It seems to me there are a lot of good ideas out there that don’t /
haven’t worked for whatever reason.  We tend to judge the value of the
idea by whether the project was a success or a failure.  While this is
not a bad place to start, there are many things that influence the
success or failure of a project.  So you need to examine all the facets
of the failure (and even the successes) before saying categorically the
idea was good or bad.

Here’s a case in point.   I got a call from a company the other day
that wanted me to do some pro-bono work for them.  They were planning a
black-tie dinner, which was to be a fund-raiser  for a very worthy
charity.  At first blush, I was willing to help them out.  I believe in
giving back to the community where possible, and I wanted to help them.

But then I got the details of what they were planning.  They were
bringing in two high-powered celebrity speakers, and had rented a
conference center for the event.  This is where things started to
unravel.  The meeting was only three weeks from the day they contacted
me.  They still didn’t have a caterer for the dinner.  They had done no
advertising and did not plan on doing any (other than the direct mail
piece they wanted me to write, which still had yet to be done and
sent,)  they had not enlisted the services of a graphic artist (they
planned on just printing a letter on the computer and calling it
good,)  they still had no mailing list and no mailing labels prepared,
nobody had given any thought to who the target audience even was,  and
the meeting was three weeks away.

The likely scenario for this project is failure — very public
failure, with embarrassment for all who participate (especially the
company sponsoring the fund-raiser.)  Now this isn’t a failure for lack
of a good idea.  Supporting worthy charities (and this one is a very
worthy charity,) is always a good idea.

Poor planning and poor execution is the reason this project will
fail.  What could have been a great service to the community, bringing
praise and credibility to the sponsor will turn out to be just the
opposite.  Not because the idea was bad, but because the planning and
execution was.

When you judge the value of any idea, make sure it was given its
due.  What I mean is this:  if you’re going to do something, give
yourself enough time.  Plan, plan, plan and then plan some more.  Then
execute with military precision.  Make sure you’ve given your idea
every chance to succeed.  I’ve seen many companies where someone poorly
executed an idea, then said, “Oh, we don’t do that type of thing around
here.  We tried it and it just doesn’t work for us.”

Imagine how absurd it would be for our friends above to say
something like that.  And yet that’s likely what will happen.  The
event will go down in flames, the owners will be embarrassed, and they
will tell the management to quit involving themselves in such
projects.  The management will then tell people who ask them to do
something worthy like this charity, “Oh, we don’t do that type of thing
around here.  We tried it and it just doesn’t work for us.”