ideas into action

Do you ever wish you were an inventor? Maybe your inner voice sometimes says, If this were my company, I’d be able to create a better product, fix this issue, offer better service, contribute to a better planet. What amazing ideas are buried in your mind and left invisible to the world?

As customers, we’re often frustrated by things that don’t work. We’ve all had ideas about how products or services can be improved.

I remember not being able to sleep on a 16-hour long-haul flight because I was squashed next to someone who had taken control of the armrest. Wide awake and with an elbow jutting into my ribcage, I had a lot of time to ponder alternative ways of arranging the seating. How difficult would it be to create an economy class seat that has separate armrests or maybe a divider? What if the seats were slightly offset so you wouldn’t need to spend hours in an armrest domination battle?

But apart from complaining, we feel powerless and simply accept the inconvenience – we’ve booked economy, after all.

I’m sure that collectively, economy class travellers around the world would have spent millions of hours dreaming up better seating arrangements. But we’ll probably never do anything with our ideas. And ideas that cannot be turned into action are ultimately worthless.

Turning ideas into action is hard! Genius is not just in the ideas, it’s in the ability to follow through. Interestingly, Albert Einstein was quoted saying, ‘It’s not that I’m so smart, I just stay with problems longer’.

Our ability to follow through on ideas is what is critical to success, especially in an environment of uncertainty. Survey findings suggest that approximately two-thirds of strategies are not successfully implemented. Sounds like a high number, but it shouldn’t be too surprising given that execution is the hard part.

Strategy is the idea; execution is turning that idea into action. If we want to make a difference, we must be good at doing.