There Are Two Types of Ideas: Which One Is Yours?

If you are someone with ideas, whether that's for products, services, research areas, whatever it might be, one of the most common and solvable mistakes with that idea is what kind of idea is it? I'm Tamsen Webster. I'm a reasoning researcher who studies how people think about ideas so we can make sure that your idea is one that people can't stop thinking about. I'm also the founder of the Message Design Institute, where we share and teach all the resources that we come across and that I've developed to help you do exactly that. But let's talk about this issue with ideas. One of the things that I see over and over again is that we use the word idea or even message to talk about more than one kind of idea. Here's what I mean. There are, let's call them concept ideas and action ideas. Here's the difference. A concept idea, you can think of as a premise. In my go-to phrasing of cause and effect or if and then, typically a concept idea is establishing a lot of that cause aspect. It's identifying new causes and/or it's naming effects. So if you think about something like, for instance, Amy Edmondson's psychological safety, that is identifying a new cause. It's noticing and naming something that previously had gone unnoticed or at least unnamed such that we can now do something with it. You can put Adam Grant's difference between givers and takers in that same category, but you can also put things like, I don't know, Newtonian physics. But you can also talk about things like the theory of relativity or gravity. There are things that say, hey, I believe this thing exists and this is what I think it is and this is what I think it does. Concept idea. For thought and thinking leaders, this can also be a framework, something that operationalizes something for the first time. I'm a particular fan of Herron and Reason's Ways of Knowing Pyramid, but you can also put things like the Hedgehog Concept in there or the EOS, Entrepreneurial Operating System. In other words, that's an idea. It is a way to do something. Now, those ideas are critically important because they allow us to notice and interact with something in a way that's different while that idea was unnamed, unproduced, not in the world. In order to establish the validity of that idea, as you'll often see in academia, typically people have to notice, define it, research it, prove it out, establish how it's different from something that's happened before, and be able to show why and how they think it does what they think it does. So pretty high standard there too. But again, mostly it's about What is it? How are you interacting with it? How do you know when you see it? How does it work? So that's the concept idea. Now, these concept ideas, oftentimes we need to do something with them, right? We need to take action with them. And it's the moment where we start to say, if you want teams to learn better, make better decisions, et cetera, then you need psychological safety. Do you hear the difference? Instead of just saying psychological safety exists, it's if you want this, you need psychological safety on your teams. Suddenly now also an idea, but a fundamentally different kind of idea. One I'm gonna refer to as an action-oriented idea, or let's call it an action idea for short. The reason this is so important is that the minute, the nanosecond that someone's brain hears a concept idea attached to an outcome, a we should, this will, etc., a whole different set of reasoning processes get engaged. And that means that idea has to meet a different set of standards, not just the ones that were necessary for the concept idea where people agree with you, they can see it, they can define it, they understand what that is, but then they also now start to say things like, how likely is it that this concept idea will produce this desired outcome if I take action on it? More specifically, they need to hear information that allows them to answer and assess the 3 beliefs that are necessary before anyone will take any kind of action. Number 1, that it's possible in principle. Can I see Can I feel, does this feel intuitively logical as a way to achieve this outcome? Does this concept idea just fit? Does it make sense without a lot of thinking about it as a way to achieve this outcome? Number 1, is it possible in principle? Number 2, is it possible in practice? And number 3, is it worth it? Once somebody agrees that something is possible in principle, they can understand why it would work, how it could work, then they want to understand, yeah, but will it really? And the will it really starts to pull in things like, can I do it? Can you do it? Can anybody do it? Can our organization do it? How do we do it? What does that look like? How much does it cost? How much effort does it take? And that contributes to establishing that third belief, which is tied to two things. Number one, outcome. If your concept idea is attached to an outcome that somebody doesn't care about, The way our brains deal with that is as null and void. The whole idea gets tossed out as irrelevant, even if part of it was really valuable. It comes back to why that if-then statement we've talked about a lot becomes so important. But the second piece where is it worth it comes into play is the effort-to-outcome ratio worth it? Once I understand that it could work in principle and I understand how it does work in practice, then I'm looking for can I assess whether or not that actually makes sense for me with you, for us as a team, organization, political party, community, country, planet. These things all tie together and all rest on the foundation of big, beautiful ideas. But in order to give your idea, whatever it may be, the best chance of success as possible, it is absolutely necessary that you're clear on what kind of idea is it. If it's defining something, naming something, it's a concept. Still important, but only a small part of what people need if you want people to act on it. If you want them to act on it, that concept needs to turn into a claim. If you want this, then use this concept. And that claim has got to be supported by intuitively logical case to support it. Something that they understand why it would work. And without your convincing them, telling them, or giving them a ton of data or answers. So next time you are thinking about your ideas or trying to figure out what it is about somebody else's idea that isn't quite working for you, check for that idea to intention fit. If that idea is just informing us about something we didn't know about before, then that's a concept idea. Make sure you've got it well supported, defined, et cetera. If it is about how or why to drive action a particular way, then you need that concept to turn into a claim and support it with a case that not only anyone can understand, but just about everyone could agree with. Understanding these kinds of differences and helping you apply them is the work that we do at the Message Design Institute. So if you're looking to get this information first, sign up for our newsletter or sign up for one of our monthly free office hours or Fundamentals of Message Design webinar.