Ask for the GOOD Ideas

by | Dec 12, 2022 | Innovation, Leadership

Do you believe in your ability to come up with great ideas for your business? I hope and imagine you do.

But a leader’s creativity ought to be supplemented with the creativity of others.

While leaders can come up with lots of ideas. They are throttling their business potential if they are not consistently receiving good ideas from their team.

Asking for ideas to improve is kind of like asking for customer referrals:

  • You are unlikely to get them if you don’t ask.
  • You don’t get ANY if the person being asked feels like you don’t deserve them.
  • You won’t get MANY if you don’t ask with skill.

By way of example, I recently asked a group of CEOs what topics they would like to discuss deeply in our monthly Roundtables next year.

I felt like I had a pretty good list, but I got some good additional ones with their input.

Key points:

  1. I received because I asked.
  2. They gave me ideas because they knew I would use them to make future meetings even better.
  3. I got good quality topics because I asked that what subjects would help them the most to improve their business.

So, ask your team specifically what ideas they have they will improve what you care about improving the most (cash flow, profits, customer experience, productivity, new products, etc.) and design some actions to move forward. And follow through!

Make the next year a year in which you and the team achieve even more together. Now there’s a good idea!