Have you Robbed your Team Lately?

Have you Robbed your Team Lately?

Speak up and share your ideas—even if you are uncomfortable. Invite people to brainstorm with you.

Insight: Over and over again, I observe how good ideas are left unsaid. Instead of speaking up and offering valuable ideas, people stay quiet:

• "I didn’t want my idea to be shot down." 

• "My idea was incomplete and I didn’t know how to implement it." 

• "I didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes." 

• "Someone else must have already thought of it." 

People often let their concerns and discomfort get in the way of sharing their ideas. This can rob their team of a valuable contribution. 

Let me share a secret from my experience: the most innovative ideas are created when someone takes a risk and shares an incomplete idea. That sparks a thought from someone else, a few people add to it, and ultimately a great idea is born. 

Here’s a story from Pacific Power and Light (PP&L) that I believe is true: 

After snow storms, ice formed on PP&L’s electrical wires and linesmen were sent to climb the poles to shake off the ice before the weight broke the lines. Several linesmen had recently fallen, and the team was brainstorming other ways to remove the ice. 

During the meeting, one of the linesmen shared his story of coming face to face with a bear as he was servicing the lines. Someone joked about training the bears to climb the poles so that their weight would shake off the ice. Everyone laughed. Then someone else added, "After storms, we can fly around in a helicopter and put pots of honey on each pole so that the bears will climb them." Someone else jumped in: "Well, maybe we can just fly over the poles and the air turbulence from the helicopter will clear the lines." 

Ever since that meeting, PP&L uses the air turbulence of helicopters to remove ice from their lines. 

The original idea of training bears to climb the poles was absurd—indeed it was said as a joke. But if the original thought had not been shared, the idea of using helicopters would not have been created. 

Key Action: Speak up and share your ideas—even if you are uncomfortable. Invite people to brainstorm with you. 

Your ideas are valuable. When you don’t share them, you are robbing the organization and your team of a possibility. And you are robbing yourself of personal satisfaction. Remember, good ideas usually are created by a team. And they often start with one person sharing an incomplete idea.