Post No.: 0941
Furrywisepuppy says:
Many people love claiming that they’ve come up with brilliant ideas yet don’t seem to wish to test them out or put in the work to make them real, perhaps in case they prove to be rubbish. But there’s no point bragging about having an amazing idea if you don’t do anything with it. Even more odious is if they see someone else ‘steal’ their idea (even when they independently came up with it themselves, perhaps even earlier) and risk their time, effort and money to test it in practice, and if they succeed, the former will wish to claim some credit for it. (If it fails though, they’ll disown it!) But it’s 1% idea, 99% perspiration – and those who shoulder the risks and do the 99% to research and develop an idea rightly deserve the credit. Even utility patents only protect specific inventions – not ideas per se. (Patent trolls, who patent inventions with no intention of ever developing and selling a product from them but will bring lawsuits against those who try, are considered pestiferous though.)
So real furry trailblazers turn their ideas into action – they work to make things a reality. Coming up with ideas isn’t easy but working out if they’re actually any good and workable or not is usually harder. It’s definitely riskier. We know of stories about bad ideas that never should’ve been given the green light. But there are also cases of good ideas that were abandoned but they and their trailblazers were simply way ahead of their time.
So sometimes you’re doing something right or have the right idea but it’s just that the rest of the world doesn’t, or at least the key decision makers don’t, understand or want to accept it yet – this has happened in the history of science and business, from Ignaz Semmelweis and his idea of cleanliness to reduce hospital mortality rates to Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale getting rejected multiple times by various studios for the idea for Back to the Future.
Trailblazers often face huge hurdles. Charles Darwin had to antagonise the religious beliefs of his beloved wife and take heckles from the contemporary scientists of his time, but we’re thankful he never gave up on the theory of evolution. Beatrix Potter had her doubters, even within her own family, but we’re thankful she never gave up on her books. Andrew Wiles dedicated years to proving Fermat’s Last Theorem, and was close to a breaking point, but we’re thankful he never gave up on solving it. Frank Whittle’s turbo jet engine was initially ignored by the British Air Ministry, but we’re thankful he didn’t give up on his design. Nicolaus Copernicus was deemed a heretic even though facts are facts, but we’re thankful he didn’t give up on trying to share the truth… There are many more pioneers, trailblazers, creators, scientists and inventors who have enriched the world significantly throughout history, and they faced their doubters, people who ridiculed them, people who called them strange, and people who just lacked imagination, vision and foresight; and these naysayers were sometimes in the majority too.
With reward comes risk but it’s the creative folk and the trailblazers, not the conservatives or the craven, who advance the world. To achieve the things that no one else has done, you’ve got to do the things that no one else has tried. You’ll get some detractors but history is littered full of examples of people who doubted or derided those who had the right vision but who thankfully had or grew thick skin, persisted with their creations, and advanced humanity. So if you’re really not doing anything foolish, unethical and the costs of failing aren’t unmanageable then go for it! And visionaries understand other visionaries – it’s typically those who’ve succeeded themselves who are the ones who’ll encourage others to go for it. Those who cannot lift themselves up are often the ones who don’t want others to try.
Generic advice is naïve though because ‘mavericks’ and ‘breaking the rules’ are and is often praised in entrepreneurship but we get cases like the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, who wished to be a pioneer by taking such an attitude without tethering his ideas to reality (the laws of material physics) and ethics (dismissing the safety concerns of his own experts).
It can sometimes be hard to know, without the benefit of hindsight, whether we should double our efforts or give up if something fails or appears simultaneously beneficial yet risky. Should scientists give up on advancing genetic engineering? Should companies carry on with developing artificial general intelligences?
You’ll need strong positive beliefs without being delusional, and to be able to question conceptions about where the limits are while being moored to reality and ethics. You’ve got to have a strong will yet exhibit great humility.
A calculated or smart risk is only investing what you can afford to lose (and not just in terms of money) and making sure the potential gains will be worth the success.
In some pursuits, someone is basically guaranteed to go home with the gold medal – if one person doesn’t get it then another person will (so if the person who came first didn’t, then the person who came second would’ve, and so forth) – unless the tournament is cancelled or every single competitor gets disqualified. And then there are other pursuits where a person or group isn’t guaranteed to achieve anything at that time or any other if another person or group doesn’t, such as inventing or discovering something. The latter are the far greater achievements in my opinion. Woof!
So doing magnificent things and especially creating unique things means that one’s life and work will not be easily replaceable by another – if you didn’t do what you do, few or no one else could step in to fill your shoes. No one else could exactly ‘cover your shift’ if you were absent. It requires thinking differently – well if nothing has worked so far to solve a major problem in the world then one must become a trailblazer and try something different for a chance of success.
