Either Parent the Idea or Give it to Somebody Else
On innovation, fatherhood, "parenting," and why prematurely wandering away is the same as giving up
In my substantial experience, you have to stay engaged with a child’s development, or you aren’t really parenting; being a parent isn’t the same as “parenting” - you have to stay engaged in the day to day.
Regarding innovation: I keep watching people fail because they wander away from their great idea, instead of staying with it and bringing it to life. This is extremely common, indeed Steve Jobs speaks of it in this interview.
A couple of years ago I (214 Alpha) had a customer who kept wandering away, preparing to receive an award from the Extinction Rebellion, which ironically meant that he never got his great idea off the ground.
To be clear: the Extinction Rebellion had offered him no such award, it’s just that he felt his idea was so brilliant that he was “destined to be recognized,” which is silly because good ideas are a dime a dozen, the killer app is in-the-trenches execution.
Likewise, he was not engaged in the day-to-day with his own children, yet felt he was the world’s greatest dad.
His great idea was to save the planet by encouraging people to locally source their supply chain, which is a good idea, but he never got started because he was busy preparing to be rewarded for his idea, and he became cross with me because I kept telling him that he wasn’t accomplishing anything of value.
He was likewise cross with me for recommending that his estrangement with his children might be related to his inability to launch his “great idea.”
This is a common thing.
Just last year, I worked with a tech guy who kept wandering away from his great idea, at one point pursuing a reality TV show, dating, and launching a half dozen corporate instruments before landing his very first dollar from his first “great idea,” which resulted in him … failing to bring forth his great idea.
There’s something in our culture that makes people believe it’s sufficient to snapshot an idea, throw it over their shoulder, and wander away to receive their recognition.
It’s common. I don’t know why it’s so difficult for people to stay with the task.
In my circles, we say you have to parent your idea or it will never come to life.
I use the word “parent” on purpose, because that’s what it takes.
There are mothers and fathers who give birth, but they do not actually parent, outsourcing the “in the trenches work” to others so they can wander away and receive recognition without being associated with any perceived failures.
But success doesn’t exist without failure - the two are inseparable.
In my experience the same people who struggle with their role as a parent are the ones who likewise struggle bringing their great idea to life - there’s a relationship, and the common denominator is this: they are disinterested in remaining engaged in the dirty day-to-day work, often because they keep wandering away.
I believe a big reason is this: they don’t want to be associated with the failure side of innovation.
In the innovation domain, there are people who snapshot their idea in a PowerPoint slide, and then they wander away, clapping themselves on the back for a job well done.
Question: have you any idea how many PowerPoint presentations I’ve seen that haven’t been updated for years?
Pro-tip:
If your presentation hasn’t been updated to reflect the thousands of failed conversations you’ve had trying to bring your idea to life, you don’t have an innovation at all. It’s just an idea, and again: those are a dime a dozen.
In the domain of “doing the work,” one is required to constantly iterate on the idea until it’s flying off the shelves.
Early in my career I had the good fortune of working with Apple alum, and one of them told me that you have to:
“…curry the interest of your intended customer as if you are trying to romance them - invest every single day trying to figure out what’s missing, and stay deep down in the trenches until they are begging for more.”
A lot of people don’t do that, which is baffling.
There are parents who hatch children and leave the “messy work” to someone else as they wander away to celebrate.
Likewise, there are managers who hatch an idea and they leave the “messy work” to someone else as they wander away to pursue some new idea while they collect recognition for other people’s work.
This is not parenting, nor is it managing.
Good ideas are a dime a dozen, and so too are adults who hatch children and then wander away, leaving their children to be raised by someone else.
And so something I enjoy about the domain of innovation is that you have to stay in the trenches or the innovation will never survive; you have to parent the idea properly or it will die.
It’s the same reason I enjoy parenting.
What makes being a dad enjoyable are all of the little experiences that weaves a fine mesh of shared encounters that successfully stewards a child into this world.
There are a lot of dads who wander away, waiting for the child to seek them out, and there are moms who do the same.
That’s not how I roll.
I don’t mind getting in the muck, helping the toddler as they are potty trained, teaching children how to swim, and as they get older: walking with them for hours and helping them curate a language for expressing the growing depths of their complex emotions and ideas.
It’s the same precise thing in the domain of innovation.
It’s not sufficient to give birth to the idea, you have to walk with it, you have to get down on your knees and do the dirty cleanup, or the idea never takes its first steps.
And it’s not sufficient to help the innovation take its first steps; you have to teach it how to run, you have to teach it how to swim, you have to teach it how to survive on its own long after you’re gone, which means you have to have the wisdom to step back and allow your innovation to surprise you.
So too with parenting, when it’s done properly.
You have to stay in the trenches, you have to do the thing, otherwise you’re not bringing anything to life.
You have to do the thing, or you aren’t.
And either your idea will die, or somebody will take your place as they parent the idea as you wander away to pursue other things.