Episode 846 - How Crazy Ideas Could Save the Day

0:04 Helping leaders motivate their people to a higher level of performance through strong human relations, team building, and goal achieving. This is the 7-Minute Leadership Podcast with your host, Paul Falavolito.

0:22 Hello, everyone, and welcome to the 7-Minute Leadership Podcast. It's episode 846. Today, I want you to think about the craziest idea somebody on your team has ever brought to you. The idea that made everyone in the room look at each other. The idea that made somebody laugh. The idea that immediately got hit with, we can't do that. Maybe it was too expensive. Maybe it sounded ridiculous. Maybe nobody had ever tried it before. Maybe it broke every unwritten rule about how your organization operates. And maybe that crazy idea was exactly right. what you needed because here's something I've learned about leadership. When conventional thinking stops solving the problem, unconventional thinking becomes incredibly valuable. Most organizations don't have an

1:16 idea problem. They have an idea filter problem. Someone comes up with something unusual and the organization kills it before anybody seriously explores it. We tried something like that before, or that's not how we operate. Management will never approve it. People won't like it. We don't have the budget. And my personal favorite, that's crazy. Good. Maybe crazy is exactly where we need to start. Think about some of the things we consider completely normal today. People willingly get into cars driven by strangers because an app connected them. We carry phones that can translate languages, navigate airplanes, deposit checks, unlock hotel rooms, order dinner and conduct business meetings. Companies

2:08 deliver packages to your front door within hours. People work for organizations thousands of miles away from their homes. 20 years ago, a lot of what we consider routine would have sounded ridiculous. Somebody had to be willing to say, what if? That's one of the most powerful questions a leader can ask. What if? What if we stop doing this?

2:36 What if we completely redesign this process? What if we let the newest employee solve it? What if we removed half the steps? What if we moved the entire operation somewhere else? What if we automated it? What if we gave it away? What if we charged differently? What if the rule everybody assumes cannot change actually can? Leaders spend a lot of time asking, how do we fix this?

3:04 Sometimes that's the wrong question. Instead, try asking, if we were building this from scratch today, would we build it this way? That question can make a room grow. very uncomfortable because suddenly you're no longer repairing the machine. You're questioning why the machine exists. I've spent nearly three decades working in emergency services where decisions, trust, and performance can absolutely matter immediately. And emergency services teaches you something fascinating about problem solving. Plans matter, procedures matter, training matters, and then Reality shows up. The road you plan to use is blocked. The equipment you expected to have isn't available.

3:54 The weather changes. The situation gets bigger. The information changes. And suddenly, plan A isn't working. That's when someone needs to look around and say, okay, what can we do? Those moments reward people who can think. And that's what I want leaders to understand. Your organization needs people who can think beyond the obvious answer. You need somebody in the meeting who occasionally says something that sounds ridiculous. Don't shut that person down. Ask them to keep talking. There might be five terrible ideas before they get to the brilliant one. That's okay. Because creativity doesn't arrive wearing a suit carrying a PowerPoint presentation labeled approved solution. Sometimes creativity

4:42 walks into the room wearing muddy boots and says, I know this sounds crazy. Listen, especially when you're stuck. So I want you to try something with your team. The next time you're facing a stubborn problem, tell everyone this. For the next 10 minutes, there are no bad ideas. Then give them permission to go completely outside the normal boundaries.

5:07 You don't need a committee. You don't need corporate jargon. You don't need 47 slides. Take the problem seriously. and start throwing ideas at it. Write everything down, the practical ideas, the expensive ideas, the weird ideas, the ideas you could never possibly do, and then start asking questions. What part of this could work? What would have to change? Could we test this on a small scale? What assumption are we making that might be wrong? That's where things get interesting because the original crazy idea might never become the solution.

5:45 It might lead you to the solution. There's a huge difference. Somebody says, why don't we stay open 24 hours? Maybe that's impossible. Then somebody asks, why are we only open until 5? Now you're talking. Maybe the answer isn't 24 hours. Maybe it's staying open until 8 twice a week. The crazy idea opened a door. Somebody says, Why don't we eliminate meetings? Impossible. Maybe. Then somebody asks why you're having 11 meetings a month. Now you discover four of them could become a five-minute update. The crazy idea didn't become policy.

6:24 It exposed inefficiency. This is why leaders need to be careful about becoming the person who always explains why something can't happen, because eventually your people stop bringing you ideas, and that's dangerous. When your employees stop giving you ideas, it doesn't necessarily mean they stopped having them. It may mean they decided you don't want to hear them. Your people see things you don't see. The person answering the phone sees a different organization than the CEO. The person driving the truck sees something the person managing the fleet may never notice. The employee who started three weeks ago might question something your 20-year employee stopped noticing 15 years ago.

7:10 Fresh eyes are incredibly valuable. Experienced eyes are incredibly valuable too. Put those perspectives together and ask them to solve something. You might be surprised by what happens. My podcast has covered creativity and innovation from customer-centered innovation to lessons from Steve Jobs, boardrooms, and making room for the misfits. There's a reason leadership keeps coming back to this subject. Organizations eventually become comfortable with their own answers. This works. This is how we've always done it. This is our process.

7:50 Until one day, it doesn't work anymore. And when that day arrives, you don't want to discover that you've trained everyone in the organization to follow instructions while nobody remembers how to think. That's the leadership lesson today. Protect your thinkers. Protect the employee who respectfully challenges assumptions. Protect the person asking weird questions. Protect the person who occasionally makes the room uncomfortable with an idea nobody expected. You don't have to approve every idea. You don't have to fund every experiment.

8:26 You don't have to turn your organization into chaos. Give ideas enough oxygen to determine whether there's something useful inside them. There's a leadership exercise that I do want you to try this week. Find one problem in your organization that everyone has accepted. Maybe customers complain about it. Maybe employees hate it. Maybe it wastes money. Maybe everybody works around it because fixing it seems impossible. Put that problem in front of your team and then say, I want the crazy solution and watch what happens. Somebody will laugh. Somebody will hesitate. Somebody will probably look at you like you've lost your mind. Good. Keep going because once people realize they're allowed to challenge the obvious answer, the conversation changes

9:18 and somewhere inside that conversation, could be the idea that saves you money, saves you time, saves a customer relationship, saves a project, or someday saves the entire organization. So, leadership isn't always about having the answer. Sometimes, it's about creating a place where an answer nobody expected has permission to show up. So the next time somebody walks into your office and says, okay, this is going to sound crazy.

9:58 Don't interrupt.

10:00 Them.

10:01 Lean forward and listen because crazy ideas have changed industries, rebuilt companies, and solved problems everyone else has accepted. And the next one might be sitting across the table from you. This has been seven-minute leadership podcast, and I thank you for listening.

10:20 For more Paul Falavolito podcasts, visit paulfalavolito.com.