by Tina Seelig
But when is a rule really just a suggestion? And when do suggestions morph into rules? What if you challenge the underlying assumptions? What are the consequences—good and bad—of getting off the prescribed path? What happens to those who break the rules?
Larry Page, cofounder of Google, gave a lecture in which he encouraged the audience to break free from established guidelines by having a healthy disregard for the impossible.3 That is, to think as big as possible. He noted that it is often easier to have big goals than to have small goals. With small goals, there are very specific ways to reach them and more ways they can go wrong. With big goals, you are usually allocated more resources, and there are more ways to achieve them. This is an interesting insight. Imagine that you are trying to get from San Francisco to the South Pole. There are lots of different routes, you will likely give yourself the time and resources to get there, and you will be flexible if things don’t unfold as planned. But if your goal is to go across town, then the path is pretty clear and you expect it to be a quick trip. If the road is blocked for some reason, you’re stuck and frustrated.
Linda Rottenberg is a prime example of a person who sees no problem as too big to tackle and readily breaks free of expectations in order to get where she wants to go. She believes that if others think your ideas are crazy, then you must be on the right track. Twenty years ago Linda started a remarkable organization called Endeavor.4 Its goal is to foster entrepreneurship in the developing world. She launched Endeavor just after graduating from Yale Law School, with little more than a passion to stimulate economic development in disadvantaged regions. She stopped at nothing to reach her goals, including “stalking” influential business leaders whose support she needed.
Endeavor began its efforts in Latin America and has since expanded to other regions of the world, including Turkey and South Africa. The organization goes through a rigorous process to identify high-potential entrepreneurs and, after selecting those with great ideas and the drive to execute their plans, gives them the resources they need to be successful. The entrepreneurs are not handed money but instead introduced to those in their environment who can guide them. They are also provided with educational programs and get an opportunity to meet with other entrepreneurs in their region who have navigated the circuitous path before. Once successful, they serve as positive role models, create jobs in their local communities, and eventually give back to Endeavor, helping future generations of entrepreneurs.
An inspiring example of an Endeavor entrepreneur is Leila Velez in Brazil. Leila lived in the slums, known as favelas, in the hills overlooking Rio de Janeiro. Cleaning houses, she survived on a subsistence income. However, she had an idea. There are many women in Brazil who want desperately to have softer, less kinky hair. Leila, along with her sister-in-law, Heloísa Assis, invented a product that transforms knotty hair into curly hair. It took years of trial-and-error experimentation, resulting in many extreme failures along the way, but once she found a solution, she opened a salon in Rio. Her business was brisk, and Leila had the fantasy of creating a franchise. Along came Endeavor, which helped her realize her dream. With Endeavor’s support and guidance, this business, called Beleza Natural, now employs three thousand people, has more than fifty different products, and earns millions in annual revenue.
This is but one of hundreds of success stories from Endeavor. I was at Endeavor’s biannual summit several years ago and was overwhelmed with the energy and enthusiasm in the room. Each entrepreneur was indebted to Endeavor for providing the tools they needed as well as the inspiration to succeed. This would never have happened if Linda had listened to the people who told her that her ideas were crazy. In fact, since then Linda has written a book about her experience, called Crazy Is a Compliment.
One of the biggest obstacles to taking on “impossible tasks” is that others are often quick to tell you they can’t be accomplished. This is exactly what happened to Nicolas Shea when he decided to take on a challenge that seemed impossible. It was 2012, and Nico had recently founded Start-Up Chile and was launching a new peer-to-peer lending platform in Chile, called Cumplo. Just three months after launching this new venture, they hit a big snag. The country banking supervisor threatened him with prison if he continued his business.5 He realized that banking regulations in Chile were designed to protect the large, established banks and left no room for innovation for entrepreneurs who wanted to find ways to improve the system.
Nico looked at this dilemma from all different angles and finally realized the only way to change the system was to get the more open-minded individuals into political positions. He decided to explore how one actually runs for office. It became clear that unless you were sponsored by an established party, it was a daunting process, requiring painful bureaucracy, paperwork, time, and money. No wonder so few people were willing or able to run for office.
Nico had a crazy idea: What if any citizen could become a politician? He cooked up the idea of creating a Cumplo-like platform for politics so anyone could easily declare and fund a campaign. Inspired by this idea, Nico decided to start a brand-new political party, called Todos, meaning “everyone” in Spanish. The values of the party were simple—honesty, collaboration, respect, transparency, and accountability—and anyone in the country could declare themselves a candidate.
To become an official party, they needed 35,000 signatures, and each of those signatures needed to be officially notarized by one of the very few notaries in the country. So, what did he do? He literally stood in front of the notary offices with a clipboard in different cities, talked with everyone who walked by, and asked them to sign up for this new multi-ideology party. With this tactic, he was able to get enough signatures to get the party on the official ballot in four of the fifteen regions of the country.
