Most of them won’t work out. But what if one does?
“We’re not very good judges of what is or is not possible,” Scheele says. “There’s so many times we talk ourselves out of something because we think it would never work—and then somebody else doesn’t talk themselves out of it. They go do it. They find out it is possible.”
Scheele, an author, artist and professional speaker, will give a keynote address at the Elevate Your Leadership and Your Team event Feb. 11 in Baton Rouge. He’ll detail why crazy ideas matter in the corporate world—and how organizations can support out-of-the-box thinking. He’ll be joined by tech executive, author and Emmy-winning news anchor Nina Sossamon-Pogue.
Business Report‘s Elevate Your Leadership and Your Team event is designed to help executives and managers strengthen their leadership approach, improve team performance and deepen workplace culture. Proceeds benefit Empower 225. Get tickets here.
Scheele has spent the past 15 years traveling to speaking engagements, initially with youth audiences. The Springfield, Missouri, native shifted gears a few years ago after going viral with a TikTok video about what he called “the best gift idea I’ve ever had”: using Photoshop to hilariously edit an old family photo.
“That sort of introduced a lot of the stuff I’ve been doing to the broader world,” Scheele says. “I started having a lot of companies asking, ‘Hey, could you teach us how to be more creative and how to get good ideas out of our people and how to bring those ideas to life?’”
Here’s how Scheele breaks it down.
Ideas equal solutions
Change is constant, and so is the need to solve problems. These challenges provide opportunities for businesses—and their competitors. “If you’re not adapting and if you’re not coming up with big ideas and chasing those, then you’re going to get left behind,” Scheele says.
Create an environment friendly to ideas
Many companies have mission statements that extol innovation but fall short when it comes to embracing different approaches to their work. “Everyone on your team has ideas,” Scheele says. “So how do we put an environment together that when an idea pops up, it has the best chance of thriving in that environment?”
Give ideas a “bodyguard”
Even the best ideas are easy to dismiss early on, Scheele says. Think about artificial intelligence—the stuff of science fiction just a few years ago. “All it takes to kill an idea is one person going, ‘That’s not going to work,’” Scheele says. Prematurely waving off an idea doesn’t only risk losing out on a groundbreaking product or process, it’s also discouraging to employees, Scheele says. So it’s crucial to protect ideas and give them a chance.
Embrace creativity
Scheele believes everyone has a creative side that should be valued. “Anytime you make something that didn’t exist before, whether that’s a spreadsheet or a painting or a business or a product, all of those things are creative acts,” Scheele says. That means everyone is capable of coming up with ideas that may sound crazy—but that could be the next greatest thing.
Learn more at the Elevate Your Leadership & Your Team event. Get your tickets here.
