People worried about
losing their jobs for being outrageous, controversial, or “fringe” would be
better served worrying about a lay-off because their company is unremarkable.
It has to start somewhere.
How can your company be remarkable,
if you’re afraid to be?
Two great posts:
Seth Godin – 50:1
The Chief Happiness
Officer – How
to Lose Your Fear of Being Fired
Update 10/7: And the other side of the question - As an employer, do you REALLY want your team to be remarkable? Creating Passionate Users: Knocking the exuberance
out of employees
I think the problem, to a great extent, comes from the mindset our society creates. "avoid mistakes, dont ask why, just do like people before you used to do..." and so on.
Our mission is to change that crap, as simple as that.
Posted by: Innovation Zen | October 08, 2006 at 04:16 AM
Just discovered your site -- a lot of good ideas!
In my seminars, I used to do an exercise called "The Fools and Rules" in which participants would make fun of basic company beliefs in order to understand why these beliefs were in place.
One of my favorite examples of this was when a client made fun of the following sacred cow: "Everything is to be done in an excellent fashion."
Their fools replied (and this is priceless): "NOTHING SUCCEEDS LIKE MEDIOCRITY BECAUSE EVERYBODY UNDERSTANDS IT SO WELL." There's a lot of truth in that statement (and that probably explains why there will always be a market for mediocre products).
Posted by: Roger von Oech | October 08, 2006 at 01:02 PM
Innovation Zen (Daniel?)- In Dan Pink's book, Free Agent Nation, he talks about how society was built around the industrial revolution - mass production and conformity. Unfortunately in some cases (like innovation), the need now exists to be more diverse and creative (as opposed to driving out variation) and most companies still have "industrial revolution" management styles!
Roger - I just looked at one of your posts "Find a Pattern". I thought this idea was appropriate here:
The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.
I'm still chewing on your "there will always be a market for mediocre products" statement. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. I suppose the real test is from who's perspective is it mediocre? Excellence from the "inside" is irrelevant if it's not valued by customers.
I believe customers only buy mediocre products if 1) there are no alternatives, 2)the value is still excellent (i.e., it's really cheap so mediocre is an acceptable tradeoff), or 3) they don't care enough. The product is something they use but they don't chose to invest the time to thoroughly consider their options. Interesting thing to mull over! Thanks!
Posted by: ann michael | October 08, 2006 at 01:43 PM