Bad ideas have existed since the dawn of time. Eve had a crappy idea when she offered Adam the apple. Mao thought sparrows were a pest, exterminated them, and caused a famine that killed millions of Chinese. The idea that the Titanic was an unsinkable ship was particularly stupid. And Decca Records turning down The Beatles in 1962 was the pop industry’s most notorious shot in the foot.
Disastrous ideas have always been there. In over 20 years in the profession, I have been amazed at the amount of terrifying, stupid, illegal, ruinous, wrong, or ridiculous ideas that can emerge within a company in the short space of a couple of days. The year 2023 has been no different. One of the problems with the crazed proliferation of business meetings is that it gives too many opportunities to express an opinion to people whose greatest service to humanity would be to work in silence. Even so, the worst ideas will never cease to exist. What’s really needed is not to extinguish the witless idiots, but to make sure that the people who must ultimately make the decisions are not as half-baked as the ideas that come to their table.
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