Last week my office had a company wide meeting, which is always great because you get to hear about company successes and the vision of our founders. But I got sort of peeved when one of the VPs was introducing a new VP and mentioned how he was “new and nieve.” He then went on to talk about how he always appreciates interns because “they don’t know what can’t be done yet.” I know he meant what he said in an inspiring way, but it made me annoyed. Feeling like you can accomplish anything may be a trait of new interns and employees who haven’t “drank the kool-aid” yet, but his comment reminded me that we all need to challenge ourselves to think with a new and innovative mind every single day.
Picasso said, “Everything you can imagine is real.”
I know that it is really, really hard to believe this, but it’s true. Forget what your cynics say, forget about the critics, do the research and prove that any idea you come up with can matter.
Just last week Seth Godin wrote a blog post stating that “all you need to know is that it’s possible.” And that really is all you need to know.
Anything is possible. Every idea has the potential to be great.
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The tough part is knowing when to not work on things that have already been tackled in the past and then to try something new. I think that’s what your VP was getting at…sometimes you really do need to know the routine ins and outs of a business and new people don’t have that.
The characteristic I think YOU are talking about is the ability to step away from a situation and not focus on the minutiae of a problem at hand and instead re-evaluate the whole issue. My two secret weapons are going for a walk and explaining the problem to someone on a whiteboard. That always helps give me clarity (unless it’s the winter, then it helps give me frostbitten fingers that can’t hold dry-erase markers).
~Chris