Jeweller - February 2019

MANAGEMENT
INTELLIGENT IGNORANCE; POSITIVE RESULTS
THINKING OUTSIDE THE SQUARE IS EASIER SAID THAN DONE, BUT RICH KIZER AND GEORGANNE BENDER HAVE
SOME ADVICE ABOUT HOW INTELLIGENT IGNORANCE CAN PRODUCE POSITIVE OUTCOMES.
The Wright brothers weren’t going to take ‘no’
for an answer; they planned to sprout wings
and fly. The year was 1903 and they were full
of intelligent ideas, they also had the ability
to ignore the common belief about man not
being able to fly.
This intelligent ignorance led them to try
radical new ideas. The Wright brothers took
to the sky and the rest is history. They flew
in the face of all the negative beliefs that
swirled around them.
Today, the world relies on air travel for so
many things and we’re glad Orville and
Wilbur Wright demonstrated that “intelligent
ignorance”, or as or as we fondly refer to it,
‘i-squared’ or ‘i2’ for short.
Fast forward to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, late
in the 20th Century, where a man named
Nick has just landed a job selling vacuum
cleaners door-to-door. Starting as a trainee,
Nick goes through the usual sales training
exercises and activities.
The last two days of training involve being
sent to a test neighbourhood to practice his
door-to-door craft. Because all sales trainees
canvass this same neighbourhood, they leave
the office with a warning: No one will buy
a vacuum cleaner from you, so just practice
greeting customers and getting your foot in
the door. But no one warned Nick.
Nick hit the streets not knowing he wouldn’t
be able to sell a vacuum cleaner in this
neighbourhood if his life depended on it.
He didn’t know it was a cold market, so he
unleashed what he learned in sales training.
And sell he did, bringing in a record number of
sales. There’s power in intelligent ignorance.
Neither the Wright brothers nor Nick let
history nor preconceived ideas dictate their
actions. Never let assumptions or people
who say “That can’t be done” or “We’ve done
that before and it didn’t work”, stop you from
trying new and innovating things for your life
and your business.
During a recent two-day brainstorming effort
UNDER THE
RULES OF
BRAINSTORMING
NO ONE GETS TO
SAY, “THAT’S A
STUPID IDEA”,
THE WRIGHT BROTHERS IGNORED DOUBTERS
to solve a client’s dilemma, the two of us had
plenty of ideas, but this situation required
different thinking because sometimes the
tried and true ideas just stop working.
On day three we asked a few entrepreneurs
for their thoughts, even though they had no
particular knowledge of our client’s industry.
After explaining the issues, we asked them to
take 30 minutes alone to think about what
we had just shared before we convened a
brainstorming session.
Under the rules of brainstorming no one gets
to say, “That’s a stupid idea”, because what
one person thinks is crazy just might lead to
an incredible idea by someone else.
In just 20 minutes the room was buzzing
with fresh ideas, and implementation
strategies were bouncing off the walls. The
solutions that came from this brainstorming
session surprised us; they didn’t fit the
paradigms of successful strategies we’d seen
and used before. But that’s the point.
When an outsider offers suggestions it’s
too easy to think, “Yeah, okay. What do
you know about my business?” They know
enough not to say, “We tried that before
and it didn’t work.”
And you need to be smart enough to
take their big ideas and tweak them
until you reach your desired outcome.
We merged the strategies our partners
shared with ours, tweaking as we
went along. Then we did a few test
implementations to see what would
happen and the strategies worked. We
knew now what to suggest to our client
and how to present it.
Two weeks later we met with our client to
present these tweaked i2 ideas, it was tense
at first, as our client’s team mulled over the
strategies we shared. Then the lights started
to come on as one person after another
said, “Why didn’t we think of that?” and “That
makes perfect sense, how did we miss it?”
Don’t let past history dictate your actions
or compromise your decisions. Ask for help.
Sometimes those with the least amount
of experience can see the path to success
more clearly than you can. It’s okay to be
intelligently ignorant.
Schedule monthly brainstorming meetings
to talk about what’s going on in store,
especially about what’s stale and how you
might do better.
Encourage everyone to come to the
meeting with new, fresh, innovative, and
exciting ideas to solve your problems. You’ll
begin to hear problem solving ideas that
you haven’t heard before. And maybe even
a few opportunities that you didn’t know
were there.
Ignore what you know and brainstorm fresh
ideas with your team – and maybe even a
few core customers or trusted local retail
partners There’s a new question bouncing
around our office these days: “What’s your i2
on this issue?” i
RICH KIZER and
GEORGANNE BENDER
are retail strategists,
authors and consultants.
kizerandbender.com
38 Jeweller February 2019