The other day a friend told me her story or rather her experience of how she implemented one of her ideas that brought unequivocal success to her company.

She had an idea she thought great. She called her colleagues to a meeting to get their feedback. But, some did not even see any goodness in the idea, others expressed reservations and none came forward with enthusiasm for the idea to transform into action. My friend was very disappointed because she couldn’t convince the rest of her managers and sadly she put her idea in her drawers to sleep probably forever.

A few months past and another grand promising idea sprung up in her mind.

What should she do? Frightened by the negative reaction of her colleagues to her earlier idea, she wondered for many days how to go about it. She believed in sharing and building an idea into greatness by feedback. But she was very much against crowd consensus and feedback from opposition for its own sake.

She so much believed in her new idea that was anxious to see it happening. So she thought her idea through, planned for what was needed and only then did she call her colleagues, each to a personal meeting in which she told them of the idea and its purpose, the role assigned to each and asked them to give content to their role to the best of their abilities. She purposely designed her course to avoid any groupthink in which a strong party unduly influences the rest of the participants.

This time not only did the idea materialize but it was also a great success. Afterwards some of her colleagues confessed to her that at the start they did not [...]