A couple of years ago, when I was walking down in one of the multinational companies HQ’s hallway, as many corporations would have; were their core values or motivating mottos printed with beautiful frames and sound scenes to convey the message elegantly and showing what the company stands for. Most of the time those words of wisdom hardly intrigue me whatsoever. It is not that they are meaningless, but most of them are normative, just like “to be the world class company” or “we understand customers’ needs”, it’s flat common, an old dogma should you say. But not this, this one is sharp, unique, classy, uncommon, yet straightforward (at least from my point of view). These are the words:
Those Who Can Think The Unthinkable, See The Invisible, Can Do The Impossible.
Sounds pragmatic, down-to-earth, and practically simple. I was utterly curious why the company leaders put such an uncommon tag to motivate their employees. Turns out the answer is as simple as the tag itself; “to encourage visionary attitude among us”. The message is clear; make innovations, be the first to discover new solutions , question what could be done better. Sometimes we are trapped in a daily routines that clog our minds from thinking freely and creatively, we fear our bosses instead of saying things that can make things better for everyone, we rarely stand up for things that we think right, or accepting other ideas that are better than ours. Instead we surrender to the situation of self denial, defend the status quo, and all of the sudden, it is all business-as-usual. Well of course keep in mind that we have to carefully differentiate between logical arguments and just being subjective.
I’m not saying routines are bad, on the contrary people should manage their routines well so that he/she can do greater things. With well-managed routines we can have a more structured and orderly life. What I’m trying to say is that sometimes we have to break the boundaries to have different perspectives, to see from another angle, to think from the other side of the brain, to have more insights on what have not yet enlightened. When I reflect it to my daily consulting life, it is all true, to become a good consultant we must think differently, otherwise our client actually doesn’t need us.
So many companies have benefited from innovative culture; 3M, Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon, Google, Apple, etc. Their employees are encouraged to be creative and outspoken, challenging things for the betterment of the company. The result is that innovation drives productivity and growth, company will stay competitive and up-to-date to market challenges due to its flexibility to bend and adjust to challenge. Steve Jobs apply this similar principle to Apple employees by telling them to “Stay Hungry, and Stay Foolish”.
You might want to ask, “how can we think anything that doesn’t even crossed our mind?” Or “how can we see things that never been saw before?” Well those are tricky questions, but the answer is just a matter of perception. We forget things more than we memorize. We saw everything and think of anything, but we rarely took lesson on what we saw or experienced. Back in time, commoners saw birds as beautiful God creatures, inventors learn from it and created aero plane, one praised the beauty of the starry night, scientists made space shuttle and send missions to Mars. The key is to be skeptical yet pragmatic, questioning everything for practical purposes.
Apply this principle in your daily life, and I am definitely sure that by driving innovation we’ll experience things greater than it was, more than anyone. So, let’s think the unthinkable, see the invisible, and start do the impossible.
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