Shiny Object Syndrome - A CEOs Friend or Foe?

Let’s talk about shiny objects…those sparkling, dis­tract­ing, poten­tial­ly earth-shat­ter­ing ideas that the idea guru in your com­pa­ny is always having.

CEOs tend to han­dle these in one of two ways:

1. Allow the idea guru to run ram­pant through the com­pa­ny, cor­ralling resources when­ev­er an idea sparks. This leads to con­fu­sion and detours. On the plus side it def­i­nite­ly makes life exciting.
2. Con­tain the idea guru. Keep faith­ful­ly to plan, and polite­ly appease (aka relent­less­ly frus­trate) your idea guru by not tak­ing shiny pen­ny ideas seriously.

Nei­ther of these paths will lead you to your great­est success.

I recent­ly met Matt Kut­tler at a con­fer­ence and this is a man who knows how to han­dle shiny objects syn­drome. He’s found­ed and sold two suc­cess­ful com­pa­nies and now advis­es lead­er­ship teams.

Matt had a busi­ness part­ner, Dave, who was a con­sum­mate idea guy…shiny objects flew left, right and cen­tre. Matt, a prag­mat­ic finance and oper­a­tions mind, need­ed a way to cap­ture his partner’s vision­ary sparks while keep­ing their team on task.

And so The Shiny Objects List was born. Matt cre­at­ed an Excel spread­sheet specif­i­cal­ly for Dave’s new ideas. When­ev­er light­ning struck, Dave added a thought to the list.

Every month the com­pa­ny had a Shiny Objects meet­ing. The team would review every idea and decide if it would be assigned to some­one to replace an exist­ing project.

Matt solved an age-old prob­lem with his Shiny Objects List. He fig­ured out how to keep his team focused with­out sti­fling the com­pa­ny visionary.

Bra­vo.

In my mind, every CEO needs a Shiny Objects List pron­to. Just make sure you also com­mit to the meet­ings as well, or it’s all for naught.