valid reasons. I don't know if they're truly worth anything yet. I review my "good" ideas every now and then to decide if any of them are worth more investment. Do they stand the test of time, or was it just a fleeting blip? For ideas that I think might be onto something, I work out how I could take action. They're still just simple ideas, but I can give them more thought and explore their credence. My approach to these is often to discuss them with someone that can help me take my idea, validate that it's indeed a problem worth exploring, and discuss how to turn it into something tangible. My bosses know to expect me to produce lots of half-baked ideas that we can work through together. When I first started working with my current boss, he was surprised and confused when I offered proposals that weren't fully fleshed out. I gave him two options: either I would only approach him with great ideas and present them with confidence and a plan of action, which would limit my proposals to only things I had independently decided on, evaluated, and developed a solid plan for. Or I could bring him my wealth of ideas, including half-baked ones that may not pan out, and we could have a free-flowing conversation around what would be most useful for the team and the company. We took option two, and I've never looked back. I've found that I often come back to ideas that are initially discounted and discover there was some validity to them after all (thankfully I wrote it down). Perhaps they just needed more time to develop. Or perhaps they were insights that were ahead of their time, and both me and my boss needed to wait to see their true value.

So take that first step and begin writing down any ideas you think are good, regardless of whether you think they'll stand the test of time and the scrutiny of others. Find a confidante or a peer or even a boss and begin exploring how your insights can enact change. Be bold in proposing ideas and humble in accepting feedback. Most of all - make a difference by thinking about ways to improve the world around you and by speaking up to make the change you want to see.