Corporate Systems and Creativity 🎨 (Jordan Peterson Talk)

Posted on June 3, 2022June 3, 2022 by brianjpombo

Brian talks about systems and looking for creativity from a Jordan Peterson talk he saw on Instagram

Transcription

corporate systems, and creativity.

Hi, I’m Brian Pombo. Welcome back to Brian J Pombo. Live,

I’m going to do something a little bit different today, I’m actually going to play a video that was on Instagram.

And it’s a clip out of one of Jordan Peterson’s talks.

I’m not sure if you’ve heard of Jordan Peterson or not, you’ve probably seen him around, relatively controversial person. Says a lot of wild things, whether you agree or disagree with them.

This is one of those that I wanted to toss out there and kind of discuss because it has a lot to do with what we talk about when we’re talking about business.

Take a watch at this real quick.

Do employers look for creative people?

No, not generally, there’s increasing demand in corporations for creative people. But the problem with being creative is that you’re useless at the bottom of the dominance hierarchy.

You’re not there to think outside the box, you’re there to learn what you’re supposed to do and implement it and creative people.

That isn’t what they do. What happens though, to companies is that because they filter all the creative people out at the bottom, and then people start to rise up to the top, you really need creative people at the top, because they are the entrepreneurial types.

And they’re the ones for example, in law firms, the more entrepreneurial ones are the ones that bring in all the business, but it’s also very difficult to nurse them within any system.

Because systems do not nurture creativity, the artist is always the person who stands outside the structure or maybe builds his or her own structure, which is also why it’s hard to evaluate creative people, you can’t if they’re operating within the confines of a system that has an evaluative structure, they’re not creative.

So that’s it. Do corporate that’s really the question is, does the typical corporate structure with the top down issue that businesses eventually if they’re growing, they eventually become somewhat of that structure?

Does it stifle creativity does it automatically tend to destroy itself by having a lack of creativity because it can’t have it within the system that it ends up building?

I think that’s true. I think it’s prettytough to disagree, if you’ve worked in any type of large corporate business, if they are not relatively broken up into subsections. And have, in a sense, smaller companies within a company, if they don’t work that way, then what you end up having is creativity being stifled.

You have a you have a certain amount of creativity at the top at least early on. And then over time, because they get very good at doing a certain thing. It gets to be kind of a rote process, to where people don’t necessarily believe it, they do it because that’s what they were taught. And they were taught what they were taught, and so on and so on. It goes on.

And then as people rise up to the company, like, like Jordan Peterson said, you end up with a lack of creative personalities, you you take away a whole lot of that spark that created the company to begin with.

Because entrepreneurse to have that that creativity, but they also need system in order to allow for growth. So it’s a it’s a balancing act. It’s a dichotomy. And it’s something that all people that run businesses need to watch for, if they care about the long term, life span of their business.

So something to keep in mind as you’re growing ahead. There’s ways around it but it’s a balancing act. This is just part of the the life.

It’s the same reason why government does not sponsor creativity, any type of heavy government work any can’t really if you think about it, who are the most creative people within government tend to end up being dictators.

If they’re really creative, if they’re really being outgoing, they’re either being dictators, or they become absolute heroes. But either way, they’re relatively revolutionary and that could be extremely good.

When you have a government that’s that’s overblown, can be extremely bad when you have a government that becomes overblown because of them.

So these are all things that you have to keep in mind. But no matter what, it’s a structural system thing. And the more you have a system that is universal throughout a company, it starts to lose its lifeforce, it starts to lose its its positive energy. And because of that, you get these dead corporations that that just they function, but they don’t they function from an old soul they function from from the past. It’s a weird thing, but it’s definitely true.

You will see it if you work in enough different style businesses. It’s guaranteed you will run into this.

The thing is to realize there is a way out. There are ways to counteract it. And there’s I can’t even go into any more detail that for tonight, but go check out my book,9 ways to Amazon-Proof your business.

This is a way to be able to fight those large corporate behemoths before they completely overtake your business. 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof your business will not only stop amazon.com from defeating you it will stop any one any of the big boys on the block from pulling down your business.

This is a way for you to be able to stand out and have zero competition in the future. Go get yourself a copy. You buy it on Amazon, you could buy it on any of the major bookstores online or you can go download a free copy over my website. AmazonProofBook.com.

That’s all I have for tonight. You have a good one. We’ll be back tomorrow.

