#ThinkfullyHabit: Bite your tongue
At first, new ideas often sound a little naïve, insubstantial or full of vulnerability. If we are always quick to jump on all the problems straight away, ideas can’t go on to develop and reform into stronger, workable or more interesting solutions. In particular, if we dismiss ideas for being too different, it may mean we never get far from thinking and doing the same old things that we’ve always done. The implications? Treat ideas a little more gently at first, especially if they are a little different - and then evaluate them rigorously once they are more fully formed.
“Ideas don’t come out fully fleshed – they come out a bit clumsy. We need to learn to bite our tongue and let those ideas breathe a little bit. Often it is the craziest idea that leads to a brilliant shift. ”
WHY?
It’s about allowing ideas to percolate, to be explored, to see what elements are interesting and to see which ideas take off – and in which direction.
It means adapting how we work. Instead of scheduling lengthy meetings where ideas have to go from conception to execution before anyone leaves, it’s scheduling a 10 minute catch up to plant the seeds to then come back to, or making room within a meeting to let the ideas naturally spread even if it feels less time efficient (it’s often not!). It means saying “Let’s see what happens for the next few minutes if we think about it in this way,” or “Let’s explore a couple of possibilities and then decide.”* We are likely to gravitate to ideas that fit our current thinking, therefore it can be especially important to bite your tongue when new ideas are introduced that don’t fit the ways things typically are, or which challenge our more established ideas around what we believe works best.
Early ideas may indeed be worth killing off (it’s not really the case that no idea is a bad idea), but the trick is to pause long enough to check.