Walking as Ourselves

Imitation is a relatively easy practice. We’ve seen this as a response to innovation. Your business thinks deeply about a problem and innovates its way to a solution. The next thing you know, a competitor dissects it and mimics its version of it. 

The data will tell you that the innovation costs 10X more than the imitation. So, why bother innovating?

The data won’t tell you what the innovator learned through innovating: how to innovate. What the imitator can’t imitate is the innovation process. So, while it’s relatively easy to imitate, it’s a trap that will keep you in an imitation loop.

Dame Helen Mirren, the Academy Award, British Academy Film Award, Tony Award, and Laurence Olivier Award winning actress, says the hardest thing you can do is walk as yourself. While she was likely referencing acting, her words carry wisdom from which businesses and their leaders can learn.

From an early age, we’re encouraged to fit into society’s norms. This act of fitting in conforms us to what’s normally done. Staying normal means cutting out possibilities, including the opportunity to be ourselves. Growth, fulfillment, and the joy of being yourself are a by-product of exploration. 

Paradoxically, the world that asks us to conform needs the opposite: to walk as ourselves. The world needs us to imagine, innovate, create, and contribute as only we can. This means following our unique voice in our unique way and living that into being. 

In order to walk as ourselves, we must become a fugitive of conformity. When we break free of expected norms, we shine a light for ourselves and others to make and walk our own path. 

This practiced path of self-discovery is the innovators’ path. When we practice this, we become skilled at knowing what’s our innovation and what’s society’s norms. 

For the business that innovates, it builds the practiced skills of innovation and discovers a never-ending what’s possible along the way. Multiply this over time — years or decades — and the imitator is a forgotten entity. Brands (and people) that that imitate will always play catch-up to innovators. 

Relevant to all of the above, with David Whyte’s permission, I shared the below poem in my recent book The Beautiful Business:

Working Together

We shape our self

to fit this world

and by the world

are shaped again.

The visible

and the invisible

working together

in common cause,

to produce

the miraculous.

I am thinking of the way

the intangible air

passed at speed

round a shaped wing

easily

holds our weight.

So may we, in this life

trust

to those elements

we have yet to see

or imagine,

and look for the true

shape of our own self,

by forming it well

to the great

intangibles about us.

— David Whyte

from The House of Belonging, ©1996 Many Rivers Press

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Today is Giving Tuesday.

It’s a global movement of generosity and giving back to organizations in need. This movement works to reimagine a world built on shared humanity and generosity.

While today is promoted as #GivingTuesday, the organization behind it is a year-round global network that works to inspire generosity around the world. I encourage you to donate to an organization or cause today.

Here’s a few organizations that I support:
WesleyLife — A 75-Year-Old non-profit who’s revolutionizing the experience of aging.
Dorland Mountain Arts — An artists residency program where I wrote most of The Beautiful Business.
Spiritual Arts Institute — The premier metaphysical arts school that helps souls grow.
The MOSAIC Foundation — An organization that works to prevent veteran suicide and to develop healthy and empowered veterans, families and communities.

If you want to find an organization that aligns with your values, American Charities has a listing of various organizations which you can search by topic.