Method Matters

Any product development project has two large halves.  One is the product.  The other is the process that produces it.

The first half isn’t just about the tangible item alone.  Rather, it also stretches back to the ideation that was the seed from which the product grows into full bloom.  There tends to be plenty of focus on this half.  There are countless books, speakers, seminars, conferences, and consultants all dedicated to subjects like “creativity” and “open innovation,” with the primary focus being on creating or capturing the spark that can lead to the next iPhone or the like.

However, there’s the process.  Which, seemingly, gets a whole lot less attention.

As Scott Belsky, founder and CEO of Behance (behance.com), an outfit that develops products to leverage the capabilities of creatives, writes in Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality (Portfolio), “The era upon us is filled with problems and opportunities that require fresh innovation like never before.  Being more efficient or cheaper is no longer enough to be competitive in a global marketplace.  We need to conceive new ideas to address the problems and opportunities that surround us—" and before finishing that sentence, it is worth noting that what Belsky is saying here is pretty much from the hymnal of those who are all about the aforementioned creativity and open innovation initiatives, but here’s the rest of the sentence: “and we need to defy the odds and make these ideas happen.”

“Make these ideas happen.”  Those four words are absolutely critical.  Somehow there is far less attention placed on that.  And that’s what Belsky addresses in this critically important—and useful—book.

He has devised something of an equation related to how to get this done:

Making Ideas Happen = (The Idea) + Organization and Execution + Forces of Community + Leadership Capability

The part within the parentheses is where most of the focus tends to be.

And he writes something that would make all creatives cringe: “someone with average creativity but stellar organization skills will make a greater impact than the disorganized creative geniuses among us.”

I’ll pause while some of your catch your breath.

But he doesn’t merely chastise.  He provides a step-by-step methodology (sort of bringing David Allen’s Getting Things Done to mind), called “the Action Method,” that can assist the creatives in making things happen.

First of all, you consider everything a project.  And there are three primary elements to a project:

• Action steps: All the things you need to do
• References: All of the stuff related to the project
• Backburner Items: Things that may be actionable at some future point

As he describes this approach, “The Action Method reduces project management to its most basic elements so that you can focus your energy on the important stuff, like actually completing tasks and making progress.”

Who, today, has an abundance of time?  Who doesn’t have too much to do?  So given time constraints and this abundance of required activities, it makes sense to have a methodology like Belsky’s.  But if you look back at the equation, you see that there are cultural aspects that have to be taken into account, as well, if things are truly going to go from idea to product.

Process matters, even though it may not be as sexy as throwing off sparks.  But without the process, those sparks disappear in a twinkling.