Creative

Reflections on Courage and Play

The Creating Passionate Users blog has been a favorite destination for me this week. A couple of days ago, Kathy Sierra posted an entry called Be Brave or Go Home. She argues that when it comes to developing products and services, being provocative and taking risks is the key to success. Going safe is a vote for your own mediocrity.

I love how she ended the post:

Creating passionate users is NOT about finding ways to make everyone like you. It’s about finding ways to use your own passion to inspire passion in others, and anything with that much power is bound to piss off plenty of status-quo/who-moved-my-cheese people. Bring it on.

If that doesn’t get you excited to get out there and do something bold, not much else will. It kind of complements one of my past entries, A Thin Line Between Love and Hate. In this case, mediocrity and indifference are killers. So, who are you going to piss off today?

Then comes the next post, Creating Playful Users… Maybe its just because I’m visiting the right blogs and sites, but there seems to be growing momentum behind the idea that play is vital to our growth. And not just intellectually, but to our organizations, businesses, and other areas of our careers. Check out some of the ideas that Kathy proposes. In a world dominated by seriousness and cynicism, playfulness is truly a strategic advantage. What one idea for implementing playfulness in your career, organization, family, etc. do you have and can commit to in the next two weeks?

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• April 21, 2006 -- I Don’t Like RSS And Newsreaders (6)
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