How do you build an “Idea guy?”

Many founders struggle with handing things off. But your business will only scale at the speed of delegation. The hardest thing to hand off, though, is being the guy who has the ideas.

While many still struggle to hand off the execution of work, it is possible. People hire contractors, specialists, and even slowly build teams of experts who, when given a goal, can accomplish that goal.

But who comes up with the goal? That’s the idea guy. That’s the founder. That’s you.

How do you hand that off?

“Why should I hand that off? That’s what I bring to the table.”

The reason you need to start handing off being the idea guy is multifaceted.

First, as we’ll see, because of how “idea guys” are built, you will actually become worse at having certain kinds of ideas over time. This means you need to find a replacement, quickly.

Second, the ideas you’re going to get better at offering are going to be at a higher level. You’re going to lose an edge when it comes to having an idea about a great marketing campaign, a new product feature, or a new architecture for the app. But, you’re going to have a whole new class of ideas: how to run a business.

This is what moving from tactics to strategy looks like, and you need to be ready.

So, you need to build an idea guy. If you grew up being the product idea guy, you need a product idea guy. If you grew up being the sales idea guy, you need a sales idea guy.

Let’s Go To the Idea Guy Store

So we’re at the Idea Guy store, and we’re looking down the aisle, and we’re disappointed.

The two kinds of people you often see trying to fill the role of idea guy are “process” guys and “charlatan” guys.

The former just seems so dull. You didn’t paint by numbers; you went on instinct. The process guy just doesn’t seem to get it.

The charlatan has the “it” factor, but you soon realize “it” is “the ability to lie, cheat, steal, and blame others.“ Not who you’re looking for.

Where are all the idea guys like you?

Well, they’re off to found other businesses, dummy.

So, all we have is the process guy and the charlatan, and we know we can’t use the charlatan… so… that leaves…

How to Convert a Process Guy Into an Idea Guy

Let’s be clear about what we’re doing:

• We’re not talking about how to build an innovative organization. (Email me with “innovation” in the subject line if you want to talk about that!)

• We’re not talking about how to hire creative people (Email me with “how to hire rogues” in the subject line if you want to talk about that!)

• We’re not talking about how to be more creative ourselves (Email me with “what’s the default mode network?” in the subject line for that!)

We’re talking about how to take your typical, run-of-the-mill, high-performing individual contributor who can knock out any task you give them, and turn them into an idea guy who can come up with their own tasks.

First, the Good News

The good news is, guess what, we all started out as process guys. You may not remember painting by numbers, but you did.

When you first started your role or business, you had to go far more step-by-step, often using off-the-shelf processes almost robotically to get anything done. And you probably thought “these things don’t work!” because your original results were so shoddy.

However, that was actually just you learning.

As you practiced and improved, you thought less about think-by-numbers because it became a habit and a behavior. Meanwhile, at the exact same time, your results got better. Because you weren’t in your head all the time. You were running on instinct.

You need to build a new idea guy, because your tactical ideas aren’t yielding the same results as they once did. Why? Because your brain is busy solving strategic ideas, and it’s getting out of practice at tactical ideas. That’s okay! That’s what happens when you’re successful!

The clever among my readers (which is all of you, of course!) are probably thinking this sounds a lot like the Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition, and it is. When you’re first picking up a new skill, you need hard rules. As you get better at it, they relax into best practices. As you master it, you begin to learn when to break the rules.

That’s normal expertise.

That’s how to build an idea guy.

It’s not hard, it’s just jarring, because we often don’t remember that transition happening to us.

Oh No, I Let My Process Guy Process, and He Never Became A Beautiful Idea Guy Butterfly!

This is going to happen. In fact, this may occur frequently. Everyone will rise up skill acquisition, and work more from instinct than from written rules. But people display this ability differently.

Some folks become master process runners, knowing how to incrementally build organizations beneath them because they know the process like the back of their hand.

These individuals grow and develop into expert instrumentalists. They can play the violin better than anyone else, but they still can’t compose a song.

They’re great to have around! A whole lot of problems can be given to an instrumentalist and be solved. They can knock any class of regular problem out of the park. They’re regular and easy to predict, and they don’t take undue risks.

The idea guy is actually the rare butterfly that comes out of this process. And even though the idea guy isn’t a “process guy” at the end, they must still grow up as one to build good intuition.

This rare breed is the composer. Probably not a great instrumentalist, certainly not when compared to your first violin chair, but makes new ideas seem easy.

How can you improve the odds of discovering a beautiful idea guy butterfly?

Step 1 is easy: grow everyone. Don’t tolerate mediocre performance, and don’t tolerate folks who don’t want to grow in their craft. Why? Because they’re taking up salary and seats that could be filled by others who, given the chance, would produce so much more with the same resources.

This raises your chances of finding that idea guy in the end, and you also have a cadre of expert instrumentalists to support them.

Step 2 (For experts only): Email me and ask me how to hire rogues.