英语书籍：Making Ideas Happen 节选(The End)

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MAKING IDEAS HAPPEN
Overcoming the Obstacles Between
Vision and Reality
by Scott Belsky (nonfiction)

Published by Portfolio
a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
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What this means is that, regardless of your industry, your profes-
sional life is becoming more nomadic, digital, and flexible. But as
a wise sage once said--and what every small-business owner knows all
too well--"total freedom means total responsibility." As where and
how you work become more flexible, the onus of organization shifts
increasingly onto the individual. As such, productivity is not about
how efficient you are at work. Instead, your productivity is really
about how well you are able to make an impact in what matters most
to you.

You might wonder, "How can I stay organized amidst the everyday
chaos of accomplishing tasks, managing projects, and staying
mentally clear enough to still be creative?" There are surprisingly
practical methods and tricks that can, collectively, become your
controls for making ideas happen. As we discuss examples and common
themes of the especially productive, you will come to see that it is
at the intersection of creative energy and organizational prowess
where great ideas become actions and ultimately revolutionary
achievements.


"Leveraging communal forces." I have found that, across the board,
extremely productive and accomplished people and teams capitalize on
the power of community to push their ideas forward. The utilization
of communal forces yields invaluable feedback and idea refinement,
builds and nourishes beneficial relationships, and establishes a
connective tissue that provides resources, support, and inspiration.

As psychologist Keith Sawyer, a protege of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
(author of the renowned creativity book "Flow: The Psychology of
Optimal Experience)," writes in his 2007 book "Group Genius," "All
great inventions emerge from a long sequence of small sparks; the
first idea often isn't all that good, but thanks to collaboration it
later sparks another idea, or it's reinterpreted in an unexpected
way. Collaboration brings small sparks together to generate
breakthrough innovation."

Even if the notion of the lone creative genius existed in the past
(and Sawyer would argue that it did not), there can be no doubt that
it's wildly outdated in the twenty-first century. The hyper-
connectivity made possible by the Internet has acted as a massive
accelerator for the "small sparks" that fuel the refinement of
ideas. Nearly every individual or company I've spoken with has
harnessed the power of the Web to achieve many of the goals we'll
discuss in this section: gathering feedback, honing ideas,
increasing transparency, and sharing and promoting completed work.

We'll look at, among other examples, how Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh uses
Twitter to increase transparency and find inspiration, how best-
selling author and "Wired" editor in chief Chris Anderson uses a
community of engaged readers to refine his groundbreaking theorems,
and how marketing strategist Noah Brier gathers feedback to improve
his Web experiments.

Of course, the Internet is just one means of accessing and building
your community. The concepts and insights that I'll be discussing
are not tied to any single medium--and they can be applied in a
number of ways depending on your personality and what works best for
you.

But whatever your disposition, I cannot stress enough the importance
of tapping into the communal forces around you: community opens the
door to new approaches for old challenges and spurs a more informed
and powerful creative instinct. Accountability, one of the most
crucial benefits of engaging with your community, is what binds you
to the relentless pursuit of your ideas. As you become accountable
to others, your creative impulses become tangible projects. Your
ideas grow roots. Community strengthens both your creative energy
and your commitment to channel it.


"Leadership in creative pursuits." History is made by passionate,
creative people and organizations with the rare ability to lead
others--and themselves. Leadership capability is what makes the
pursuit of an idea sustainable, scalable, and ultimately successful.
Unfortunately, there is a huge void of leadership capability in the
creative world, as evidenced by the high attrition and frequent
management debacles across the creative industries. When employees
quit a creative team, it is most often a result of an interpersonal
conflict or not feeling engaged by the subject matter; it is rarely
about money. To grow and sustain creative pursuits, you must be able
to keep others engaged with your ideas.

Leadership capability relates both to your leadership of others as
well as to your ability to lead yourself. Perhaps some of the
greatest hurdles in implementing ideas are personal deficiencies--
common psychological barriers that creative minds often face when
executing ideas. Very few of the famously prolific and productive
creative people we discuss in this book are "naturals." While the
ideas might flow generously, the methods behind the capacity to make
ideas happen are often counterintuitive. In some ways, the self-
discipline and restraints necessary to execute an idea can feel like
a tremendous compromise of your very essence as a creative person.

I have come to call this notion the "creative's compromise" because
you must be prepared to adopt new restraints and best practices
that--at first--feel uncomfortable. You will never need to compro-
mise your morals or artistic integrity, but you will need to exert
control over your destructive tendencies. Perhaps you have the
tendency to jump from idea to idea to idea without ever following
through on any particular one. Or maybe you have the tendency to
incubate ideas privately. You might be avoiding feedback for fear of
criticism, and when you do receive it, you may subconsciously find
ways to discount it. Everyone with the gift of creativity has a
series of tendencies that can become obstacles. The journey to a
more productive life as a creative leader starts with a candid self-
assessment of who you are, your tendencies, and the greatest
barriers before you.

You need to think differently about how you manage your ideas, your
community of collaborators, and yourself. As we discuss leadership
in the context of creative pursuits, we will reconsider the rewards
systems that govern our own actions and discuss how to manage the
delicate chemistry of a creative team.


A FINAL NOTE AS WE BEGIN

Of course, even if you were to adopt all of the best practices in
this book, making ideas happen will never be easy. Across the
hundreds of interviews conducted during the research for this book,
no individual or team I met was without frustration. Anything new
inherently works against the grain. And working against the grain is
uncomfortable. The aspiration you should have is to improve your
approach. And the responsibility you should feel is to give your
ideas a chance.

This book is highly practical, filled with methods that have worked
for others. Every tip and insight is kept short and actionable, so
you can put this book to use right away and return to it as a
resource when you face different challenges throughout your career.
You will find some sections more mechanical than others. Keep in
mind that execution isn't pretty. However, your effort to develop
the capacity to make ideas happen is a worthy investment. The best
practices presented here are yours to digest, scrutinize, and modify
as you see fit. My hope is that you take away a few crucial
realizations that make all the difference.

The conversation also continues online, where a network of thousands
of creative people and teams, like you, are eager to push their
ideas forward. As our research evolves online at our think tank
(the99percent.com) and at the Behance Network (behance.net), I hope
you'll both learn from the material and become a contributor.

Let's get started!


Hardcover - Read ends on page 19.