In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

Goals or Systems? 🙃 (Atomic Habits Review Series – Part 1)

Posted on May 24, 2022May 24, 2022 by brianjpombo

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Brian kicks off a series of videos about James Clear’s terrific book, Atomic Habits.

Transcription

Goals or systems?

Hi, I’m Brian Pombo. Welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

I wanted to talk about this is kind of an initial look at the Atomic Habits book by James Clear. If you haven’t caught this book before, I gave kind of a general review yesterday.

Today, I wanted to go into the kind of the first chapter and some of the things that really stood out for me.

He talks a lot about compounding and the compound effect, which also a great book out there, Compound Effect by Darren Hardy deals with a similar idea of how how habits really compound over time.

It doesn’t go in a straight linear line of improvement, it has a has very much a lagging result, here’s that here’s a picture of the plateau of latent potential.

This is you know, where you see what actually happens versus what we all think should happen. That if you’re especially if you’re doing the exact same thing day after day after day, let’s say you’re dealing with a daily habit, then it would seem like it would just gradually work its way up.

An improvement would be be able to be seen pretty quickly.

But in reality, improvement takes forever to be visual at all. And and then it slowly ramps up, and then eventually it’ll take off. It goes way beyond what you think is even possible early on. But let’s I want to get into the section on goals.

So he talks about goals versus systems. And this is really good stuff. Because it’s a lot of times we we over focus on goals as being the end all to what needs to happen. And really, goals are just foundational.

There’s something that needs to occur at some point, especially if you’re writing a business goals have to be in place somewhere. Because you got to you have to have everyone on the same side, you have to have everyone go in the same direction, you got to know, you know, even in soccer, the goal is the place where you’re kicking the ball to it’s the goal, that’s where we’re headed.

If you don’t know that, it’s really easy to start kicking the ball in the wrong direction, because there’s at least three other directions you can be kicking it in. So let’s it’s not as important, he spent some time saying that goals aren’t important at all.

And I disagree. I disagree with that.

But he then goes back and and discusses what he means by that. But he is trying to break people out of that goal mentality is as the goal being the thing, the goal is not the thing, the goal is the beginning of the thing, and then you got to build a system to back it up.

So this is a great piece when he’s talking about the different problems that are associated with goals.

He says achieving a goal only changes your life for the moment. That’s the counterintuitive thing about improvement, we think we need to change our results.

But the results are not the problem.

What we really need to change are the systems that cause those results.

When you solve problems at the results level, you only solve them temporarily. In order to improve for good, you need to solve problems at the system’s level, fix the inputs, and the outputs will fix themselves.

This is this matters both personally and if you’re working with any type of organization, including a business that really does matter a lot, understanding the importance of the systems being the thing, that this is a thing that I come into contact over and over again, with business owners, where they don’t see the importance of systems, especially if they’re very outgoing.

And they have a very spontaneous attitude about things and they like to, you know, keep things nice and loose then systems seem like they’re fighting against that when in reality they they can help promote that in the long time.

A systems first mentality provides the antidote, when you fall in love with the process rather than the product.

You don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy.

You can be satisfied anytime your system is running. And a system can be successful in many different forms, not just the one you envision.

I also love this line you you do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. This is it’s difficult to talk about and it’s difficult to think about but if you could realize that the that he talks about the trajectory is more important than than the endgame than where you’re going.

It matters whether you’re you’ve switched things on a regular basis.

And if you can do that, if you just switch things by a small percentage It’s like you said 1% improvement over time.

If you could do that, that makes a big difference over time that compounds and it doesn’t take that much willpower to do, especially if you’re dealing with personal, personal issues that you’re trying to trying to fix or make better.

So it’s just another piece of this atomic habits book. It’s difficult to discuss. He does it better than me trying to explain what he said, so be made sure you get a copy of the book, I’m, I don’t get any pay. I don’t get any kickback for promoting this book. It’s just a it’s one of those books that makes such a big difference.

I think if you’re in the right frame of mind, and you’re looking to make improvements and you’re not sure how the if you get stuck, really getting from point A to point B, and you’re not quite sure how to get yourself there.

This is a good book for that.

Also my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business I do get a kickback from these, but I don’t charge very much for him. It’s a it’s a short book nine ways to Amazon proof your business you can get them wherever books are sold, and honestly, I’ll give it away for free too.

So if you want a digital copy, you go to my website, AmazonProofBook.com and sign up for a free digital copy. That’s all I have for tonight.

You have a good one. We’ll be back tomorrow.

In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.