Chapter 25 – Try ideas, especially from others

“Good ideas come from everywhere. It’s more important to recognize a good idea than to author it.”
~ Jeanne Gang “Great ideas can come from anywhere. There are no titles around an idea.”
~ Steve Stoute “An idea that can change the course of the company can come from anywhere.”
~ Jack Dorsey

Don’t let your ego get in the way of a good idea, no matter the source. Learning to encourage and develop ideas from others is an excellent way to increase your value and give your own ideas more weight.

You are a designer with experience, training, and taste. When it comes to elegant solutions to interactive or visual problems your concepts naturally will be very strong. Strong too, though, may be your impulse to overly rely on your own proposals and risk silencing outside sources. 

In response to a UI problem you’ll muster all of your creativity and produce a solution that is elegant, possible, and grand. You’ll leverage your learned design experiences and will know how to best design out the solution for the task.

Imagine being at this stage of ideation when a member of your team comes to you with an idea. You’ve already come up with an excellent and exciting solution you’re ready to act upon, and now an outside source (perhaps worse from a non designer!) brings you something different. What do you think your reaction will be? The reasonable truth is rejection. You know better, you have the idea, you’ve invested yourself into it, why would you entertain this other idea?

Another similar scenario: you are putting together the layout for an application when a developer comes up to you with an idea they’ve had. They mean well but they are not a designer, right? They don’t have your skillset and haven’t approached it with the same empathy and experience you have, why nurture this outside idea?

As difficult and unintuitive as it may be, you should absolutely explore these ideas if time allows. 

You should receive the ideas and nurture them for a variety of reasons:

It might be a better solution than yours

It’s a difficult thing to admit, especially when you’re proud of your own work, but either through luck or intuition an outside source may have the better idea. If you put your defenses up immediately when presented with a new idea you could miss out on the true best path.

Good ideas come can from anywhere

Your talents and your experience gives you a deep well to draw from for solutions and designs, but it does not give you a monopoly. If you genuinely try to develop someone else’s idea, you may find that a) it’s an excellent idea b) parts of the idea can be integrated to improve your solution c) you’ll learn a new perspective you didn’t have before

Remove your own hubris

It can become a self fulfilling prophecy if you believe you are the only one with workable ideas. Specifically, if you won’t accept ideas from others, ideas from others will stop being offered. It’s dangerous to fall in love with our own ideas or idolize our own abilities. Great ideas can come from anywhere, and to shut out all other ideas because we only trust and value our own creations is folly. 

If your nurture other’s ideas, you’ll be trusted with more

If a teammate was rewarded with kindness and enthusiasm when they shared their precious idea with you, they will be eager to continue doing so in future. Further, that reputation will spread and others will come to know that you are someone who can be trusted to take a concept and treat it fairly. 

With such a reputation not only will ideas for immediate issues flow to you, but exciting concepts for new projects and work will begin to come to you. As you become known as an open individual who values the input from others you’ll increase your value to a number of projects.

People will more willingly accept your ideas

If you have shown good faith towards others and their contributions, when it comes time for you to present an idea they’ll have a greater appreciation for where it comes from. They’ll know you as open, willing, and have seen you put in time and care for other’s solutions. When the time comes for you to pitch or push for an important idea they may now be your greatest supporters. 

You’ll become approachable

If you are the arbiter of good taste and shut down anyone who approaches you with an idea, a funny thing will happen: they will stop approaching you. If you build yourself into an impenetrable design tower that only casts down ideas and doesn’t try some from others, people will stop trying. You will not be invited to brainstorming sessions. Your ideas will not be called upon as often as they’re seen as iron clad and not up for discussion. Being “right” all the time does you no favors.

Instead, being someone who will roll with others for the sake of discovery, who can think quickly to mix and match ideas as they come in, who takes time to weigh the opinions and concepts of others; that someone will find themselves in high demand to help with ideation.

Trying ideas of others can pay huge dividends.

One last but very important part of this, you MUST give credit to the original idea creator. Name them and celebrate their ingenuity. It will all be for nothing if you don’t call out those who came up with the original idea. Sure, you are the one that took the pebble of an idea and polished it into a jewel, but if you want to continue to receive the benefits listed above you must give credit to the originator.

We’re often very precious and proud of our own ideas. We know where they’re coming from and can lean on our designer’s intuition and experience. It’s not unreasonable to feel confident in the solutions you yourself propose. But pay special attention to encouraging and developing ideas from others and you’ll find yourself becoming trusted, in demand, and your own ideas getting stronger.

Try ideas, especially from others.

What’s I’m NOT saying:

• Every idea is a good idea
• Waste your time on anything anyone brings you
• Your ideas should always take a back seat
• You should not fight for your own good ideas

What I am saying:

• There are outsized benefits to genuinely working with others ideas
• Humility and openness are in short supply and will be well received
• Being open to ideas will have people wanting to give you more
• Become an integral part of brainstorming sessions by enabling others
• You build trust and approachability by helping others ideas with your talents