Metrics_ How to Improve Key Business Results - Martin Klubeck [143]
So, I try to give you what I've found to be the most likely response, not to depress or scare you, but to make it easier for you to be like water and react appropriately if my prediction comes true.
Why Embracing Your Uniqueness Is Healthy
It doesn't require a lot of research to realize that the most successful companies and people are those who have embraced their unique strengths. I recently put together a presentation on visionaries, and each has two things in common.
First, they all have a compelling, life-changing, positive vision (I avoided those megalomaniacs with visions to take over the world).
Second, they all embraced their unique qualities and made them strengths. From creators and inventors like Albert Einstein, Dr. Marie Curie, Henry Ford, Leonardo da Vinci, Granville Woods, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs, we learn that uniqueness in inventiveness isn't enough. You need to embrace those unique ideas and trust in them. You have to have faith in yourself and your ideas. A good example would be Herbert Kelleher, who took Southwest Airlines to new heights by embracing its uniqueness. He built a successful passenger airline that continues to withstand downturns in the industry. The company does it with a unique style and sense of humor. Southwest Airlines definitely side-stepped the “norm” the other airlines wallowed in, and embraced its uniqueness. Your organization may have unique ways of doing business, like those brought out by Herb Kelleher.
The ability to maintain faith in your convictions, principles, and values requires that you believe in yourself or your organization. Almost all innovators have to weather the storm of ridicule from their peers, many of whom would rather say something can't be done than to watch it happen.
Colonel Billy Mitchell (father of the US Air Force), Father Edward Sorin (founder of the University of Notre Dame), W. Edwards Deming (father of Total Quality Management), Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia), and Bruce Lee (founder of Jeet Kune Do) all had to withstand the slings and arrows of naysayers. In most cases, their biggest opponents were their friends, family, and countrymen. What makes their ideas live on successfully today is a result of their dedication to their ideas. But that dedication wasn't easy. Their ideas were seen as non-status quo. Against the establishment. Ideas that would require a drastic change in the way things had always been done. Your organization may have unique, innovative ideas about how things should be. You have to embrace that uniqueness and make it the strength of your organization.
OK, so your organization may not have a vision that will change the world. You may not be moving mountains and changing lives. Perhaps you're just trying to provide needed services. Perhaps you're just trying to make a living.
But should you? Should you be doing more? Should your organization have a bigger purpose? A vision?
Why not?
If you do or not, if you organization does or not, you still should embrace your uniqueness. You should not conform to what others are doing just because “that's what's always been done” or “because that's what everyone else is doing.”
Here's a more concrete example (in case the previous was too abstract). Let's say your company is concerned about where it stands in relation to its competitors. Let's say it looks at the metrics published by its top competitor and your leadership decides to change so that it matches this competitor.
Let's say both organizations are relatively successful, but in some ways they are unique.