It’s the great ideas I want, not just the good ones

Last week it was my parent’s something or other wedding anniversary (north of 45, south of 50). I got my daughter to give her Grandmother a call to say “Happy Wedding Anniversary, thanks for making me possible”.

Anyway, my daughter and I got into a discussion about who my family was. How could my parents be my family, when my family was my wife and children who live with me? What I realised, at that moment, was I simply didn’t have the right words in the English language to adequately describe the concepts of my old family and my new family.

Fast forward two hours and I am being told by email by Ben Bickford that the Churchill Club should offer a “member get member” scheme using free event attendance as the lure. Unfortunately for Ben, I almost immediately said no because I get these type of ideas sent to me all the time. “You should offer free brown bag lunches”, “You should get Dick Smith speak”, “You should offer weekend workshops”, “You should run breakfasts”, etc, etc.

These ideas, although great and potentially worthy, are very frustrating for me. Each idea requires a fair bit of thinking through on how to execute it, whether the execution will impact other programs, both now and later.

Each idea also has inherent costs and risks that should be mitigated wherever possible. All ideas also have an opportunity cost as my time is a scare resource. However, if I don’t run with each idea, the “offerer” is normally disenchanted: “I gave you some good ideas and you just ignored them!”.

But just like the problem with my daughter I didn’t have the right words to describe exactly what I wanted from people. The ideas are interesting but they are not enough for me to act upon. Although I don’t want a full-fledged plan, I want a “little more meat on the bone”. I want a… (See I don’t have the words).

So I decided to make some up. I called it cleverly, an Idea Plan. Basically, it’s half way between an idea and a plan. So now if someone offers me an idea, I go back to them asking them to flesh it out a bit more.

If they don’t, I don’t consider it unless it’s absolutely mind blowing.

Of course, there’s no set framework for this fleshing out request as every idea I receive is different.

“You should offer brown bag lunches.” My answer: “Cool, could you find a good location for this that will offer us the space free and is close enough to a couple of hundred potential attendees so that they could drop in for lunch”.

“You should get Dick Smith speak.” My answer: “Cool, could you please chase up his PA’s details and find out what he would like to speak about – and I will contact him”.

“You should offer weekend workshops.” My answer: “Cool, do you want to do a web survey to find out the best content/format/price plus find and cost up an appropriate venue”.

“You should run breakfasts.” My answer: “Cool, do you want to flesh your idea out and get back to me?”

So back to Ben’s idea of the free events as an incentive. Ben thinks it’s a great idea and is happy to be contacted. I don’t really have an opinion though. And I won’t be forming one until I understand the rough cost of writing and maintaining the software to do it, as well as how much it will cost to operate the plan assuming different levels of conversion, ie. I need more than just a good idea before I am prepared to spend time thinking about it. Not asking for a formal business case, just an “Idea Plan”.

Now I don’t want to be accused of being a blocker or an innovation naysayer, in fact I thrive of innovation. However, it’s the great ideas I want, not just the good ones, which seem to be in near infinite supply.

This is how I get to the great ideas of others, I let them self-select.

By the way, turns out that both my parents had forgotten that it was their wedding anniversary. And funnily enough, I just didn’t have the right words to describe how I felt about that.

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Brendan Lewis is a serial technology entrepreneur having founded: Ideas Lighting, Carradale Media, Edion, Verve IT, The Churchill Club, Flinders Pacific and L2i Technology Advisory. He has set up businesses for others in Romania, Indonesia and Vietnam. Qualified in IT and Accounting, he has also spent time running an Advertising agency and as a Cavalry Officer with the Australian Army Reserve.