William C Taylor - Simple principles for making a big difference
William Taylor was co-founder and founding editor of Fast Company
My notes of his talk on power of ideas below.
- Growth and power of ideas
- Do you have a definition of success for your company, for your team, even for yourself, that allows you to stand for something special and inspires others to stand with you?
- Growth - The goal is no longer to be the best at what lots of other people already do. It's to be the only one who does what you do. What do you promise that only you can promise?
- Are you determined to make sure that what you know doesn't limit what you can imagine, going forward?
- Why we cannot change - published on Fast Company in 93, originally written in 59.
- Playing it safe is dangerous
- Umpqua Bank - bank that appeals to all customer senses
- The only sustainable form of business leadership is thought leadership.
- What makes you and your colleagues more excited than ever, more determined than ever, and especially, more confident than ever, in a world which on most days, still, seems more uncertain, more worrisome, and more threatening than ever.
- How we do business and that distinguish us from how everybody else in our field does business?
- Make everything more memorable
- John Gardner, Personal Renewal, McKinsey
- who is against learning? Who is against growing? Who is against optimism? Nobody in theory, except when I go into most organizations, I don't see an awful lot of it going on. So I ask myself, "Why is that?” And I think it's because, deep down, people are really scared of failing.
- Omission bias - companies would rather not do something than do it and fail. because if you do something and it doesn't work, you kind of get your head handed to you. Whereas, if you don't do something that would have worked, no one ever really notices.
- Loss aversion - playing not to lose is different than playing to win
- Failure resume - I gave similar input at the culture jam of our company - to include failures in appraisals.
- For change - lean on hope than fear. Get them excited for change. Explain end state. Point out examples in other industries.
- "Reminiscing about future"
- Links: https://www.fastcompany.com/55009/50-reasons-why-we-cannot-change http://www.pbs.org/johngardner/sections/writings_speech_1.html https://www.princeton.edu/~joha/Johannes_Haushofer_CV_of_Failures.pdf https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/apr/30/cv-of-failures-princeton-professor-publishes-resume-of-his-career-lows