1. Consensus on the front end kills courage
If you look for consensus during a season of innovation, it will almost always strip the courage out of your idea.
Trying to find consensus while mining for fresh ideas results in diluted ideas because people often don’t realize what they need before they see it.
No one needed smart phones…until the smartphone was invented. Now try to remove it from the marketplace or your life.
Even the electric light bulb was seen as a stupid idea. Scientist Henry Morton of the Stevens Institute of Technology predicted the light bulb would be ‘a conspicuous failure.’ The British parliamentary committee concluded the light bulb was ‘good enough for our transatlantic…but unworthy of the attention of practical or scientific men.’
And if you are looking for courage, few things will kill it faster than the drive for early consensus.
The best idea only looks like the best idea after it wins.
2. Individuals are almost always more courageous than teams
I don’t know why this is true, but it’s often easier for a team of people to adapt to a bold idea and make it better than it is for a team to come up with a bold idea.
This isn’t always the case, but in many instances, I think it is. I dream in teams and I encourage people to dream alone, but often the best ideas come from one person.
Teams are one thing. Committees are another.
I’m not 100 percent sure what the differences are between the two, but I think teams tend to attract leaders while committees rarely do.
So, if you want to kill vision, form a committee. The committee will beat the life out of any innovation you bring to the table.
Most dying organizations have committees. Almost no growing organizations do. It’s an interesting observation.
3. You shouldn’t walk alone, but innovation may require you to start alone
Walking alone is a bad idea, but starting alone is sometimes required for true innovation.
The need to start alone or with a handful of people by your side is not that uncommon a phenomenon.
For example, when I launched my leadership podcast two years ago, almost all the advice I got was “keep it short…people have small attention spans” and “feature your ideas on the podcast.”
I didn’t want to do that. Instead, I wanted to do two things: bring a longer form podcast to the church space AND do it by featuring me interviewing other leaders. Every other podcast in the church leaders space at the time was shorter and featured the podcast subject interviewed by someone else.
Against most of the advice given to me, I launched the podcast as a 45-minute to 90-minute episode with me interviewing someone else. To be fair, I had seen this format done in other areas, but no one in the church space that I knew was doing it.
Now, 24 months later, people seem to love the format, and it’s caught on quickly. I’m not doing it alone anymore, but I had to start alone.
Sometimes that’s OK.
