Apparently sprinters reach their highest speed right out of the blocks, and spend the rest of the race slowing down. The winners slow down the least. Its that way in most new business too.
The earliest phase is usually the most productive.
The striking thing about this phase is that its often completely different from what people think “business” looks like. When you think business you think suits, offices, boardrooms, reports. However most successful businesses are the opposite of this, and whats more they are probably the most productive part of the whole economy.
Why the disconnect? I think there’s a principle at work here: the less energy people spend on performance, the more they spend on appearance to compensate.
Whats worse is that the energy people spend on seeming impressive, actually makes their performance worse!
Suits, for example, don’t help people think better. I bet most executives at big companies do their best thinking when they wake up on Sunday morning and are making coffee in a bathrobe (or in the shower or reading a bedtime story to their kids). That’s when you have really big ideas! Just imagine what a company would be like if people could think that well at work all the time.
I don’t have a proposal for how to achieve this in the real world, but it did seem interesting to pry this topic open.
Sometimes i think professionalism is a dieing fad from the 1970′s. Today we want authentic, genuine products, partners, clients, suppliers and friends. Real people who do real work. No longer does the bland, fake “take a number and get in line” sterility of professionalism cut it for the informed, seasoned, advertising-hardened consumer.
What do you think, leave a comment on the blog…
Disclaimer: Thanks to Jessica Livingstone and Paul Graham for Inspiration
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Nice Work …
It seems as though you’re touching on one of my age old theories.
In the fifties, after WW2 people entered an age of proffesionalism, in which appearance was seemingly everything within a refreshed booming economy. As the late sixties came about, people grew tired of this, and began experimenting with new ways to express themselves that rebelled against the proffesional attiude of the previous decade (obviously Vietnam has much to do with this, but hey).
This continued into the latter part of the seventies, when the shift slowly reversed and moved back towards a suit and tie, clean cut high rise ideology of the 80′s, headed by the merger/aquisition and advertising fields.
Towards the late 90′s and into our current decade, we are noticing a shift back towards free thinking, free acting and friendly business, an environment in which people are interested, as you say, in good people who do good work, not good business cards and good suits.
Anyway, its my two cents, but its worth at least a buck.