Maybe you're killing ideas

We need all the good ideas we can get.

The best way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas. Including bad ones.

And the best way to get lots of ideas is to encourage, foster, and reward ideation.

Not easy. The Casual Fridays Blog takes a good look at whether your is pro-ideas or anti: 10 Signs You’re Shooting Down Good Ideas. Here they are:

10. You know whether or not an idea is good based who proposed it.
9. You observe from a distance rather than being lead down a path to the idea.
8. You believe every idea is improved with your input.
7. Listing the top 10 ideas from your department this year, half or more are your own.
6. Brainstorming means narrowing down to the best idea, instead of hearing all of them.
5. All ideas must be proven.
4. You only want BIG ideas.
3. You have no effective mechanisms to foster, collect, review, and implement ideas.
2. Your competition is your main source of ideas.
1. No matter how much you’ve talked about ideas, collected them, praised them, in the end you don’t use them.

These behaviors are very common. And they're costing you. Remember -- you don't have to implement every idea that comes along. The important thing is to get lots of ideas from every source so you'll have a lot of good ones.

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