The next step was to get candidates to sign up to run. The first person to accept this challenge was a famous comedian and radio host in Chile. This was great, but they needed more candidates to demonstrate they were serious. So, after agonizing about it for quite some time, Nico decided to step down as president of the party to run himself!
On March 1, 2017, Nico became an official “pre-candidate for president” in Chile. He stopped everything he was doing and took on this new role, traveling the country and talking with citizens from diverse backgrounds to understand their perspectives. Todos also attracted fourteen other candidates, seven for senate seats and seven for congress.
Many people close to Nico thought he was completely nuts! His wife, mother, and teenage daughter begged him to quit. But he knew he needed to demonstrate that for democracy to work, everyone could and should get involved in the governing of the country. He was never more afraid. In fact, when a friend asked him if he knew what he was getting into, he burst into tears. He knew he had to take this on, but he also knew it would be the most challenging thing he did in his life.
Although nobody in the Todos party won in their political races and the party didn’t meet the minimum votes to continue, Nico is incredibly proud that they all tried, and he plans to rebuild the party again soon. This example illustrates that if you set an enormous goal for yourself—like democratizing democracy—you must break it down into concrete steps to overcome the inevitable hurdles along the way.
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It is arguably a huge endeavor to address a grand problem. But once you decide to take it on, it is equally hard to challenge traditional approaches to solving that problem. This is another place where it is helpful to break a few rules.
One of my favorite classroom exercises turns problem-solving on its head. First, I come up with a problem that is relevant for the particular group. For example, if it is a group of executives in the utility business, the topic might be getting companies to save energy; if it is a theater group, the problem might be how to attract a larger audience; and if it is a group of students, the challenge might be to come up with ideas for a brand-new restaurant. Then I break the group into teams and ask each team to come up with th
e best ideas and the worst ideas for solving the stated problem. The best ideas are approaches that each team thinks will solve the problem brilliantly. The worst ideas will be ineffective or unprofitable or make the problem worse. Once the teams are finished, they write their best best ideas on a separate piece of paper, labeled BEST, and their worst worst ideas on one labeled WORST. I then ask the participants to pass both to me. I read the best ideas out loud—which are usually pretty incremental, such as a restaurant on the top of a mountain with a beautiful sunset—and then shred them. The students are clearly shocked and none too happy.
I then redistribute the worst ideas. Each team now has an idea that another team thought was terrible. They are instructed to turn this bad idea into a fabulous idea. They look at the horrible idea passed their way and quickly see that the idea has a seed of brilliance. Within a few seconds, someone always says, “Hey, this is a great idea!”
When doing this exercise with a utility company, one of the “worst” ideas for saving energy was to give each employee a quota for how much energy he or she used and to charge extra for exceeding the allotment. They thought this was a pretty silly idea. The team that received this “bad” idea turned it into one worth considering. Employees would be given a quota for how much energy they use. If they use less, they get money back, and if they use more, they are charged for it. They could also sell energy credits to their coworkers, giving them an even larger incentive to save electricity. They essentially set up a program that is similar to the cap-and-trade model used by some companies.
I did this exercise with the staff responsible for putting on arts events at Stanford. One of the teams charged with finding ways to bring in a larger audience came up with the “bad” idea of putting on a Stanford staff talent show. This is seemingly the opposite of what they do now—bringing in top-notch talent from around the world. The next team turned this idea upside down. They interpreted this much more broadly and proposed a big fund-raiser, during which the faculty and staff across the university would showcase their diverse talents. This would very likely bring in lots of people who wouldn’t normally go to performing arts events and would help build awareness for their other programs.
When the challenge was to come up with the worst business idea, the suggestions were boundless. One group suggested selling bikinis in Antarctica, one recommended starting a restaurant that sells cockroach sushi, and one group proposed starting a heart attack museum. In each of these cases, these bad ideas were transformed into pretty interesting ideas that deserved some real consideration. For example, the group that was tasked with selling bikinis in Antarctica came up with the slogan “Bikini or Die.” Their idea was to take people who wanted to get into shape on a trip to Antarctica. By the end of the hard journey, they would be able to fit into their bikinis. The group that needed to sell cockroach sushi came up with a restaurant called La Cucaracha that made all sorts of exotic sushi using nontraditional but nutritious ingredients and targeted adventurous diners. The group given the challenge of starting a heart attack museum used this idea as the starting point for a museum devoted entirely to health and preventative medicine. All groups came up with compelling business names, slogans, and commercials for these ventures.
This exercise is a great way to open your mind to solutions to problems because it demonstrates that most ideas, even if they look silly or stupid on the surface, often have a seed of potential. The “good” ideas are usually expected and incremental, but the “bad” ideas open the door to some truly unique solutions. More important, it demonstrates that with the right frame of mind you can look at most ideas or situations and find something valuable. For example, even if you don’t start the “Bikini or Die” excursion to Antarctica, this is an interesting jumping-off point for ideas that might be more practical.
