The Washington Post runs a contest every once in a while. Contestants have to take a word and by changing or adding one letter invent a new word. Some of the previous winners have been Sarchasm (The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it – which I can relate to as it feels like most of my posts) and Osteopornosis: (A degenerate disease).
My favorite however was this one: Dopeler effect -The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly. I love this one because it is true, especially for management in fast-moving companies. You employ a lot of smart people and they are all creative. You have only so much time and they just seem to come up with more-and-more good ideas. So each idea gets less and less of a hearing. That means that you get lots of ideas coming at you really fast. Suddenly all the ideas start seeming equally smart, even though, just by the rule of averages, some of them have to be stupid.
Here’s something to think about: the risk of judging a bad idea as a good one is greater than the risk of not hearing the idea at all. And the reward for hearing every idea is much less than the risk of missing one or two.
I’m not saying go back on 70 years of management theory and start closing your door and hiding (although, let’s face it, most managers do it anyway). I’m saying that if you find yourself suffering from the Dopeler effect it might be time to ask the people bringing you ideas to pick their ideas (and your battles) more carefully.
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