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ajqtrz
Chef - loquacious Old Dog
People make suggestions, often off the top of their heads. They, "why can't we do this or that..." and somebody gives them, immediately, a good answer. That's the usual response. I'd suggest though, that it's not the best answer in many, many cases. Here's why.
When you make a suggestion and somebody points out, in a flash, the "error" of you thinking, you generally fell, not so good. And you, generally speaking, tend to give the idea up. After all, it's a road block, isn't it? And when several suggest or show you the (obviously easily seen and therefore something of which you should have know, but didn't -- shame on you!), problems you don't feel encouraged. And with that you tend to offer fewer ideas, right?
Now if a person makes the mistake of offering an idea "everybody knows" won't work, for whatever set of reasons, instead of saying why you think it won't work, how about listing the benefits of it working first? Then, you add, "but of course it might not work because...." and ask, honestly, "is there a way we can solve that?" This does two things. First, it makes the suggestion positive. A positive response encourages the person to suggest more, focus on their idea more, and so on. And if enough people focus on the idea, well, maybe all the reasons it can't be done, can become ways we made it work. Second, you'd be surprised how many times what we think will never work, does. Xerox is a case in point. The man who invented it offered it to a big corporation., Their response was, "why would we need that? We have carbon paper and it's a lot cheaper). So, sometimes the type of approach nobody thinks will work even of those in the box can't see past the cardboard of the box. So throw out the box that is made of "why we can't do that." It's just cardboard and like cardboard, can usually be cut apart and thrown away leaving the good stuff for all to enjoy.
AJ
When you make a suggestion and somebody points out, in a flash, the "error" of you thinking, you generally fell, not so good. And you, generally speaking, tend to give the idea up. After all, it's a road block, isn't it? And when several suggest or show you the (obviously easily seen and therefore something of which you should have know, but didn't -- shame on you!), problems you don't feel encouraged. And with that you tend to offer fewer ideas, right?
Now if a person makes the mistake of offering an idea "everybody knows" won't work, for whatever set of reasons, instead of saying why you think it won't work, how about listing the benefits of it working first? Then, you add, "but of course it might not work because...." and ask, honestly, "is there a way we can solve that?" This does two things. First, it makes the suggestion positive. A positive response encourages the person to suggest more, focus on their idea more, and so on. And if enough people focus on the idea, well, maybe all the reasons it can't be done, can become ways we made it work. Second, you'd be surprised how many times what we think will never work, does. Xerox is a case in point. The man who invented it offered it to a big corporation., Their response was, "why would we need that? We have carbon paper and it's a lot cheaper). So, sometimes the type of approach nobody thinks will work even of those in the box can't see past the cardboard of the box. So throw out the box that is made of "why we can't do that." It's just cardboard and like cardboard, can usually be cut apart and thrown away leaving the good stuff for all to enjoy.
AJ