I read advice posts to see what kind of viewpoints people hold in different sectors of society. It’s pretty easy to distinguish a business person from a creative type. Their work is worlds apart, and their lives are probably just as far apart. But do they think the same? You would think that people have the same basic needs, and are motivated to reach these needs in a fairly universal way. But each person is a unique individual, so labeling doesn’t work because a person on the job may or may not have the same reflection off of the job. This seems to be fairly consistent, the further down the ladder you are. But once a person reaches a certain plateau, it seems that things start to change. Perhaps it’s the fact that the higher up the ladder one goes, the further away they are from reality. Their version of reality can be defined in facts, figures, and accomplishments. They aren’t mired in the pit of seething emotions that exists at the operational level. Their world is more uniform simply because those around them are cut from the same cloth.
Having been in traditional Corporate America for as long as I was, I saw the deleterious effects that it had on people. And I really do think that all of society’s institutions had a heavy hand in making this world a much more difficult place to exist in by insisting on conformity. We’ve become so focused on making consistency be the redeeming quality, that we forgot that important lessons exist in the opposite realm. Perhaps it’s easy to ignore those lessons, because they go against what we believe and understand. Consistency is proven. The unknown is just down right scary.
I saw a piece of advice on a business blog that literally had me cringing: “Express your individuality on your own time. Integrity is vital, but most of the time, individuality should go. Even artist conform”. Seriously, there was even a short explanation for the validity of this advice that talked about the extreme importance of meeting customer expectation. All of the rest of the smart advice that followed didn’t compute because I was in shock over those first words. Which was too bad, because he did have some valid insights in other areas.
We only need to look around to see the effects of meeting customer expectation. Talk to those operational workers who reel from left to right trying to keep up with ever-changing directions from above who demand that we fickly work to meet customer expectations. There are a lot of angry people out there, because those in the higher echelons forgot that there are also internal customers. The “working stiff” is also a customer to management. What would happen if workers suddenly decided that the company was under-performing in respect to offering legitimacy of the work? If they left en mass as customers do when they are displeased? Sure they can be replaced, but not if every worker suddenly expressed the same frustration as we are now seeing start to happen. It will happen when the threshold is crossed from career to just function.
Honestly, when I look for advice, I go to those on the outskirts who do things their own way. It’s not an easy path and there’s a ton of ridicule from the comfortably numb, but they are probably closer to the truth because they have less to lose. What more could they lose? They’re not part of the popular crowd in the first place, so they can concentrate on doing the process in a legitimate and thoughtful way. Here’s a great article that I caught through a retweet: Groupthink Hasn’t Worked, It’s Time to Embrace the Maverick by Nigel Cameron. His philosophy is a legitimate one whose time has come. Actually, it’s way overdue. Now is the time for disruption as so many of the forward-thinkers are recommending. Groupthink will only allow for a limited perspective that has been done to death. What we need is to stop paying attention to mainstream advice, and to start looking into the gloom at those who we haven’t been listening to. There will definitely be a lot of advice from those outliers since they’ve been ignored for so long, but it won’t be the same cookie-cutter view that we’re used to. And then maybe we can finally start to move forward again, instead of the perpetual circles that we’ve become used to.
Nigel quoted Walt Whitman saying, “Have you learned the lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and disputed passage with you?”. And then Nigel ended his thoughts with, “In the 21st century, great value lies at the extremities of opinion; and we need to harvest it as we move through change faster than we have ever known before.” This is advice that we should listen to, because it is really embracing thinking outside of the box in all of its forms. Thinking outside of the box should no longer be just lip service, but everyday action and thought for finding new opportunities.
What are the lessons that make you think? And what are the lessons that give you hope?
