I continue to find it surprising how people impose boundaries on their own lives/ thinking. I think a lot of the explanation for this tendency comes from “compliance conditioning”.
Increasingly, I’m seeing people not being willing to apply imaginative thought to their situation in order to find alternative ways of doing things, to generate new product/ service design…and the list goes on.
The reason why the world is now full of mind-bending marvelous technology and other weird and wonderful products is due to their respective inventors having a mindset of “pushing boundaries” – being prepared to challenge the ways that things are done in order to invent new/ improved/ evolved solutions to problems/ needs.
When I was consulting within the Regional Business Partner programme in New Zealand, it became apparent with various clients that I was meeting with that their sphere of thought was being limited by their sense of compulsion to “comply”. Upon finishing in this role, I wrote to the Prime Minister of New Zealand and the Minister of Business, Innovation and Employment (and included a copy of the book that I published in 2016) to point-out that very few businesses that I had met with demonstrated strategic thought tendencies/ capabilities – mostly due to being transfixed first and foremost on complying with this, that and the other legislative/ regulatory requirement. Around 6 months later the Hawke’s Bay Chamber of Commerce was advertising for a ‘Strategist Specialist’ to assist the creative thinking of Hawke’s Bay business owners.
If you want to succeed in life, avoiding challenging the status quo will not help your cause. Yes, there are certain legislative/ regulatory requirements that must be met in all industries now – and this will always be the case going forward. However, don’t allow the “direction” that you set for your business to be dictated by these hard-coded rules. In order to survive and thrive ongoing, the evolutionary course of any organisation must first and foremost be set based on “strategy” (i.e. the high level framework for the creation, production, marketing and distribution of products/ services that your organisation seeks to provide).
How do you think we developed as infants into children, and then into adults ? Answer: by testing boundaries – and in some cases by “pushing” boundaries. If individuals – and organisations – do not take it upon themselves to “push their boundaries”, and devise strategy to suit the needs of its various stakeholders first and foremost, then unfortunately your organisation will by default be allowing your world (and the direction that you steer your organisation in) to be shaped mostly by external factors (like legislation/ regulation).
Have some strength, permit yourself to be creative in your thinking, and set a course for your business which is based on strong “vision” more than anything else.