Tuesday at 2:00pm with Russ

It's Tuesday at 2:00pm! (PST Time: I live and work from Southern California)

In this New Year I'm going to continue to explore some leadership quotes that might challenge us, inspire us or remind us of different aspects of the leadership journey. This is part of my personal journey to keep growing, learning and being stretched! Join me each Tuesday at 2:00pm (PST). It will take you just a few minutes to read through the 2 sections of this post, but don't miss the final section where I share some of the things I'm reading, listening to and enjoying this week.

You can find past posts on my website HERE.

Enjoy!

LEADERSHIP QUOTE:

“Ideas in secret die. They need light and air or they starve to death." Seth Godin


What does this stir up? Either write me HERE or comment at the end of the blog post HERE.


A LITTLE BIT DEEPER:

This is the last Seth Godin quote we'll explore as we come to the end of the month. We've had some great thoughts over the past 4 weeks. You can see them all HERE.

This quote is a great reminder to us to ACT on some of the ideas we might have, instead of leaving them locked away.

This is so true...

I'll wake up in the morning and have a couple a great ideas bouncing around in my head. If I don't write them down, they usually just disappear.

When I write them down, I am then reminded of them when I scroll through my notepad, and once in a while that idea will just jump off the page to me, and I'm then forced to do something with it. My options are:

  • I share the idea with someone who could benefit from it or be a part of it. I'm looking for feedback.

  • I test it a little bit by working on some of the details and stages of development needed. Sometimes this process brings me back to reality and I delete the idea, but sometimes it warrants more thought.

  • I give the idea to someone else who I think might benefit from it, or someone who could put their own spin on it.

  • I leave it alone. It's not time to take this thing for a ride. It's OK to just leave it sit for a while, but this is an intentional decision.

  • Sometimes, I might even just delete the idea completely and move on with something else.

My point in sharing a little of my process is that it's really what Godin is saying.... You have to do something with the idea, you need to be intentional about some action step.

How do you process ideas? How do you determine if an idea should take a step forward, intentionally?

DEEPER STILL:

There's a great story from Roy and Walt Disney and "The Idea Drawer" (you can read the whole article below). Basically, Walt was the idea guy and Roy was the operations guy. There were times that Roy would say to Walt, you have a great idea, but it's not time for that yet. Let's put this idea in the drawer and we'll pull it out later to see if we can adopt it.

There's much more to the story, but ideas will come and go all the time. What we do with them and how we process them will make all the difference.

I was reading a great article on Forbes about 15 Ways to Encourage Creative Idea Sharing From All Team Members (linked below). Some really good tips here, but the one that stood out to me was the second one: Schedule Regular Team Brainstorms.

I don't think we spend enough time sharing ideas with each other, bouncing ideas off our team, off our friends, with our families. We're so concerned that our idea might be a bad one, or might even fail, that we "keep it in secret", and then it dies.

This week, find some time to brainstorm some crazy ideas with some people you trust. You'll find yourself encouraged and energized by the simple conversation together.

 

Things I'm Reading, Listening To and Watching This Week:

Source: www.leadermundial.org