I recently finished reading, “Orbiting The Giant Hairball, a Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace” by Gordon MacKenzie. This long time cult classic in the business world was given to me recently by Jim Perdiew at the end of his 2007 marketing conference and I have to say, “This book rocks!”.
In a nutshell, it is essentially a collection of on man’s experiences in the corporate world and some ways he found to avoid becoming a victim of corporate inertia that stifles creativity and drags so many good people and departments down. The Giant Hairball is the tangled impenetrable mass of rules, and systems, based on what worked in the past and which can lead to mediocrity in the present – it is policy, procedure, conformity, compliance, rigidity and status quo. Orbiting is originality, rules-breaking, non-conformity, experimentation and innovation. He explains that key to surviving successfully and providing true value for yourself and your company is directly tied to awakening the creative genius that lies with our own subconscious.
In Gordon’s words:
“Orbiting is responsible creativity: vigorously exploring and operating beyond the Hairball of the corporate mind set, beyond “accepted models, patterns, or standards” – all the while remaining connected to the spirit of the corporate mission.
To find Orbit around a corporate Hairball is to find a place of balance where you benefit from the physical, intellectual and philosophical resources of the organization without becoming entombed in the bureaucracy of the institution.
If you are interested (and it is not for everyone), you can achieve Orbit by finding the personal courage to be genuine and to take the best course of action to get the job done rather than following the pallid path of corporate appropriateness.
To be of optimum value to the corporate endeavor you must invest enough individuality to counteract the pull of Corporate Gravity, but not so much that you escape that pull altogether. Just enough to stay out of the Hairball.
Through this measured assertion of your own uniqueness, it is possible to establish a dynamic relationship with the Hairball – to Orbit around the institutional mass. If you do this, you make an asset of the gravity in that it becomes a force that keeps you from flying out into the overwhelming nothingness of deep space.
But, if you allow that same gravity to suck you into the bureaucratic Hairball, you will find yourself in a different kind of nothingness. The nothingness of normalcy made stagnant by a compulsion to cling to past successes. The nothingness of the Hairball.”
It is a VERY easy read and just about the most creatively constructed book I have ever read, unless you count the books my 6 year old daughter has stapled together for me. If anybody wants to read it let me know, its at my desk (both Gordon’s and Anna’s).
I believe AGI Interactive and all of the diverse individuals who make it up must find a way to Orbit. Together, as a department, we form a completely unique medium in which each of us has the opportunity to contribute, be creative and innovate. We must have the courage to cross boundaries, courage to act, courage to be open to new thought ( as well as to let go of gravitational thought) and be willing to admit impasses as well as our own ignorance (not to mention our own stupidity at times). If we are to grow, we must begin to explore.
Loved this book. I want my own pink budda room!
My goal in life is to have the hairball orbit me.
That sounds like a cool goal.
Can I claim first dibs on reading?
I gots it right now, you can cop it after I’m done.