We are all informed by our influences, so our originality is increasingly in our connected world about our “unique prism” on how we view those influences.
As you can see from my website tommccallum.com, I work with clients who are already successful yet hungry and open, seeking to bravely make an even more meaningful impact. Sometimes i call my role helping to “polish the diamond”, to support them on their journey from good to great to elite. Another way I express this is that the role is to help them look through the prism slightly differently. Even turning the view a tiny fraction can make a huge difference.
This brings me to the podcast Sideways, by Matthew Syed, author of Black Box Thinking, who was mortified to hear that he may have accidentally been guilty of plagiarism when his literary agent found that an article in the New Statesman, published before his book, was almost the same as the first two chapters of that book.
As it turned out, he had drafted those chapters before the article came out, so he was instantly absolved. The podcast, then, moves into talking about how: “our brains are wired for unoriginality, we evolve as a collective brain, absorbing our shared cultural cues and looking for what has worked in the past.”
Interesting, but even more so was when he then interviewed the author of the New Stateman piece, Ian Leslie about originality. Since that episode in 2014, Ian has reframed this term and we see that we are all informed by our influences, so our originality is increasingly in our connected world about our “unique prism” on how we view those influences.
In the world of leadership, economics, behaviour, culture, I rarely come upon an idea I consider truly original. However, I constantly learn new perspectives, edits, augmentations, distillations from others, many of which I curate through this blog. Let’s then consider this blog then. I’ve posted every day now for over 1350 days. Is every post original? No, but each day I do endeavour to look through my own unique prism slightly differently at ideas that are often recurrent.
Going way back to my days in marketing, I used to say “there is no such thing as an original idea”. I often used that line in order to be self-deprecating when complimented, but once I learned that to deflect an acknowledgement diminishes the person giving it, instead I evolved that to something along the lines of “I am not sure there is such a thing as a truly original idea, though I do look to evolve existing ones in new and different ways”, then thanking them for the compliment.
As I am writing this, I think of Nilofer Merchant and her concept of “Onlyness”, so then I searched my own site for her name. Well, look what I found, this post from nearly three years ago: “What is your original idea today?“, in which I began:
In my role as an experienced coach supporting leaders to reach their peak, I’m highly focussed on limiting beliefs, choice of words, and also where language is phrased negatively rather than positively.
It is a little absurd then, that I have often used a certain phrase, and even written an article about it: “No such thing as an original idea“. As I put in that brief article:
“…I recognised that {a recent post} was, to use a musician’s analogy, a riff on a recurring theme, in this case: “less is more”. A favourite phrase of mine is “there is no such thing as an original idea”. I believe, though, that we are always listening, learning, developing new ideas to develop, extend, evolve ideas.”
So, my own belief around the phrase “no such thing as an original idea” can be qualified as I described above.
That said, in a recent call with Nilofer Merchant, author of “The Power of Onlyness” (see article here), she totally challenged me when I used that line around the themes I am looking to incorporate in the book I am in the processing of writing.
She reminded me of the definition she created of “Onlyness”, being:
“You’re standing in a spot in the world that only you stand in, a function of your history and experiences, visions, and hopes. From this spot where only you stand, you offer a distinct point of view, novel insights, and even groundbreaking ideas.”
Thank you Nilofer, that landed like a really good smack in the mouth (in a good way!).. it woke me up to my language and my own self-limiting beliefs around my own “distinct point of view, novel insights, and even groundbreaking ideas.”
Hmm. As you can see, there is duplication in this post and what I wrote nearly three years ago. On some occasions, as I develop my thoughts through writing a post, I will go back and edit out such duplications from the earlier paragraphs. However on this occasion I will leave those first thoughts as I wrote them, instead using them as an example of how at that time my thoughts were influenced by Nilofer, and now I was spurred to write on the topic, through a very slightly different view through my unique prism, by Matthew Syed and Ian Leslie.