My old buddy John Stiggelbout used the notion of turning a good idea on its head when applying to graduate school. He did something any normal person would think was a terribly bad idea, and it turned out to be inspired. He decided at the last minute that he wanted to go to business school. Having missed all the deadlines, he chose to make his application stand out among the others in an unconventional way. Instead of touting his impressive accomplishments, he asked a former professor of his to write a humorous letter, claiming to be John’s best friend and cellmate in prison. The letter described John in the most colorful terms that any admissions committee had ever seen, including his ability to open a mason jar with his belch. Instead of knocking John out of the running, those in the admissions office were incredibly curious to meet this audacious candidate and invited John to visit the school. John was nice enough to dig up the letter so you can see it, too.
I met John Stiggelbout as a fellow Greyhound bus passenger. He must have passed out on the floor at the back. I found him next to a Styrofoam cup and a candy wrapper, covered with cigarette butts, holding an empty MD 20/20 bottle. I am his best friend. We were cellmates after we got caught robbing the 7-Eleven. After a hearty meal at the Salvation Army, we once went to a revival meeting where we were both trying to pick up the same girl. (He takes defeat and humiliation well; he is obviously a practiced loser.)
He has impressive qualities that any struggling Junior Achievement Company or small family laundry could put to good use. He covers his brown and yellow teeth when he yawns and opens the window when he spits. He can whistle loud using his fingers and can crack a mason jar with his burp. He showers once a month. He uses soap when he can. He needs a place so he doesn’t have to sleep in the bus station restroom. He needs to find a position with a large company where his heavy drinking and sexual preference for exotic birds will not get him fired the first day on the job. Anyone with a sexual preference for exotic birds is both original and independent of thought. In fact, he is so independent of thought that he is utterly devoid of it.
This guy will do anything for a drink. He may even work. Now that Stiggs is out of jail, I’m sure his parole officer would not mind if some graduate school looked after him for a bit. He is a great leader in the Hell’s Angels, and all the boys I talked to thought he would make a hell of a white-collar criminal. Of all the people I have found on the floor, passed out in the back of a bus, this guy is the best. My overall impression is that he is not as good as I make him out to be. Get me out of jail so that I can go to Chicago instead of him.
BUFORD T. MORTON, INMATE #335342
WALLA WALLA STATE PENITENTIARY
WALLA WALLA, WASHINGTON
Once John arrived for the interview, everyone in the office was peeking out of his or her door, hoping to get a look at the fellow who submitted the application. He was polite and poised during his interview, and was admitted.
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The concept that there are no bad ideas is a hallmark of good brainstorming. Sometimes the craziest ideas, which seem impractical when they are initially proposed, turn out to be the most interesting in the long run. They might not work in their first iteration, but with a bit of massaging, they might turn out to be brilliant solutions that are feasible to implement.
Running a successful brainstorming session actually takes a lot of skill and practice. You need to explicitly state it is essential to break with the assumption that ideas need to be feasible in order to be valuable. By encouraging people to come up with wild ideas, you defuse the tendency to edit them before they are shared. The key is to set the ground rules at the beginning and to reinforce them. Tom Kelley, a partner at the design firm IDEO and David Kelley’s brother, wrote a book called The Art of Innovation, in which he describes the rules of brainstorming at their firm. One of the most important rules is to expand upon the ideas of others. With this approach, at the end of a good brainstorming session, multiple people feel they have created or contributed to the best ideas to come out of the session. And since everyone in the room had a chance to participate and witnessed the emergence and evolution of all the ideas, there is usually shared support for the ideas that go forward toward implementation.
If you have participated in brainstorming sessions, you know that they don’t always work like that. It’s hard to eliminate the natural tendency for each person to feel personal ownership for their ideas, and it can be tough to get participants to build on others’ suggestions. Patricia Ryan Madson, author of Improv Wisdom, designed a great warm-up exercise that reinforces these two ideas: there are no bad ideas and build on others’ ideas. You break a group into pairs. One person tries to plan a party and makes suggestions to the other person. The other person has to say no to every idea and must give a reason why it won’t work. For example, the first person might say, “Let’s plan a party for Saturday night,” and the second person would say, “No, I have to wash my hair.” This goes on for a few minutes, as the first person continues to get more and more frustrated trying to come up with any idea the second person will accept.
Once this runs its course, the roles switch and the second person takes on the job of planning a party. The first person has to say yes to everything and must build on the idea. For example, “Let’s have a party on Saturday night.” The response might be, “Yes, and I’ll bring a cake.” This goes on for a while, and the ideas can get pretty wild. In some cases the parties end up underwater or on another planet and involve all sorts of exotic food and entertainment. The energy in the room increases, spirits are high, and a huge number of ideas are generated.