The saying goes “ideas are a dime a dozen” and “execution is what matters”. It’s hard to fault these pieces of wisdom. When people come up with ideas, they always seem simple enough to execute, how hard can it be to make this happen? But it’s often not that simple.
Once you start looking into the details of the idea, and put it in the context of your current circumstances, the size of the effort to do it starts to grow. What seemed simple becomes more complex, as we dig into what it will actually take to achieve the goal.
Sometimes the complexity arises in the unspoken aspects of the idea. Adjacent changes required to make it valuable. Things that were not considered to begin with, but that would make the idea fail without them.
Other times the issue lies in the complexity of the system where we will implement the idea. As a system grows, so does its complexity. Adding new features becomes harder as the interactions grow. And the opportunities for breaking changes often arise undetected.
Ideas are good, and we should entertain most of them. Give them the attention they need. Build on top of them. Embrace them from every source. But we need to make sure that we don’t delude ourselves into thinking we can implement them all. Nor we should be dismissive of them because implementing them will be hard. It’s a fine balance, and getting it right requires expertise and patience.
So that’s the true measure of a leader. How they navigate the nuanced world of evaluating, vetting, and implementing ideas. To grow as an individual, a team, and a business.