The graveyard of good ideas

Good ideas meet untimely ends every day. We’ve all experienced it—the particular sensation that ripples among creatives when they realize a brainstorming session goes wrong.

DEFEAT.

There’s a certain performance aspect to some brainstorming sessions. It occurs when strong personalities feel the need to assert their “ownership” of creativity.  

I tend to enter business situations with eternal optimism. But one particular example haunts me, as it’s more the norm than the outlier.

The scene opens on a board room table, with a few key players seated closest to the leader. (Sadly, room setting like this is still a thing. I guess none of these peeps ever heard of the knights of the round table.) The “facilitator” is the person who called the meeting, and he’s a senior level executive many of the participants are vying to impress. 

At the end of the table, furthest from the head honcho sit two worker bees who received a special invitation to attend and share some big ideas.

Spoiler alert: They do. They work directly with the clients daily and they not only reveal why the past strategies failed or were only moderately successful, they share some big ideas that could take $250,000 in business to $500,000 or more.

I watch with bated breath, thrilled to see this playing out so beautifully. Then the worst happens.

One of the execs next to the head honcho interrupts with an idea. And the momentum of the meeting falters. Teetering there on the edge, I wait to see what head honcho will do.

He points to the senior exec. “That’s the idea!” He says triumphantly. Then, patting himself on the back for inviting some of the worker bees to witness the awesome power of an executive-level brainstorm, he calls the meeting to a close.

I ride back down the elevator with the worker bees. Their sense of dejection is palpable.

The head honcho never acts on any of the ideas in the meeting.

And business rolls on.

There’s a graveyard of good ideas living in many offices across the country. Walk amongst the tombstones and you’ll find revenue-generating strategies, cost-cutting innovations and team building ideas. Hang around for long and you might notice the lingering spirits of your creatives as they wander through, revisiting the good ideas that met untimely ends.

There’s a better way to connect your execs and your creatives.