Okay, everyone will have to become an entrepreneur (or at least develop entrepreneurial-type thinking and action), to succeed in the years ahead, you concede, given what is happening in the economy. Virutally no one’s job is safe.
But what the heck do you do if you haven’t an idea for what you want to create.
Well, the place most people begin is by asking “what am I good at?” And they go from there, figuring they will either start a company that capitalizes on their strengths, or they will work as a consultant to someone who needs those skills, or they will eventually be hired full-time by a corporation that needs their expertise.
It’s certainly an adequate place to start…but it is probably not the best.
Knowing who you are, who you know, and what resources you have—your “current reality,” to reduce all that to a phrase—is a very good thing, but the very best first step is to ask “what do I actually care about?”
It’s pretty obvious actually. Desire, as we have seen, motivates you to act. It makes you persist when you encounter obstacles. And it makes you more innovative. The net takeaway: It makes it more likely that you will create an idea.
You always know what you care about. Always. And it’s rarely couched within the specifications of a specific job (We yet to meet anyone who has said: “I want to do statistical analysis of receivables for a Fortune 100 company.”) Similarly, it is uncommon that the answer describes perfectly the company you want to start. But, if you honestly reflect, you will always have an answer. (“My favorite thing in the world is playing with numbers to solve or understand something.”)
Your desires will break down into two types. There are those things that we can call “Ultimate” desires—things you want simply because you want them. The defining characteristic is that you actually care about “it.” (I have to be an abstract painter; [architect, engineer, doctor, work in the local women’s shelter] or I am going to be absolutely miserable.”)
When you have an Ultimate Desire, guess what? You already have an idea. (“My favorite thing in the world is playing with numbers to solve or understand something.”) What you’re actually looking for is how to do it. What you are looking for is an acceptably low cost next step within your means at hand to make it a reality. So don’t get confused. Don’t say you don’t have an idea. You do. (“I want to play with numbers.”) You just haven’t developed the next step. (“I am not sure what playing with numbers is going to look like.”) The thing you most need to do at this point is figure out how to get moving.
The second kind of desire is when you want something because you think it will bring you something else. Here’s an easy example: “I really like the idea of starting my own company, not because I want to run a company, but because I think that’s going to provide me with gainful employment” (or make me famous, a la Mark Zuckerberg. Or insure that I never have to work for anyone else again in my life.”) The specific thing isn’t what you want so much as what you think it’s going to lead you to. Think of these things as “Instrumental” Desires, things that you want because they lead to an Ultimate Desire. These are the cases in which you need an idea.
How do you obtain one, in the case of Instrumental Desires? Thinking, analysis, and introspection aren’t bad—they could trigger an idea—but you also want to be acting as soon as you can. You want to be doing something. If that thinking, analysis, introspection slows down you acting, it’s not so good. What you see over and over are reports of people sitting around the kitchen table night after night and month after month and year after year trying to think up an idea but never doing anything.
The reality, when you dig a little deeper, is that they had LOTS of ideas—“maybe I’ll open a restaurant; maybe a personal shopper service; maybe….” So why did nothing happen? They either didn’t think any of them were good enough, or they were spending all that time at the kitchen table trying to refine them (on paper) or they are spending all their time playing “what if” games (solely in their head), pondering tens or hundreds of scenarios that might or might not happen. They would have been far better off getting out and doing something because—as we have seen—action changes reality and thinking doesn’t. After every action you have new opportunities; potentially new partners, fresh ideas. If you are sitting around your kitchen table and not acting, nothing happens.
Sure, ideas can arise in a flash of insight. But more often (and more reliably) your ultimate idea will surface and develop through your interactions with other people or the marketplace. You don’t need the idea as much as you need to get started. Worst case? You take a few tiny steps; discover you don’t like what you’re doing. Or it’s impossible. If that happens, you re-boot, and move onto something else.
Different lens for looking at Current Reality
When it comes to generating ideas, are Ultimate Desires better than Instrumental ones? No. Are Instrumental ones better than Ultimate ones? No again. They both can lead you to a Big Idea. But knowing which is which is very important, because they each take you down different roads.
In the case of the Ultimate Desire you are going to pursue it because you have to. If you don’t have the skills right now you will develop them along the way. If you don’t have the contacts or networks right now, you will develop them as well.
Here’s a quick example. A woman we know has a passion for aiding kids in the juvenile justice system and she was looking around to find something she could do to help them. Her Ultimate Desire was clear. She wanted to work with those kids and make their lives better. It was kind of thing she would do, even if she never made a dime.
So she got started with what she had at hand which wasn’t much: A tiny store front and bunch of books people donated. She open a used book store and got at-risk kids to sell the books in the store and online. She has been remarkably successful in keeping these troubled kids from going back into the juvenile justice system.
Did she know a thing about books, or retail or even that much about how to deal with troubled youth before she began? No. But her desire was so strong that none of that mattered that much.
Now, let’s take a look at Instrumental desire, the desire that leads to something you truly want. You’re looking around for an idea because you think it’s going to bring you employment or because you think it will bring you, for the sake of illustration, fame or fortune. So, you know the answer to the question of what do I want? You want the fame. You want the employment. You want the money. Whatever end goal you have is valid. But since the immediate goal (the thing you are starting) is a means to an end (“I am founding a company to become rich”) knowing your skills, interests, assets and the rest is really important because you want to do something you like or in an area where you excel, because it will be easier than starting completely from scratch with no particular background or skills.
You’ll have an idea. Get started and see if it is the right one.
Paul B. Brown is the co-author (along with Leonard A. Schlesinger and Charles F. Kiefer) of Just Start: Take Action; Embrace Uncertainty and Create the Future recently published by Harvard Business Review Press.
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Click on the “Following” button to get the new Action Trumps Everything blog post as soon as its goes
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