How to filter bad ideas

by James Gaskin

December 3, 2007 —

Ever wonder why executives get so much more vacation time than the rest of
us? It's so the real workers have a chance to get something done without the
executives around to muck things up.

Many liked my line saying "Bad ideas, like waste products, flow downhill."
Some asked if there's any way to filter some of those "bad ideas"
before they cause more damage.

Yes, you can filter bad ideas, which explains my point about executive vacations.
Past that, however, there are ways to limit the damage to your technical infrastructure
done by executives.

More enlightened executives (meaning less stupid) can learn to propose ideas
in a new way. When the boss says, "is this a good idea, or not? I want
the truth," the "truth" is always "Yes, boss, it's a great
idea." No one reaches vested retirement telling the boss the ideas suck,
even when they do.

Train your enlightened executives to ask, "Which of these three ideas
do you think works best?" instead. Then you get honest feedback and a discussion
of merits, not a rubber stamp from employees needing to keep their jobs. Tell
the executive this is the "new" way of surveying employees in a way
that generates more brainstorming and team collaboration and higher level thinking
attacking the problem at hand. That's enough buzzwords to make the executive
happy.

If your job requires you to ask for input, try the second method for best results.
If you're high enough up the ladder to get your ideas rubber stamped no matter
how bad they are, you aren't reading this. If you're reading this, you probably
need the best ideas possible to present to your executives so they'll accept
them, change a few words, and present them as their own. That's corporate life
in the technology business.

When responding to bad ideas, use vague buzzwords executives don't really understand.
Even if they do understand, what does "workflow reprocessing with meta-tagging"
really mean? It means to do what you know will work.

Another bad idea filter is stalling. Don't respond until asked a second time.
When you have to respond, do it cleverly. Identify the bottleneck in your paperwork
processes, and send all information through that person. Either the executive
will forget about the project during the delay, or will fix the bottleneck problem.

No matter which of the two happens, you win.

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