How Boring Kills Brilliance

I received this regulatory notice from NY State today:

For the return due March 20, 2014, the Tax Department’s Sales Tax Web File service will require vendors to report credit information on a jurisdictional basis. This means for each jurisdiction for which you report activity, you must now separately report your credits against taxable sales and purchases.

Did your brain just freeze from boredom?? Mine did even though I’m a detail oriented Classic (SJ). I wrote this a Pixie Tip not because I’m a libertarian exhausted by living and running a business within Kafka-esque New York State and Federal regulations but rather because it is the sort of detail that I never imagined dealing with when starting a small business. It’s the sort of thing that stymies less detail oriented types — Organic Freedoms (NFP) or Smart Freedoms (NTP) — from sustaining these ventures on their own. It’s a shame because life doesn’t have to be this complicated and we probably lose a lot of great ideas because of it. 

I handle these sorts of boring details for PixiesDidIt and it’s not a big deal. But, if Katie had to do this on her own, I’m not sure they would get done and eventually ignoring these tedious details could lead to disaster. Kate’s the idea gal. Sure, all personality types have great, creative ideas but some are better and grander than others. Yes, great ideas are what moves society forward but they go nowhere without feasible ways to implement them. The devil is always in the detail.

If you want to come up with big ideas that work, you need to mix the brilliance of big picture thinkers with the pinpoint precision thinking of detail oriented thinkers. Great brainstorming doesn’t happen in a vacuum. If you have a brainstorming session without giving any thought to WHO you are inviting to it, you’ll find nine times out of ten that there are one or two people with really neat ideas and then everyone else who spends the meeting talking about how these ideas are not feasible. Eventually those one or two idea people clam up, the naysayer take over and you have boring group think.

Meetings, and especially brainstorming meetings, are like putting together a great dinner party. You have to think about your guest list. To have a fantastic brainstorming meeting invite a slew of Organic Freedoms (NFP), Smart Freedoms (NTP) and a few Smart Structures (NTJ) and then one, and only one, Classic (SJ), preferably an introverted one. You instruct everyone that this is a brainstorming meeting where you want to hear big ideas for the topic at hand. Then you instruct the Classic to write down every idea and quietly (to themselves) start thinking of feasible ways to implement them.

Next, hold a follow-up meeting where you talk about how to make these ideas a reality. Invite the same group of Organic Freedoms, Smart Freedoms and Smart Structures that is about equal to a second group of Classics, Funs (SP) and Organic Structures (NFJ). The second group will ALWAYS be the Debbie Downers pointing out how none of these ideas are feasible. But the first group will have had time to think about how to implement their ideas and be jazzed that they had a brainstorming session where their ideas were not all immediately shot down. They’ll also have had the time to work on their less preferred way of taking in information, i.e., the nitty gritty, the details. This means they will have some practical ideas for implementation to assuage the more practical types.

If you can’t control the guest list, single out the known Debbie Downers and tell them you don’t want to hear any negative ideas or points — even if they make sense — until meeting #2. Follow this advice and you might — just might — get a great, feasible idea out of these meetings.