Making Ideas Happen (3 page)

Many claim they create solely for themselves; they argue that the conception and actualization of an idea is simply a means for self-fulfil ment and nothing more. But this argument is selfish: an idea executed for an audience of one is an awful waste of potential inspiration and value for the greater good.

“I think that if you want to treat your work like a virus that wil reach a lot of people,”

Jonathan explained, “it’s good to package it in a way that can optimize the number of people it can reach, and that can mean different things. You can make something real y, real y palatable and turn it into an HBO miniseries or you can make something moderately palatable and turn it into something that goes into an art museum or you can make something not at al palatable and turn it into something you do in your basement.”

Jonathan is just another member of the powerful cadre of creative professionals who have been able to overcome the chal enges posed by the creative psyche. The attributes that Jonathan embodies are common among people who routinely push ideas to fruition.

The most exceptional creative leaders and teams who I have met are able to generate a surplus of ideas with discipline and poise. They ground their creative energy with a supreme sense of organization. As professionals, they have overcome the stigma of self-marketing and use their respective communities to stay accountable. And as leaders, they are able to build and lead teams that thrive over time.

The quality of ideas themselves is less important than the platform upon which they materialize. Realize that you control the platform for your ideas.

The Forces That Make Ideas Happen

This book is divided into three sections, each presenting a critical set of tools for making ideas happen: Organization and Execution, the Forces of Community, and Leadership Capability. Of course, there is also the idea itself—the catalyst. But, for the purposes of this book, I wil leave the creative inspiration and ideas up to you.

MAKING IDEAS HAPPEN =
(THE IDEA)
+ ORGANIZATION AND EXECUTION

+ FORCES OF COMMUNITY + LEADERSHIP CAPABILITY

The capacity to make ideas happen is defined by the confluence of the three core components outlined in the equation shown here. Reaching your greatest potential requires mastering the intricate balance of al three forces at play—whether you are executing an idea on your own or working with a team.

Let’s quickly discuss the relevance of the three components:
Organization and execution.
It is undeniable that your approach to productivity largely determines your creative output. The way you organize projects, prioritize, and manage your energy is arguably more important than the quality of the ideas you wish to pursue. There is nothing new in this assertion. The necessity of staying organized has been wel -documented in innumerable books. Our thirst for a simple solution is evident in the huge success of methodology-oriented books and productivity blogs.

Few, however, have explored organization and execution within the context of the creative mind, or within the context of our rapidly changing work environment. Creatives have always represented one of the most mobile groups in the workforce, and this trend of mobility is now extending to the business world at large.

The ranks of freelance, contract, and part-time workers as wel as smal -business owners are increasing daily. Many businesses are hiring people for rotational programs that last only two years. Practices such as “daylighting”—in which an employee works on a creative, personal project for 10-20 percent of their at-work time—are increasing in popularity as companies like Google tout their effectiveness. Even the more traditional “lifer” companies, such as General Electric and IBM, are acknowledging the value of a shorter experiential education over a lifelong career opportunity.

What this means is that, regardless of your industry, your professional life is becoming more nomadic, digital, and flexible. But as a wise sage once said—and what every smal -business owner knows al too wel —“total freedom means total responsibility.” As where and how you work become more flexible, the onus of organization shifts increasingly onto the individual. As such, productivity is not about how efficient you are at work. Instead, your productivity is real y about how wel you are able to make an impact in what matters most to you.

You might wonder, “How can I stay organized amidst the everyday chaos of accomplishing tasks, managing projects, and staying mental y clear enough to stil be creative?” There are surprisingly practical methods and tricks that can, col ectively, become your controls for making ideas happen. As we discuss examples and common themes of the especial y productive, you wil come to see that it is at the intersection of creative energy and organizational prowess where great ideas become actions and ultimately revolutionary achievements.

Leveraging communal forces.
I have found that, across the board, extremely productive and accomplished people and teams capitalize on the power of community to push their ideas forward. The utilization of communal forces yields invaluable feedback and idea refinement, builds and nourishes beneficial relationships, and establishes a connective tissue that provides resources, support, and inspiration.

As psychologist Keith Sawyer, a protégé of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (author of the renowned creativity book
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
), writes in his 2007 book
Group Genius
, “Al great inventions emerge from a long sequence of smal sparks; the first idea often isn’t al that good, but thanks to col aboration it later sparks another idea, or it’s reinterpreted in an unexpected way. Col aboration brings smal sparks together to generate breakthrough innovation.”

Even if the notion of the lone creative genius existed in the past (and Sawyer would argue that it did not), there can be no doubt that it’s wildly outdated in the twenty-first century. The hyperconnectivity made possible by the Internet has acted as a massive accelerator for the “smal sparks” that fuel the refinement of ideas. Nearly every individual or company I’ve spoken with has harnessed the power of the Web to achieve many of the goals we’l discuss in this section: gathering feedback, honing ideas, increasing transparency, and sharing and promoting completed work.

We’l look at, among other examples, how Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh uses Twitter to increase transparency and find inspiration, how bestsel ing author and
Wired
editor in chief Chris Anderson uses a community of engaged readers to refine his groundbreaking theorems, and how marketing strategist Noah Brier gathers feedback to improve his Web experiments.

Of course, the Internet is just one means of accessing and building your community.

