Shrinking into a little ball

Nolan’s award winning film about subconscious espionage opens with the following line. 

What is the most resilient parasite? Not a bacteria, virus or an intestinal worm. But an idea. Resilient and highly contagious. Because once an idea has taken hold in the brain, it’s almost impossible to eradicate. A person can cover it up and ignore it, but it stays there. Information may be forgotten, but an idea, fully formed and understood, that sticks. It’s in there somewhere. 

The challenge, so many of our ideas never it make it that far. They stay locked inside our own heads. Because we’re far too busy trying to be experts. We’re terrified of feeling foolish and looking stupid, unable to cope with the vulnerability and humility of sharing an untested vision. 

And so, when the team meeting comes to an end and the boss looks around the room, instead of raising our hands and asking tough questions and daring to deploy an opinion, we shrink into a little ball and hope no one notices us. 

Intellectual contagion? Not so much. 

I have a friend who used to run an educational software company. And every time he would onboard a new programmer, his promise to them was, if you don’t have a significant failure in the first ninety days, you’ll be fired in front of the entire company. 

Which scared the holy bojangles out of the employees, but also motivated and inspired them to take intellectual risks. And enabled the company to launch a series of software products that changed the industry forever. 

Proving, that true originality demands the willingness to experiment, the curiosity to find interesting ways to fail, and the courage create something worth being criticized. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…  

If your perception of and response to failure were changed, what ideas might you attempt? 
LET ME SUGGEST THIS… 

For the list called, “99 Ways to Think Like an Entrepreneur, Even If You Aren’t One,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.

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