“We’ve always done it this way” (aka what I call “the six most dangerous words in business”)
“if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you always got”
“you can’t see the goldfish bowl you are swimming in”
“When others Zig, you Zag”
“Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no-one else can see” ~Schopenhauer
I was recently reminded of the last of these quotes and phrases, which set me to thinking that we can look at genius differently than the reductive simplicity of the highest IQ people we can think of (Einstein, Turing, Hawking and others). Instead, let us consider the genius in seeing what others don’t see.
For leaders, for entrepreneurs, the ability to see what others don’t see is critical, but they are often their own worst block to their ability to have such vision. Why? Often because they get stuck working “in” their business, rather than “on” it, plus they are adherents to the cult of “busy-ness”, rather than recognising that taking time to do nothing (eg take a walk, with no headphones) can create space to have that type of “see what others don’t see vision”.
Now, let me go to the images above. The one on the left is someone clearing the high jump “belly down” using the “Straddle” technique. The individual on the left is Dick Fosbury, a lone innovator who, while a college student, decided to “flop” over the bar, landing on his back. This became known as the “Fosbury Flop”. Dick Fosbury won Olympic Gold in Mexico City in 1968 and his technique rapidly took over and is the only style used by elite high jumpers.
Dick Fosbury saw a target no-one else could see. I wonder what led to that? Perhaps something as simple as the innovation in soft foam landing mats for high jumps in the 1960s, prior to which you had to land in a sandpit. Clearly unsafe to land on your back from over 2m up in the air, yet nobody thought to then try it when foam landing mats became available. Nobody, that is, until Dick Fosbury did it. Perhaps he saw the foam and then saw what others didn’t see, that he could try landing on his back. From that, his innovation likely came forward.
He also likely faced ridicule from his peers. He almost certainly did, in fact, what else explains why he innovate this at least four years before Mexico 1968, yet was the only leading contender at the meet using the flop? What else explains it? Well, perhaps fear of change, fear of failure, fear of ridicule.
You see, it takes something additional to succeed beyong the genius to see what others don’t see. It takes the courage and commitment, the bravery, to try it, to recognise, as Seth Godin puts it “this might now work”, and to have the hunger and curiousity to “JFDI”, to just do it!
What might you see that others don’t see (if you give yourself time and space to allow fresh ideas to come from new directions) ?
Perhaps you already have, but you have dismissed your idea out of fear of change. You aren’t ready to Zig while others Zag, you’d rather keep doing what you’ve always done.
It is Saturday morning as this goes out. Perhaps take a walk and DON’T think, simply take it as an exercise to be present, to truly see what it is front of you. Perhaps take a route you’ve walked before, and this time see what you haven’t noticed before?
PS a final thought. Back to the Fosbury Flop. The Men’s High Jump World Record has now stood for over 27 years, since 1993. In all that time, only 5 men have come within 5cm of that height and none in the last six years. The Women’s High Jump World Record has stood even longer, since 1987, and of the top 28 all time performers (all within 6cm of that record), only 2 have made that list in the last 8 years. Perhaps someone will find a new way to innovate the High Jump. Perhaps someone will look at the running shoe sole technology that has changed the world of elite Marathon running and look to a new way of running and take off to use that new technology? Perhaps something even more different, maybe taking from tumbling in gymnastics and simply flip forwards over the bar off the momentum of a tumbling run.
PPS One more example of Genius in sporting innovation. Graeme Obree, immortalised in film in “The Flying Scotsman” was an elite cyclist who smashed “the hour” the record for most distance travelled on a cycling track in an hour in 1993, riding a home made bike with a radical position that he called “Old Faithful”. From wikipedia: “In March 2018, Obree tested another replica of Old Faithful in the Mercedes-Benz F1 team’s wind tunnel to gauge the aerodynamic efficiency of his various riding positions on the bike, having never previously participated in wind-tunnel testing before. It was found that the CdA (drag coefficient) of Obree’s initial “tuck” or “crouch” position was 0.17, compared to a conventional 1990s bike position of 0.20 and a modern conventional position of 0.188, leading to an estimated gain in speed of about 2-2.5 km/h over his rivals in the nineties and a gain of 1.5 km/h over contemporary track cyclists“. Graeme Obree’s genius saw what others didn’t see, though it was only 15 years later in a wind tunnel that the scientists measured it.
