There is no shortage of ways to come up with entrepreneurial ideas, ways of doing something better, ways of thinking, approaches to problem solving, etc.. Companies are started everyday, most are copycats of what already exists, of what is hyped, of what already works.
At most any job you are supported and rewarded for doing the same task over and over again; you get the promotion because of your experience. Why is this? Because the default attitude of most people in charge is to avoid failure. People who are in charge didn’t get there because they took chances and made mistakes, they got there by doing the same thing over and over again; demonstrating competence.
Have you failed? I have, many times. And I proudly say it because it’s part of my journey. I would feel mediocre if I didn’t have the setbacks I’ve had. Anything I’ve done that has worked happened because I learned from the mistakes of others and my own; not because I followed some “success script”.
Bad managers, good managers, great managers. What’s the difference? I understood the distinction when I was 18 years old. I worked at FedEx Ground, and I was protected by my Manager because I made him look good as a result of my breaking rules that hadn’t been broken but were bottlenecks to unrealized value; I unlocked that value by systematically breaking them!
We’re all biased, so biased that we love to hang out with people who think like us, read stuff that we agree with and do stuff we like to do. It’s all good and well, but what we get in enjoyement we lose in perspective; because that one perspective that we hold isn’t the complete picture of life.
In the world of product design, your goal as the designer is to make the product easy to understand and use. People will get frustrated, anxious, angry and just leave it if it’s not easy to use. Similarly, organizations have to be designed to be to be easy to work with for employees, customers, partners and providers. Of course, most aren’t.
You walk into a new situation, a new job, a new team, a new everything; how do you approach it? With an open mind or a closed one? Most everyone who gets hired for a job is rewared because they have experience in doing that job; not because they don’t.
