Working in the Overlap: Scott Belsky

Scott Belsky, author of Making Ideas Happen, founder and CEO of Behance, and one of Fast Company’s list of “100 Most Creative People in Business” gave another personally challenging talk for me. Belsky shared with us many insights he’s gained from studying how creative ideas turn into successful business ventures.

Harnessing Ideas and Making Them Happen

A most helpful insight was that we all need to create periods of non-stimulation (like 2-3 hours) throughout our day to think, plan, create, and dream.  This gives us the space to set goals, come up with new ideas, or just be creative. He thinks people and organizations that are able to “unplug” like this will have a competitive advantage in today’s wired world.

He stressed having a bias toward action, going so far as suggesting revolting against meetings that go nowhere.  You should always leave a meeting with action verbs of what will happen next.  In the last three minutes of a meeting, he suggests recapturing the action steps by each person saying what they will be doing.  It creates accountability and can keep people from duplicating work or not realizing they were assigned a task.  This increases productivity.

He also suggests looking for your times of “insecurity work,” like checking Facebook, blog statistics, or other activities that don’t add value.  He’s not saying don’t do these things, only limit the amount of time you spend doing them and be held accountable to it.

To encourage innovation, he suggests allowing for pockets of failure.  Tell people it’s okay to fail, so that they feel free to take some risks, rather than fear what will happen if they do fail.

Working in the Overlap

The point that was especially meaningful to me was his telling us to work in the overlap of 3 areas:

1. our genuine interests, what keeps us up at night
2. our skills that we either have or can learn
3. the opportunities around us

We should also push those around us into working in these areas too.  When we work in the overlap, we will truly love what we’re doing, be good at it, and therefore feel more satisfied and be more productive.

The reason this last set of thoughts was so meaningful to me was that I heard a similar list over 8-9 years ago that led me to abandon my job as a software developer to heed a call to ministry.  My pastor at the time, Tim Keller, said that we know we’re in the right job when we’re 1. passionate about it, 2. are good at it, and 3. have the opportunity to do it.

At the time, I met the last 2 criteria, but wasn’t passionate about programming databases, so I decided to seek out the way of my passion, studying and sharing Christ with others. I’m now just waiting on the opportunity.

Tell me about how you work in the overlap of these three areas.  If you don’t, what area do you need to consider?

Check out my other posts on this topic:
Catalyst Dallas Brings a Breath of Fresh Air
Healing the Tension between the Younger and Older Generations: Craig Groeschel
Stirred By God’s Sung, Preached, and Spoken Word at Catalyst Dallas