Andy Eklund is founder and Managing Director of Aqus, an Australian-based consulting organization that facilitates creative thinking, be it for strategic planning or corporate communications. He has worked with over 500 clients around the world. And he has seen, all too often, sticks poked in the wheels of creativity, stopping even the best ideas in mid-spin.
Let’s face it, the market for new ideas is as bearish as that for IPOs. New ideas imply risk because they always come with elements of the unknown.
In his blog, Creative Streak, Eklund lists 10 ways ideas are stifled. I will expand on a few of these and then add a couple of my own.
Eklund Stifler #1: Lack of Oxygen
This seems to be a good place to start: are you capturing all the ideas available? Unfortunately, not all ideas get to bubble up to the surface. Shyness, uncertainty, lack of empowerment, fear of ridicule…any number of reasons, real or imagined, will inhibit people from coming forward and presenting an idea. In other words, ideas die in the womb. The fertility of these people’s imagination is wasted.
Corner Office Killer App: “Yes, But…”
When an idea is proffered up, there is an instant when it hovers weightless, somewhere between the rise and the fall. There is a silence, a tension, an apprehension. It is at that moment when the most common squelcher of ideas usually rears its ugly head. Someone says: “yes, but…”

“Yes, but…” is akin to the spider drawing prey into its web, wrapping it up in sticky goop, and then eating it at leisure. “Yes, but” means “nice try, but if you had thought it out first, you would have realized that it can never work.” The ‘but’ can be any number of things that have contributed, lo these many years, to corporate inertia: more important priorities; lack of resources; channel conflict; upcoming negotiations. It may or may not really be that important or relevant, but it is almost always deadly. Like a highway robber, it waylays, it leaves poorer, it spoils the trip.
“Yes, but…” is at its destructive best in the mouths of superiors. Regardless of the intent, a “Yes, but…” from your boss is a kick in the gut. It is now clearer to everyone in the room why he and not you is in the corner office. Everyone is now staring at that chunk of very green spinach stuck between your front teeth. If you are one of those shy, uncertain, unempowered, ridicule-fearing types, you will have nothing further to say.
If an idea is not allowed to breathe, to percolate a little prior to intervention, even a well-meaning attempt to improve it will likely hasten its demise.
Eklund Stifler #2: Budget
Budget is at the top of the list of Buts.
There are two ways the budget bogeyman makes its presence known. One is the zero sum expense game. There is only so much money available for, say, marketing, and while a good idea may move ahead of the pack, it cannot change the bottom line. If there’s no extra money, a new idea means cutting into a long-running campaign or cutting back on a new product launch or cutting out someone else’s pet project.
There is also the issue of capital. Some investments may have a good return and a relatively quick payback. But there is always a threshold at which the organization will balk. In my old company, the magic number was $1 million. Any project that Operations did not want to entertain suddenly required a million dollar investment. Even more magical was when the numbers were so attractive that the million dollars might not have been a deal breaker. Ta duh! Suddenly, without warning, the cost was $2 million. The hissing sound you may have heard was the air seeping out of the idea balloon.
Eklund Stifler #3: Mutilation
The natural successor to Budget. Most good ideas cost money. Not all ideas, to be sure, but most. And not necessarily a lot of money, but money nevertheless. Which means the idea has to be sold. Sometime in the future, I will discuss how to present an idea to Senior Management, but for now consider that the timing must be appropriate, the framing i.e., (rationale) impeccable, the excitement palpable, the packaging tidy (no loose ends), and the support (with the necessary documents and from the right people) fully in place. And, to Eklund’s main point here, you have to choose the right person to present the idea, the right person not necessarily being the one who had the idea in the first place. The key to the successful presentation of an idea is more often the presentation than the idea itself.
Corner Office Killer App: Where’s the Beef?
If you are going to put an idea out there, it should have some meat on it. It is easy to pick at the bones of a skeleton. It is somewhat more risky to take cheap shots at a 600 pound gorilla. If you know you are going to a meeting where ideas on a specific topic are to be bandied about, come prepared. Have numbers to back up you claims. Have answers for any possible objection. Have back-up documents. Have one or more colleagues in place to jump in with credible support. In other words, be prepared to bully your idea’s way into the spotlight and keep it there.
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Percy Williams Bridgman, in his book The Intelligent Individual and Society, wrote “There is no adequate defense, except stupidity, against the impact of a new idea.” The real stupidity is wasting a good idea or dismissing what is, at least, the seed of a good idea.
