Ten years ago I made a prediction at a European Commission Startup Europe event in Glasgow.
The video I’d shown argued the centre of global trade was moving east, and most of Western Europe hadn’t noticed. We were having conversations about innovation. Others were building it.
I turned on the news last month. The video could have been made yesterday.
There’s a concept I keep coming back to — in my own life and in coaching conversations.
The gap between talking about a thing and doing the thing.
It shows up everywhere.
In geopolitics it’s decades in the making. At an individual level I see the same pattern all the time. The difficult conversation that’s been six months coming. The business idea that’s been “almost ready” for three years. The qualification that keeps getting pushed to next quarter.
I worked with someone recently who had a clear picture of what needed to change. They knew it intellectually, could articulate it precisely, had good reasons for every delay. What they didn’t have was a first concrete step committed to a specific date.
We spent twenty minutes on that one step. The conversation they’d been avoiding for months happened the following week.
Not because I said anything clever. Because we moved from the abstract to the specific. That’s where most things actually start.
I’m not anti-conversation. I’m a coach — conversation is the work. But there’s a difference between a conversation that generates clarity and action, and one that functions as a substitute for it.
Labhraidh a bheul, ach ’s e ‘n gniomh a dhearbhas. — The mouth will speak, but deeds are proof.
Old Gaelic proverb. Still accurate.
So the question isn’t “what are you planning?”
It’s: what’s the first step, and when exactly are you doing it?
Plans stay plans until they have a date attached.
Is obair làtha toiseachadh.