Have you ever pitched an idea you were passionate about, only to have it shot down without an iota of consideration? Are you walking into an ideation or pitching session expecting to hear “no because” / “we tried that last year” / “it’s not a strategic brand fit” or perhaps the most dreaded: “hmmm that’s interesting” (possibly punctuated by an eye roll)?

The reality is that great ideas are squashed regularly. Some are in their infancy or could have been potential catalysts for an idea built off of the original. If the very goal of an Ideation Session is to bring these innovative ideas to market, why then do we insist on consistently putting up these blockades?

The more experience and expertise we have in a given area, the more we tend to default to why an idea might not work, rather than considering how it could. I call this our “River of Thinking”. Trapped in years of our own knowledge and expertise, we predict potentially hundreds of reasons why each idea won’t succeed, considering them through our very specific paradigms and not seeing the bigger potential. 

So how do we avoid the dreaded trap of “No, because” and end this senseless loss of potential genius?

When beginning an ideation session, it is important to set the tone for the goal of the day by clearly Signaling that the session you are about to lead is an Expansionist session, and that you are looking for big ideas. Reductionist Thinking can be reserved for another day. I cover the importance of the creative behavior of Signaling in this post.

The key to harnessing the momentum of your ideation sessions and to keep the innovations flowing is as simple as “Yes, and…”. Simply ask each participant to begin each sentence or response to an idea with those two very simple words. You’ll be amazed at the immediate transformation of the energy in the room. 

Almost instantly you will notice an increase in laughter (recall my post on the importance of Playfulness in unlocking the door between your conscious and subconscious brain for stimulus enhancement). Shortly following this surge of joy, you will see people discover their hands while demonstrating their ideas and further opening their kinesthetic knowledge in the session. Then, you will notice how each idea expands upon the last, with the ideas getting bigger and bigger, seemingly without limit. It is important to remember that you can always reverse engineer a big idea back, but it is nearly impossible to take a pithy, uninspiring idea and turn it into something of value. 

“Yes, and…” stops the “Yes, or…” people dead in their tracks. The ‘Yes, or…” people are those who pretend that they have heard and are in support of your idea, before simply just shouting out their own idea. “Yes, or…” brings no value to the session – keep an ear out for it and work to coach your participants back to finding their “Yes, and…”

Most important of all, “Yes, and…” turns “my idea” into “our idea,” which creates a sense of pride and ownership in participants, instantly overcoming a huge barrier to buy-in (and therefore execution). The moment you can transform “my idea” into “our idea” is the pivotal moment that exponentially accelerates the idea’s likelihood of coming to life, both bolstering and fostering current and future innovation and creative potential. 

I define Creativity as the ability to have big ideas, whereas Innovation is the ability to get these ideas executed successfully. Incorporating “Yes, and…” is one of my strongest tools to do just that!