Why Great Tech Ideas Fail: Vision vs Execution
How Visionaries and Operators Can Stop Sabotaging Each Other
The article below is adapted from my upcoming book, Love at First Launch: A Visionary’s Guide to Bringing Extraordinary Tech to Life. If you’d like to be alerted when the book is available, be sure to subscribe to our newsletter at the bottom of this page.
People are the problem.
Great ideas fail. Life-changing visions never reach their full potential. Promising ventures grind to a halt. And it’s all because of people not understanding how to work with one another.
The plight of the Green Shirt and the Red Shirt
Most visionaries and revolutionaries are what we call Green Shirts. Lots of energy, no fear, huge vision, the bigger the better, no limits in sight. Exactly the kind of person it takes to champion a revolutionary tech idea, whether for a startup or an established organization. The kind of person who can inspire teams and boards. The kind of person who says, “The moon? Why can’t we go to Mars?”
The Green Shirt lives in the world of the possible, and their ability to dream up ambitious projects that others might shy away from drives the organization forward. Their preferred state is in the midst of nurturing a revolution.
But the Green Shirt doesn't always get to stay in their comfort zone in the world of the possible. They are surrounded by teammates they care for and respect and know are crucial to the outcome—who also tend to introduce into the process what the Green Shirt considers slowdowns and obstacles. These are the operational warriors charged with implementing pieces of the Green Shirt’s ambitious visions. The data scientists, the operational department leaders, the security and compliance folks.
Each is an expert in their respective domain. They guard the interests of the organization. They take immense pride in executing well and thoroughly. They are directly responsible for the success of their piece of the pie day in and day out.
And when they first hear of the Big New Ambitious Vision, their immediate reaction tends to be, “I just worry that …” (said with a quick, apologetic glance toward the Green Shirt they don’t want to disappoint). This person is a Red Shirt.
Read More: Are you a Green Shirt or a Read Shirt?
They see the practicalities, the risks. They’ve cleaned up the mess of past mistakes and tough situations and have developed a playbook that works. They want to stick to this playbook, not because they lack courage, but because they take seriously their responsibility to protect the organization and the people in it. Their preferred state is with all of the kinks worked out, everything running smoothly. That’s when they feel accomplished. And once they get there, they’d rather not slip back into that uncomfortable world where new problems are cropping up that they have to deal with.
Why organizations need both Green Shirts and Red Shirts
Green Shirts could not succeed without the vitally important Red Shirts, and they know it. They’re grateful that the Red Shirts safeguard the aspects of the organization that they themselves don’t have the patience to tend to. But oh, does it grate on them when the hurdles so accurately voiced by the Red Shirts start to pile up in their path.
The Red Shirts of course, need the Green Shirts too. They know that it’s important to set a new course and take on new challenges and risks, and that’s not where their natural inclination lies. They appreciate being inspired by the Green Shirts and their Big New Ambitious Visions. They just, you know, have some thoughts.
In an undisciplined process one of two things can happen: either the Green Shirts steamroll the Red Shirts, forcing everyone to launch without dealing with valid problems (inevitably leading to failure) or the Red Shirts stymie the Green Shirts, diluting the vision and slowing things down to the point of failure due to weakness. Both of these outcomes are a waste of resources and, more important, momentum.
Even if failure isn’t immediate, there’s often a slow death march for the project. There are two ways this can happen. If the Green Shirt dominates too much, they will simply ignore valid objections, creating chaos internally that eventually spills into view. This is often the story of the tragic safety issue with a consumer product or a fraud claim against a publicly traded company. A Green Shirt couldn’t handle hearing “not yet” and pushed things past the point of recoverability. It’s not the outcome they wanted or foresaw, but a natural and unfortunate extension of the process not being mature enough to account for the push/pull between Green and Red.
In some cases, the organizational safeguards are powerful enough, or the Green Shirt hasn’t established enough influence, and the Red Shirts dominate. In this case you’ll see a project languish for triple or quadruple the time it was supposed to take before finally launching as a watered-down, barely recognizable version of the original vision. This is a much more common scenario: The project launches, eventually, but never reaches the heights it could. And the Green Shirt is frustrated and wonders what went wrong.
Perhaps you’ve embarked on a project and have had one of these experiences: either you’re the Green Shirt, wondering why people can’t just get on board and make it happen, why they’re always trying to slow you down, or you’re the Red Shirt, wondering why the visionary keeps pushing these impossible goals and deadlines at you.
Of course there are shades in between these extremes, people in the middle who don the Red Shirt when working up the chain of command and the Green Shirt when working down. They are the balancers who help the Red and Green Shirts work their stuff out. We refer to these unsung heroes as Blue Shirts. But Blue Shirts cannot solve these problems through personality alone unless the process supports them.
So how do we free our fearless Green Shirts? How do we protect the concerns of our diligent Red Shirts? How do we keep our steady Blue Shirts from burning out trying to keep the peace between the two?
Vision and process save the day
The answer to all of these things is twofold: vision and process.
Vision keeps everyone focused. Committing to what, precisely, we are trying to accomplish keeps the Green Shirts from flying off untethered with new ideas every few days. It keeps the Red Shirts oriented that change is the goal and that their role is to de-risk it, not derail it. And it helps the Blue Shirts keep all of the parties honest.
Process lets the Green Shirts and Red Shirts give one another a bit of grace, knowing that their momentary discomfort in hearing one another out is simply a planned speed bump on the road. Specifically, the process should have a defined length and cadence of meetings, which appeases the Green Shirts. They tend to become impatient with the details and need to know that the end is in sight. On a deeper level, they need to feel safe that all of the concerns and roadblocks that are raised will be handled, and won’t become a reason to abandon the vision.
Red Shirts also want to know that the process is defined, but for the opposite reason. While the Green Shirt wants to see a process that feels short enough to be endured without losing motivation, the Red Shirt wants to see a process that’s thorough enough that they have plenty of opportunities to raise their concerns. Therefore, the process must be both succinct enough for the Green Shirts to tolerate it, and thorough enough for the Red Shirts to respect it.
Once the process is agreed upon, the Blue Shirts can breathe a sigh of relief knowing they won’t be called in to rescue a hopelessly contrarian situation and can focus instead on moving the project forward.
And the real quest begins
With everyone aligned and the path forward clear, you're no longer spending energy managing personalities or defending your vision. You're finally free to channel all that energy into the work itself—into building something extraordinary that only your team, with its unique mix of ambition and pragmatism, could create. That's when you move from simply launching tech to building something extraordinary.