Making Ideas Happen

I don’t normally shill or review books but there’s a good one that, if I didn’t own an iPad I probably wouldn’t have bought it to read, but because it stares at me from the iBooks store “buy me, you’re a creative, look at the typography on my cover, it’s a book about creative ideas, you know you want me.” Okay okay sold.

Honestly I’m more into books that dive right in with hard facts I can apply immediately or even worksheets, seriously. Because if you don’t take action it’s all just extraneous fluff and your retention rate will plummet (if you don’t believe me or want it in a graphic, visit this post). So I was expecting to be disappointed when before getting a few pages in there was “Jimmy and Timmy were stuck in a rut when Tommy and Johnny…” (no, those weren’t really the names used) as in, telling stories to try to glean a result isn’t the best construct for a message. As I soldiered on though, it got better, nothing earthmoving and probably stuff you have or had read elsewhere but a good compendium.

In short:

• You have ideas (or someone does) that you want to make happen.
• Here’s how to organize them from a solo or leadership POV
• Organization or, Organization (having one) will get you to manage and execute them
• Ideas don’t happen in isolation (excepting if one is painting for oneself, no he doesn’t go there)
• Innovation requires leadership (yes and no, depends on the type of innovation)
• Have your own inner feedback loop for ideas and your team (if you have one)
• Ambiguity isn’t a bad thing (and how!)
• Failure isn’t a bad thing, provided you learn from it
• Leaders need to get out of their own way (most of the time, unless you’re Steve Jobs, then carry on)

There’s also a lot of stuff about making lists which, I struggle with this too, from GTD method to pen and paper to various applications on my iPad, iPhone, Macbook Pro, etc., drives me bonkers. As a creative I like to keep things in my head but that’s not the best place. At various times in my career I had people to keep track of things for me, but even that’s fallible.

In the end it’s about motivation and making connections, which, I guess that’s what all creativity boils down to, and how things happen in the first place. So maybe you don’t need the book but, if you have room on your eReader or bookshelf, it’s not a bad book to get.