A recent news story cited “the difficulty of developing consensus around how to solve the intractable problem of youth violence.” But complex problems are rarely solved by consensus, and breakthrough ideas, the kind that are truly radical, almost never emerge from a group setting. Albert Einstein, an idea man if ever there was one, observed, “If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.” Consensus certainly has a place, but truly game-changing ideas never survive the consensus-building process. If you’re looking for ways to create dramatic change in the way you do business, keep in mind that there are always many more people who can tell you why an idea won’t work than there are people who can come up with a better one.
