You know what the main trouble is with the old saying, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions?”
The fact that it’s actually true.
Not to mention, it’s also limited. While “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions,” the road to rapture is ALSO paved with good intentions.
Good intentions are neither destructive or productive. They just are. They’re just a starting point.
Where we go wrong is when we start thinking that just by having them, everything else will work itself out.
This is why the 17th Century Jesuit, Baltasar Gracián, advised people not to talk about their big-deal plans until AFTER they were fulfilled. Talking about them almost feels like doing them. Talking about them still gives us the sacred dopamine hit, which if done too much, interferes with us actually getting to work, often disastrously.
This is also why we tell kids not to tell people their wish when they blow out the birthday cake candles- because this too encourages talking before doing, which again, provides rich pickings for tempting distractions.
Whereas effective change-makers “practice pragmatism,” as Ryan Holiday advises in his book, Right Thing, Right Now.
Frederick Douglass was not just a staunch abolitionist – he was also an effective one. He was a fiercely eloquent writer and successful publisher.
Martin Luther King Jr. was not just a man who really wanted the world to be equitable and just. He was quite possibly one of the most rhetorically brilliant people who ever lived, and on top of that, a world-class strategist.
Emmeline Pankurst and the suffragettes were not just women who really badly wanted the vote. They were brilliant organizers and incredibly resilient people, both physically and mentally.
Florence Nightingale didn’t just feel for the wounded soldiers in hospitals – she had the grit and dedication to learn about medicine and apply statistics to healthcare.
In other words, vision is great, but execution is everything.
But that’s common knowledge. What’s rare is being able to create the mindset where both dreaming and doing can coexist. That begins with language; that begins with culture. That’s what real leadership is.
As Thomas Edison quipped, “Vision without execution is hallucination.”
