”Wanna know how to take charge of a meeting?” a friend advised me years ago. “Be the first to grab a marker and start taking notes on the whiteboard.”

On a separate occasion, I remember being a senior designer, interviewing creative director candidates to be my boss and run our design team. The first candidate came in and did an excellent job answering our questions. The second candidate came in and, before we even asked our first question, they said, “I made a few slides to share; would you mind if I hook my laptop up to the projector and walk you through them?” Even before seeing the slides, we knew who we wanted to hire.

What's the underlying principle behind both of these stories? The work always wins. Our industry is rife with meetings where we all pontificate ad nauseam. Talk is cheap. Ideas are worthless. Everyone can and does talk; everyone has ideas.

Wanna separate yourself from the pack? Make something while others are busy talking. When everyone just brings ideas, show up with a comp or a prototype or a wireframe deck or pages of sketches. With ideas, there’s no way to tell if someone is sharing something they’ve been thinking about for a long time or making up on the spot. But if you bring a prototype to a meeting? Clearly, it’s pre-meditated. You’re signaling that you’ve spent some time thinking about this beforehand, and that’s likely more effort than others have put in. On a level playing field, people tend to honor or defer to those who have put the work in.

Ideas are hard to say “no” to. For one, sharing ideas is supposed to be a form of divergent thinking, and that’s not an appropriate time for critique. More importantly though, ideas are often too vague and non-specific to know what you’re saying “no” to. So it’s easier to say ”yes,” which often conflates acquiescence with approval. Showing up with something tangible short-circuits vagueness and expedites clarity.

I bet you’ve been in meetings where the time spent talking about a thing is longer than it would have taken to do the thing in the first place. Next time you find yourself in that situation, politely—or silently—excuse yourself to start making the thing that everyone’s talking about. Notice how much sharper that brings things into focus, because the work always wins.

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