Scott Belsky, Head of Behance, explained to the audience that ideas are worthless if you can’t make them happen. Many of us believe that great ideas inevitably lead to success. Nothing could be further from the truth. Whether it is the perfect solution for an everyday problem or a bold new concept for a creative masterpiece, you must transform from vision into reality for an idea to have value. Scott introduced three key characteristics of teams that make ideas happen: Organization and Execution: How do you organize yourself and your team? You can easily spend your entire day just responding to incoming communications – emails, texts, tweets, etc. – while never finding time to push meaningful ideas forward. In order to execute ideas, you need to organize for impact. Scott created the formula “Creativity x Organization = Impact”. However, it’s important to organize with a bias to action: Measuring the value of a meeting in action steps. Prioritize projects visually. Only accept meetings that are actionable. Continue to optimize to surpass your horizon of success. Communal Forces: Do you tap into the power of your credit union organization? In order to succeed as a team, you need to share ideas liberally to connect with the dreamers, doers and incrementalists of your credit union. Why not consider broadcasting your ideas early to get feedback as early as possible in the process? We need to consider competition as our friend, actually seeking it out. Maybe most importantly, we need tap into the communal power, not get slowed down by consensus, rather looking for differences. And, don’t be afraid to market yourself. If people don’t know what you stand for, they won’t listen to you. Leadership Capability: Fight fear and tolerate failure. Leader listen, then lead. As a leader, we need to empower the “hot spots” of the organization, the people go for advice. We need to value the team’s immune system: during brainstorming sessions empower the dreams and suppress the doers, in times when execution is important, you need to suppress the dreamers and empower the innovators. To innovate, credit unions need to incentivize innovation and, at the same time, tolerate failure. Leaders need to gain confidence from doubt: There are many reasons why confidence is such an issue in people’s lives, and a lot of them have to do with conditioning. In many ways our society teaches us to doubt ourselves. It’s all part of the conditioning process that is designed to make us dependent rather than independent. He ended with an important reminder: Nothing extraordinary was ever achieved with ordinary means.