289 of 294 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This book is a college course on turning ideas into reality, May 13, 2010
This review is from: Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality (Hardcover)
When I started reading Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky, I had grand hopes. I wanted this book to single-handedly pick my ideas off the dusty shelf in my brain and turn them into million-dollar businesses (or something like that). Maybe that is a little extreme, but I was instantly drawn to this book because I have a hard time making my ideas happen. I suppose I was looking for inspiration and a hidden secret on how to turn any old idea into something of functioning brilliance.
Of course, no book can accomplish that. But Making Ideas Happen is probably going to change my life. Here's the thing. This book is not filled with flowery prose or motivational stories meant to get you off your butt. Instead, this is a college course in taking your idea somewhere. Belsky mines the experiences of a lot of visionary people who all have one thing in common, they were able to make their ideas happen.
If you are still in love with the idea of your idea, you are going to want to get over that pretty quickly. The idea is not the thing, Belsky argues, the execution is the thing. Ideas flow freely, while doing something about them takes a lot of hard work and focus. Making Ideas Happens spends most of its time talking about the nuts and bolts on exactly how you can bring your idea to reality. Warning, it is not easy. Things will stand in your way. Heck, you will get in your own way. You will need great passion and determination. If you can muster those things, then the tips in this book will serve you well. If you just want to be creative all day, well Belsky has advice for that to, get a partner who is a doer.
Scott Belsky argues that you need three things to make any idea happen. He says, "you just need to modify your organizational habits, engage a broader community, and develop your leadership capability."
Getting Organized
If you ever want to move your ideas forward, you need to figure out how to organize them and then how to manage the process of working on them. Belsky spends a lot of time talking about how to manage tasks better. His suggested system involves three main categories, Action Steps, References, and Backburners. One of the problems with ideas is that they hit you at the most inconvenient times. You need a place to store new ideas while you move ahead on current ones.
Belsky suggests that you take a project-based approach to making ideas happen. Each major idea should be a project. Each project should have action steps (the things you currently need to do to move the idea forward), references (the information that feeds the idea but is not necessarily action oriented), and backburners (things for future consideration). Belsky and his team at Behance have actually developed a task management system that incorporates these ideas. It is called the Action Method, and I am currently using it with great success. Look for a review on it soon.
Being organized is the first step toward execution. Creative people have a tendency to flit about from one thing to the next. When a new idea strikes, we leave off on an old one. With a project based approach and a way to organize and create action steps around an idea, you can stay focused and stay creative at the same time.
Collaboration
The next major piece of making ideas happen is collaboration. Belsky argues that all good ideas need a team to move them to completion. I am sure you can find examples where this was not true, but Belsky has great examples of when this was true. Teams make more progress than individuals.
In the book, Belsky spends a lot of time explaining the importance of collaboration. One of the surprising benefits he brings up is skepticism. Having someone on hand to thoroughly vet your idea, to poke it to see if it holds water, is actually a very good thing. One of the best things you can do to make ideas happen, it seems, is to kill the bad ideas quickly.
Of course, there is a lot more that collaboration can get you. When you can get more people than just you excited about your idea, you can take it places. Layer that on top of your ability to organize your idea into a linear project, and you will soon be moving quickly toward final execution on your idea.
Another thing that Belsky brings up is the dynamic of the dreamer and the doer. If you are the dreamer, it may be in your best interest to find a doer to partner with so you can take your idea to market. A dreamer is creative and challenges the status quo. A doer may not see the big picture as well, but they sure can see all the little details needed to get the job done. Gary Vaynerchuk shares similar advice, and this is something that I personally (as a dreamer) have been pondering for a while. Dreamers are sometimes afraid of doers, because they think that they will have to compromise their dream. However, without a doer, sometimes their dream will never see the light of day.
Be the Leader
Finally, to bring your ideas to fruition, you need to step up to the plate and lead. You lead yourself first, by getting organized. Then you create excitement around your idea and build a team. To keep that team motivated and moving your idea forward, you must learn how to work with them, to make them feel important to the process. In the last part of the book, Belsky gives a lot of advice (again, taken from people who have had great success) on how to lead.
There is one big twist in Belsky's advice on leadership. For the most part, this section of the book could be in any leadership or management manual. But Belsky always ties it back to the idea. The idea is the engine that makes everything else possible. So when you lead, you are not doing it as a fancy-pants CEO. You are doing it as the person with the idea, and you are instilling passion every step of the way. Earlier, I pointed out that execution is the thing, not ideas. This is true, but in the end, good execution needs a great idea.
This book is for you:
If you have a great idea (or ideas) but can't get it off the ground
If you are already working on your ideas and want to execute better
If you need to learn a better way to manage tasks and organize projects (read the first part of the book)
If you want to create a dynamic team that buys in to your idea 110%
If you want to enable your team to get more done and achieve more creative results
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65 of 71 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An indepth implementation oriented analysis of turning visions into realities, April 15, 2010
This review is from: Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality (Hardcover)
The buzz was high on Making Ideas Happen in the past month, but despite the hype, the book is not disappointing, It's very well structured, easy to read while addressing complex issues. As expected, it's very action oriented and full of tips and best practiced based on tried and true cases. Finished the book in a day, it's a must read both to help understand how to address the challenges of making your ideas become reality, but also as a study of how others in sometime different context apply essentially a similar approach to not let ideas remain just that.
I had been hearing about this book everywhere from different sources, now I understand why. The chapter on The Force of Community is fascinating and captures so many tools that so many chose to ignore in trying to bring their projects to life.
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48 of 55 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It's all in the execution, April 16, 2010
This review is from: Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality (Hardcover)
According to the author, Scott Belsky, the ability to execute ideas can be developed by anyone willing to build their organizational habits and harness the forces of community. That's why he founded his company, which helps creative people and teams develop these skills.
He spent six years studying the habits of highly productive creative people --- people who work with ideas, come up with them and execute them.
After he interviewed hundreds of successful creative people he put together their best and worst practices. Here are a few . . .
- Generate ideas in moderation and act without conviction
- Reduce all projects to just three primary components
- Encourage fighting within your team
- Seek competition and share ideas liberally
In my profession, advertising copywriter, I find that in my own case, coming up with the ideas is the hard part. Executing them is easy. But many in my profession have the opposite problem. They quickly come up with great ideas but fail to execute them so they are useful.
I heard of someone who had great ideas. Trouble was, she never did a thing with those ideas. Someone else often took her ideas and actually executed them. The person with the great ideas remained poor. The person who executed the ideas made money. Another man took the great ideas of others and made millions. Having brilliant ideas is a wonderful thing. But it's the person who executes the idea, brings it to life, gives it birth, who becomes successful. So the key is to come up with ideas but then take it to the next level and execute those ideas.
That's what this book is all about.
Highly recommended.
- Susanna K. Hutcheson
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