Back in the day, when an employee or staff member would come to me with what they thought was a fresh, new great idea, 99.9% of the time I would shoot it down because “we’d already tried that.” And really, after 30 years of coming up with a “bazillion” marketing and promotion strategies, we really did try everything (or at least we thought we did). I always hated that feeling deep inside of saying “no” to someone who only wanted to contribute what they thought was a great idea.
In retrospect, what I failed to see at the time was although we may have tried it before, this was coming from a different human, with a different energy, and a different twist or spin, with a different agenda, and a completely different level of consciousness. Who knows what could have happened if I had loosened my righteous grip just a bit.
Truth is, “We already tried that” is a true statement. However “We’ve never tried that with you” is equally true.