Quality and Innovation

(Image Credit: Doug Buckley of http://hyperactive.to)

You can’t be anyone you want to be.

To become your most powerful, you have to fully become WHO YOU ARE.

(Umar Haque posted a similar sentiment on the Harvard Business Review blog in 2011.)

“Don’t want to be the best in the world at what you do. Be the only one who does what you do.” — Jerry Garcia

This is not always easy. People are changing. Situations are changing. Environments are changing – constantly, and without fail. And since we have to deal with so many messages from the outside world about who and what it thinks we should be — and become — it should not be surprising during the times when it feels like a struggle. Plus, what if WHO YOU ARE challenges the mainstream notion of what’s right or good? This makes fully becoming WHO YOU ARE even more frightening. 

But the more I reflect on it, the more I think that embracing your unique gifts is the key to becoming an innovator. When you find or create a safe space in which can can take risks to uncover and unleash who you are, you creative potential blazes. But sometimes those safe spaces are hard to come by… so what are we going to do about it?