Saying yes to mean no

Recently, I had two similar conversations with two similar people that ended up with very different outcomes. Both conversations started the same way: I brought up an idea I had that I wanted feedback on. In both cases I was talking with people smarter then me who had experience I thought would shed light on the idea I was trying to refine. After I explained the basic idea, both people thought the same thing: "that is going to be really really really hard to make work". But the end result of the conversations were very different. In one case, the conversation lasted about 10 minutes and then the subject was courteously changed to something else. In the other case,  the conversation turned into an hour+ discussion about the idea full of new insights, new potential, and eventually a significant improvement on the original idea. 

Why were the outcomes so different if the initial response from folks I was talking to was so similar? Because the first person said no and the other person said yes but meant no and that approach made all the difference.

This is how conversations one more or less went:

Me: "I have this idea, there is this type of chemical that does blah blah blah, would that work?"

Them: "Making that chemical do that is probably really hard"

Me: "Well I have read a bunch of papers where people did it"

Them: "Well, they did it in the lab, its probably still going to be too hard"

silence...

Me: "So, its been unusually warm hasn't it!?!" 

This is how conversation two more or less went:

Me: "I have this idea, there is this type of chemical that does blah blah blah, would that work?"

Them: "Yeah, I think that is possible, but have you thought about maybe doing blah blah instead?"

Me: "What is that, I have never heard of it!?!"

conversations continues for hours

Both people had a similar initial reaction to hearing the idea: this is insane. But person 2 had a much more productive response. They still told me no, but they did it by saying yes. They said yes, but meant no. 

This type of situation happens often with ideas about adapting an existing material or process to a knew type of application. In my case, it was about adapting a new material that is used in a non-energy application to an energy application. These types of ideas can be particularly frustrating for the person championing them because there is usually a lot of information about the thing being adapted, but there are always gaping wholes in the available information that you need to prove the idea will work. 

These holes let people like person one make an objection that is hard to combat, and usually just kills the conversation (and thus any potential refinement of the idea). This is counterproductive. Not only does it deprive the idea of the improvement it needs, it frustrates the champion of the idea and likely entrenches them in the current iteration of the idea. This is at least how it goes for me: "oh, you don't think its possible, I'll show you how impossible it is... "

The say yes but mean no approach on the other hand leaves the conversation open, but also highlights a  new possibility for the growth of the idea. This approach implicitly acknowledges that the idea is not done, and that it has room to improve, but that it has potential. Instead of frustrating the champion of the idea, it should excite them.  At the very least they should think that at least someone thinks its possible. At the most, it should give them a  new line of thinking to explore. 

Clearly, this approach is easier to use in some situations. Let's say someone comes to you with a new idea and you happen to see a clearly superior path for the idea to take. Its easy to say yes to the original idea when you actually mean "no, you should look at this instead". But when you know nothing about the idea and no brain waves come to you, it is much easier to just say no. This is something to avoid. If someone comes to you with a new idea in its infancy stage never say no. This sounds insane, but just forbid yourself from saying no explicitly. Try to find some way of saying yes, while steering them towards something more productive.

If person one was really way out of their comfort zone they could have instead said "woah, I have never heard of anything like that, its seems like it would work, but you might be careful about _____" Idea champions like hearing that their ideas are crazy. They also like hearing that they theoretically could work. And they should like getting constructive criticism, but as always, it needs to highlight a real problem. You should not use a biased 3rd party argument or a vague nondescript concern. As always, if you feel like there is a issue, but you can't quite put your finger on a specific problem, the best approach is probably to stop talking and think with your brain.