What you don’t know cannot stop you from doing what you have never done.

Bill Dallas
Lessons from San Quentin

“I’ve Been Thinking. . . about the last time I had a revolutionary idea. Unfortunately, I’m still thinking. . .

The janitor at the elegant El Cortez Hotel in San Diego had a revolutionary idea. The management determined their single elevator was no longer sufficient for efficiently getting guests to their rooms or lobby. Engineers and architects were consulted to determine the best strategy for constructing another elevator.

They proposed cutting a hole in each floor from the basement to the top of the hotel. As they discussed the details of their plan, a hotel janitor overheard the conversation.

“That’s going to make quite a mess,” the janitor said to the experts. “Plaster, dust and debris will be everywhere.”

One of the engineers assured him it would work out fine because they were planning to close the hotel while the work was being completed.

“That’s going to cost the hotel a healthy amount of money,” the janitor responded, “and there will be a lot of people out of jobs until the project is completed.”

“Do you have a better idea?” one architect asked.

Leaning on his mop, the janitor pondered the architect’s challenge and then suggested, “Well, why don’t you build the elevator on the outside of the hotel.”

Looking at each other in amazement, the architects and engineers responded: “That’s never been done before. . .let’s do it.”

Hence the El Cortez became the originator of a popular architectural procedure. That’s revolutionary thinking! That janitor was willing to “stir up” the normal thinking and challenge the experts to look at the situation from an unconventional point of view.

I love it! In fact we should build a phrase into everyone’s job description.

When asked: “What do you do here?”
People could respond: “I ‘stir up’ the status quo.”

Organizations would benefit from a Coordinator of Stirring Things Up. . . challenging, stirring, experimenting, and modifying every blindly accepted way of doing things.

Actually every person inside an organization is perfectly positioned to stir something up. It’s not about the position.

In reality, our ultimate choice is to stir things up or be stirred. Be the stirrer or the stirred.

Warning Label “Never allow the stirred to return to its original state.” Make sure it is better. Even if what you do is good – make good better and better and keep stirring.

The world’s expectations are ever increasing. We’ve grown accustomed to speed, accuracy, even pretty. Seek a new level of quality – magnificent, remarkable, splendid . . . ah yes, even world class.

People don’t pay a premium for average. Mediocrity is so. . . mediocre. Yet, so few companies have committed to offering the remarkable.

Blow the top off! Stir it up. Don’t just dare to dream about excellence. Instigate. Initiate. Invent. Become the programmer. Fix the broken and more importantly, reinvent the mediocre.

Take a simple task you perform over and over every day. You could do it in your sleep. Has it become mundane? Are the results normally the same? Does it require little or no imagination on your part – not to mention initiative?

Stir it up!

Too many people suffer from initiativitis – an aversion to taking initiative. Fear. Lack of time. Comfortable. Not enough pay. Not my job. Have a hangnail. All are excuses leading to initiativitis.

Whatever the excuses – flush it!

Become the initiator of initiatives that initiates innovative initiatives on your team.

I took a typing class as a junior in high school. Some of you have never seen one of these – we typed on a manual typewriter. When I achieved “50” words per minute with no more than three errors on our weekly typing test, I got to use the electric typewriter once a week. In college I had my very own portable electric typewriter. Then, someone invented the word processor, the computer keyboard and now I can do it all on my phone if I so desire.

The typewriter is officially antiquated, defunct, extinct.

Ev and Twitter had no clue how successful they could be by stirring things up. People didn’t get it at first. How do you make money twitting people? And then it happened, word spread and Twitter became the fastest growing communication’s tool in history. They broke the mold. . .

Thank goodness for initiators, innovators, stirrers.

What part of your job could you make extinct because you are willing to stir up the status quo? Don’t wait for a job description, rule, process or permission -- initiators write their own.

I love the sign that hung in Thomas Edison’s lab that read: “There ain’t no rules around here. We’re trying to accomplish something.”

What about failures or criticism or skepticism? What if I flounder or make mistakes? I will personally guarantee you every one of those things will happen if you stir up the status quo. So what!

If you have the chance to create a map that leads your team to new levels of excellence – a world class treasure, wouldn’t it be worth a little nuisance? Posture yourself to stir it up knowing there is no fail-safe recipe. Resist the internal dialogue that allows you to rationalize all the reasons why you shouldn’t take the risk to stir it up. Argue with that logic.

Thank goodness Jack Vetter was willing to challenge the odds when he decided to stir up the long term care profession with his commitment to quality. We continue that quest today as we strive to become a world class company who provides unequalled senior care.

Do we make mistakes? Many. Criticism? You bet. Skeptics? Oh my –plenty. Misunderstood? Without a doubt. Worth it? Absolutely.

Think about how many things, experiences, and processes have been standardized in our lives. That’s not all bad – except when we’ve been brainwashed to believe they have to stay that way or never be evaluated. Creativity and her sister innovation dies with unchallenged routines.
Constantly challenge assumptions, comfort and complacency.

Start asking – What about? What if? Could there be?

Then, start tinkering, doing, experimenting -- take action. Get ready for some surprising, exciting adventures and unexpected results.

All of this “stir it up” stuff hinges on relentlessly avoiding the ever so popular ‘let’s get comfortable and coast’ mentality. Instead, set out to do something audacious, revolutionary, even ridiculous . . . one small, tiny step at a time.

If you don’t make things happen, then things will happen to you.

Robert Collier
The Secret of the Ages