Kill the work, not the creator
I have seen the excitement vanish from people’s eyes. The look is unmistakable. The eyes fade into the horizon and the posture shifts. I know that look instantly because I’ve been there myself.
The look is easily mistaken for an inability to handle feedback or understanding the pace of business. But it isn’t. It’s the quiet defeat that comes from feeling unimportant to the bigger picture. While some people show up to just cover a role, most people show up to connect and feel part of something bigger.
As a manager or a partner, you don’t want to kill the creator. You want to kill the work. In my experience, solving this comes down to three simple steps:
Agree on the problem
Before anyone starts thinking about what they have to do, open the room up. Spend real time defining the problem. What might be clear to some, might be seen differently by others. Defining the core of the problem and finding the right language to talk about it as a group will move everyone in the right direction under a single truth.
“Clarity” seems like a simple concept, but it was only until the team spend a few minutes talking about it that it was obvious that “certainty” was the word the team needed to really connect to the problem.
Allow for ideation
Lock the problem, don’t lock the answers. When you approach a project with “the best” solution already in mind, you miss the chance to find a better path. Confirmation bias starts taking over the project and real innovation fades away.
When was the last time you asked “yes, and?” until ideas didn’t quite make sense anymore? On a session someone suggested we change all the toilet water color in an airport to advertise the brand. Did we get to do it? No, but it led to a powerful set of color applications for the whole brand.
The problem is the only judge
When it is time to review the work, evaluate it based on the shared problem. The conversation shouldn’t be a guessing game about personal taste or someone’s mood. Which idea solves the problem in the best way possible? No egos, no personal preferences, pure focus on the objective. If it doesn’t ladder back to the problem the idea is off the table.
The output?
When you keep a close eye on these three steps, conversations become incredibly simple. Subjectivity fades out because the target is fixed on solving a real thing. The team knows exactly how hard they need to work to get the execution where it needs to be, and they will gladly kill their own ideas to get to an actual solve.
These steps also act as a final filter for your room. If someone consistently refuses to discuss the nuances, connect to the problem, skips the collaboration, and just wants to dictate their ideas without listening—then, maybe they shouldn’t be in the room.
