Are You a Visionary, or Just Delusional?
by Antone Roundy | 2 Comments | Entrepreneurship, Podcast, Product Creation
Ray Edwards is at it again, posting assertions that I just can't leave without comment:
Realistic is not where the money is.
Realistic does not change the world; it does not shake up the status quo; realistic does not create legacy.
Ray's right, of course. But the thought needs to be expanded on a little. "Realistic does not change the world" could serve equally well to justify charging blindly after foolishness as to combat nay-sayers.
If you were to ask Ray what the opposite of "realistic" is, I'm guessing he wouldn't say "unrealistic" -- probably something more like "visionary". But how do you know whether you're being unrealistic or visionary?
Let's consider someone who's clearly a visionary: Steve Jobs.
You might have questioned his vision in 1985, when he'd just been ousted from the company he co-founded. But 11 years later, he was back at Apple, which he's been guiding to incredible success ever since.
And he wasn't just spinning his wheels for the 11 years in between. He was working on NeXTSTEP, the precursor to Mac OS X. And the year after leaving Apple, he bought what has become the wildly successful film company, Pixar.
From Jobs' story, it's clear that setbacks -- even big, 11 year setbacks -- by themselves aren't proof of lack of vision. We'll have to look somewhere else.
Former Apple CEO, John Scully, shared this insight into Jobs in a recent interview:
He always looked at things from the perspective of what was the user's experience going to be? But unlike a lot of people in product marketing in those days, who would go out and do consumer testing, asking people, "What did they want?" Steve didn't believe in that.
He said, "How can I possibly ask somebody what a graphics-based computer ought to be when they have no idea what a graphic based computer is? No one has ever seen one before."
Reader Comment:Jeff, Thanks for you comment. One thing about Ray Edwards' blog is that he tends to keep his posts very short. For me, that's been useful, because he'll introduce an important idea, but not cover it so thoroughly that there's nothing else to sa...
(join the conversation below)...he recruited me to Apple because he believed that the computer was eventually going to become a consumer product. That was an outrageous idea back in the early 1980's because people thought that personal computers were just smaller versions of bigger computers.
... He felt that the computer was going to change the world and it was going to become what he called "the bicycle for the mind." It would enable individuals to have this incredible capability that they never dreamed of before...
He was a person of huge vision. But he was also a person that believed in the precise detail of every step. He was methodical and careful about everything -- a perfectionist to the end.
There's a lot in that quote. Clearly, Jobs didn't look to the past to find the future -- a visionary doesn't limit himself to what history has proven is realistic.
However, Jobs didn't lead Apple to develop Mac OS X, the iPod, the iTunes Music Store, the iPhone, the iPad, etc., by coming up with crazy ideas and pursuing them with blind enthusiasm. He pursued his vision with discipline.
Some visionaries do stick to the pie in the sky side of vision. They're the ones who come up with ideas that make other people rich. If you want to be a visionary who succeeds yourself, you'd better be ready to roll up your sleeves and work. You'd better be ready to challenge your own ideas and slash any pet projects that don't have a realistic chance of panning out.
Yes, a visionary has to be realistic.
The difference between a visionary and a pessimist is that a pessimist accepts everyone else's definitions of what's realistic. A visionary has the ability and the courage to take an honest look at his vision and decide whether it's realistic.
Here's a quick checklist for recognizing the difference between vision and delusion:
- Visionary is driven. Delusional is lazy.
- Visionary looks for the causes of setbacks. Delusional persists and keeps failing the same way.
- Visionary tries something else for a reason. Delusional tries something else at random.
- Visionary creates unique, new ideas. Delusional creates unique combinations of old ideas by skipping the hard parts.
- Visionary follows the vision. Delusional follows the money.
To paraphrase Ray Edwards:
Delusional is not where the money is.
Delusional does not change the world; it does not shake up the status quo; delusional does not create legacy.
If you have the courage to live the life of a visionary, don't let the realists of the world stop you. But don't be delusional. Be your own realist.
November 4th, 2010 at 10:48 am
I found your article to contain thought provoking insight. Thus it offered content of value. I have never heard of Ray Edwards so I followed your link to his post, took a look around his site (total time about 90 sec.) and concluded that I probably would have no reason to ever return. You are to be commended for your tag line "internet marketing with ethics". Keep up the good work.
November 4th, 2010 at 11:20 am
Jeff,
Thanks for you comment.
One thing about Ray Edwards' blog is that he tends to keep his posts very short. For me, that's been useful, because he'll introduce an important idea, but not cover it so thoroughly that there's nothing else to say. So for someone like me who's looking for inspiration for my own blog posts, it's great.
If you're looking for more meat, there's a downside to that, of course. But if you're just looking for ideas to consider in more depth yourself, his blog can be valuable.
If you stay in internet marketing long enough, I'm sure you'll hear more about Ray. He may not be out there in public and talked about as much as some of the other big names, but he's definitely one of them -- in fact, he's been hired by many of them.