Ideas vs Execution March 18, 2014
Posted by Duncan in Look and Feel.trackback
I received a sobering lesson today in the value of good ideas, versus the execution of these ideas.
Four years ago I read a great post on status boards, and on the train the next day I mulled over the possibility of building something similar in PeopleSoft. This is the image that started my thoughts racing:
This was around the time that PeopleTools 8.50 came out, and I believed that a similar looking status board could be easily created using some query pagelets, some styling and a custom portal. Failing that, I could just knock the whole thing up in iScripts. It’d take probably about a week’s work to build. This status board could then be displayed on a big screen mounted on the wall in whichever department had commissioned it (be it HR, Payroll, Recruitment etc). Not homepage dashboards, but a department-wide dashboard that continually updated.
I pitched my idea around at work but lacked the tenacity to drive it through. In short, I didn’t execute and the idea withered.
Fast forward 4 years to today and I’ve just read an interview on the Zapier blog with the founder of Geckoboard. He read exactly the same blog post as me and had a similar idea, however he executed on it and built a thriving company on the back of his efforts.
The value of the idea was trivial, compared to having the conviction to execute on it. A sobering lesson indeed.
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The PeopleSoft Tipster Blog 
Hey Duncan, looks like there is still space in the Gecko’s widget directory for a Peoplesoft Widget/Plugin 😉
Cheers,
Amr