Making Ideas Happen (11 page)

Godin believes that the source of obstacles to shipping is the “lizard brain.”

Anatomical y, the lizard brain exists in al of us—it is known as the amygdala, a smal nugget of our larger brain that sits at the top of our brainstem. “Al chickens and lizards have is a lizard brain,” Godin explained. “It is hungry, it is scared, it is selfish, and it is horny. That’s its job, and that’s al it does. . . . It turns out that we have one too.” Of course, through evolution, the human brain has evolved into a complex system capable of thinking much more expansively—and creatively. But the primal tendencies of the lizard brain to keep us safe by avoiding danger and risk are stil potent.

After the biology lesson, Godin explained that “every single time we get close to shipping, every single time the manuscript is ready to send to the publisher, the lizard brain speaks up. . . . The lizard brain says, ‘They’re gonna laugh at me,’ ‘I’m gonna get in trouble . . .’ The lizard brain [screams] at the top of its lungs. And so, what happens is we don’t do it. We sabotage it. We hold back. We have another meeting.”

The lizard brain interferes with execution by amplifying our fears and conjuring up excuses to play it safe. Suddenly the responsibilities of our ful -time jobs or our personal lives wil support our lizard brain’s cal for retreat. While the lizard brain stays quiet when we have monotonous jobs with a paycheck for doing what we’re told, it becomes riled when we start to chal enge the status quo.

What creative people need, Godin believes, “is a quieter lizard brain.”

Of course, it is extremely difficult to override our biological and psychological tendencies. To confidently quel the resistance triggered by our lizard brains, we must choose our projects wisely and then execute without remorse. By committing to always shipping regardless of success or failure, Godin is able to battle the barrage of excuses thrown at him by his primal self. He is comfortable with the risk of failure because he knows that such comfort is, in fact, the key to being able to execute. As a result, Godin has made ideas happen again and again. The price he happily pays for his successes is having a lot of failures along the way.

The Tao of the Follow-up

A big part of execution is persistence. When we rely on others to drive momentum, our projects are at their mercy. Sometimes, to keep moving our ideas forward, we need to relentlessly fol ow up with others.

Jesse Rothstein, an energetic and charismatic sales representative at Procter & Gamble, radiated the enthusiasm and col egial spirit bred during his days as a star athlete playing a starting position on Cornel University’s lacrosse team. Working for Procter & Gamble, Rothstein spent much of his time on the road, traveling from store to store along the East Coast, meeting with the corporate buyers of Procter & Gamble’s products.

Many of the managers and buyers at Wal-Mart, Costco, and BJ’s Wholesale Club knew Rothstein—and they al loved him. But, while he knew everything about the trends and margins on toothpaste, mouthwash, and laundry detergent, Rothstein was best known for what he did when he
didn’t
know something. He would seek the answer and ruthlessly fol ow up until he got it. Simple, right?

Fol owing up is easy when the answer is a phone cal away. But what about finding information that requires responses from multiple people? What about pursuing an answer that lies only at the very end of a long chain of frustrating and tiresome actions?

Rothstein’s gift is his ability to navigate corporate bureaucracies, multiple time zones, and various rungs of the corporate ladder to find information and serve his clients. He has no MBA, no souped-up technological solutions, and no magical powers. What Rothstein has is perseverance and a simple conviction that he adheres to with an almost religious fervor: he fol ows up like crazy.

“I’m starting to believe that life is just about fol owing up,” Rothstein confided to me on a hot August evening at a Thai restaurant in New York City. “There’s this one guy that I was paired up with to lead a recruiting project. It wasn’t his real job, and it isn’t mine, but it’s something you do in a company to help out. It’s corporate citizenship. The problem was that this guy didn’t real y care. I would send e-mails and a week would pass before a response. I would send drafts of a calendar for him to review and get no response. He obviously didn’t care much, but the project had to get done. At one point, more than a week passed without any feedback or col aboration. So, I forwarded the original e-mail again. Then, two days later, I reforwarded the forwarded e-mail. Then three days later I printed the e-mail out and I sent it FedEx overnight, with my quick notation at the top: ‘Just wanted to fol ow up.—Jesse.’ He final y got back to me, and he did quite a bit of the work himself.”

