September 21, 2026 | Issue #36 | | Support of the Monday Morning Update | | For 2026 please consider a donation to help support delivery of the Monday Morning Update to your email every week by 5:30 am. Our distribution of this update is over 11,000 and growing. Your consideration is greatly appreciated. Thank you! | | |
Kill Your Own Ideas
by Denyne Micheletti, CEO
At a conference I attended last week, keynote speaker Tom Rivellini introduced a concept that has stayed with me: the importance of being willing to “kill your own ideas.”
It’s a provocative phrase—but an important leadership principle.
We naturally become attached to the ideas we create and the systems we build around them.
They represent our time, experience, hard work, and sometimes even our identity. But one of the greatest signs of integrity is being willing to challenge our own thinking when new information, new perspectives, or better ideas emerge.
And I think that challenge goes beyond individual ideas. We also need to be willing to examine the structures we’ve built around them.
Programs, contracts, organizational structures, policies, and ways of doing business often exist because they made sense at a particular point in time. But longevity alone doesn't make a structure effective—or mean it is still the best way forward.
Sometimes the most powerful question we can ask is not, “How do we improve what we have?”
It is:
“If we were building this today, knowing what we know now, would we build it this way at all?”
That question takes courage.
It requires us to look critically at structures we may have spent years working within—or even helped create. It means being willing to identify duplication, outdated assumptions, unnecessary complexity, and systems that may no longer reflect the needs of the people and communities we serve.
Changing our minds after listening and learning isn't weakness. It's growth.
The strongest leaders aren't focused on proving they had the right answer from the beginning. They're focused on getting to the best answer now.
That means surrounding ourselves with people who challenge our thinking, listening to perspectives that make us uncomfortable, and being willing to imagine what could exist if we weren't constrained by what already does.
Be passionate about your ideas, but never so attached to them—or the structures built around them—that there is no room for something better.
Maybe “killing our own ideas” isn't really about what we're willing to give up.
It's about whether we're courageous enough to make room for what comes next.
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Thank You to Our Generous 2024-25 Thriving Families CA Foundation Champions!
Thank you to the following Champions who stepped up in 2024-25, with funding to enhance our ability to serve the field. These agencies have made it possible for TFC to support our field with more tailored support of individual organizations, ability to pay for legal, advocacy and social media supports, enhanced regional trainings, improving data collection, and more.
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