All the Good Ideas Are Taken

The Second City in Chicago has been turning out A/List comedians since the 1950s. Countless performers from Joan Rivers and Alan Arkin to John Candy and Steve Carrell started there, then went on to have long/lasting careers in comedy. Many of them move on as cast members on Saturday Night Live, where they continue to churn out laugh after laugh. The question is, when does the well run dry? When will we harvest the last laugh – the last joke or prank? When will we run out of funny? The answer, of course, is never. Humor is just an observation of the world around us. As long as our world is changing, there will be an opportunity to find humor in it. The best comedians are just the ones who are most adept at noticing it. Those of us in the agile community often feel like the best ideas have been spoken for. But that can’t be true. If all the good ideas were taken, we wouldn’t be filling conferences across the globe year after year, writing (and buying) books, and attempting to make our current processes better. We’d just take the ideas we’d have and say, “Well, that’s the best we can do.” There will always be good ideas. Better ideas. Great ideas. As long as there are great problems, there will be great ideas. So if you’re thinking that there’s no point in contributing because all the good ideas are taken, stop thinking that way. Ideas are a renewable resource. Are we going to run out of musicians? Will there come a day when there are no more good designs? Your ideas, your thoughts, your contributions are what makes the agile community tick. So don’t hold back. We’re counting on you.