Groups that ignore this advice will suffer. I remember a brain-
storming meeting for a major life insurance company, in which a
new vice president (new from another company) offered a novel
suggestion. She said, “Why not send the beneficiary families of the
recently deceased insured a live plant to commemorate the person’s
life and to symbolize that life goes on?” I thought it was an inter-
esting suggestion, but the roomful of “seasoned” executives howled
at it. They tore it apart, beat it, kicked it, stomped it, mocked it,
and just generally lynched it before they moved on. The VP obvi-
ously felt assaulted. But it didn’t end there. From that point on in
the meeting, whenever a new or unusual idea was suggested, there
was a chorus of “Oh sure, and let’s send a live plant, too!” Fol-
lowed, of course, by knee-slapping and convulsive laughter.
I had never seen anything quite like this in a brainstorming
session. It was early in my career, and I had no experience or
authority to intervene, so I just observed in horror. But it didn’t
end there, either. In subsequent meetings around the company,
whenever anyone brought up a new, unusual idea, the suggestion
was met with a chorus of “Send a live green plant!” This VP’s
suggestion became part of the culture of the company, in a very
demeaning way.
Now, here’s the punch line (which in this case is delicious). In
her previous job, the new VP had worked at a smaller life insur-
ance company, where they had enjoyed tremendous success with
the plant strategy. This, of course, is why she mentioned it in the
first place! (One of the best strategies for successful creation is to
borrow best practices that have worked elsewhere.) The epilogue
of this story is that the woman moved on to a career at another
company. Was it the plant incident that drove her out? Probably
not entirely. In fact, she has a remarkably resilient attitude. But I’ll
bet it factored in, and I know that it affected her willingness to
open the creative spigot and let the ideas flow.
Creating safety is a process that requires careful attention and
constant maintenance. One organization that knows a lot aboutCreating a Safe Place 14314-25 ware 143 1/19/01, 1:14 PM