Rothstein’s relentless commitment to fol owing up distinguished him in the eyes of his clients and his employers. This simple conviction, he claimed, is at the core of his ability to pursue sales leads, relationships, and other ideas. Even outside of his work at Procter & Gamble, Rothstein put his fol ow-up principle to work. He started a nonprofit organization that runs an annual dinner fund-raiser cal ed the 21 Dinner, in honor of a former lacrosse teammate who tragical y died on the field. He was able to secure sponsors and wel -known speakers from the world of sports, ultimately raising $50,000

in his first year running. It is no surprise that this dinner is now in its fourth year.

Rothstein later left a very successful career at Procter & Gamble to found a nonprofit organization cal ed “Coach for America.” His impressive ability to make bold ideas happen through great determination has enabled him to found such an organization despite a troubled economy.

To push multiple projects forward simultaneously—and succeed—you’ve got to have something special. People like Rothstein make you wonder if almost impossible feats become more possible through the application of simple convictions and practical methods like fol owing up—rather than, say, genius.

After al , none of Rothstein’s actions sel ing product at Procter & Gamble, securing venues for the 21 Dinner, or printing apparel were bril iant on their own. Rothstein’s bril iance lies with the fact that he always identifies the necessary actions for each project and then takes them (and enforces them) relentlessly. He always fol ows up until every action is done.

Further investigation of Rothstein’s system for organizing projects and ideas—and Action Steps—revealed a concrete method to his madness. Rothstein’s approach, though highly personalized for his own work flow and on-the-road lifestyle, incorporated many of the key elements of the Action Method. From the way he captured ideas and subsequent actions in every meeting to the way he processed them, Rothstein rarely missed a beat.

There are many stories like Rothstein’s among idea generators who fol ow through and are successful. At the core of each story, we find the same set of methods and convictions again and again. While each person’s system is personalized, the mechanics of how productively creative people work are fairly consistent.

Seek Constraints

Sometimes I ask teams to tel me about projects that were especial y difficult to execute. A surprising number of stories have a similar beginning: “The client was very hands-off.” “There was no defined budget; we were told to think big.” “The brief was rather open and there was no firm deadline established.” While the outcomes may vary, the beginnings of these nightmare projects share a common theme: the teams felt especial y free.

Sometimes this sense of freedom is real y a symptom of something missing. Perhaps the client is stil wavering about direction or awaiting more information from higher-ups.

In such cases, while the brief may appear very open, the client is likely to impose more unexpected restrictions later on in the project. Such surprises are likely to cause frustration and redundant work. But this is not the main reason why open-ended projects fail.

It turns out that constraints—whether they are deadlines, budgets, or highly specific creative briefs—help us manage our energy and execute ideas. While our creative side intuitively seeks freedom and openness—blue-sky projects—our productivity desperately requires restrictions.

During the summer of 2008, I was invited to the set of
Engine Room
, a reality-TV

series being produced by MTV and Hewlett-Packard. The program gathered four teams of four creative professionals each from Europe, Asia, South America, and the United States. These teams would compete as they addressed a series of seven creative briefs. Once the brief was shared, the teams would have anywhere from one to six days to brainstorm, plan, and execute their ideas.

On the set, I witnessed some miraculous col aborations take place despite extreme time limitations. Brainstorms were lean and ideas were quickly tested and, when necessary, discarded with little hesitation. Feedback was rapidly exchanged, and defined intervals of time were preserved for extreme focus during execution. The clock ticking discouraged team gatherings that weren’t actionable. And the output was pretty remarkable given the time crunch.

