Make Ideas Actionable By Becoming Understandable

Your actions, assumptions, and perspective impact making ideas actionable and understandable.

Are you one of “those” team members who is always throwing new ideas out on the table, like a jump ball? And are team members “jumping” at the chance to play around with your ideas? Or do your ideas fall with a loud “thud” on the table, without being bounced around at all?

Some of you reading this post are part of teams operating comfortably within status quo boxes. Consequently, you may be perfectly comfortable with “the way things are.” Then again, being a member of these types of predictable teams can become frustrating. For starters, you begin to feel underutilized and/or underappreciated. Plus, over time, other team members may resent your seemingly continuous idea intrusion into their comfort zones.

Alternatively, before asking another “have you considered” or “what if this option is explored further” question, take a step back from the table. Consider the understandability and accessibility of the ideas you present to each team member, as well as your employer and your client. You may discover that assumptions derail the viability of your new ideas.

Understanding your assumptions first contributes to making ideas actionable and understandable to others, including you.

1. First, do you assume everyone understands what you are talking about? Understandable and accessible word choices matter, especially when introducing new technology, tools, or methods.
2. Next, are you combining and recombining standard thinking in a more novel way? Sometimes, the culture of status quo teams views any new idea as a threat. As a result, you blindside people on the receiving end of your innovative thinking. Can you present ideas more understandably from the start, so people perceive your input as familiar, accessible, and achievable, as well as different?
3. Then, do your own biases create a need to constantly focus on new ideas? Perhaps you assume everyone feels just as underutilized or underappreciated as you do. From your perspective, of course they are more than ready for new ideas. Realistically, you may be the only person on this team or in this discipline or division who feels this way. However, there are other teams, elsewhere in your organization (or at a new company) who are comfortable, confident, and conversant with the value of dripping new approaches into old solutions. If you value new and creative ideas, locate your people. Because “those” people will be working on the meaty projects you crave to become part of.
4. Practically you might be mis-assuming that team members are emotionally, physically, and mentally prepared 24/7/365 to tackle new concepts and ideas. Frankly, the safer assumption is that team members are exhausted by multiple workplace variables. Have you considered the environment into which you present new ideas? While team members might love to make your understandable and accessible ideas actionable, they have no energy to move forward together.

To make ideas actionable, not only make new ideas more understandable. Become more objective and mindful about the context into which you introduce your ideas.

Obviously, if there is a critical error or mission-critical decision to be made, your team’s inertia and receptivity to new ideas is an impediment to necessary actions. You need to take action, even when everyone is out of emotional, physical and mental gas or has analysis paralysis.

However, for many daily decisions made during various projects and initiatives, your ideas can make yesterday’s standard outcomes and output more differentiated tomorrow. Once you understand how to incorporate contextual relevance into presenting new ideas, your ideas become actionable because they are relevant and understandable. How will you take action and move forward, tomorrow?

Catalyzing you to be ahead of what is new, next, and continuously changing. | Professional Innovation | Cross Functional Leadership | Complex Problem Solving | Speaker, Consultant, Mentor |

How do you become more professionally visible, cross-functionally relevant, and strategically valuable throughout your career trajectory as the problems you solve become more complex? Babette Ten Haken’s One Millimeter Mindset ™  speaking, consulting, and mentoring programs catalyze people who solve problems differently to collaborate more innovatively as they create and implement innovative and robust business outcomes together. Regardless of whether you are a traditional thinker or a more creative one, use her 3 Core Questions, 4 Change Agreements, and 5 Professional Whys so everyone gets to where they really need to go, together.

Babette walks her talk so you can walk yours. A speaker and consultant, Babette leverages her own professional, cross-functional experience in new product development and market research to become your concierge mentor. Babette  is a business-oriented STEM professional, qualitative Voice of the Customer facilitator, PMI-certified Wicked Problem Solver, Duke Corporate Education licensed Strategic Agility practitioner, and Six Sigma Green Belt (Quality). She is a member of SHRM, PMI, the National Speakers Association (NSA). Delivered virtually or in-person. Her playbook of cross-functional collaboration, Do YOU Mean Business? is available in digital format on Amazon.com. Contact Babette here. Image source: Adobe Stock.