Book Recommendation: Making Ideas Happen

Scott Belsky of Behance, has written a very interesting book that shows you tools and techniques to actually make your ideas a reality.  As stated in the first sentence of the introduction:

IDEAS DON’T HAPPEN because they are great-or by accident.

They happen for a reason, and with more than a little work and elbow-grease applied. As many of us have seen, both personally and professionally, ideas that are not cultivated and grown, die on the vine.  Making Ideas Happen outlines best practices to make sure that your ideas actually turn into reality taken from years of hands-on research and practical experience.

Overview

• You have to have ideas you want to make happen
• You can develop the capacity to make ideas happen
• Making ideas happen = Ideas + Organization + Communal forces + Leadership capability
• Organization enables you to manage and ultimately execute your ideas
• The forces of community are invaluable and readily available
• Fruitful innovation requires a unique capacity to lead

The book has plenty of real-world examples of how creative people organize and execute their ideas.

The Action Method

Scott also introduces you to their practice, the Action Method, which he developed while working at Goldman Sachs and further refined while pursuing his MBA at Harvard.

The Action Method reminds me a little of Getting Things Done (GDT), from David Allen, but it is slightly different in organization.

The Action Method breaks things down into Projects and Actionable Steps within those projects.  You can set deadlines for Action Steps or have them simply exist and a facility is provided for “backburner” items that may or may not be pursued at some point in the future.

Having used the Action Method ( the online version ) for over a month, I can testify their system it does indeed work – as long as you commit to your self that you will use it ( as with any such system ).  By constantly documenting, prioritizing, and rearranging both my ideas and the Action Steps required to realize those ideas, I feel that I'm one step closer to accomplishing many of the things that have, so far, just been on my to-do list.

Additional Resources

Behance ( Scott’s company ), has created a series of products that help you implement the Action Method in your day-to-day life. You can visit their site here.

The first is a set of paper products which help you record and manage your Action Items.  The second, called Action Method Online, puts the Action Method at your fingertips for every day use.  I’ll be reviewing Action Method Online later, since it is closely related to the book and very valuable in and of itself.