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Shooting down ideas is not a skill

scottlawsonbc.com

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Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill

#111

Post by ehnto »

mfkhalil wrote: post #2

The least productive teams I've been a part of are the ones where everyone is waiting for their turn to say why an idea is bad. Sometimes being "too smart" can hold you back from building something genuinely new.

It's definitely a more nuanced topic than I think the article leads on. There is a right and wrong time to apply the brakes, but you can still be critical in either case.

There have been numerous times where I have identified real issues with an idea, advocated we crack on anyway and ended up with good results. Often you can't know for sure if an issue will even be that insurmountable until you get to it.

But there are other times where the risk/reward isn't lining up, or the risk is very well known, you've tried it before etc. Then hit the brakes, back to the drawing board for another try.

I think the danger is when people treat ideas as precious. In a well functioning team, your idea is going to get picked apart, modified, morphed and implemented by others. Get over your attachment to the idea as your baby, and you get to really enjoy the process.

Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill

#112

Post by arjie »

Realistically, yes. During exploration you need to be able to rapidly iterate and those who close off trees to exploration based on one or two leaf nodes are adding too much cost to the search function. But that's just the difference between exploration and exploitation. When you're discovering, you need a greater ability to differentiate between hard-stops "if I go that direction I fall off a cliff almost certainly" and explorable areas "if I go that direction I can make it work if I do these straightforward things". People have various levels of this, and I suspect it's based on risk and change tolerance.

Some can only operate like how things always were. Others will go right off the cliff. Life doesn't last long if you're the latter. And life isn't fun for me if you're the former. So it's just a question of finding a sufficient group who are at your appropriate spot in the middle and adjusting yourselves.

Overall, because of the much larger number of people online these days and the general meshing of various subcultures into common fora, I just apply filtering tech in order to retain this bubble of alignment among the chaos. I think it's more useful to watch the more-risky explorers than oneself, if only because ideas come out of there, though.

But those who always say "no" to something aren't useful to me. I have yet to encounter one whose ideas I haven't already thought of but have found a pathway that dodges the problem. Anyway, all of this is old ground, explored by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes,_and_... and the subsequent business articles that recommend "Yes, and..." everything.

Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill

#113

Post by Supermancho »

awesome_dude wrote: post #24
Supermancho wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that a skill or communicating experience? I have a hard time trying to identify when my criticisms are a sort of technique that can be developed. Ofc, even my criticisms can be ill-founded.

> Is that a skill or communicating experience? uhhh, how is communicating experience not a skill?

> How is communicating experience not a skill?

This statement is over-generalizing the case. I'm talking about a niche context when trying to "shoot holes in an idea", not some general communication skill (as you've implied) that is practiced. I don't believe what I referenced is a skill.

Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill

#114

Post by [deleted] »

notatoad wrote: post #76
gdubs wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congrats, you've killed the idea in its infancy because you demanded answers to questions before it could even walk. Ideas need time to be explored, and given a chance.

>Ideas need time to be explored, and given a chance. sure, and the time for that is before you bring them to potential critics. unless a meeting is intended as a brainstorming session where any thought, no matter how unformed, is welcome, meetings are not a time to present your initial unexplored thoughts to colleagues, bosses, or other departments. take a couple days, think about it without spending other people's t…

[deleted]

Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill

#115

Post by [deleted] »

ceejayoz wrote: post #69
gdubs wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congrats, you've killed the idea in its infancy because you demanded answers to questions before it could even walk. Ideas need time to be explored, and given a chance.

> Ideas need time to be explored, and given a chance. Then go back, address the objections, and re-propose. If you can't explain at least a little bit of "why this is worth at least digging into", that's on you.

[deleted]

Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill

#116

Post by [deleted] »

muglug wrote: post #68
gdubs wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congrats, you've killed the idea in its infancy because you demanded answers to questions before it could even walk. Ideas need time to be explored, and given a chance.

Sure, but it's sort of dumb for me to bring an idea I value to the table until I have answers to all the obvious questions. I owe it to my colleagues to not make them the bad guys by shooting down an idea.

[deleted]

Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill

#117

Post by [deleted] »

bawolff wrote: post #71
gdubs wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congrats, you've killed the idea in its infancy because you demanded answers to questions before it could even walk. Ideas need time to be explored, and given a chance.

If your idea is so in its infancy, that you can't explain its business case to people, even just hypothetically, than its too young to share. Ideas are cheap. Everyone has them.

[deleted]

Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill

#118

Post by satisfice »

This article commits exactly the sin that it claims to warn against. It has obligatory positive statements about the value of critical thinking, surrounded by highly disparaging comments about how people practicing critical thinking in good faith are not adding value. The net effect will be to discourage the healthy development of critical thinking practice.

Taking generic potshots at critical thinking is not a skill.

The article has good advice. The idea of postponing critique for a little bit to give an idea a chance to breathe, for instance. But then it also comes in with insulting BS like “Shooting down ideas is not a skill.” The whole article is obviously about improving one’s skill at the positive practice of culling bad ideas. Why throw such shade with the title?

The ignorant practice of refusing to consider an idea is not the same as critical thinking. Critical thinkers already feel bad about bringing rain to the parade. Do you have to make them feel even worse about it?

Re: Shooting down ideas is not a skill

#119

Post by atomicfiredoll »

sigseg1v wrote: post #8

With all due respect, if the idea is good, then it will happen. The proposer of the idea needs to nurture it and part of that is defending it. When someone is super optimistic and comes forward with an idea where: - it's actually just a half baked solution for something I already tried to solve 4 years ago - I'm acutely aware of all the spots it will fall - they still think it can work, when it really really honestly…

> The proposer of the idea needs to nurture it and part of that is defending it.

Some people are focusing on the first sentence, but I think this part is key. Obviously, if it's a good idea and you're putting in the work, that's probably a good direction. Critique is useful, defending an idea can help prevent you from being blindsided and help to hone your vision.

One of the things a lot of people seem to struggle with is knowing when it's worth it to keep going and when to let go. When working on something, there can be a lot of people coming from all sides saying, "this won't work," "this will work if you just stick with it", "actually, you're just missing X." There's a lot of noise, and the pushback can be fairly cliche at times.

Sometimes, things like you've mentioned like lack of experience will block them. But, depending on how strongly somebody feels about a concept, when they don't necessarily know if it's a good idea, they may just nurture it and see how everything plays out. It's okay if some things fail.

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