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It’s Only Common Sense: Dare to Make the First Move

Imagine you’re in a meeting with your management team trying to figure out how to make your company outstanding. Your goal is to find a way to get off the plateau you’ve been on for the past couple years. You have flat numbers and a team affected by cultural malaise that makes everyone feel like they are stuck in a quagmire of inactivity. You wait for someone to present a new idea that could thrust your company off the plateau and into the future. But when someone comes up with an idea, everyone has 50+ reasons why it won’t work before the idea is even fully expressed:

• We tried that five years ago and it didn’t work
• We sent out a newsletter once and some of our customers didn’t like it
• If we make a special offer to attract new customers, our current customers are going to hear about it and complain
• Advertising is a waste of money and doesn’t work  
• If we start giving discounts to win business, we will lose our shirts
• We don’t need to update our website
• We shouldn’t hire millennials because all they care about are microbrews and no-tuck shirts
• We don’t need to change anything; we just have to wait until the economy turns around or our competitor goes out of business

We’ve all been here before, right? Everyone sits around and stares at one another daring someone to come up with an innovative idea for someone else to shoot down.

What can you do about this? Don’t tell me that there is nothing you can do or you have to ride it out. If that is what you want to say, then why bother to stick around at all? Close down your company right now because you have just declared it useless and without a future. Or I can call my friend Tom Kastner and have him sell it for you. He’ll find a buyer who is more assertive, innovative, and creative than you are; then wait until you see what that person will do with your useless, hopeless company in less than a year.

Better yet, you can do something about it. You can motivate your team to come up with good ideas that will work if you apply yourselves to their implementation; all it takes is some passion and a little bit of enthusiasm and your company can start anew.

Here are six simple rules for creative, productive, and innovative dialogue that will get your team and your company moving again:

1. Set a goal—just one—based on where you want your company to be in 6–12 months.
2. Work backward from your goal and list the steps it will take to achieve it.
3. Foster a culture of open, fruitful dialogue by giving everyone the freedom to dream without the ridicule of negativity because there are no bad ideas.
4. Create a rule that no one in the room can knock down an idea without providing an alternate idea that might work better. The accumulation of these ideas will lead to strategic tactics that will lead ultimately to achieving your goal.
5. Allow creativity and encourage crazy ideas from your craziest people. Crazy ideas are the basis of most of the great inventions in history.
6. Have fun. There is nothing more rewarding than being part of a team that sheds its doldrums and starts thinking with energy and intention.

That’s all you have to do. Just about any plan you come up with as a team will work if you all have the passion, enthusiasm, and persistence to carry it out. Any plan can become a great plan with proper, dedicated implementation.

It’s only common sense.

Dan Beaulieu is president of D.B. Management Group.