Wel -articulated problems can also serve as helpful restrictions for the creative process. At the inaugural 99% Conference, the legendary designer and Pentagram partner Michael Bierut spoke about his experience designing the sign for the new headquarters of the
New York Times
in Times Square. Establishments in Times Square must adhere to specific requirements to match the area’s character. Specifical y, the sign needed to be fifteen feet tal while not obscuring the view of the staffers inside the structure. Bierut tried to view the inherent design chal enges as useful rather than frustrating. “The problem contains the solution,” Bierut explained. His innovative solution embraced, rather than rejected, the constraints that defined the project—and the result was al the more gratifying.

The Pentagram Web site explains: “The answer was to break the sign up into smal er pieces, 959 of them to be exact. Each letter in the Times logo was rasterized—that is, divided into narrow horizontal strips, ranging in number from twenty-six (the I in ‘Times’) to 161 (the Y in ‘York’).” These pieces were then systematical y mounted on the ceramic rods that wrap around the building to, when viewed from afar, form the letters. Critics’

reviews were general y positive, and the project remains one of Bierut’s proudest accomplishments.

Constraints serve as kindling for execution. When you’re not given constraints, you must seek them. You can start with the resources that are scarce—often time, money, and energy (manpower). Also, by further defining the problem you are solving, you wil come across certain limitations that are helpful constraints. As you find them, try to better understand them.

Bril iant creative minds become more focused and actionable when the realm of possibilities is defined and, to some extent, restricted. Of course, when you limit the realm of possibilities too much—by al owing too little time or budget—you wil have to lower expectations for the outcome. The goal is to find the right balance, so that you can feed off the project’s parameters rather than feel frustrated or unduly constrained.

Despite your natural tendency to thrive on untethered creativity, you must recognize and harness constraints. And it is ultimately your responsibility to seek constraints when they are not given to you.

Have a Tempered Tolerance for Change

In any col aboration, one of the greatest chal enges that can arise is change. Of course, our ideas and projects must evolve with the feedback and realizations we gain over the course of development. While we must remain open to change, we must also ensure that changes are introduced at the right time and for the right reasons. Change can get us offtrack very easily.

When we become passionate about a particular project and invest tremendous amounts of time and energy, it’s only natural that we become less wil ing to change course. Momentum and other sources of energy that help us survive the project plateau can also make us headstrong. As we become more confident, we also become more resistant to change—even when we need it.

Structure is a mechanism that you can use to preserve the possibility of change in passionate creative pursuits. Rather than invite consideration of change at any time, many creative teams set up periodic meetings throughout the development process cal ed “chal enge meetings.” In a chal enge meeting, anyone is invited to ask and answer questions like “What doesn’t make sense with our current plan?” “What are we missing?”

and “What should change?” This is similar to what happened in Room Three at Disney in the early days.

But change can also be bad, especial y when it is the result of anxiety. Earlier, we learned about our “lizard brains” from Seth Godin and how, when we are nearing a project’s conclusion and are about to ship it, we start to think of reasons to delay. Often, we start thinking of last-minute changes we wish to make. Godin cal s this “thrashing”

—the process by which everyone becomes a critic and starts to pick apart a plan, product, or service. Early in the development process, thrashing is helpful in finding flaws and further refining an idea. However, at the very end of a project—right before launch —thrashing becomes the predominant reason for delays and blown budgets. For this reason, Godin suggests that we thrash heavily at the beginning in order to avoid those last-minute changes at the end.

But what if, at the very end of a project, when everyone focuses on the final touches, a major flaw is discovered that requires significant change? Truth be told, ideas are most likely to reveal their flaws immediately prior to completion. It is for this reason that proponents of entrepreneurship argue that the primary reason smal start-up companies have an advantage over large corporations is their flexibility and ability to make major changes at the last minute.

You want to limit change later on in a project, but you want to be able to change when you need to. You want to limit thrashing to the beginning of a project as much as possible, but sometimes a realization happens when you least expect it.