I’ve rarely seen teams do this well and agree that your proposed approach is much better than the alternative in many cases. I’ve definitely seen cases where insiders thought something was impossible and then a new person went and did it. (I’ve been the insider, the new person who ignored the advice and succeeded, and the new person who ignored the advice and failed.)
That said, I think there’s a middle ground where you convey why you chose not to do something but also leave it open for the person to try anyway. The downside of just letting them do it without giving context is they may fail for a silly rather than genuine reason.
What I’m suggesting could look something like the following.
That’s an awesome idea! This is something some of us explored a bit previously and decided not to pursue at the time for X, Y, and Z reasons. However, as insiders, we are probably biased towards viewing things as hard, so it’s important for team health to have new people re-try and re-explore things we may have already thought about. You should definitely not take our reasons as final and feel free to try The Thing if you still feel like it might work or you’ll learn something by doing so.
I’ve rarely seen teams do this well and agree that your proposed approach is much better than the alternative in many cases. I’ve definitely seen cases where insiders thought something was impossible and then a new person went and did it. (I’ve been the insider, the new person who ignored the advice and succeeded, and the new person who ignored the advice and failed.)
That said, I think there’s a middle ground where you convey why you chose not to do something but also leave it open for the person to try anyway. The downside of just letting them do it without giving context is they may fail for a silly rather than genuine reason.
What I’m suggesting could look something like the following.