The concepts and insights that I’l be discussing are not tied to any single medium—and they can be applied in a number of ways depending on your personality and what works best for you.

But whatever your disposition, I cannot stress enough the importance of tapping into the communal forces around you: community opens the door to new approaches for old chal enges and spurs a more informed and powerful creative instinct. Accountability, one of the most crucial benefits of engaging with your community, is what binds you to the relentless pursuit of your ideas. As you become accountable to others, your creative impulses become tangible projects. Your ideas grow roots. Community strengthens both your creative energy and your commitment to channel it.

Leadership in creative pursuits.
History is made by passionate, creative people and organizations with the rare ability to lead others—and themselves. Leadership capability is what makes the pursuit of an idea sustainable, scalable, and ultimately successful. Unfortunately, there is a huge void of leadership capability in the creative world, as evidenced by the high attrition and frequent management debacles across the creative industries. When employees quit a creative team, it is most often a result of an interpersonal conflict or not feeling engaged by the subject matter; it is rarely about money.1 To grow and sustain creative pursuits, you must be able to keep others engaged with your ideas.

Leadership capability relates both to your leadership of others as wel as to your ability to lead yourself. Perhaps some of the greatest hurdles in implementing ideas are personal deficiencies—common psychological barriers that creative minds often face when executing ideas. Very few of the famously prolific and productive creative people we discuss in this book are “naturals.” While the ideas might flow generously, the methods behind the capacity to make ideas happen are often counterintuitive. In some ways, the self-discipline and restraints necessary to execute an idea can feel like a tremendous compromise of your very essence as a creative person.

I have come to cal this notion the “creative’s compromise” because you must be prepared to adopt new restraints and best practices that—at first—feel uncomfortable.

You wil never need to compromise your morals or artistic integrity, but you wil need to exert control over your destructive tendencies. Perhaps you have the tendency to jump from idea to idea to idea without ever fol owing through on any particular one. Or maybe you have the tendency to incubate ideas privately. You might be avoiding feedback for fear of criticism, and when you do receive it, you may subconsciously find ways to discount it. Everyone with the gift of creativity has a series of tendencies that can become obstacles. The journey to a more productive life as a creative leader starts with a candid self-assessment of who you are, your tendencies, and the greatest barriers before you.

You need to think differently about how you manage your ideas, your community of col aborators, and yourself. As we discuss leadership in the context of creative pursuits, we wil reconsider the rewards systems that govern our own actions and discuss how to manage the delicate chemistry of a creative team.

A Final Note As We Begin

Of course, even if you were to adopt al of the best practices in this book, making ideas happen wil never be easy. Across the hundreds of interviews conducted during the research for this book, no individual or team I met was without frustration. Anything new inherently works against the grain. And working against the grain is uncomfortable.

The aspiration you should have is to improve your approach. And the responsibility you should feel is to give your ideas a chance.

This book is highly practical, fil ed with methods that have worked for others. Every tip and insight is kept short and actionable, so you can put this book to use right away and return to it as a resource when you face different chal enges throughout your career. You wil find some sections more mechanical than others. Keep in mind that execution isn’t pretty. However, your effort to develop the capacity to make ideas happen is a worthy investment. The best practices presented here are yours to digest, scrutinize, and modify as you see fit. My hope is that you take away a few crucial realizations that make al the difference.

The conversation also continues online, where a network of thousands of creative people and teams, like you, are eager to push their ideas forward. As our research evolves online at our think tank (the99percent.com) and at the Behance Network (behance.net), I hope you’l both learn from the material and become a contributor.

Let’s get started!

ORGANIZATION AND EXECUTION

My freedom thus consists in my moving about within the narrow frame that I have assigned to myself for each one of my undertakings. I shal go even further: my freedom wil be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself of the claims that shackle the spirit.

—Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons
IN A WORLD
obsessed with innovation, it is easy to fal in love with ideas. The creativity quotient is the darling of the adventurous mind. For some of us, creativity is intoxicating.

Our society has gone so far as to divide its members into two camps, the “left-brain people” and the “right-brain people,” under a radical (and arguably false) assumption that both parts of the brain cannot coexist effectively—that bril iant creative people are inherently unable to act as organizers and leaders. But they can. And when creative and organizational tendencies are able to coexist, society is pushed forward as remarkable ideas are actualized. The real problem is less about how society views creative people and more about how creative people view themselves.

In 2007, Behance conducted a pol of over a thousand self-described “creative professionals,” asking them how organized they considered themselves to be. Only 7

percent of those who responded claimed to feel “very organized.” Double that number (14 percent) claimed to work in a state of “utter chaos,” and the largest group attested to “more mess than order” (48 percent). Upon further fol ow-up, I also observed that, far from being a point of concern, the disarray experienced by many of these professionals was regarded as a badge of honor!

The reality is that creative environments—and the creative psyche itself—are not conducive to organization. We become intolerant of procedures, restrictions, and process. Nevertheless, organization is the guiding force of productivity: if you want to make an idea happen, you need to have a process for doing so.

Part of the creative mind’s rebel ion is understandable, because there is no one best process for developing ideas and then making them happen.
Process
in general has a bad reputation; anyone who has worked in a corporate bureaucracy knows why. When a process is imposed on you external y, it can weigh you down and diminish your energy.

Process is a deeply personal matter of taste and habit, especial y for creative people.