Individuality

Its easy to get caught up in what others or society thinks is important/positive/successful/cool. I think the truth is its important to do things that make sense to you, regardless of whether or not they are true for others. This sponsors innovation, creativity, peace, and maybe social change. Who knows you might be happier bucking the trend, creating a new or breaking an old stereotype. Someone has to set the trend, why not it be you? But not for trend's sake, for your sake, and perhaps others will enjoy it too... Not always easy to find friends/family/employers that support this. "Too much creativity gets in the way of productivity." Organizations should ideally maximize creativity, minimize organizational structure, while still meeting and exceeding the end goal. I think this makes any organization's solutions more robust. Tried, tested, from all angles and walks of life. Structure allows you to manage/monitor quality and performance. How do you ensure quality and productivity without organizational structure? Trust. When hiring, you have to trust that a person is motivated. Trust that they can produce. Make fit a more prominent goal. Create an employee satisfaction department. Serve the employee and they will serve you. Make there no reason not to produce in every sense. Go beyond company environment into personal and private environments if necessary and welcomed. Is there a company so good that someone would never want to leave? Can there be a company that can serve the employee in all aspects so that they don't have a desire to leave? Perhaps companies can facilitate a person's calling? It would be a win for everyone- company eliminates inefficient, lower productive or less ambitious employees, employees find professions where they ARE all of those things. The other company gets a great new employee, and society benefits from more innovation or better service. I think the next level on quality improvement is people. Improving the quality of people working for you- not necessarily educating them, but finding the right ones, and removing obstacles for them. The productivity and innovation potential of cultivating more Einstein's or Newtons, or Welches, or Gates is enormous. I believe there is greater good in helping more people achieve thier potential in everyway. No education program can match the power of enabling or motivating young stars to reach thier potential. Theoretically it is impossible. You can only teach as much as is currently known. But helping a person unleash the drive, the creativity, the motivation and the way, allows you to blow the cap off of possibilities. If we could measure the rate of innovation, implement a plan to focus on removing barriers to success (every kind and combination) and see how much the rate of innovation increases would be phenomenal. It may come down to changing culture. A culture of happiness, individuality, creativity, benevolence, equality has an insane amount of potential in changing the world. There are too many obstacles, many of them dealing with culture and individual circumstances that prevent people from acheiving thier potential. There is no value in homogeneity. Heterogeneity allows people to compare, contrast, and improve ideas, and technology. Diversity is an asset in anything. For example say Google is a great company, and they indeed happen to have all of the smartest most innovative thinkers there are. Products might be great, but the lack of market competition would hinder innovation in other areas such as price, or even technology. Lack of reasources creates innovation to benefit the greater good. From necesity is born innovation. Diversity is natural and it will always exist. The best thing to do is to use it and support it. It makes for happy people. Happy because you are useful, and happy because your individual beliefs are supported. Organizations and Countries should be more organic and have fewer barriers. This is all dependent on trust. The more trust in the benevolence of people, the more we can accomplish to benefit oursevles. We are wasting time fighting, whatever it is that each of us fight...