Less talking, more doing.
In the past few years I’ve grown increasingly frustrated with the “idea people”. People who are constantly coming up with new ideas, or the concept that the more ideas you have the better off you’ll be. Their view is that the better ideas are the new ones. Three old ideas were alright, but this new, great, special idea is the real ticket. That’s bullshit.
New ideas, truly original, invigorating ones are rare, ones that you can act on are even rarer and the ones that you’re willing to put the time and effort into are even rarer than that. Ones that you’re going to be passionate enough to see through until the end, to do what it takes to make them a success are even rarer than the rarest. I’m tired of ideas. I’m not tired of innovation or new things, but innovation comes with actually doing it. I’m tired of ideas perpetuating new ideas, and throwing out the old ones for the new ones, even though you never even started, let alone finished the old one.
A few months back IBM was running what I thought was a great ad campaign that poked fun at this concept. My favorite, ideating, is a perfect example of this. It’s a whole room of white t-shirt wearing office workers who are all laying there trying to come up with the next big thing, or a better way to handle their process. At the end in bold lettering it just says “stop talking, start doing”. Exactly. What’s the point of all that “ideating” if nothing ever gets done?
Ideas, even modest ones, even projects that happen on the web, take time, hard work, and lots of effort to become a reality. When you’re just sitting at home online, browsing websites, seeing the next project launch, it’s hard not to think that it just happened as quick. You easily forget how difficult it is to launch something, to finish something.
I wish more people talked about actually doing, talked about grinding out the details, building something they’re proud of, getting it done. Finishing. I’m guessing they’re all just too busy doing the work, instead of the people who have plenty of time to talk about all their ideas.
Following through isn’t glamorous. Coming up with an idea is. Being the person with the big brush strokes, the “idea guy”, may seem so, but in the end, it’s just a lot of hot air and hand waving. Idea guys just want to be told how right they are, they don’t want to do the grunt work it takes to get something done.
Seeing a project launch, finish, a client happy, the site up, functioning, results, those things, those things make me smile.
Comments
Matt Robin
Great article Tom - simply one of the best I’ve read for ages!
One part that you’ve nicely articulated, that I really agree with, is this: I’m also a fan of innovation, of new and progressive ideas - but I can’t stand the constant churn of ideas that try to make things better (that might not have been bad in the first place) and fail to do so. Ideas just for the sake of ideas.
I’ll note that world of Web 2.0 Start-ups just seems to be an endless stream of this sort of crap. The other part (and really your main argument of the post) that I also agree with, is the effort it takes to progress an idea all the way to the finished, completed result.
That is the hardest part as far as I’m concerned, someone coming up with the ideas is just the start, the bulk of the work follows the idea. When it’s successfully completed - that’s the best part :)
Tom Watson
@Matt Robin Thanks! I’ve never worked at a Web 2.0 Start-up but a lot of the clients we’ve worked for have had this problem. They just don’t want to stop, make a decision and do it. I feel like they’re afraid they might make the wrong one and are still hoping for a better, new idea.