Shooting Down Ideas Is Not a Skill — Scott Lawson

Criticism in meetings is cognitively cheap and structurally favored over idea generation, but it creates no value on its own. The post argues that shooting down ideas requires no imagination while proposing them demands courage and vision. Drawing on Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats framework, it recommends separating optimistic and critical thinking phases: first fully explore the upside of an idea before stress-testing it. Practical habits include framing concerns as conditions rather than verdicts, and pairing identified problems with potential solutions. The long-term cost of idea-killing isn't just one dead proposal — it's the chilling effect on future proposals.