Neither my posts, my wisdom nor my ideas emerge from a vacuum. Everything I have learned until now and everything I will ever learn in my life will come from doing, learning, experimenting, and listening to people who tried to do the same thing in different ways before I came along.
I often hear people lament over the fact that there are no truly original ideas left. They’re completely missing the point. The importance some people attribute to the originality of an idea is completely overblown. It’s an ego trip. They’re just disappointed because they couldn’t be known as the guy who came up with it.
Truth: What makes an idea good isn’t how original it is. It’s how good it is.
Who cares if you were inspired by a dozen things other people did? Who cares if you borrowed from artists and designers and engineers who solved a problem or created something great twenty years before you became the precious little center of your mother’s world? Great ideas, real innovation, the next big thing, no one is going to come up with them sitting at their desk, brainstorming with a roomful ofΒ suck-ups.
Great ideas, real innovation, the next big thing, they’re all out there, waiting to be pieced together like a puzzle. And the puzzle pieces, they are scattered all over the place. How are you going to find them?
You want to find out how to get better at customer service? Take off the suit, get in your car, and go talk to your customers. Better yet, become a customer all over again. Heck, do both.
You want to find out how to design better products? Start looking at every product out there a little more closely. Things that have nothing to do with your industry. Dog toys. iPhone applications. Action figures. Tennis rackets. Bicycles. Sunglasses. Mechanical pencils. Media players. Faucets. Swiss Army knives. Even cat food is designed to look, taste and feel cool. Learn what works.
You want to find out how to become a wiser business leader? Go out and talk to people who have suffered under some really bad ones. You’ll learn very quickly how to avoid becoming the next mediocre suit with a big title.
You want to generate great ideas on a regular basis and execute on them the way Apple and Nike do? Surround yourself with creative thinkers who will challenge groupthink, uninspired corporate obstacles and collectively work together to figure out how to rock the As all the way to the Zs.
Inspiration and wisdom are everywhere. Whatever unbeaten path you may find yourself on, it’s still a path. People have been there before. Maybe the path looked very different then, but it’s still the same path. Find these people and learn from them. Since you probably didn’t have time to clear your schedule today, let me bring a little bit of that wisdom to you… but after that, you’re kind of on your own.
Very few of the little bits of wisdom below were meant to be used as business advice, which is precisely why I selected them. They’re all really about life, about decisions, about integrity, about the choices we make. But it doesn’t take a genius to see how some can be applied to customer service, to hiring, to innovation, to career management, to choosing whom to work with, and to coming out of this recession a market leader.
Rule #1: Just because someone has had more downs than ups doesn’t mean they don’t have a lot to teach you. Success, just like good ideas, doesn’t emerge from a vacuum. Success is nothing if it isn’t the final intelligent outcome of a thousand purposeful failures.
But hey, don’t take my word for it:
“Nothing is just one thing.” – Carrie Fisher
“I never knew what I wanted, except it was something I hadn’t seen before.” – Robert Altman
“Change is not threatening.” – Steve Wynn
“I love discourse. I’m dying to have my mind changed. I want to know, you understand? I like listening to everybody. This to me is the elixir of life.” – Jack Nicholson
“Take a bit of the future and make it your present.” – Andy Grove
“Courage is doing something you need to do that might get you hurt.” – Bobby Bowden
“If you’re not nervous, you’re either a liar or a fool. But you’re not a professional.” – Jerry Lewis
“Hire people who will treat the switchboard operator as friendly as they’ll treat the managing director.” – Sir Richard Branson
“My definition of evil is unfriendliness.” – Muhammad Ali
“Tell the truth. sing with passion. Work with laughter. Love with heart. ‘Cause that’s all that matters in the end.” – Kris Kristofferson
“Never accept ultimatums, conventional wisdom, or absolutes.” – Christopher Reeve
“If you don’t go, you’ll never know.” – Robert DeNiro
“If you want results, press the red button. The others are useless.” – Homer Simpson
“Hypocrisy is a detriment to progress. There’s always a hidden agenda.” – Larry Flint
“Money doesn’t make people happy. People make people happy.” – Steve Wynn
“If the dark is dark enough, light flares.” – Esky (New York City mascot)
“A nickname means you belong.” – Buck O’Neil
“Risk means guessing at the outcome, but never second-guessing.” – Mel Brooks
“I don’t regret anything.” – Bryan Anderson
“If a guy doesn’t have a little gamble in him, he isn’t worth a crap.” – Evel Knievel
“Wisdom is knowing when to shut the f*ck up.” – Adam West
“The measure of achievement is not winning awards. It’s doing something that you appreciate, something you believe is worthwhile.” – Julia Child
“If I complain about a traffic jam, I have no one but myself to blame.” – Steve Wynn
When you’re 70 and retired, trust me on this, you don’t want to look back and wish you had done it differently. Do it differently now, while you actually can.
