It doesn’t fail, I had decided not to renew my HBR’s subscription and then I get the latest issue where the main article is pure gold. Which three articles have you read in your business life that deserve, in Olympic style, the Gold, Silver and Bronze Medal? Personally my Bronze medal goes to Alan Deutschman’s 2005 Change or Die. The silver Medal goes to Seth Godin’s 2003 In Praise of the Purple Cow , and now the Gold goes to Ed Catmull’s Creativity at PIXAR. Creativity at PIXAR is nothing less than the blueprint for Enterprise 3.0, encompassing Operations, Management, Strategy, Training, Talent, Management and sheer luck. All centered around creativity as practical strategy, with the background of Moore’s Living on the Fault Line, where functions that are not CORE are not part of the organization, the company is structured around fully integrated functions, like a 3-D puzzles, or a multi-dimensional (quantum) puzzle, where there are n-dimensions interconnected in more ways that it is visible or traceable, where the overall result is greater then the sum by a few orders of magnitudes. In a mature 2.0 business world, is your company still organized according to an org chart? How quaint! How 1.0. What can you do?
First you MUST read the article on PIXAR, it might make you think (again), it might make you ponder, it might make you angry, and be in awe. You might even hate it, and that’s ok too. If the article appeals to you and to your personality: make it part of yourself, make it part of your personal brand, and figure out a way you can deploy your new/changed vision into what you do.
Second, you can email the link to the article, or to this blog entry, to everyone you know, your boss (if you have one), partners, reports, investors. Blog about it, twit about it, FB-it, and let them know that you are open to talk and discuss its implications in what your do and in your relationship with them.
The third step depends on you and your company. If you are an entrepreneur in the making, this is going to be part of your DNA, and the DNA that you’ll pass onto your creation. If you are an Entrepreneur with a young start-up you are still in time to make these new ideas permeate into your company, into your people, and into everything you do, and most importantly in HOW you do “it”. If you are in charge of an establish company, change, real ecological change, takes virtually no time. It’s only the ripple effects of the change that take time to set in. If you work for an established company, and the corporate culture is on another planet from where PIXAR plays, you are in trouble. The article resonates with you and it has entered your thinking and expanded your worldviews; it’s going to be harder and harder waking up in the morning to go work which is just a job. The good news is that you hold the key, you have the solution to this dilemma, and you are in good company! Many employees are eager to fly solo and create something new, make a statement, and enrich people’s lives by creating a new brand. It still boils down to two points: plan and execute. Therefore – if that’s your situation – your first step will be to plan an exit route from your present situation. Will your inside view of your company, or of any organization for that matter, ever be the same?
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Photo Credits: tom.arthur
