Making Ideas Happen (6 page)

Treat managerial Action Steps differently.
Aside from the Action Steps that you and only you can do, there are three other types of Action Steps you should keep in mind as the leader of a project. The first type is delegated Action Steps, which we just discussed above. The second type is “Ensure Action Steps.” Sometimes you wil want to create an Action Step to ensure that something is completed properly in the future.

Rather than being a nag to your team, you can create an Action Step that starts with the word “Ensure.” For example, “Ensure that Dave updated the article with the new title.” If you use a digital tool to manage your Action Steps, you can always search by the word “ensure” (to only view Action Steps that start with “ensure”) and spend some time verifying that these items have been done. Creating “Ensure Action Steps” is a better alternative than sending numerous reminder e-mails to your team when you are worried about something slipping through the cracks. The last type of managerial Action Step is the “Awaiting Action Step”. When you leave a voicemail for someone, send a message to a potential customer, or respond to an e-mail and clear it from your in-box, you’re liable to forget to fol ow-up if the person fails to respond. By creating an Action Step that starts with “Awaiting,” you can keep track of every bal that is out of your court. When I respond via e-mail to a potential client, I create an Action Step like “Awaiting confirmation from Joe at Apple re: consultation,” saved in the project “Consulting Work.”

In my online task manager I wil set a target date for one week later. After a week passes, I wil be reminded to fol ow up. Sometimes I wil search al my Action Steps, across projects, with the word “Awaiting” and dedicate an hour to fol ow up on everything.

Foster an action-oriented culture.
Your team needs an action-oriented culture to capitalize on creativity. It may feel burdensome or even a bit aggressive to ask people to capture an Action Step on paper, but fostering a culture in which such reminders are welcome helps ensure that Action Steps are not lost. Some of the most productive teams I have observed are comfortable making sure that others are capturing Action Steps. Aside from friendly questioning along the lines of “Did you capture that?” some teams take a few minutes at the end of every meeting to go around the table and al ow each person to recite the Action Steps that he or she captured. Doing so wil almost always reveal a missed Action Step or a duplication on two people’s lists. This simple practice can save time and prevent situations in which, weeks later, people are wondering who was doing what or how something got lost in the shuffle.

Attraction breeds loyalty.
When it comes to the mechanics of capturing Action Steps, you should find the solution that fits you best. Keep in mind that the design of your productivity tools wil affect how eager you are to use them. Attraction often breeds commitment: if you enjoy your method for staying organized, you are more likely to use it consistently over time. For this reason, little details like the colors of folders you use or the quality of the paper can actual y help boost your productivity.

In her book
The Substance of Style
, journalist Virginia Postrel shares an anecdote about usability guru Donald Norman’s assertion that “attractive things work better.” When the first color computer monitors became available commercial y, Norman wanted to justify the value of buying the expensive monitors instead of the standard black-and-white displays. Nowadays, this decision might seem obvious, but back in the day before the World Wide Web and color printers, the value of a color monitor for functions like word processing was unproven. “I got myself a color display and took it home for a week,” Norman recal ed. “When the week was over, I had two findings. The first finding was that I was right, there was absolutely no advantage to color. The second was that I was not going to give it up.” In her analysis of Norman’s findings, Postrel explains, “The difference lay not in ‘information processing’ but in ‘affect,’ in how ful -color monitors made people feel about their work.”

In other words, the aesthetics of the tools you use to make ideas happen matter.

Maintaining a Backburner

During brainstorming, in the midst of working on a project, or during a long night’s drive, you’re likely to conceive ideas that may not be actionable yet. For instance, you might think of some things you would do in a current project if only you had more time or a bigger budget. Or you might come up with vague ideas for new projects to consider in the future. Either way, you are liable to forget these ideas if you fail to capture them and develop a ritual for returning to them over time.

You won’t want to record these thoughts as Action Steps because they are not yet actionable. And writing them down among your other Reference notes is not sufficient because you are unlikely to read old project References in the future. We cal these ideas “Backburner Items”—stuff that isn’t actionable yet but may be someday (and is worthy of revisiting periodical y).

Sometimes these fledgling ideas are the best ones. Rumor has it that the melody of the hit song “Sweet Baby James” popped into songwriter James Taylor’s head during a long drive from New England to the Carolinas. For just such occasions, Taylor carried around a microrecorder that he used to capture little melodies or ideas he wanted to revisit. While driving, he reached for the recorder and quickly recited to himself the concept and melody—along with a note to toy with the song idea. It was apparently not until much later, when he listened to his recorded thoughts, that he wrote the song.

We are humans, not machines. With our creativity comes the tendency to think of random ideas and actions we might want to take but not right at that time. Idea generation is often tangential to the active projects in our lives. But the fact that the timing is off does not mean that the thought isn’t worthy of future consideration.

The Backburner keeps your ideas—and the possible future actions you might take to make the ideas happen—alive. It is critical to making an impact with your creativity because, most often, great ideas that are not yet actionable are quickly forgotten.

Set up your Backburner.
Functional y, the Backburner is easy to employ. Set aside an area at the bottom or side of your notes—or perhaps a separate page—to capture Backburner Items that come up. As you aggregate Backburner Items over the course of a day, you wil want to use a central repository for storage. They can be assigned to a current project name (a particular client, for example), or to a more general Backburner folder reserved for distant ideas like a book you may want to write or a business you’d like to start.

