“The risk [in creating] is that many times, you’ll be wrong.
But if you’re not okay with that, you’re never going to create a breakthrough.”

Seth Godin

There is a question I am often haunted by when an idea strikes me. I follow the light bulb of creativity with a grounding, even sobering, critical question:

“How do I know this idea is worth making?”

You’ve probably experienced this, too. You make a comment to a friend and they reply (with eyebrows raised), “Oh! That’s gooooood.” Whether it’s an idea for a book, a product, a business, a talk, or something else. Once the idea starts to seem legitimate, the hard part begins. Making the thing is hard—much harder than coming up with the idea. It takes time, energy, money, and often a little of your pride in order to bring an idea into the world. So, how do you know when an idea is worth that amount of effort? I’ve developed a theory. First, let me tell you a story.

On January 24th, 1975, the famous improvisational Jazz pianist Keith Jarrett arrived in Cologne, Germany for a scheduled performance later that night. There was only one thing Jarrett needed to perform in Cologne’s famous opera house: a well-tuned concert piano. When he arrived at the venue that afternoon, however, that was not what he found.

Instead, the promoters of the event had rolled out the house “practice piano.” It was damaged, ugly, and badly out of tune. Jarrett only needed a few minutes with the instrument to know it was a disaster. They called a piano tuner, but he could only do so much with the instrument.

To calm him down, the event promoter Vera Brades took Jarrett out for a meal. For more than an hour, she tried to talk him into performing anyways. Jarrett was of course worried about his reputation. “What if all these people arrive only to hear a disaster? How will I be remembered for that?” Brandes eventually convinced him, if for only one reason: 1,300 people already had tickets and were on their way.

That night, when Keith Jarrett took the stage, he had to improvise. He skipped over keys that weren’t working. He slammed down hard on the keys that were muted. In the process, he discovered the sounds the piano had to offer as he went. And luckily, someone had planned to record it. The concert was, still to this day, one of the most famous and talked about performances by a jazz musician… ever. The album that was recorded that night produced a record called: “The Köln Concert.” It’s considered to be Jarrett’s masterpiece and is still the best-selling piano record of all time.

Crazy, right?

Here’s why I tell you the story: when it comes to evaluating the possibility of a potential idea, there is really only one thing you can know for sure: you won’t know until you try. For Jarrett, the pressure of a watching crowd created the opportunity to make something beautiful from that ugly piano. I call this, “creative tension.” The best way to make something great is to put pressure on it. As long as it exists in your head, you’ll never know if it’s got real potential.

So, here’s the question: what idea are you sitting on today? What’s keeping you from taking the next step to make it happen?

It’s time to stop sitting on it. Today is the day. This week is the week. This year is the year. Yes, your idea could fall flat. But, here’s the thing: you won’t know until you try.

“A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.”

Harry Truman

I used to build teams the way I built playlists — using mostly songs I already liked.

Given the choice, I’d pick people who thought like me, laughed at the same things, and finished my sentences in meetings. It felt efficient. It felt right. We got along so well that I assumed we were doing great work.

As it turns out, we weren’t doing great work. We were doing comfortable work. Those aren’t the same thing.

I’ve been teaching a study out of Kellogg and Stanford for years now, and it still stops a room every time I bring it up. Researchers put college students into groups and gave them a murder mystery to solve. Some groups were made up of students from the same fraternity or sorority — same social circle, same shorthand, same inside jokes. Other groups were mixed, pulling together students who didn’t already know each other and didn’t share the same background.

Here’s the twist. The homogenous groups enjoyed the exercise more. They rated the experience higher. They walked away feeling like a good team.

They were also worse at solving the mystery.

The mixed groups had a rougher time. More friction. More re-explaining. More moments of “wait, why do you see it that way?” And they solved the case at a noticeably higher rate.

In my experience, that insight (that how a group feels and how it performs could be negatively correlated) cuts against how most of us actually build teams. We treat ease as a signal of quality. If a meeting feels smooth, we assume the thinking is sound. If a group gets along, we assume the group is good. But ease and accuracy are measuring two different things. One tells you how the room felt. The other tells you whether the room was right.

This is the trap for anyone building a team, a board, a class discussion, or a creative collaboration. The version that feels best to sit in is rarely the version that produces the sharpest work. Comfort is what happens when nobody in the room is forced to see something they missed. Insight can only occur when we are our first insights are challenged, and we have to think deeper.

I’m not arguing for friction as a personality trait. Nobody wants a team that fights for sport. But if every person on your team would nod along to the same argument, you don’t have a team. You have an echo chamber.

So here’s the challenge, especially if you’re the one doing the picking. The next time you’re building a group — a project team, a panel, even a friend group you lean on for advice — ask yourself who’s missing. Not missing in the diversity-checkbox sense. Missing as in the this person would catch what I can’t see. Someone who reads the room differently than you do. Someone whose first instinct isn’t your first instinct.

You might enjoy the meeting a little less, but you’ll probably solve the mystery.

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Jim Collins

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