A Double Take at Leadership: Tool

Let’s face it; even the best team members can slip into negative thoughts complaining to one another, “that won’t work here, we’ve already tried that.” 

When these sentiments arise, consider acting more like an optometrist. Instead of throwing the idea out or giving up on the initiative, engage your team members and ask them to think about what slight modifications could be made to turn an idea from useless to useful. 

Here are a few questions to consider asking when met with negative thoughts: 

  • Is this the same approach as the one we tried before? Or, is it just reminiscent of it? 
  • Has anything changed since the last time we tried something? If so, how might those changes affect the viability of trying again? 
  • How might we change the components of the approach to make it work? 
  • What items in our approach are key and which ones might we consider removing or adjusting? 

This week’s tool and video are designed to get you thinking about how you might rethink your approach to solving problems, redesigning processes, or brainstorming solutions – especially in the face of the sobering, at times cynical, “that won’t work here, we’ve already tried that,” argument.   

 

We already tried that