Blog

(Scott Belsky is the author of the national bestselling book Making Ideas Happen.  He’s also founder and CEO of Behance, a company that develops products and services for the creative industries including the 99%.)

Most ideas never happen. Even great ideas suffer great odds.

Why don't ideas happen?

• Energy is high when a new idea strikes. A few days pass and we enter the project plateau where most ideas die. We want to return to the high, so we use our creativity and we come up with a new idea. It's idea to idea syndrome. Nothing ever gets completed.
• The gravitational force of operations. The day to day stuff pulls you away from a long term creative project.
• A lack of feeling organized. Only 7 percent of people feel organized.
• A lack of accountability. If you don't tell people about your idea, will you actually make it happen?
• A lack of leadership capability. People don't feel fully utilized.
• A lack of feedback exchange. People aren't pointing out problems with the idea because they want to be nice.
• Disorganized networks.  Who's supporting you?

How do people and teams defy the odds and make ideas happen: creative ideas = organization execution + communal forces + leadership capability.

Organization

• We are inundated with an endless stream of email, social media, etc.  It's a reactive workload instead of proactive.
• Create a window of non stimulation in your day. You're not emailing or tuning in.  You work on something important to you.
• Spend energy on organization. Math equation: creativity x organization = impact.  100x0=0, 50x2=100. Organization of a mid-level idea is better than no organization around a great idea.
• Organize with a bias towards completion. Put things into three categories: action steps (things you have to do), backburners (ideas not actionable yet) and references (notes, handouts).
• Rethink meetings. You have meetings in the morning but that’s typically our most creative time.  Often times we are left with nothing actionable from a meeting. Should there have been a meeting at all?  Have a time of captioning action. Take the last few minutes of the meeting to see who's taking action on what. Accountability goes up.
• Backburner items. Keep a list, review it periodically to see if something is now timely, still a backburner or something to throw out.
• Surround your teams with progress. Show goals, accomplishments and actions.
• Prioritize projects visually. It's easier to see what's really high and low priorities.

Communal Forces

• Types of people in a workplace: the dreamers, the doers and the incrementalists. Dreamers are happy when they think of new things for us to do. Doers are the Debby Downers. Doers are happy when there's nothing in the pipeline and everyhings on time and on budget.  Incrementalists have the ability to move between the two and never fully accomplish things.  Surround yourself with people who balance you.
• Share ideas liberally. It creates accountability.
• Share ownership of ideas. Let people run with parts of your idea to engage your team.
• Seek competition. We need to pace ourselves with other people on our teams or in our communities.
• Fight your way to breakthroughs. Creative teams fight. You have people who care and are passionate about their position.  We're forced to explore other people's opinions. They fight to get rid of apathy.
• Don't become burdened by consensus.
• Overcome the stigma of self-marketing. Earn respect in your community.  

Leadership Capability

• Leaders talk last. Silence the visionary and buy engagement from your team.
• Find and empower the hot spots. Empower the people who others go to for information.   These people can optimize the way we work.  They are not the most senior or most popular people.
• Value the team’s immune system to keep bad ideas out.
• Seek restraints. People thrive off restraints. Creatives think they don't want them, but restraints empower the creative process.
• Be the bureaucracy breaker.  These are the people who ask the seemingly annoying questions.
• Push people into their intersection. Work in the intersection of interests, skills and opportunities.

Gain confidence from doubt. We shun people before we celebrate them. Nothing extraordinary is achieved through ordinary means.

See yourselves as stewards of ideas. Be responsible for your ideas. See your creativity as a responsibility.