They Stole My Idea!!!

Not mine - that's a quotation. But we've all had that experience, right? You thought up something new and amazing and six months later you saw one in a shop.

A good friend of mine told me about an idea she and her husband had come up with which explained those inexplicable congested spots on the motorway which seem to appear and vanish without any apparent reason.

"It's Compound Braking, Dave" she told me, "Someone brakes a little bit more sharply than they needed to, the car behind them over-reacts a little bit more again, and so on back down the motorway until suddenly you've got gridlock with no visible cause. Compound Braking."

Just a couple of weeks later I was driving to a session when lo and behold, radio 4 news announced that scientists had, at great expense no doubt, discovered why congestion appears on the motorway for no apparent reason. They then described how a chain reaction of ever-more-panicky braking responses cause this. Hm, I'm thinking - isn't this just Michelle's Compound Braking by another name?

Besides the obvious lesson about rushing down to the Patent Office every time you have an idea...

...next time you're listening to the idle chatter of members of your team who's coming up with these hare-brained ideas? Odds are these are the people who could be putting that IQ to use on solving the problems your team faces. Are you letting them, or are you stopping them?


All the best,

Dave Bull
Team Coaching Network Ltd
http://www.teamcoachingnetwork.com