I’ve seen a number of people draw a box on the bottom of every note page. They fil it with Backburner Items over the course of a meeting, and then, at the end of the day, place the Backburner Items into some sort of folder or running text document on their computer.

Create a Backburner ritual.
Of course, putting stuff in your Backburner is not enough. You need to periodical y revisit and curate the Backburner as time goes on.

Make it a habit. One agency creative director I interviewed keeps his Backburner as a running Microsoft Word document on his computer. On the last Sunday of every month, he prints out this ten-or fifteen-page document and, pen in one hand and beer in the other, spends half an hour editing the list. As he reviews each entry, he either cuts it, keeps it, or—in some cases—turns the Backburner Item into a series of Action Steps.

Consider making a recurring monthly “Backburner Review” appointment in your calendar. Ritualize the time you spend revisiting the half-baked ideas that may someday transform your work or life. It is easy to forget your Backburner (and, most of the time, you should!), but you need to stoke it from time to time.

When you review your Backburner, you wil find that some of the items have suddenly become realistic, actionable goals, while others have gradual y become irrelevant.

Sometimes a long-held Backburner Item is actual y the solution to a new problem you face.

References Are Worth Storing, Not

Revering

The third and final component of every project is “References.” The tendency to take notes, make sketches, and compulsively save various types of handouts and reference materials is ingrained from our early days in elementary school. We were trained to write down everything we learned, relevant or not, and we often memorized everything we’d written for the big exam day.

For many of us, this habit of recording and organizing everything has become a time-and space-consuming behavior with no real payoff. We take notes in meetings, we watch these notes accumulate in a pile on our desks along with other handouts and articles for reference, and then we eventual y take the time to “file” them in some sort of elaborate system. To what end?

Two of the greatest benefits of storing References with some sense of organization are simply the reduction of clutter and the peace of mind—even if we seldom refer back to them. Microsoft Research scientist Gordon Bel famously took Reference management to the extreme when he decided to log his entire life’s personal data —every e-mail, every phone conversation, every day’s face-to-face conversations (using a head-mounted video camera), and even his health-related data (via a heart-rate monitor).

The recording of this data happened automatical y, al owing Bel to proceed with his life knowing that everything was being documented. His experiment concluded with a massive archive of the Reference items of his life. His struggle, which he shares in his book
Total Recall
, was making sense of it al . One of the greatest benefits discovered by Bel was the liberation of his “meat-based memory,” al owing him to engage in more creativity and actionable stuff. By letting go of the static stuff that typical y burdened his mind—and piled up around him—he became more productive. But the question remains for those of us who don’t have head-mounted video cameras and therefore must record and organize information manual y: How much energy should we invest in capturing and organizing References?

It turns out that most of us seldom refer back to al of this static documentation that clutters our lives. While we might cherish the opportunity to refer back to the thoughts or main points gathered in meetings and brainstorms of the past, we rarely have the luxury to do so. Truth be told, we can barely complete our Action Steps amidst the chaos of the everyday, let alone refer back to References.

You must find ways, using modern technology if possible, to manage the References of your projects without compromising the precious energy you have for what is actionable.

References obstruct your bias toward action.
It is common that Action Steps get lost in the shuffle of nonactionable stuff. The more energy you spend on scribbling down notes, the more liable you are to miss the opportunity to capture valuable Action Steps.

Even if you do manage to write the Action Steps down, they often become obscured amidst sketches, thoughts, and other notes. The notebook closes and—hours later—the Action Steps disappear from your mind along with the potential they hold.

Even with a wel -organized system for managing References, you might consider reducing your scribe-like tendencies.

Use a chronological pile (or file).
I have observed some people who abandon project files and intricate Reference management systems in favor of keeping a single chronological pile of al notes or handouts from al meetings—across al projects. In the age of online scheduling applications and software, it is easier than ever before to match meetings in the past with exact dates. Simply place your notes from every meeting (regardless of project) at the top of a Reference pile immediately after each meeting. Every month, place this pile into a date-labeled file folder. With the help of your datebook, you should be able to easily jump back to the notes and other References related to any meeting you attended in the past. This is an efficient and simple way to find notes for particular projects. It requires no time to file and sort, and keeps the rest of your space clear of dusty archival materials.

Feel the flow of References.
You have an article, Web site, or note that might be valuable later on. Taking the fol owing steps wil make the Reference easily accessible when you need it.

Question it.
“What is the relevance? For what purpose would I refer back to this at some point?” If you can’t answer this question, throw the Reference out! Some people claim they must write things down to learn and understand concepts. This is fine, but consider discarding the notes and saving only the Action Steps. However, what if the item is important and must be saved for later on?

Label it.
Ask yourself, “How should I identify this Reference so I can intuitively find it later?” If you keep a chronological file, the label need only be the date. Otherwise, consider what project name is most appropriate.

File it.
If you’re using a paper-based system, place the Reference in the appropriate folder (or pile, if you are taking a chronological approach paired with your calendar). There are many great software and online applications that we have seen used across industries. For example, Evernote (evernote.com) is a Web-based application that al ows users to take snapshots or record quick text or voice messages and then store them by label (project name). Behance’s Action Method Online application also has a Reference manager that stores text and URLs by project. Other online document applications from Google, Apple, and others can also be used to store References organized by project.

Practicing the Action Method

The Action Method reduces project management to its most basic elements so that you can focus your energy on the important stuff, like actual y completing tasks and making progress. The best way to get started is to look at a few of your current projects through the Action Method lens. Try to see each project as a col ection of the three elements: Action Steps, Backburner Items, and References.