At Future Delivery, we often come up with a lot of innovative and creative ideas. But sometimes there are just too many “good” and “cool” ideas, and it is hard to find the best one that we should do. After all, our resources are limited, and ideas are always the sweetest and most brilliant at the beginning. How do you find the idea that not just sounds cool at the beginning but is resource efficient and has the most sustaining value. To maneuver through all the cool and creative ideas, here’s a systematic approach on picking out the most valuable ideas.
Have the Calm Before the Brainstorm
A good brainstorming session must start with the right mentality and attitude. If you go into a discussion with a large bias or some personal issues with your teammates, it won’t be very fruitful. The first step is to really make sure the whole team has the same goal: to find the best solution. With that in mind, no one should take anything in this brainstorming session personal. Make sure you are thinking as objectively as possible, and that you are in good terms with all your teammates. That’s when you can really play the game well.
Don’t fall in love with your Ideas. Fall in love with your Teammates
I cannot stress this enough. When you are brainstorming, you should throw out every idea that you have, but you must be willing to have all of them overthrown. The fact is that for everything you come up with, you might be right, or you might be wrong. No one knows. If more than one person you truly trust thinks you are wrong, then the odds of you being right decreases dramatically. Yes, you might think that you are the only genius among a bunch of idiots, but that’s why working with people you can respect and trust is so essential. Always surround yourself with people you can respect or you will never be happy in life.
My co-founder Jun and I are very good at trying to destroy each other’s ideas, but we’re even more accepting to becoming convinced that our own ideas are trash. Being open to be proven wrong is EXTREMELY important because it makes people feel that disagreeing with you is fun. When I point out the flaws in Jun’s thinking, he fights back with more arguments, and once I nail him down by proving his comeback futile, he just says “meh…..:(” and gets over it. However, I’ve worked with people who start to feel that they are personally attacked and their ideas are not taken seriously. Come on, if I don’t take your ideas seriously, I wouldn’t even bother arguing with it.
