This post is meant to be about something that I called “idea execution” in my notes: getting things done. It was going to be a neat follow-on from January, when I wrote about “idea generation”, and February, when I explored “idea communication”. In those posts, I explored a pretty clear framework for generating and communicating ideas. But now at the “idea execution” stage, I don’t think that’s relevant. It’s not worth writing about a theory on how to do things in practice: you just have to go and do it.
As Paul Graham says, learning about how to be an entrepreneur is a little like going to the Louvre, only not to look at the art. You’re surrounded by opportunities to do more; to actually be an entrepreneur, not just learn about it; to actually look at the art, not just the floor where the art is stored. Similarly with getting things done: few lessons will be more useful than the lessons you learn when you just go and do it.
So what’s this post about?
At the same time as not having much to say, I also have quite a lot to say, because being the one who gets stuff done is pretty understated. Maybe I’m just saying that because it’s the dimension I relate most to, but I don’t think so. Compared to a visionary or a communicator, the contribution of someone who just ‘gets stuff done’ is less easy to see.
A leader who is brilliant at coming up with ideas is the one we think of as a visionary, and their contribution is identified by the ideas they come up with. Someone like Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum (or Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of bitcoin).
Meanwhile, communicators are known for engaging a group, and are identified by their followership. Education for women and tackling the climate crisis are not new ideas, but Malala Yousafzai and Greta Thunberg are known for making them a lot more appreciated.
By contrast, the people who implement those ideas can come across as simply putting together pieces that other people already produced. Ultimately, ‘bringing everything together’ is all there is to it. Yet this is more important than it looks, because it’s about persuading people that, if everyone takes the leap, they’ll land next to all they need to succeed on the other side.
Patrick McKenzie, a former SaaS start-up CEO who works incubating entrepreneurial start-ups at Stripe, puts it in more technical terms to make the same point: being the coordinator is about bringing everything together. (A Schelling point describes something you choose to do if everyone else was doing it, like “I’ll go to the pub if everyone else wants to go”; if everyone else is going to be “there” (at the pub), then you want to be there too.)
It can be the most important piece: in a jigsaw, someone comes up with an image to turn into a jigsaw, someone else figures out how to sell it, but if nobody puts the pieces together, you’ve just got coloured paperboard in a bag.
This idea of the coordinator is very similar to something that Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX and a major donor in the effective altruism space, said on a recent Tyler Cowen podcast: “someone who just puts the flagpole down and says, “This is happening”.” These people are actually rather scarce.
But as that Bankman-Fried podcast suggests, being the coordinator is even more than this. It’s also about taking responsibility for implementing the ideas that others have put together and promoted, actually implementing the thing, and that’s a big deal too:
“I do think that that is probably one of the most scarce pieces — someone who can start something and drive it and lead it and take responsibly for it, and be the person who’s like, “If this doesn’t go great, that’s on me. I will do whatever it takes to make sure this thing goes great, and I can get it there. I’m not allowed to blame anyone else for failing. If it fails, that means I failed to find a way to route around whatever problems I was having”.”
Last week I was speaking to a founder-CEO of an EduTainment start-up (education + entertainment), and we spent some time discussing entrepreneurship and the responsibility that comes from being at the top of your organisation. She’s done a good chunk of the start-up journey, spending some years finding product market fit, finding it, and rocketing up to 15 million users. To her, what being the coordinator comes down to is “taking ownership of the problems that you have”.
I think that sums up my thoughts. Next month I’m writing about “What does good look like? The importance of an ethical north star”: for the past three months I’ve been writing about how to be a good leader; April is about how to be a good leader.
Excited for more of this, especially with April's focus on the 'good' in 'good leader'!