Sunday, July 19, 2009

Where Ideas Come From

Continuing to answer the 20 questions for leaders that Michael Smith of ClearView Baptist Church in Franklin, Tennessee asked Mike Hyatt, this week’s question is, Where do the great ideas come from in your organization?


I’ll tell you where they don’t come from. They almost never come from the leaders. Leaders are great people, but tend to get caught of in making the last great idea work. You get tunnel vision sometimes and then some ordinary person comes along and asks, “Wouldn’t it be easier if you did it this way?” Your natural tendency might be to tell them all the reasons they are wrong, but after you take the time to consider the idea and make adjustments for things they hadn’t considered, it might the one of the best ideas you’ve seen in a long time.


Remember Moses? He got so busy trying to judge the people that he didn’t have time for anything else. His father-in-law showed up one day, observed what was going on and told him he ought to get some men to help him. Moses set up a system in which some men would judge the lesser things and other men would judge the things that were weightier and only some of the things would ever make it up to Moses for judgment. It must have been a good idea. We are still using that system in our courts system today.