Brilliant Doers

People often refer to those they admire as brilliant thinkers. But thinking alone doesn’t result in action. Doing does. The people with great ideas who actually put them into play, and more importantly make them stick, causes meaningful change. 

Almost everyone can make a list of ideas. Almost no one is committed to the effort, persistence and habit forming required to make the idea work...to get through the slog.

Thinking requires work. Doing requires even more work. Both are a choice. Choose wisely.

HT to The Long and the Short Of It podcast for the idea flow.

What's the Big Idea?

Most big ideas stem from small ideas…and often bad ones. They get shaped like art or music or a dance. Small steps honed, crafted and thrown away making way for the new and improved ones. The current version of Google, Amazon or Photoshop certainly didn’t start out that way. Too often we’re hoping for the big idea, for the hit that a lot of people will use (the ones where we say "I wish I would have thought of that). The fact is it’s not likely to happen…the brilliant hit right out of the box. The better and more effective path is to practice coming up with small, bad ideas. And then maybe some of those will grow up to be big ones. The key of course is to practice…to get really good at developing idea flow. But first you have to start. We hope you do.

Selling an Idea

…is often like selling someone a meal when they’re not hungry. You’re offering a solution to a problem they don’t have…yet. But what if you could create a version of the future so compelling, so interesting and legacy driven that you could gain enrollment to go there? And what if you could take responsibility for getting past the obstacles that stand in the way? What if you did the heavy lifting?

Big ideas often come with hard work and risk. But they are necessary for meaningful change. Your job isn’t to sell the idea. It’s to lead the charge to get there.  

The Stalemate of the Suggestion Box

Top Management

We would love to hear your ideas…bring ‘em on.

Middle Management

We don’t like new ideas because we already have too much work to do…and their isn’t anything in it for us.

Employees

Why bother, nothing ever happens anyway.

The only way to solve this is to gain enrollment in the purpose of the idea by everyone involved. Everyone needs to have skin in the game (share in the risk if it doesn’t work) and be rewarded when it comes to fruition. This requires leadership by someone to create a meaningful vision (to create the enrollment) and to gain participation by everyone to do the required heavy lifting. 

Leadership isn’t reserved for those with titles…and either are the most effective ideas.

Hard Work...

is what separates great ideas from meaningful outcomes. It's what stands in the way of producing remarkable products and experiences. Without hard work, ideas go nowhere. And, that's precisely why most suggestion boxes don't work.

It's far easier to have a thought and give it to someone else to work on than to see it through on your own. In fact, we've been taught and conditioned to believe that making great things happen is reserved for the select few in high places. And if you want to contribute, you should stuff your thought in a box or send an email, and then hope yours gets chosen. Of course, that convention is seriously flawed because those people only have so much time...and they have their own great ideas they're already focused on. So, the alternative is to do the work yourself.

The upside to taking initiative is that you're more certain of the outcome. The downside is that you could discover that your idea isn't that good. Either way, you win. If the idea gets used, you get credit and the purpose is fulfilled. If it fails, you've avoided resentment by wasting someone's time.

A lot of people have a lot of seemingly great ideas. Great ideas are not scarce. So, on their own, they're not worth much. But, people who take the initiative to slog through the hard work, get organized, do research, build a case and present to the right audience...those people are very hard to come by and have tremendous value.

The best advice I ever received on this subject...worry less about surrounding yourself with people with great ideas and more about building a team of people who can see them through.