Enough ideas to ruin your business

I love a good idea.

The spark.

The head-nod moment where you think, yep, this could be something.

The kind of idea that makes you want to cancel your afternoon and start sketching out a plan you’ll (definitely, 100%, yes really) follow through on this time.

That “what’s possible?” energy is addictive.

It makes you feel alive.

Capable.

Creative.

But I came across a quote recently that caught me off guard.

It was in a Jeff Bezos interview, where he was recounting something his senior exec said to him:

“You have just enough ideas to completely ruin the business.”

At first, I laughed.

Then I felt a bit sick.

Then I wrote it down.

Because it’s not wrong.

And it hit pretty close to home.

Not in a shiny-object syndrome way.

It’s not distraction.

It’s not dopamine-chasing or jumping from one trend to the next.

It’s almost worse.

It’s the what-if-we-just-did reflex.

The instinct to improve, refine, optimise.

From the outside it looks like vision.

From the inside, it slowly starts pulling the roof tiles off while people are still living in the house.

I know this because I’ve done it.

With my team.

With my own work.

When you’re surrounded by smart, capable people who care about what they’re building, it’s easy to get caught in the rhythm of reinvention.

Easy to forget that most of the time, progress doesn’t always look like new ideas.

Sometimes it just looks like finishing the old ones properly, and allowing time for them to provide return.

Because these systems need time.

To mature, with consistency and repetition.

Time for them to be tested, and their returns proven.

For any of us who love building, this waiting and evaluating can be the hardest part.

And I don’t think this only applies to people running companies.

If you're raising kids, you're running logistics.

If you're leading a team, you're running systems.

If you're freelancing, congrats!

You're the CEO.

And the senior.

And the junior.

Finance.

Ops. HR.

Office Plant Waterer.

So if you’re producing, building, or managing anything, you as an individual are an organisation.

And whoever you are, ideas don’t arrive quietly.

They come with expectations.

They create weight.

They shift timelines.

They change the shape of what people thought they were responsible for.

They are not free.

And most of the time, they arrive before the last one has landed.

Before the team has found rhythm.

Before the lesson from the last project has had time to settle.

Before anything’s been truly tested.

But we introduce something else.

A new priority.

A new plan.

A new deck.

And whether we say it or not, what people hear is:

That last thing wasn’t it either.

So you can end up with a stack of half-built things.

And no real confidence in, or momentum for, any of them.

There’s a story from the British Olympic rowing team that I forget (then remember, then forget) time and time again.

In the lead-up to the Games, they used a simple filter:

Will it make the boat go faster?

If yes, they did it.

If no, they didn’t.

Even if it sounded smart.

Even if it looked exciting.

And Steve Jobs used to make Jony Ive, the designer of the iPod, the iPhone, the Mac, kill ideas constantly.

But Jony, like most of us, liked his ideas.

Quite a bit.

So he started inventing fake projects, just to have something to sacrifice.

Decoy ideas he could throw under the bus to keep the ones that he was close to. Which was clever, if slightly unhinged.

But questions like those would kill half the ideas in most organisations.

Mine included.

It’s not a clever concept.

It’s not inspirational.

It just works.

Yet I still forget it.

Still catch myself halfway through explaining some new plan that, if I’m honest, probably just needs to sit in a notebook for a few weeks.

Or years.

Hearing that quote felt like a circuit breaker.

Not a wall, but a pause.

A hand on the shoulder that says:

“Cool idea. But does it actually help?

Or do you just like being the guy with a cool idea?”

So maybe have a think.

Where is your own enthusiasm quietly making things messier?

Not in a dramatic way.

Just enough to be felt.

And what’s one small circuit breaker you could install?

Not to stop the ideas.

They’re essential.

But to give the ones that matter enough room to breathe.

Because sometimes the bravest thing isn't chasing what might be possible.

It's protecting what already is.