I have a test for a good idea.

It isn’t whether the idea is clever. Clever ideas are easy to admire and easy to forget.

The test is a small jolt of surprise. When I find myself thinking “Hang on… Why isn’t this already here? It must already exist…”

In 2002 my then-husband, Min Thein, was working in Canberra. Aldi had opened there. We didn’t have one in Victoria.

He took me. He was, frankly, raving.

No brands I recognised. A quarter of the range I expected. Stuff presented in cardboard boxes. And Min Thein standing in the aisle telling me this would work in Melbourne, wondering aloud whether they franchised… whether he could open one in our suburb.

I laughed at him.

Not unkindly. I just didn’t think Aldi was a real thing.

He’d run the test. I’d only run my taste.

He had noticed a gap: Why isn’t this here yet? I had noticed that I didn’t like it. Only one of those is information.

Now there is an Aldi in most medium sized country towns, and one only 15 minutes from where I live on the farm.

The ideas worth backing rarely feel clever. They feel overdue.

Here’s the one in front of me at the moment. If you want a speaker for your conference, there are bureaus, and they’re good at it. I am listed with five of them. But a bureau is built to fill a slot on a program. The brief is the room, the date, the forty-five minutes.

When what you need is the right person alongside your executive team for six months, or one independent voice for a hard board conversation, there’s no equivalent. You ask around. And hope.

Graham Seldon looked at that and asked the question I didn’t ask about Aldi. Why isn’t this already here?

What have you laughed at lately?

Go fearlessly – Corrinne

PS I am on the ‘roster’ at the newly launched Curated Advisory Group. (I am not convinced about that word – sounds like I have to take my turn at the school tuck shop!)