Having good ideas is a necessary part of the job of a technical artist. We’re frequently asked to solve problems in unique ways, often amidst challenging circumstances or parameters, so being able to react and respond is critical.
But on the converse, sometimes we’re on the receiving end of others’ ideas: vision and dreams that people or teams want to implement, sometimes in ways that seem unreasonable or impractical. Those might be the moments where it’s good to remember that just because an idea exists, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good idea.
While the brainstorming process is critical to generating ideas, there’s also another filter that they must go through in order to be able to pass muster as something able to be completed. Those ideas must progress from the “wow” stage to the “how” stage: they’re not just cool and amazing, but we can wrap our arms around what the process will entail in order to bring them to life.
Many of our technical tribe are really good at the “how” piece, and we frequently live in a mindset of logistics and details. So when an idea is presented to us, how can we ask the appropriate questions and provide reasonable feedback without coming across as cynical, stubborn, or unwilling? How can we warrant that all teams (including our own) are being set up for success with proper planning on the front end?
Here are a few ideas we and others need to consider to ensure that a new idea really is a good idea worth pursuing.
- Count the cost.
Jesus himself emphasizes the importance of advance planning in Luke 14:28-32, when he notes the prudence of counting the cost prior to starting something of note.
In the same way, new projects and ideas should never be undertaken without first considering what all will be required.
It’s easy to initially think of only the financial cost for materials, contractor fees, rental costs, etc.
But what about the unseen costs?
What about any added stress and anxiety that could come from bringing a certain idea to life, especially within the given context of other planned events or projects already on the calendar?
What about the cost in man hours, that will ultimately prevent a team from being able to focus on other things? Is it worth the tradeoff for those other tasks that will need to be neglected or marginalized for a certain period?
Sometimes, given the existing workload or demands, it may be required to go about implementing an idea differently. Maybe the financial cost needs to increase so contract labor can be used due to how busy the current staff is. Or maybe the current staff just doesn’t have the headspace to focus on something else during its existing workload (like during a holiday season, for instance), so it’s necessary to bring in additional labor.
Or maybe, once the cost has been counted, it’s determined that while the idea was valid, it just might not be the right season to bring it to life, and the timeline needs to be reconsidered and possibly shifted to where it could be more palatable to introduce.
- Ask the right questions.
When a new idea is first brought to the table, it’s easy to think of certain questions: who is in charge, when is it due, how much will it cost, etc.
But other questions often get overlooked or forgotten about, like Is this repeatable? Is it scalable? Is it sustainable?
In a vacuum, very few ideas are truly one-and-done. There’s often a seed that grows from that to spur future ideas. If it happened a certain way in year one, there’s often a desire to expand and improve upon it for year two. And if it’s a multisite church, there’s often a later need to take that idea to multiple venues or locations.
Sometimes those questions don’t get considered on day one.
If there’s a yearning to do something big and neat that will stretch our team beyond what we’re capable of, often times people can rally together to pull off the impossible. However, the impossible then becomes possible, and “dreamers” will begin to look for the Next Big Thing that can expand upon the originally impossible idea.
Being stretched beyond imagined limits once can be exhilarating. But if it’s going to happen again, that needs to be discussed upfront. If we’re going to pull off this crazy thing, we need to at least discuss now what will be required down the road to do this again. And if it’s not something that’s going to be repeatable like this, or it’s not something we can sustain and reproduce, then it needs to be part of the decision-making process.
Does the cost need to increase? Do we need to establish a baseline that involves additional resources and expectations? How well do we need to document and track the process so if we are asked to repeat it, we have a good paper trail to follow in order to do that? And can we go ahead and plan a time to debrief and discuss it while it’s fresh so that can help in the planning process for the next time?
Also, does the idea need to change or be modified if this is expected to happen in multiple places concurrently? At our church, there have been many great ideas brought to the table in the past that ultimately had to be modified due to the need of scaling that idea broadly across multiple campuses that had differing levels of resources, team size, building/facility features, etc.
Asking the more significant picture questions now can save immense amounts of stress or headache down the road and can eliminate the need to make late, in-the-field adjustments that could weaken the overall implementation.
- Determine how to measure success.
It can be easy to feel energized after doing something new, and it can be fun to post on social media about this awesome new thing that happened. But having fun and thinking it was cool aren’t really the measuring sticks of success.
So what are those measuring sticks, then?
That is going to look different for every organization and its individual ministries. But whatever they are, they need to be clearly defined so there’s a way to measure whether the new idea was successful.
“Wins” need to be clearly defined and need to be attainable. So a win can’t be that something “felt great” or that “it seemed like a lot of people were excited.” Subjective feedback can’t determine whether something was a win; there’s a reason why sports have scoreboards to clearly measure success and objectively determine progress.
Churches should be the same way. Given how much money and time were spent on something, is there a certain return on investment (ROI) that needs to be met to determine if it was successful and worth repeating?
Should there be a minimum threshold of attendance or response in order to label something as a success?
Do we have data in hand from past years that we can use as a baseline against which we can measure new things?
Ideas shouldn’t be implemented for the sake of being new or cool. They should be pursued with a specific target in mind, like a response or call to action. And if that’s the case, do we have a clearly defined way to measure the things that we want people to do or feel? If not, that needs to get fleshed out at some point during the decision-making process.
As a technician, sometimes it can feel like we’re the last line of defense between a brainstorm and its implementation, as if something we weren’t part of is being dumped on us with an expectation of perfection. In some ways, that’s OK; after all, it’s the vision of the ministry teams that drive us to respond technically. Our job is to use our technology resources to serve other teams and bring their vision to life.
But at the same time, it’s OK for us to still ask questions to ensure that there’s clarity by all parties. Does everyone know how this will impact teams and workflow, and do our priorities need to change? Is this something that we’ll be expected to expand or build upon? How do we even determine whether it’s successful?
We may not be part of the team that came up with the dream, but we’re certainly part of the team that brings it to life. And asking the right questions can sometimes be the difference in something morphing from a wild hair into a good idea.
