Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. The tale goes that when asked how he persevered after failing so many times, he responded by saying that he hadn’t failed, he’d just found 1,000 ways that didn’t work.
So how do you know when you have a good idea, and execution is your problem? And how do you know when you just have a plain old bad idea?
My worry is that I see people working on things, and the idea seems sound. But the execution is poor. The good idea gets sent to the scrapheap, or we get mediocre results from what had great potential.
How do you know if your problem lies with your execution or with your idea?
This question is exciting, and is probably a good place to start before going around telling people that they suck at doing things, but their ideas are good.
In NLP (which is a bit controversial) the focus is always on how people are doing things. So for example if a patient presents with a fear of flying, the practitioner doesn’t try to go back in time to figure out why the person is scared. Instead they ask themselves the question, how are you doing that? How are you being afraid of flying? The same can be applied to success. How are you being successful at work? And more importantly, how can I get some of that?
There is a distinct focus on dealing with process, and then repeating or disrupting it. Content is relegated to second place, and that’s important in our goal of discerning whether to blame the idea or the execution. This lower importance of content can help us see that content (or idea) is ruled by process (execution). Execution is what brings the idea to fruition.
An idea is a map to a destination. Like asking, hey what if we did this? Execution is ‘doing the idea’. In a good incremental learner, who is happy to fail, execution develops the idea. By the time you get to the end, you often have something different from what you expected at the start. But it probably works. So what keeps you sane while you fail 1,000 times?
Intention
Intention will guide your execution while you ‘do’ your ideas. If your intention is off, or more about looking good, or maintaining the status quo, then your idea won’t develop so well. To bring it all together, an idea is only as good as your execution. And the compass of execution is intention. Keep your compass true, and in your hand at all times, and your idea will develop and grow into something great.
Comments on these ideas are greatly appreciated. What do you think?
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