My favourite advertising slogan ever. One that Apple took in 1997 and spread across the world. IBM’s slogan at the time was Think, Apple turned that on its head.
In our society thinking differently comes with a tax, in and outside of work. I come from a family that (on both sides) tends to reject the status quo, the machine, the corporation and the idea of being managed by someone. I’m one of a few direct family members in the last 100 years that have worked for anyone else. In some ways I see that as a personal failing, by now I should have cracked that nut and taken my own path. In other ways I see it as how successful I’ve been, where I’ve been able to surround myself with smart people to learn from, as well as make time to build a strong family bond as a husband and father (something historically my family hasn’t succeeded at).
In the workplace, thinking differently can be a challenge, especially if that work place is not diverse. With diversity comes different thinking, something many tech companies have struggled with, especially in software development. For 18 years I worked for 2 major businesses, Electronic Arts and Microsoft. Each had it’s merits, each had it’s downsides.
I found out how important it was for me to be able to think differently in 2009 when I moved from a role at EA to a role at Xbox. At EA clarity reigned supreme, with measures, process and talented people (working in what was for many their dream job). We were able to approach a problem with whatever thinking we wanted and changed / created process almost daily. In Xbox at the time, the culture was pivoting, hubris was rife and lack of measures created politics that many denied existed, I was a square peg in a round hole.
Out of the many ways I approached this problem I’ve been pondering on 3 recently. After reading Adam Grant’s Originals: How Nonconformists Move the World, this sentence from the book resonated:
“Originality brings more bumps in the road, yet it leaves us with more happiness and a greater sense of meaning.”
1.After 3 months at Microsoft I was drowning in email and conference calls. Every morning I’d start the day going through what could be 100’s of emails from Seattle. With the time difference it meant when I was at home Seattle was working at sending me email. Much of this email was telling me what to do and how to do it.
On top of this, each evening I was drowning in conference calls as Seattle started their day at 5pm my time. I found advice from an old colleague who’d also moved to Microsoft (to a different division). He said ignore the email, reject the conference calls, see what happens.
At first glance this may sound like a recipe for getting fired. But the spirit of what he said stuck. The actual problem was the content of the emails and calls i.e. the hubris and politics resulted in Seattle’s view that no-one could know what they know. Xbox was huge and complicated and they felt the need to tell people how to approach what they did.
I started to ignore the emails and calls coming through, the ones telling me how to do my job. Nothing bad happened. I was still doing my job and succeeding. The assumption was I was doing it in the way Seattle wanted me too, the reality was I was doing it completely differently and getting better results. I was then spotted elsewhere in Xbox and hired for a different role based on my original thinking. Microsoft had started to embrace non conformists, great timing for me.
2.Don’t be the only one who thinks differently. At Microsoft I quickly hired like minded people. People I trusted and knew could help drive success. I needed to be challenged and understand when I was talking rubbish, had ideas that wouldn’t work or was just plain wrong. The problem was Seattle was telling me this all the time. I know I’m not approaching things incorrectly all the time so needed others with me. Without others who could help the wave of change and thinking, to help the push back and articulate why we should do it differently the organisation was failing.
The downside to surrounding my self with like minded people at Xbox is that I now often under communicate my ideas. They’re already so familiar to me that I regularly underestimate how much exposure an audience needs to comprehend and buy into them. I didn’t need to get good at this in Xbox as I was part of a group of non conformists. We were original thinkers together. When you’re alone it’s a tough place to be. Priority number 1 on my learning right now is improving my ability to articulate an approach without the voice of others
3.Understand the problem. One of the things that helped me in those early days at Xbox was Stephen Covey’s short film Max and Max. I was Max in the dog sense and the employee sense. I read his book The Eighth Habit and gained inspiration for understanding how to thrive with others and realise those leaders with ego’s, hubris and conformity always move on. It also helped me realise what was actually happening to me. I was being stifled and not allowed to approach work with my own flavour. I couldn’t understand why I’d been hired. Why hire people for their talents only to tell them how to approach their work? It’s in my DNA to challenge convention, I need to work where that can happen. Understanding what was happening to me at that time was the first step to being able to take action and change my situation.
So, we all benefit from listening to others and others listening to us. When ideas are not heard a part of you can die inside. That’s when a business loses a person. That’s when society loses a person. We cannot afford to lose people. More than ever we need passionate people to stand up for what they believe in, whether that’s big or small.
I want my children to know a world where different perspectives and views are valued. A world where they can stand up and be heard. A world that embraces thinking differently.