Ideas are easy. Execution is Everything.

I’ve found that big projects and initiatives always are more successful when “worker bee” types are involved in the planning stages.  I’ve found that people who are generally best at conjuring up and selling ideas don’t usually have the knowledge/skill to see them through.  I’ve found that “ideas are easy.  Execution is everything.”

There was an older web developer I looked up to at my previous corporate job, and I remember mentioning to him one morning how I’d watched an amazing interview the previous night on Charlie Rose. He took an awkward pose and returned a blank stare.  “…who’s Charlie Rose?

Sigh.  Only one of the best things on tv.  Yes occasionally boring, but always intelligent conversation.  Always going beyond the soundbite.  And it’s all online.  All of the interviews.

A recent show I caught the tail-end of was filmed at a university.  The 2008 Harvard Business School Alumni Achievement Award’ees in a roundtable discussion.  The 49 minute mark of this video, a guy named John Doerr said something that resonated with me. He talked about how things usually fail in the execution stage, not the idea stage.

This truth rears it’s ugly head in almost every plan, every project, and every goal.  There is an almost guaranteed disconnect between those talking/planning and those doing/executing.

Management/Administration on one side, and worker bees on the other.  Insulated from each other.  Speaking different languages.  The generals draw up war plans, the soldiers crouch in the trenches.

I haven’t experienced much of this at my current job.  But I can still remember the taste of failure.  The client is sold one thing.  The project manager carries a version of that idea to a working group.  The working group creates something with the information they have available.  And the client just kind of stares at the delivered product in confusion.  He might curiously poke it with a stick, before refusing payment.

Back to the drawing board with another idea.