Making Ideas Happen (17 page)

Without eye contact and set meetings that start and end on time, it is difficult to uphold the commitment and level of candidness that exists only in a physical and intimate experience. Nevertheless, every leader should consider taking aspects of their circle online—whether through online “drop boxes” that store files (helpful for writing circles that require the prereading of work), or online discussion boards that can enable offline conversations to continue online.

Regardless of your industry or level of experience, circles can support creative pursuits. Your contributions to your fel ow circle participants wil strengthen the col ective value of the circle experience. Like most other relationships in life, the benefits you reap from circles are a function of what you contribute.

Another interesting dynamic that may arise within a circle—or elsewhere in your life —is competition. Among peers within the same industry, you wil start to feel pressure to further pursue and refine your ideas as others share their own progress. These competitive vibes can act as positive motivators.

Seek Competition

Six years is 2,190 days. While spectacular creative achievements take time, Noah Kalina’s “Everyday” project was unique in the consistency required and the forces that made it a worldwide sensation. Kalina is the first to admit that his idea to take one picture of himself every day—now for nine years running—was neither bold nor ambitious.

Every night, Kalina would snap two self-portraits with a digital camera before going to bed. On August 27, 2006, Kalina uploaded a video entitled “Everyday” to YouTube. The video featured the first six years’ worth of self-portraits played in a continuous stream, accompanied by a soundtrack by his then-girlfriend and fel ow Brooklyn native Carly Comando. “Everyday” became one of the top ten YouTube videos of al time, watched by over fourteen mil ion people. Noah’s fledgling idea—and the preceding commitment to pursue it—became art and inspiration for people around the world. An endless set of appearances fol owed the release of the video, including coverage by
Good Morning
America
,
CBS Evening News
,
ABC News
, VH1, the
New York Times
, the
Washington
Post
, and the
Los Angeles Times
, giving his career as a photographer a major boost.

Kalina’s idea to document his life through daily snapshots became a major multiyear project made up of a single daily task. However, contrary to what mil ions of viewers might think, Kalina began with no specific plans for this project. Even years into taking the photographs, he didn’t know how (or if) this particular project would ever be presented to others. It was just an idea—a creative project—that only took a few minutes every day to implement. While the forces of organization and self-discipline kept Kalina on task, the project was just a solo adventure until another force—competition—entered the mix. One evening, while exploring various blogs in the photography community, Kalina happened upon a video made by photographer Ahree Lee, who had made a montage of three years of her own daily self-portraits.

Kalina took photos of himself for six years before he had the impetus to aggregate them into what became one of the most popular viral videos of al time. Perhaps surprisingly, the impetus was not the momentum of the project or encouragement from friends or col eagues—it was Ahree Lee. Kalina saw Lee’s video and knew he could present something even richer. Lee’s project served as a powerful catalyst for action.

What fol owed was a determined effort to present his project to the world. There were other photographers out there aggregating their own sets of daily photographs, but Kalina’s pursuit encompassed many years, and he was going to make sure it got noticed.

Without Kalina’s commitment to the daily tasks of taking self-portraits, the project would never have gone on as long as it did. Without the force of competition from Lee, the project never would have been transformed into something that would help his career. Without the col aboration with Comando on the soundtrack, the video might never have achieved the same impact. Kalina’s idea was not necessarily novel, but the dedication and discipline that it represented was stunning. And without the catalyst of competition, who knows when he would have presented his project to the world?

Ideas often have the tendency to lie stagnant until we are jolted into action by either excitement or fear. The prospect of someone else completing and receiving fanfare for an idea that you had first is outright painful. Ideas are sacred realizations born out of our deepest sense of identity and wonderment. One might argue that our ideas are an extension of who we are and who we hope to become. This is why competition taps into something almost primal—the Darwinian struggle for survival.

For this reason, competition—regardless of whether it stems from friendly camaraderie or outright envy—is an extremely powerful motivating force. It serves as a catalyst for taking action and pushes us to improve our overal level of performance. Any leader can easily lose focus without a group of competitors to keep him or her on track.

The competitive forces around you wil display better ways of doing things. Watch them —and get to know them—rather than pretend they don’t exist. While it may be against your nature to do so, you should actively seek out competition and be grateful for it. By embracing competition, you stay at the top of your game.

Commit Yourself in Order to Commit Others
When you launch a new project, you want everyone you know to help get the word out.

You wil want introductions to potential clients and customers. Ultimately, you wil want your community to mine their Rolodexes and resources to help your idea gain traction.

But a problem emerges if you have not yet demonstrated your ful commitment to the idea you are broadcasting.

An example that comes to mind is Rebecca (not her real name), an aspiring jewelry designer in New York City who came to me for advice on launching her new venture.

Rebecca had developed an extraordinary line of jewelry in her spare time on the weekends that was receiving great feedback from early customers. She also had just received a few great blog reviews on the line that, in turn, had led to more Web site traffic and some unexpected sales. She was becoming more confident in the potential of her business and was starting to take the pursuit more seriously.

As she posed thoughtful questions and jotted down my suggestions, I was impressed by her determination. As our conversation continued, I started to consider what I might be able to do to help—and who I might be able to introduce to Rebecca. At the time, Behance’s reach in the world of jewelry design was real y growing. Perhaps I could write an article about Rebecca’s pursuit or introduce her to some great boutique owners who could real y help launch the line? But as impressed and excited as I was for Rebecca, I had one reservation holding me back: Rebecca had not yet ful y committed to the venture. Her ful -time job as an analyst in an investment bank was stil consuming the majority of her time. She had even shared with me that some of her recent orders were too large to fil . She was scrambling to improve her Web site and hire some part-time people to help assemble the jewelry in the limited spare time she had.

