How to Starve Ideas to Death

We’ve all had these meetings: Big ideas are being discussed. The future of the company is being diagrammed on a whiteboard.

The word “should” is being used a lot. The greatest thing since sliced bread is being articulated with passion.

Everyone is smiling. People are enthusiastic and everyone pats each other (and themselves) on the back as they are leaving.

Three months later, nothing has been done. This morsel of genius was not put on anyone’s plate. Nobody was tasked with nurturing it. Nobody was tasked with ownership.

And if nobody owns it, does anybody care?

This notion was the oversimplified crux of the question Garrett Hardin was asking in 1968 when he wrote “The Tragedy of the Commons,” originally published in Science magazine.

My friend Wikipedia explains:

The article describes a situation in which multiple individuals, acting independently, and solely and rationally consulting their own self-interest, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource even when it is clear that it is not in anyone’s long-term interest for this to happen.

Forty-two years later, the concept manifests in myriad other ways: This is the reason public restrooms are treated so badly. This is the reason the company microwave never seems to get cleaned. This is the reason a shared, limited resource — like a great idea — may start to die the minute it is born, if it isn’t given a custodian of its well-being.

Ideas only turn into action if a pair of hands gets them there.

Every task needs an owner with accountability, motivation, and fear of failure.

Leaving ideas to fend for themselves never lets them mature. They never grow up into actions, into real things.

These morsels of genius will get stale — or rot.

Give them the life they deserve. Give them an ambassador of their well-being.

Give them an owner and avoid the tragedy of the commons.