IQ v I WILL, really, Big Red?
Big Red Car here on a bluebird Colorado day in Steamboat Springs (channeling the experience with the Samsung Tablet) with a nice snowfall and some nicely groomed skiing.
So I’m thinking about two of The Boss’s CEO pals. Very different guys.
One is someone The Boss thinks of as being, perhaps, the smartest human he has ever met.
The other is a plodder — Big Red Car’s opinion, not The Boss — and is not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
Who gets the better outcomes?
The Brilliant Man/Woman
There are people who can see things others cannot. They are brilliant and have so much stuff in their brains, they are like Cray computers.
This pal of The Boss’s is like that. Every couple of months, he will call The Boss and invite him to breakfast at Texas French Bread over by the University. Breathless, excited, energized, visionary. Brilliant. Young. Man.
They will have a chat about this person’s latest startup idea. Long leisurely chat. Ideas. No paperwork. All in his head. But, BRILLIANT!
[The Boss — getting ready to tell you a secret, pay attention — will map out the idea on one of those cardboard inserts you get when the cleaners fold your shirts. He likes his shirts folded for travel, but I think it’s because of the cardboards. Don’t tell The Boss.]
Two months later, this brilliancer will call again and The Boss will meet him again and there goes another of those cardboard inserts.
The Boss will ask, “What happened to the idea you told me about two months ago?”
“Oh, I got tired of messing with it, but this one is fabulous. Let me tell you about it.”
The Boss will listen, sketch it out on one of those shirt cardboards, put it in the same stack, and get another call in two months.
Ground Hog Day, y’all.
The Plodder/Plodderess
There is another chap, bit of a plodder. Never has time for an entire breakfast, but he has enough time for a cup of coffee and makes The Boss pay for it, pleading he’s a broke startup entrepreneur.
The plodder will show up with a well fleshed out idea, saying, “I have to write this stuff down, because I have so many ideas. I have to make sure I remember what I’m talking about.”
He will also have a Vision, Mission, a two-page Strategy, three pages of Tactics, and a couple of dollar weighted Organization Charts, which he uses to plot growth and the cost to grow. He’ll smile and say, “I have a business engine canvas, but it’s not very good. Just preliminary.”
They’ll chat about the pain point to be solved and he’ll say, “Not very clever, but here’s what I think.”
Then they’ll part and the guy will send him the finished work a couple of weeks later. It will be infinitely more refined and the email will say, “Thanks, you forced me to think about a couple of things I didn’t consider. They’re in here now. Thanks.”
The Boss will get a call and the guy will say, “I remember you telling me that raising money is a struggle. I have 225 targets on my list. Built them from the business journal, like you suggested. Surprised how many I found. Wish me luck. Just sent you my pitch deck. Let me know where I’ve gone wrong.”
Two months later, The Boss gets an email, “Got the deal done. Raised a little more than the target. Turned out just like you said. Lots of targets. Ten percent interest level. Five percent wrote checks. Now, I have to form the Board and committees and stuff. Stealing what you wrote on those things on The Musings of the Big Red Car. Thanks.”
Bottom line it, Big Red Car — IQ or I WILL?
The bottom line, dear reader, is this — in life it doesn’t make any difference how high your IQ (intelligence quotient) is. It matters what you will actually do to further your idea. In the battle between IQ v I Will — take I WILL all day long.
Remember this, you can change how you do things, but it will take work. Do the damn work. Sometimes, it’s better to be a bit of a plodder.
But, hey, what the Hell do I really know anyway? I’m just a Big Red Car. Be good to yourself; it’s Friday and you deserve some gentleness. This weekend, go to church or temple or mosque and say a prayer of gratitude for having been born into these times.