My greatest concern was that Rebecca wouldn’t be able to handle the introductions or opportunities I wanted to provide. This would reflect poorly on her—and perhaps on me if I made the introduction. Was she real y wil ing to take the leap from a steady career to one that involved more risk? Was Rebecca real y going to pour her heart into it? As I probed further, it seemed I was not the only connection that was on deck for Rebecca.

We were al waiting for her to commit before we did everything possible to help.

When you publicly commit yourself and take on risk to make an idea happen, you garner what I have come to cal “Committal Benefits.” Committal Benefits represent the increased likelihood of others to take a risk of their own—financial y or with their reputations—to support your projects.

When I ask the leaders of new companies about the turning points in their success, they often talk about the moment when they informed their network of the drastic change (and thus risk) they had decided to make in their lives—the e-mail they sent to their friends and family announcing the decision or the blog post they wrote about the reasons for their transition. Only after publicly committing themselves did they experience ful support from their communities.

When you commit, your community wil be more wil ing to commit resources to help you. While it is okay—and perhaps even advisable—to tinker with your ideas for a while before taking the plunge, you must recognize that your community wil not ral y behind you until you ful y commit yourself.

Create Systems for Accountability

Perhaps the most critical of al communal forces is accountability. Given al of the tendencies of the creative mind that we have discussed, it is no surprise that we need help staying focused and committed to our goals. There are multiple ways for us to create a system of accountability for ourselves. At the annual TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference, the power of the stage helps hold leaders accountable to bold goals. Various online social networks provide tools for artists to broadcast their work. For freelance and remote workers, the coworking movement provides a communal work space that fosters focus.

The Pressure of the Spotlight

It is 8:30 A.M. on a crisp Tuesday morning in Long Beach, California. Approximately nine hundred people have traveled here from around the world for the annual TED

conference. Leaders in the worlds of technology, entertainment, and design have come for a curated set of eighteen-minute presentations on new ideas and breakthroughs across industries. They have also made the trek to meet each other during the breaks and dinners that happen over the course of the five-day conference.

The audience is star-studded. From tech legends like Bil Gates, Steve Wozniak, and Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, to entertainment icons like Robin Wil iams and Ben Affleck, everyone has come to indulge themselves with a healthy dose of wonderment. TED’s tagline is “ideas worth spreading.” As chief curator Chris Anderson (not to be confused with
Wired
’s Chris Anderson) explains, the purpose is “to put great people on the TED stage and let the rest happen as it wil .” But the larger col ective hope is that some of the most important and timely ideas wil gain the spotlight, and gain some momentum as wel . Unlike most conferences, most people in the room at TED have the rare combination of bold ideas and the resources and influence to do something about them.

But the great potential of such bril iant people with ideas and resources would be squandered without any accountability. Luckily, there is a mechanism cal ed the TED

Prize, awarded every year to three people who have become leaders in their fields of interest. According to the official Web site, the TED Prize was “designed to leverage the TED community’s exceptional array of talent and resources. It is awarded annual y to three exceptional individuals who each receive $100,000 and, much more important, the granting of ‘One Wish to Change the World.’” The TED Prize recipients are identified several months prior to the annual TED Conference and are asked to prepare an eighteen-minute presentation about their “wish” for the award ceremony during the conference.

Past TED Prize recipients have included former president Bil Clinton, scientist E. O.

Wilson, U2 front-man Bono, and Jil Tarter, director of the SETI Institute, a global scientific organization in search of extraterrestrial intel igence. Al recipients have a few things in common: they are leaders in their industries, they have bold wishes for the world (whether it is to fight AIDS in Africa or preserve Earth’s biodiversity), and they have the resources and networks to actively pursue these wishes. In fact, the TED Prize recipients themselves might be the most equipped and wel -positioned people in the world to pursue the wishes that they share with the TED audience.

As the TED Prize recipients come to the stage, one by one, to accept the prize and present their wish to the world, an audience of industry titans listens intently. Between each new presentation, a video rol s with an update on progress made in accomplishing the previous year’s wishes. The combination of an influential audience and updates on the progress of past wishes creates a very powerful yet unspoken sense of accountability for the new recipients. Every TED Prize recipient knows that, one year later, they wil be showing their progress to the TED audience and the broader world.

The TED Prize is an example of how you can use the spotlight to foster focus on a good cause. Those around you play a crucial role in holding you accountable to your ideas. Even if you possess the resources and wherewithal to turn your ideas into action, you’l stil benefit from the impetus that can only be provided by others.

The Power of the Network

As I was exploring the Web late one night, I came across the work of Brock Davis.

Davis had published a project cal ed “Make Something Cool Every Day” a few months earlier, and it was miraculously starting to receive tens of thousands of visits every day.

Davis had proclaimed at the start of 2009 that he would create something new and “cool” every single day, and upload it to the Behance Network. What fol owed was an endless stream of portfolio pieces, each with a caption and some clever artistic twist that made you eager to see the next one. Through sheer consistency, Davis built an audience on the Network that would visit his portfolio every day to review his latest post and pass along words of encouragement. Knowing he had an expectant audience in turn fueled Davis to continue to deliver regularly.

What I didn’t know at the time was that Davis was just one of almost a thousand creative professionals who had joined together, through various online networks, in a group cal ed MSCED—Make Something Cool Every Day. The col ective was largely made up of freelancers in the creative community who had a shared determination to consistently develop their portfolios, get feedback, and function under the pressure of time. Of course, this entire col aboration depended implicitly on the accountability provided by other participants as wel as by hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world who were captivated by the consistency and originality of the work being uploaded daily.