Smart Blogging Babe Says Start Pissin'em Off

I guess I'm in a pissed off (grin) and pissing-them-off mood tonight, and then I come across a cool post on similar subject at the Small Business Branding blog. I'm not one of the Top Ten Smartest Blogging Babes (lucky for everyone I don't even aspire to this), but in reading the post, I see a parallel between the writer's thoughts and some of mine on business. Here's the most pertinent part:

"Creating passionate users is NOT about finding ways to make everyone like you. It's about finding ways to use your own passion to inspire passion in others, and anything with that much power is bound to piss off plenty of status-quo/who-moved-my-cheese people. Bring it on."

True. Not just in finding relation to creating users, but I think this is a business maxim.

Some would argue I like this idea too much. Whats much more true is a belief in the following equation:

In any business, [love for status-quo] = [death((slow) or (quick)) and painful)]

I don't believe in Change for change's sake. I do believe strongly in a bias toward action - something friends in various places in Washington State helped me understand a few years ago (thanks Paul).

I recently had a conversation with an associate about the difference between a culture of loving the status quo, and a culture of continuous improvement. These two cultures in an organization are largely mutually-exclusive; you can't live in both. While I'm not an advocate of polarization for its own sake, either, I do believe in what a friend calls the rule of thirds:

"At any given time at [insert organization name here], one third of the folks are going to love you and your ideas. One third will hate you and/or your ideas. One third will be on the fence, so convince them".

I love this, and whether its just coincidence or some largely unknown physical law, I've seen the numbers play out plenty close in the last year. Some folks are always in the "hate you/hate your ideas" third, and I don't know that that will change. Maybe its a case of not having the right people on the bus - or just human nature; I don't know which.

Came across the reference thanks to Halley... sure wish she used Trackback; so easy to implement, and so handy. Halley - I'll help you with it if you'd like.