Supposed To
It’s a New Year. It’s Pink Plus or Minus’s fourth year.
Approaching this milestone, it was my intention to relaunch this blog with a new focus. I’ve given it a lot of thought, read through past posts, discussed the matter with those close to me, and have come to a singular conclusion.
The one constant with this blog (and with much of the way I approach both professional and personal matters) is to challenge the way things are supposed to be done.
Perhaps it stems from the teenage rebel who never quite lost her voice inside me, but more than anything I think I just don’t know any other way. The moment someone tells me that there is a way things are supposed to be done, my inclination is to search for another way. I might very well come to the same conclusion, but I don’t fancy the proven path for getting there.
When you move through life challenging the latest conventional thinking, people often will question you. Doubt you. Think you crazy.
Good.
I’m not interested in those people.
As the great Walt Whitman so famously wrote: “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I’m large. I contain multitudes.”
So for this year, the focus for this blog is really nothing new. The original foundation of Pink Plus or Minus was standing on the precipice of change in an effort to test the mobile office by living in my car, driving cross country, and running a business from the road while interviewing leaders in my industry.
Not exactly the way you are “supposed to” do anything.
But moving forward, I want to have a broader focus on ideas and theories of both life and work that challenge the supposed to’s. Think of it like an anti-cynical version of Andy Rooney’s “Did you ever wonder why….” segments.
These may include challenging emerging sentiments in marketing and communications (does every business “need” a twitter handle? Is SEO the best thing for lead generation?) to more mundane considerations (how many extracurricular activities are too many for kids? Is golf really a sport?).
I don’t know exactly where this path will lead, but every day I find myself facing so-called experts espousing the latest ideas on what is “supposed to be.” And many of them mock those who challenge those assertions.
Perhaps they are right.
But I’d like to use this space to critically think it through and enjoy getting to conclusions through the back door. Or maybe at times by digging a secret underground tunnel.
Ideally, I’d like to create discussion along the way. And please, if you disagree with me, feel free to post it in the blog. One thing I’ve noticed is that folks who disagree will often send me a disagreeable email, rather than post their thoughts publicly. I invite all disagreement. I enjoy it. It makes us all smarter to have our thinking challenged. So please, if you disagree, would you mind terribly doing it out in the open?
Only, do remember…there is a difference between disagreeing and just being disagreeable.
Thanks and Happy New Year. Here’s to challenging the status quo and never getting lazy in our thinking.
I think this is one of the fundamental reasons why we worked well together at Ocean, we both like to come up with new ways to challenge the status quo. I feel like every time I approach something I am spending a great deal of time rethinking the processes before I even begin any work.
It can be very challenging at times since disagreement is by its very nature combative. When it involves something that an individual has a personal connection to (such as prior work), the conversation can take a very wrong turn. Avoiding that situation has always been difficult for me.
I agree. It is difficult to navigate conflict without hurting feelings. This is particularly true of areas where people have vested a sense of their identity. One can hope to approach these areas with a certain amount of grace, or at least patience, so that the person doesn’t feel attacked, rather just the idea challenged. Easier said than done.