Why you should embrace wonky thoughts and wonky people

I always find beauty in things that are odd and imperfect - they are much more interesting .   Marc Jacobs

 

Don't think to straight, embrace some wonky thoughts and wonky people, it's no fun walking down the straight and narrow.  Life is a collaboration of individuals of different shapes and sizes with different thoughts and opinions, embrace the differences.

Beauty is skin deep but wonky vegetables are ugly to the bone. I watched a new snippet on how supermarkets are having wonky veg boxes, full of overgrown, funny looking vegetables which you can buy at a discount.

The highlight of the story was the news reporter asking a woman if she wasinsulted by a particularly curly carrot.

It was a daft question, but the answer was glorious

“No, I rather like it, it has character”

Wabi Sabi

I was reading the book ReWork: Change the Way You Work Forever and itmentioned a phrase Wabi-sabi

Wabi-sabi is described as 

Wabi-sabi is the quintessential Japanese aesthetic. It is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is a beautyof things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things unconventional...

Wabi-sabi is the art of imperfection, its important in world which moves towards conformity, a world of corporate companies and high streets filled with chain stores.  

Wonky Appearance

We live in a world which places a premium on looks and presentation.  The mediais filled with pictures, interviews and opinions of attractive people, why listen to the ramblings of people based on their appearance?

It turns out appearance is not only important in people but in our are fruit and veg, people don't want to buy funny shaped vegetables.

Thousands of tons of vegetables are thrown away because they are the wrong shape, supermarkets have stringent acceptable dimensions for vegetables.

We should champion the different shaped vegetables not throwing them away, we should buy them if they are cheaper and bigger.  Let us not forget wonky vegetables are funny

Be Prepared for Wonky

Wonkiness is not limited to vegetables, you will meet lots of wonky people in your life. People can have wonky thinking, behavior, appearance, methods, processes and wonky dress sense.

If we were all the the same, life would be boring but yet we are naturally suspicious of people who are different.  We should embrace the differences in each other and collaborate to incorporate the different views and ideas.

The difference in thinking of individuals is an invaluable tool, which bares the most fruit when working in groups, this allows the different views to merge and colloborate.  I use the term wonkiness of thought because other people have different opinions and methods of thinking, this can seem alien but ask questions and learn from a different perspective.

Wonkiness means you need to work differently with people to get the most from their wonky thinking.

Embrace Wonky

When you work at the same job or do the same process long enough you become a slick machine, to the extent it becomes a habit. Habits are the brains way of beingable to do tasks on autopilot e.g. when you do something enough time the braincan do it without concentrating on the task.

A great example is driving. Have you ever driven to work and forgot how you gotthere? It’s because your brain did it on habit autopilot.

It’s not habit autopilot that s the biggest threat it’s your system 2 logical brain accepting defaults. To progress you need to evolve processes, find better ways andthink about how to become more effective.

When new people join your department or team they bring with them wonkythinking, they question why we do things in certain ways. New team memberswant to understand the goal of processes and then see if there is a better way.

Wonky thinkers ask why?

Enjoy Wonkiness

We should embrace the wonky vegetable in everyone. Everybody has a wonky quality to them, which often manifests itself in fascinating hobby.

I love hearing about the unusual hobbies and stories of colleagues

A friends 2 year old son loved watching Youtube videos of clocks, particularlygrandfather clocks.
I used to collect erasers, which my nephews and nieces loved and some survived which my children play with!

My nephew used to collect can's of Lynx deoderant, he had over 50 cans

A school teacher did Kendo and brought in his sword

I will leave you with the quote from the great Roald Dahl

A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.  ― 

picture from here

Leadership is about motivating others to action not making them

"Leadership is not about titles, positions, or flow charts. It is about one life influencing another." John C. Maxwell

Alex Ferguson was one of the most successful managers of all time winning the Premier League 13 times, 5 FA Cups and 2 Champion League titles.  Alex Ferguson's title was manager but his primary task was to lead and motivate a squad of players to produce individual performances and works as team for a whole season.

During your career you will work for managers, if you are fortunate you will work for a leader.

Managers monitor and schedule, checking the work done meets the goals and objectives set.  Tasks are assigned and work gets done because the manager has authority.

Leaders inspire people, work is done because people believe in the vision of the leader.

Leading

In the book  Leading by Sir Alex Ferguson (Author), Sir Michael Moritz (Author) gives insights into management style of Alex Ferguson.  The back of the book has a great quote

"My job was to make everyone understand that the impossible was possible.  That's the difference between leadership and management."  Alex Ferguson

Leaders sell a vision of the future and everyone works to make the vision become reality.  

The differences between leaders and managers is  motivation.  Managers motivate by fear, leaders motivate by inspiring people.  

Leaders are not focused on personal accomplishments or credit, instead they focus on what the group can achieve by working together.  The quote below highlights this attitude

“No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it.” – Andrew Carnegie

One Alex Ferguson's motivational stories talks about geese flying from Canada to France.  They fly in a V formation show in the picture above.  The geese swap positions during the flight to enable the geese at the back to rest, to accomplish the flight the geese must work as a team.

"If one goose falls ill, two always have to go with him. What I was saying was that I'm only asking you to go 38 games in the League to win it. I'm not asking you to go 5,000 miles!" Alex Ferguson

Trust and delegation

Ferguson explains the importance of delegation. when he started out in management he tried to do everything

• take training sessions
• make sure the pies were right
• talk to the groundsman about the height of the grass
• negotiate contracts
• scouting
• everything and anything

Without delegation Ferguson became a bottleneck and he found his staff were frustrated at not being able to do their job.  Ferguson was spending too much time on low impact tasks and not enough time on important tasks.

Ferguson's moved to Man utd and with more people to manage Ferguson had to learn to delegate because there was too much to do.   This quote highlights his thoughts on delegation

"When I hired someone to do something, I trusted them to do it.  I depended on them to get on with their job and come to me with any problems"

Here are some inspiration quotes on Leadership

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” – John Quincy Adams

"The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires." William Arthur Ward

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” —Maya Angelou

“Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” —Henry Ford

"Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it." Dwight D. Eisenhower

picture from here