A recent Facebook video of Sr. Ken Robertson’s TED Talk struck a nerve. “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”
He opened with one of my favorite stories of a 1st grade teacher going over to a young girl and asking her what she was drawing as her idea for a picture in art class. The girl stated she was drawing a picture of God. The teacher blurted out a defensibly accurate statement: “But no one knows what God looks like!” The girl never looked up and simply stated: “They will in a minute!”
He goes on to point out how the fear of being wrong disables creativity in modern organizations. Being wrong is punished rather than being viewed as an opportunity to learn. Instead, we seem all too happy doing nothing creative.