Dangerous Things you want your Employees to do… and often

I've been thinking lately what makes our organization a cut above the rest in our corporation. Perhaps the little liberties I encourage my team to take foster and help maintain a culture of sustained productivity? Here's a list of presumably dangerous things I encourage my employees to do:

· Screw up - Try new things; learn from mistakes often and fast!

· Talk to strangers (and accept rides and lunch) - Get out there.

· Screw off - Enjoy unstructured play – it’s where ideas happen.

· Be wasteful - Buy a new tech toy and experiment.

· Play with knives - Hone skills to deal with prickly issues

· Talk to your boss with out you there - Let them handle some big issues and build their reputation and yours.

· Get lost - Explore new territory.

· Play with power tools - Try new tools to build bigger, better things; don’t be afraid – wounds will heal.

· Do NOT do their job - Expand their role and contributions.

· Be a pain in the @#!- Question things

· Piss someone off - Maintain integrity and respectfully disagree.

· Ignore the rules - Rules are good. We all like rules.
But, direction should be guided by vision and focus.

· Speed! - Be responsive. Be first.

· Play with fire - Spark and fan hot ideas!

· Jump off a Cliff - Take a big risk. Go for it!

Sure, there's risks, and chances I'll get burned. But, I'm experiencing far more benefits than draw backs. I wonder what others may have experienced.

BACKPACKING 2008

Views from the High Sierras from Bishpo Pass, up along the Pacific Crest Trail, and out through Piute Pass.

That'll do... Babe

As of today, my favorite movie. It is perfect, and pure. Uplifting.

Set in a pastoral land where all animals (and humans?) fully understand and accept their per-determined lot in life, a runt pig captures the imagination and heart of a solitary sheep farmer. The farmer has probably not tried anything new in the last half century, to be sure, by the look of his equipment and techniques. From the very first contact the pig and farmer experience a fleeting connection; and a silly little wisp of an idea flutters by. Slowly, little quirky things begin to show up, and the little ideas begin to flurry.

These thoughts eventually bubble to the surface and exhibit themselves in odd little comments and actions of the farmer’s. After a while the farmer’s wife grows concerned for her husband’s uncharacteristic behavior. But, neither the wife, nor the farmer who is beginning to swim in these thoughts, can quite put their finger on the source. At a pivotal point in the film, the farmer let’s go to his ideas and begins training the pig as a sheep dog.

“It was then that Mrs. Hogget began to worry. But, Farmer Hogget knew that ideas which tickled

And nagged,

and refused to go away – should never be ignored…

…for within them lie the seeds of destiny.”

Brings a whole new perspective to the old addage "tickled pink!"