When the subject of inclusion comes up in management circles, I commonly hear platitudes like, “Everyone’s ideas are great.” Experience shows that such statements are patently false. Screen doors on a submarine—no redeeming qualities there; they just wouldn’t work out well. The problem with saying, “Everyone is great; everyone is special,” is that you are also saying, “Nothing is really great; nothing is really special.”

With this thought in mind, I’d like to propose a different sort of inclusion mantra: “Everyone’s ideas are a little bit dumb.”

I should clarify: I’m not talking about facts. Facts are concrete, stable, and generally not open to much serious discussion. Water is wet. Fire is hot. The SEC is, by far, the best conference in college football. These are all facts. OK, one is an opinion—fire is only subjectively hot when compared with its surroundings.

Ideas are different. They are bigger than facts. Ideas are vague and amorphous. They are things like “lasagna is better than spaghetti,” or “all life is sacred.” Ideas are simple statements that can have very complex implications. They are often, and should be, debated.

 …