We spend so much time smoothing things out…
We lose the opportunity for change, or for texture or creativity…
(at least according to Seth Godin)
Here’s the full piece…
Is everything okay? Unless you work in a nuclear power plant, the answer is certainly no (and if you work there, I hope the answer is yes.) No, everything is not okay. Not in a growing organization. Not if your company is making change happen, or dealing with customers. How could it be? And yet, that’s what so many managers focus on. How to make everything okay. We spend so much time smoothing things out, we lose the opportunity for change, or for texture or creativity. Instead of working so hard to make everything okay, perhaps it is more helpful to work hard at living with a world that rarely is.
Reading it again, do we really want things to be just ‘ok’ or do we need to revisit the mission statments again?
I think it was Henry Ford or was it Barack Obama who said;
Being OK is what makes America great
Can anyone remind me please?
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Hi Bruce – I like where you’re going with this. Being OK for me is accepting the status quo and being comfortable with here-and-now. OAPs like okay. Worriers like okay. Dead people are okay.
Okay doesn’t change anything. Why do we put so much effort into being okay?
If we spent more time thinking about ‘What If?’ we might embrace change and the future better (I think it was a Honda commercial that first posed that question!)
I hope you don’t mind me including this link to a recent post where I talk about negotiation for freelancers: if you get yourself into a un-comfort zone and not be okay, you have the upper hand.
Freelancing Negotiation: Psychological Tricks
Comment by Simon Stapleton — 14/4/2009 @ 12:26 pm
Hi Simon, good call on the lanuage and the Honda reference
I’m not completely convinced that language per se is the trick, although it clearly helps.
There’s a problem with its subjectivity (i.e. what really is ok, or what really is good, bad, excellent, etc?)
There is also the idea that language is a direct extension of physiology which makes for some interesting implications!
Comment by Bruce Lewin — 15/4/2009 @ 7:35 am