On The Road To Transformation

The route to your organization’s true purpose (the one that doesn’t have to do with making money) is seldom straight and never smooth.

If it was, just anyone could do it. And then it wouldn’t be transformative.

Status without the quo

Organizations that are driven by purpose are special because they change people, they overturn conventions, create new categories, and disrupt the status quo.

They tap into the way a special group of people see the world and the way they think. They find ways to help that tribe instead of hyping them.

Thank goodness, there aren’t many best practices to show the way. If there were, they’d be just like every other organization. And as a result, they wouldn’t be unique enough to transform anything.

Transformative organizations are rare and powerful because building them requires a different way of thinking.

A place without rules

With that in mind, here are a few random observations on the road to transformation. And on what it takes to think through the transformative power of a shared purpose.

Incremental change is fine if you’re a glacier.
The expedient thing and the right thing are seldom the same thing.
Don’t bother with your audience. Find your tribe.
Help them, don’t hype them.
We do not see the world as the world is. We see the world as we are.
We have become slaves to information when what we really need is insight.
Insight appears when you look for meaning rather than facts.
We are all equal in the eyes of an idea.
Traditional thinkers don’t kill ideas. They take away all the oxygen surrounding them.
We don’t know what we don’t know until we do what we don’t usually do.
If you want something new, you want to have people in the room who don’t think like you.
If you’re going to leap, you might as well take a quantum leap.
Trust your instincts or they will go away.
“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.” Henry David Thoreau