Don't Sell a Bad Idea
Don’t Sell a Bad Idea
When I was ten years old I’d order merchandise
from the back page of comic books and sell them door-to-door. In the spring, I’d be selling flower and
vegetable seeds and in the fall I’d sell Christmas cards. In high school, I’d sell myself in student
council elections and eventually joined Junior Achievement, a ‘learn-by-doing’
business program. In fact, I won their
national sales contest in 1972 and the $500 scholarship paid for my first year
university tuition, all my books and I still had money left over.
I joined our family tire business at 15 years
of age and was selling in the showroom, ‘selling up’ while working in the
service bays and as soon as I could drive, I was selling tires ‘on the road’ to
gas stations and trucking companies.
Even though I was only 32 when I decided to run for political office, I
was an experienced ‘pitchman’ at all candidates meetings and on the door
step. Once in elected office, I soon
moved into leadership positions and had opportunities to not only sell myself
and my ideas but to put those ideas into action.
Decades later I’m still fortunate to find
leadership opportunities and to be in a position where ideas can become
reality. There is just one problem: not
all my ideas are good ideas.
So with maturity and after some stumbles, I’ve
learned to look for ‘skilled contrarians’ as part of my governance and
management teams. Fortunately, some of
those contrarians have found me.
Soon
after I was elected Mayor the city manager come into my office, closed the door
and asked: ‘can I talk to Frank?’ This was
different from the ‘Your Worship’ relationship we had outside that closed door
and he used these opportunities to politely point out what might be flawed
about a particular strategy – or more bluntly, how I might be screwing up. Same goes today on private sector boards where
the ‘MVP’ is the director that speaks up and helps us avoid ‘group think.’ If I’m chairing that board, I don’t want to
act on my own idea until I’ve heard them speak.
Skilled contrarians are not ‘yah-buts.’ Those are the ones that seem to resist all
new ideas by starting their sentence with ‘yes but.’ I’ve run into ‘yah-buts’ as I moved into
leadership roles in the private and public sector and always work towards the
same solution: give them a chance to change careers.
The most dangerous situation is where there
isn’t a skilled contrarian – where all your ideas are good ideas. Being the pitchman that I am, I will
sometimes get on a roll and start selling one idea after another. That’s when the alarm in my head needs to go
off – ‘oh no, I’ve been here six weeks and all of my ideas have been wonderful
and are being acted on.’ That’s when you
realize that for whatever reason you’re surrounded by groupies.
We all have to live with the consequences of
our bad ideas but many others have to live with some of mine. For example, a bare wall faces a back street of a rezoning that I spoke enthusiastically in favour of and a local government can’t get rid of
an advisory committee I thought would be helpful. I’ve also had bad ideas in the private sector
but the marketplace seems to take care of them.
So the lesson I’ve learned is ‘don’t get caught
selling a bad idea.’ Be self-aware that
some of your ideas will be good and some won’t, and then ensure you get trusted
input from others – hopefully skilled contrarians – before putting all of them
into action.