Two standard deviations from the mean.

Some people love the normal. Love the average. That’s okay. There’s business in the average. James Blunt has made a great success of it. But as Mr Zappa says “without deviations from the norm progress is not possible”.

At school I oscillated between wanting to be normal, actually to be invisible; and wanting to stand out. It wasn’t until I grew used to my eccentricities that I really became the true me. As my good friend and mentor James Victore says “the things that made you weird as a kid make you great today”. So too in business. You need to be two standard deviations from the mean. Another great friend Tara Lemmey (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tara_Lemmey) coined that phrase and I love it. Innovation happens at the edges and its probably fair to say that when you started your business you did so from the edge. You spotted an opportunity that the mainstream hadn’t. But as a business grows it tends to gravitate back to normal. This happens for two reasons: 1 When you started doing what you do you pulled normal towards you, towards the edge in someway. Your success re-calibrated normal. 2 As things change and the competition comes from the edges you do that “consolidation” thing when you seek safety in normal. This doesn’t help.

Being on the edge of normal is a skill. One that, with age, becomes harder to retain. You need to train that weird muscle; sharpen your weird eye; or it won’t be as strong or as sharp as it needs to be.

There are a few simple things that you can do to remain ever-so-slightly weird:

1 Spend time with people who aren’t like you.
2 Walk rather than drive. Spend time immersed in reality away from the glass and steel coffin we usually wrap around ourselves and we encounter new things.
3 Go to art galleries, exhibitions, concerts. Widen your radar.
4 Buy one of those youth/design magazines that you wouldn’t normally buy.
5 Hire people that make you feel slightly uncomfortable.
6 Go and do something that scares you. Climb; ride; act; do stand-up comedy; anything to stop our lives shrinking to the known and comfortable.
7 Go and have a coffee/juice/beer somewhere new. Somewhere edgy. Listen and watch. A designer’s best skill is not design; it is observation.
8 Talk to a stranger (be careful).
9 Find a mentor. Not someone in your sector but someone from way outside of it. Someone who thinks differently from you.

Most of all, reconnect with that inner weirdness, that inner freak. Find it celebrate it.

To find out how to create fresh thinking and a culture of innovation in your business come on my one day Do Disrupt workshop: http://ow.ly/wq60303VXNj

To understand how to reduce stress and help your people take a look at the Do Lectures Ideas Day on Stress: http://ow.ly/T3fu303VXWE