Why We Need A Central Idea

Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash

There’s a passage in Ayn Rand’s book, The Fountainhead, where the central character, Howard Roark, lays out his personal rules for Architecture. He says:

"Here are my rules: what can be done with one substance must never be done with another. No two materials are alike. No two sites on earth are alike. No two buildings have the same purpose. The purpose, the site, the materials determine the shape. Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless it's made by one central idea, and the idea sets every detail. A building is alive, like a man. Its integrity is to follow its own truth, its one single theme, and to serve its own single purpose. A man doesn't borrow hunks of its soul. Its maker gives it the soul and every wall, window and stairway to express it."

There’s a truth and directness to what he’s saying. This is the path of the innovator and the innovator’s - Roark’s - goal was not to mimic and copy conventional wisdom but to blaze his own trail, to do work he felt was important and needed and useful. 

And the one line that, to me, encapsulated his perspective was smack dab in the middle of that paragraph: Nothing can be reasonable or beautiful unless it's made by one central idea, and the idea sets every detail. A building is alive, like a man. Its integrity is to follow its own truth, its one single theme, and to serve its own single purpose.

Except, in my view, he wasn’t just talking about buildings and architecture. He was talking about all of those things we build for ourselves in our professional lives as well. 

Those creations - be it a business or a piece of art or a social initiative - must be created around something - a central idea or theme, a vision as to what we aspire to become. And it has to be a powerful (to us) idea, one that moves us, one that delivers material change in some defined corner of our universe. That spark of emotion at the center of that idea is what sets us alight. 

That central idea then dictates what we are to build. It allows us to move in the right direction, and hence gives us directional insight into what it will take to get there, efficiently and effectively. It demands ruthlessness in its execution, only realizing that which is needed and avoiding that which is wasteful. This is how those actions lead us to a cohesive, driven outcome.

In Roark’s worldview, there is no room for compromise, otherwise you diffuse the integrity of it. For yourself - in terms of how you view how complete and ideal your end product is to your vision. For your people - who have joined your initiative, who follow your lead and ultimately see your compromises clearly. And for your customers - who can sense dishonesty from a mile away.

Everything comes back to that central idea. No Me-Too’s, no copycats. The idea is our guiding principle and to truly innovate, to build something great, we need to be single minded in how we consider it. In this way, we’re able to build something we believe in.

Austin Heller: "What in hell are you really made of, Howard? After all, it's only a building. It's not the combination of holy sacrament, Indian torture and sexual ecstasy that you seem to make of it."

Howard Roark: "Isn't it?"

- Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead.