Sometimes worse is better.

When you’re developing something new, remaining flexible is one of the most important things you can do. You need to always be able to respond to new information, and to let go of your preconceptions of how things should be.

This means you need to test ideas early, and discard them easily. But that’s not what most people do, because it’s not what most companies or managers incentivize.

You’re often told that your ideas need to be bulletproof. Or that if challenged, they need to hold up. You need to account for every possibility or circumstance. Your ideas must be robust, and well-thought-out.

I disagree.

That’s not to say that you should throw out every garbage idea under the sun. You need to make sure your ideas are worthwhile. But as a team, you need to be able to hear ideas *before* they get polished. This has myriad positive results – it lets rough gems grow better, faster, and it lets interesting failures get discarded early. With good ideas, it lets people “get in on it” early, contribute, and buy-in much, much faster. And it lets you throw out ideas that won’t work without building up a huge emotional investment/attachment to the concept.

Your team needs to understand that this is how it should work, and as a leader, you need to foster a culture that can hear things “rough” without being critical or dismissive because of that roughness.

But if you can swing it, and get your team on board, your work will improve much faster.