The Idea Chasm

By asking for ideas, you have one other important responsibility

Today is all about yet another well-intentioned activity that ends up causing more harm than good. Your company is facing some challenges or maybe you want to hit some stretch goals (warning here). Or maybe you’re trying to come up with something unique to try to grow the business in the new quarter. And as a manager, you’re feeling a little short of big ideas (not surprising). So, you go to your team for ideas.

This seems like a great plan (and generally it is), but you need to do it the right way. First things first, there ARE bad ideas. In order to prevent these ideas and people from spending a lot of time on them, you need to provide some guardrails on what exactly you’re asking the team. You probably don’t want just any idea. They need to have some basis in reality, be capable of delivering some sort of result, or fit into some budget. You have an obligation to guide the idea process because (and we’ll get there in a minute), you’re going to need to respond to all of these ideas.

Constraining the ideas doesn’t mean you’re going to stifle creativity: quite the opposite. You should be channeling that creativity in the right places. You don’t want something completely unguided: “Hi team…we need some ideas to grow the business this quarter. Any idea is on the table.” I can assure you that you definitely don’t mean this, so don’t say it. You’ll be surprised with what people come up with.

Assuming you’ve constrained the process properly, the team will go to work. This can be a really valuable exercise. You shouldn’t be the one always coming up with ideas and your team is likely to have better ones anyway since they are closer to your customers. They will appreciate the empowerment that comes from the fact that you’re finally asking them what the company should be doing. And, of course, it’s a fun exercise for most people.

But asking for ideas like this comes with a cost. People are going to use their time. They are going to go out on a limb and take a risk by proposing some innovative things. They’re basically handing over their baby hoping that you like it. And, unfortunately, part of your job is to call a bunch most of these babies ugly. But you have to do it.

The worst possible thing that can happen when your team turns in their ideas is for them to fall into the “idea chasm.” It could also be called “idea purgatory.” That’s where the ideas aren’t necessarily dead, but they aren’t alive (i.e., being enacted) either. This is what I see happen most often when managers ask teams for ideas. And it’s the worst possible outcome.

Every single idea that is submitted should be given a clear status from you. It should either be yes, no, or not now. The “yes” ones are what everyone loves. Those are the easy ones. They “no” and “not now” are the trickier ones. Since your team put in the work to come up with these ideas, you owe it to them to at least explain why their idea isn’t be implemented.

There can be a million reasons why ideas aren’t going to work. They simply could be too expensive or not aligned with a goal (though you should have done a better job setting parameters to prevent this). Often you’ll get seemingly great ideas from newer folks, but you won’t pursue them because they were tried in the past, but the new person wasn’t aware of that. Let’s use that as an example for the type of feedback you should provide.

Let’s say that your company offers only annual subscriptions for its product, but a new person proposes that you also offer monthly subscriptions. What the new person doesn’t know is that you tried this in the past and it didn’t work. Your response to their idea needs to be much more than: “no…we tried that last year and it didn’t work.” You should take the opportunity not only to educate this one person, but likely a bunch of others who may not know this fact.

Your feedback needs to be more like: “No, this isn’t an idea we’ll pursue. We tried this in Q4 2021 and we found that the churn rate was far too high. In doing the math, the increase in conversion rates we saw with the monthly plan was offset by the higher churn rate, which made annual plans a better revenue option for the company.”

There are a few things that this does. First, it gives the person who submitted the idea some clear feedback and they know that you took some time to really look at their idea, which they will definitely appreciate. Second, it educates the entire company. It’s helpful for new people, but also for veterans who might have forgotten about it. The final thing it does is it makes everyone look at the issue one more time. You gave very specific details about why the idea didn’t work in your response. Maybe someone takes that information and modifies the idea just a bit to offset the issue you identified. And suddenly an old idea is new again.

Asking the team for ideas is always a great…well…idea, but it does come with some responsibilities on your end as a manager. EVERY idea should receive some meaningful feedback. If you’re not prepared to do this, then don’t ask the team. It will demotivate people far more than you think and have the opposite impact from what you were hoping.

Before you go…

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