The Dangerous Good Idea

A good idea can generate a lot of enthusiasm.  But it is a wild animal - until it is pinned down it's dangerous.  Because each person who endorses a good idea has their own vision of it, has an idea of how it will work and what they or the customer will get from it.  And unless each of those visions are extracted, clarified and either included or excluded from the final version, there will be a lot of dissatisfaction that the project team didn't get it right.  

I visualized this on Pinterest as a work of art, but there are many times when a good idea gains a life of its own.

                             

For example, I learned this (again) camping with my son this week.  The good idea was to spend his last week before schools started going camping on Assateague Island, with the wild ponies.  However, my vision for the experience was to be out with the wind and the sun and the sound of the ocean.  His vision was of campfires (which wouldn't light, even with 2 firestarters and 100 pages of recycled paper) and playing with the ponies (who are wild and should not be touched) and snuggling up with a movie at night (which obliterates the sound of the ocean).  So it was not the blissful experience for either of us that we thought it would be.

Coming back to the workplace, start with the organizational goal - why would we do this in the first place.  Really and truly, what makes this compelling for us?  Then listen to members and figure out what they would get from it.  Listen to staff and hear what they think it will provide.  It's not always clear, you have to ask questions.

Then from that input, form the strategic reason for doing it and the primary and secondary goals, and get agreement from everyone on these.  Get them changed upfront if there isn't agreement.  This will guide the project through its first stages and give it a strong foundation for the actual development.