Bob Dylan Doesn’t Vote For President
Thursday, August 7th, 2008 by Mark | Posted in Business, Management, Unconventional Thinking | CommentsFrom our earliest days, we are all taught to conform.
To play well with others. To refrain from rocking the boat. To know our place. To avoid uncomfortable situations. To be a team player. To blend in.
I have never bought this. And I would like to suggest that you toss it back in the face of the dispensers of this play-it-safe advice as well.
I mean, it all boils down to a single question: why would you want to conform?
I go to meetings all the time where people are nodding their heads in agreement whenever the senior person at the table-meaning the one with the grandest title- speaks. It can be pure corporate -speak nonsense that holds zero validity anywhere else but a conference room in the sky, but the bobbleheads are nodding up and down like leaves blowing in the wind.
They want to conform.
I wonder why not a single exective of major sway didn’t come out publicly and knock Citigroup’s loving embrace of subprime bottom fish. Or a big wig at Bear Stearns. Yes, I know corporate etiquette holds that we keep our mouths shut and conform. 
And then banks go under. And the people running them need to be viewed as men and women who failed to live up to their fiduciary responsibilities.
If one big name would have said “Game Over” to the Wall Street Journal, what would have happened? They would have been fired? Would never work on Wall Street again?
No. They would be heroes. Legends. In demand by everyone and more important, men and women who could go to sleep at night knowing they live life by the way they see it, not the way “the book” says to live it.
What if everyone lived a life of conformity. What would we be missing?
Lindberg
Lennon
Dylan
Joyce
Madonnna
Hemingway
Parks
King
All said yes to a chorus of no’s. Imagine a world without them.
Actually we can’t. They saw to that.
Mark Stevens
CEO
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