I’m just as guilty as anyone else. You’re working on a project, on an offering. You have deliverables, you improve your offerings, you listen to customer feedback and add features.

Wait! What’s the purpose of this “thing”? Why do you do it… and is what you are spending time on worth it?

Sometimes, no matter how good you are at critical thinking, you need an outsider, another critical thinker who isn’t so involved, to take a look and ask the tough questions.

One of my hard lessons is Intuitlabs. The original innovation.intuit.com was very close to me, and it was difficult for me to let it go and allow other people to take up the task of delivering on its goals.

And I’ve also played the Outsider role. I was recently asked to review and comment on an internal tool project’s future milestones. When I asked “why me”, the answer came back that during meetings, I was the one telling Roy (Intuit innovation director) that I disagreed with him.

You don’t have to do what Outsiders suggest. You don’t have to change your direction or strategy, although we’ve seen that happen before in the iLab - at least one BU rethought their entire strategic focus because of one of our projects.

But… you DO need to listen to Outsiders, and you might need them in order to keep on track with what you really want to do.

Are you engrossed in a project? Put out a call for an Outsider - a critical thinker who can ask the tough questions and get you to think.

tagged: critical thinking, your business