It takes continual learning, hard work, patience, delayed gratification, sacrifice and sufficient support. If you only want things now, you’ll never achieve anything great because if something can be gotten now, everybody can do and probably has done it, and that means it cannot be special. Trailblazers logically lead rather than follow.
Although it mightn’t be rational for any particular individual to try things that only, say, have a 1-in-25 chance of succeeding (like perhaps trying to invent a new biodegradable form of packaging that’ll be commercially workable, or to pioneer a new treatment for a disease) – we’re collectively glad that at least 25 people did try or are trying, and at least 1 did succeed or will succeed and inaugurate civilisational advancement. In other cases it can be like it’s irrational for any particular person to vote in a democracy because their vote will quite unlikely make a difference to the end result – but we’re collectively glad whenever enough people do bother to vote.
Something only appears impossible until someone does it, and to do something requires trying it. So say ‘yes’ to more things. This doesn’t mean to everything but when we say ‘yes’ to something, our bodies respond accordingly with positivity in preparation for it.
I just want to be pedantic for a moment though and say that the phrase ‘make the impossible possible’ makes no sense because by definition that ‘impossible’ thing cannot have been impossible – just merely improbable! While I’m at it, you also cannot technically ‘make your own luck’ otherwise it’s not by definition luck – luck is the stuff in your life you cannot personally control. A lot of clichés in motivational speaking circles are nonsense! It’s full of extremely simplistic gung ho advice like ‘never quit’ or ‘never surrender’ (even if a million lives are at risk?(!)) Such circles can also over-simplistically blame those who fail as quitters, as weak, or for lacking enough positivity or faith. But the purpose of such phrases is to be taken as psychological tools to motivate us into action – the error would be to promote or take them too literally.
From another perspective however – if you can pick your team, like in professional sports, then if you need to motivate your players then you’ve probably got the wrong players. And with already self-motivated players, you could actually be a distraction if you try to externally propel them. If you have the right people who individually want what the team collectively wants without the need for carrots or sticks, and they know what they’re doing, then set the goal but then let them get on with it.
Now claiming to be ‘very competitive’ doesn’t need to be mentioned if someone has entered themselves into a competition! Of course they want to win. There are those who may over-train and burn themselves out though, or are overly driven and are, as a consequence of a ‘winning matters above all else’ attitude, more tempted by cheating and doping. They’re easily frustrated if things don’t go their way, are never satisfied, and don’t appreciate the moment enough, or even their own lives. The risks they take can even prematurely end their lives. So the problems are if winning is more important than morals or one’s health, or if one will be a sore loser if one loses and insufferable as a winner if one wins!
Anyway, when the four-minute mile was broken by Sir Roger Bannister, a flood of others soon followed – when one person or company demonstrates what’s possible, it makes it mentally easier for others to attempt and achieve the same. Once doubt is banished, the floodgates open. (That’s one reason why having successful parents is a lucky boon – you’ll have intimately seen what’s possible so you can just follow in the same footsteps.)
Trailblazers show others what’s possible, and others will soon copy and follow their path, and hopefully push a little bit further, and inspire the following generation to push a little bit further, and so on. These incremental steps are how humans have gone from cave-dwelling to city-dwelling creatures and beyond, despite not genetically evolving that much in that time.
If you lead a company that desires to be more innovative, you cannot just tell your people to be trailblazers – you must also provide them the necessary resources, time, structure, systems, their own levers of power, and perhaps inspiration and incentives, to ‘make it so’.
Trailblazers constantly think ‘how can we do this better?’ A manager runs a company using metrics whilst a leader grows a company and their people. Each manager and leader is a steward of the company. Management is about predictable results whilst leadership is about planning for unpredictable results. Management is for trying to be a little bit better than before but leadership is for radical moves. Well one needs to constantly look at both evolution and revolution – to improve existing ways of working plus to have a constant awareness of where the ‘next big thing’ will be coming from and being ready for it. The trick is to be able to spot when a customer proposition or form of business is about to run out of steam, then abandoning it when that happens in favour of the new revolutionary one you’ve been quietly building in the background. Timing is therefore key. Improvement and innovation never stops – even the best must continue to strive to improve.
Leading innovation involves creating a culture where nascent trailblazers look out for accidents and explore the benefits of them – this means viewing failure as part of the learning process and maybe even looking for the pluses out of failed results (like Post-it notes were only discovered by accident).
Woof! It’s about being free to experiment and to make contained accidents.
Comment on this post by replying to this tweet:
