On Initiative

More than once in my life I’ve come to a new idea or project and burned to make it real. I would go to the people whose support or formal sign-off I needed, lay out my plan, and hear the same question every time: “Why you?” Because there’s almost always someone with more experience, more competence, or more resources in the field. Wouldn’t it be safer, more reliable, to hand my idea off to them?

The paradox is that I asked the very same question myself, often, when people came to me with their initiatives.

The answer is simple, and it came with experience.

Nothing matters more than the force of intent. When a person has reached a discovery, an insight, or a plan on their own, it means the necessary knowledge has already come together in their head. And if they’re also “charged” to carry it out, ready to pour their own energy into it — that’s far more valuable than a mere difference in experience. A motivated, diligent beginner will always outrun a professional working without enough interest or enthusiasm.

Hand the work to someone who will be executing another person’s design, and we won’t get the same level of commitment from them. These people didn’t toss and turn at night looking for the solution, didn’t assemble the puzzle out of scattered pieces. For their own ideas, people are ready to fight as if for their own lives — and sometimes quite literally.

Many make this mistake of choice, and that’s exactly why progress moves at all: young companies push out the old ones, however unshakable their place in the market once seemed; the inevitable changing of faces plays out in politics, science, art, public life, and everywhere else.

When we back people with initiative and give them the resources to realize what they’ve imagined, we take the side of evolution — the most powerful force in the universe.

Of course, it matters to tell apart those with an unbreakable will to act from the “dreamers” who carry hundreds of fantasies but never move from words to deeds.

Here’s to backing the generators of new ideas and helping them bring those ideas to life! 😎