If a six-year-old doesn’t get it, no one else will either. If you’ve got a six-year-old handy, try out your thinking on them. If they don’t get it, then maybe you should start again.

Power Players road test their ideas on people who have no background in what they’re working on. They don’t cut corners on this one. It’s cheating when you share your ideas with people who are already in the inner circle.

Go way, way outside the circle and turn to fresh eyes and a fresh head. The six-year-old example might be a little extreme and literal but you know what I mean.

The best Power Players I know do in fact use kids as a sounding board. Probably because kids have no filter when they think something is a dumb idea. They also ask questions when they don’t understand something and they pick up on the obvious mistakes most of us forget because we’ve been living with it for too long.

If a six-year-old doesn’t get it maybe a 60-year-old won’t, either…