Once in a while a good book comes into our lives and you tend to enjoy and savor every page of it. I’ve got thousands of books in my personal library and truth to tell, the good ones…the really…really good ones would account for less than 5% of them.
But recently I got me a really good book. It’s actually a book on Marketing and is authored by Seth Godin. The title of the book is The Big Moo and in it carries a small article that talks about how to be a failure. Listen to the tips:
HOW TO BE A FAILURE
1. Keep secrets.
2. Be certain you’re right and ignore those who disagree with you.
3. Set aggressive deadlines for others to get buy in-then change them when they aren’t met.
4. Resist testing your theories.
5. Focus more on what other people think and less on whether your idea is as good as it could be.
6. Assume that a critical mass must embrace your idea for it to work.
7. Choose an idea where number 6 is a requirement. Meaning: Assume that a critical mass must embrace your idea for it to work.
8. Realize that people who don’t instantly get your idea are bull¬headed, shortsighted, or even stupid.
9. Don’t bother to dramatically increase the quality of your presentation style.
10. Insist that you’ve got to go straight to the president of the organization to get something done.
11. Always go for the big win.
Practical aren’t they?
And then the book talks about the latest cooking fad and all those cooking shows you see in Cable TV.
Listen to this:
Call it the curse of the TV Food Network. Since the net¬work debuted about a decade ago, enrollment in degree granting cooking schools has almost tripled.
What’s happening to all the graduates? Often carrying more than $50,000 in debt, they take jobs in kitchens, cleaning potatoes and chopping carrots. As you can imagine, this is hard work-and low paying! About half of all culinary-school grads quit the industry within three years. They know that they’re not stars on the Food Network and realize that they have little chance of getting off the chopping line.
The reason for this overwhelming attrition is that these wannabe TV stars are playing by the wrong rules. The new secret of success is that winning the game has absolutely nothing to do with hard work and paying your dues.
In the old days, stable industries offered young workers a pyramid structure.
If you did the work and stuck it out, you’d move up.
Thirty or forty years after starting in the mail room, you’d be a senior vice president, an executive director, a bishop, or a chef with his own restaurant.
In our fast-moving, media-crazed culture, the opposite is now true. Those who fit in now won’t stand out later. Those who follow the rules are never noticed-because the system has broken their spirit. There’s plenty of work for the undifferentiated masses, so you can have as much of that as you are willing to handle. The fast-rising stars are those who question authority and convention and refuse to do what’s been done before. The very system that is always looking for new talent, new ideas, new approaches is only too happy to sap all the energy out of those that can be persuaded to work at the bottom of the pyramid.
Makes sense doesn’t it?
I like what John Mason has to say as a title of his book. You were born an original. Don’t die a copy. But I like better what the Bible has to say. You are beautifully and wonderfully made. Meaning to say you are uniquely you and God has a plan for your life.
And let me paraphrase – don’t make yourself ugly by following those who are.