This post was written to “Rhino II” by the Stereo MC’s, on DJ Kicks (From my Massive Attack channel on Pandora)
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Is it me or are you having a melancholy moment? rarely does one learn or create without many scrapes and bruises from multiple failures.
When your 70 and looking back, doing it differently isn’t the answer, doing something is still better than doing it right, at least you learn there’s a difference.
Owen out!
Olivier… Just gotta say I am so glad you posted this. I have struggled a bit with the launch of my blog, hung up on this idea of “original ideas.” I eventually arrived at the same conclusion you did: if an idea is a good one, it’s origination is beside the point. I’d always rather be on point than beside the point, so I plunged in and started writing. While what I have to say may not be completely original, it is filtered through my own set of experiences and learning… and those are unique (dare I say, original). And I agree that the best wisdom for business comes from the best wisdom for life. Great list of pithy quotes for the purpose! π
Music to my ears.
The path to any real originality is indeed the filter of your own interpretation. π
No melancholy, man. π
Just looking back and watching companies continue to do the same thing and the same thing and the same thing, and talking themselves into thinking they are doing it differently or better now than they were five years ago.
Truth is, the only thing that’s changed are the budgets, the clothes, and the acronyms.
What business leaders aren’t doing enough of (still) is getting out of their own routines, their own habits, their own bubble of obvious advice: Measure backwards, wait and see, acquire for volume, promote for comfort, hire for show.
Is Jack Welch really the main source of advice business leaders should seek? Let’s hope not. He should be one voice among dozens. Hundreds, even. Tom Peters, Kathy Sierra, Richard Branson, Jack Nicholson, Papa Smurf, your uncle Ralph… The broader your experiences and your menu of channels, the more investment in your own success you secure. The narrower, the less opportunities you have to ever do anything great or valuable.
People need to start realizing that sources of wisdom and inspiration are all around them, not just in the executive conference room. π
Try http://www.brainstormforme.com for your next great idea!
I couldn’t have said it any better, if there is one thing that get’s me fired up, it’s the stuffy suits that can’t change nor wish to. As Gary Vaynerchuck says, those 70 year old douche-bags are no longer in control! In many circles they still are, but the day is coming when they will fall or their businesses will. Creativity is no longer behind closed doors and it no longer belongs to the suits, it’s everywhere and it’s coming from everyone.
As I stated on my Blog, Your Passion is in front of you – You’re just not paying attention! That means creativity is abounding and we have to stop, look and then act on that creativity. This is the time business will change forever!
You know I think you ROCK Bro, keep preaching it, I’m in your corner.
Thanks.
You know, in the grand scheme of things, I have more sympathy for the dinosaurs. (The actual dinosaurs, yes.) They had a better case for survival than companies that still work so hard to get in their own way and treat their own people like crap. π
Back from a week on the Outer Banks, with limited internet access and virtually no SM interaction, it’s refreshing to come back to another insightful Olivier post.
You captured perfectly the conundrum faced by so many small businesses – they want to do something great but think they have to create something brand new. Something entirely original. Something never done before.
No they don’t. Deliver a better pizza. Design a better tennis shoelace. Produce a better, energy saving flashlight. The key to all of these ideas: do something better.
Steal the best ideas from the smartest people in every industry. What design ideas can you steal from IDEO CEO David Kelley? What service ideas can you steal from Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh? What packaging ideas can you steal from Apple? What product development ideas can you steal from Nike? How can you combine the product of all this larceny into something wonderful, something delightful, something that I’ve got to have?
To steal a phrase, just do it. But do it well. Do it with passion. Do it with purpose. Do it for others who share your vision, your peculiar obsession.
“I cannot give you a formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure, which is: Try to please everybody.”
Mark Twain
Word.
“If life is a journey, pay attention to how you walk.” ~ Angus Wong
You’ve been providing my weekly injection of inspiration (and thank you for that). Insightful thoughts. Makes me think of a few others:
Authenticity
Honesty
Curiosity
Passion
Integrity
Creativity and Inspiration
TMTOWTDI …..There’s more than one way to do it.
Business or personal life, doesn’t matter, it’s one life — it’s up to us to make it interesting, engaging, and a reflection of who we are (want to be).
So much of “what we do” is bound up in existing processes and approaches. It takes real determination to push against the inertia that comes with our daily work. But as you point out, when you look back on it all – what counts? What’s important? And did you do the right thing?
Puts it into perspective, really. Great stuff, Olivier.
Well said. π
seen this?
http://mashable.com/2009/08/08/british-troops-social-media/
think they may get it, over there.
Pretty cool post. I just came by your blog and wanted to say that I have really enjoyed browsing your posts.
Any way Iβll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you post again soon!
Here’s a bit of ancient perspective.
If Israel’s King Solomon could say four thousand year’s ago, “there’s nothing new under the sun,” I wonder how distressed he’d feel today?
Ponderful post once again Olivier.
Trey Pennington