Committee is another name for “neutering.” If you want to take some great ideas from your best people and turn them into “mediocrity,” form a committee.
Committees are designed to “reach consensus” or “agreement” as to what you want to do next. But when people come into the committee meeting they have far reaching ideas, ideas that are “out of the box” and creative and innovative. Then they meet the other committee members…those that didn’t take the time to get creative and innovative. When these two worlds collide, mediocrity happens.
I call this “neutering” because when you take a wildly innovative, creative idea and the committee reduces it to something that is “OK” or maybe even “good enough” the best ideas never see the light of day…they get neutered.
I use a phrase to help companies get past this conundrum…play in the “Corners of the Circle.” You are probably saying, “there are no corners to a circle”…exactly. Companies that play in these “corners” aren’t accepting mediocrity…they are in the area of creativity and innovation. They are coming up with ideas the competition can’t get to…because they are probably having a committee meeting to figure out how you came up with such innovative ideas!
Customers never, ever say, “WOW these people are AWESOME” when the committee delivers a mediocre idea or solution. They only say this when you live in the “Corners of the Circle”…and you can’t find those in most committee meetings. Oh and one more thing in case you haven’t figured it out on your own…no one spreads Word-of-Mouth on mediocre ideas.
