Inflation is the gradual loss of purchasing power over time, reflected in a broad rise in prices for goods and services. In other words, you can buy less today with the same amount of money as you could a while back. For example, in the 1970s, the average cup of coffee cost 25 cents. By 2019, it had climbed to $1.59.   Inflation isn't limited to price spikes for any single item or service. It refers to increases in prices across a sector such as retail and, ultimately, a country's economy.

Inflation

Inflation in a healthy economy is typically in the range of two percentage points. Inflation can stimulate spending and encourage demand and productivity when it is within range. But when inflation surpasses wage growth, it can be a warning sign of a struggling economy.

A healthy economy

Households lose purchasing power when the prices increase for items such as food, utilities and gasoline. Companies lose purchasing power when prices increase for inputs used in production. In response, companies typically raise the prices of their products or services to offset inflation, meaning consumers absorb price increases.

How inflation affects consumers and companies

Statistical agencies measure inflation by determining the current value of a “basket” of various household goods and services. This is referred o as a price index.  Agencies compare the value of the index over one period to another, such as month-to-month for a monthly rate of inflation or year-to-year for an annual rate of inflation.

How inflation is measured

<ul><li>Demand-pull inflation occurs when the economy's demand for goods and services exceeds its ability to produce them.</li><li>Cost-push inflation occurs when the rising price of input goods and services increases the price of final goods and services.</li></ul>

The main causes of inflation

<ul><li>Post World War II, price controls, supply problems and extraordinary demand caused double-digit inflation.  It peaked at 20 percent in 1947 and subsided at the end of the decade. </li><li>The mid-1960s to the early 1980s saw some of the highest inflation rates, with a peak of 14.8 percent in 1980. In turn, interest rates jumped to nearly 20 percent. </li><li>In January 2022, inflation in the United States increased to 7.5 percent, its highest level since February 1982, due to soaring energy costs, labour mismatches, and supply disruptions. </li></ul>

Historical inflation

During inflation, companies usually pay more for input materials. To maintain gross margins, companies raise prices for consumers. However, if price increases are not executed carefully, companies can damage customer relationships, depress sales, and hurt margins.  But done right, recovering the cost of inflation on a case-by-case basis can strengthen relationships and overall margins.

How inflation affects pricing

<ol><li>Adjust discounting and promotions and revisit other aspects of sales inapplicable to the base price.</li><li>Develop the art and science of price change. Don’t make across-the-board price changes but tailor pricing actions.</li><li>Accelerate decision-making by establishing an inflation council that can act quickly on customer feedback.</li><li>Plan options beyond pricing to reduce costs.</li><li>Track execution relentlessly.</li></ol>

Five steps companies can take to adapt to inflation

Deflation occurs when the overall level of prices in an economy declines and the purchasing power increase. It can be driven by growth in productivity and the abundance of goods and services, a decrease in demand, or a decline in the supply of money and credit. Generally, moderate deflation enables consumers to purchase more with less money. But deflation can also signify a weakening economy and lead to recessions and depressions. In addition, during deflation, debt becomes more expensive.

Deflation

Discover the world of business and economics.

economics

Economics

moneyandinvestments

Money & Investments

business

Business

What is inflation?

There are great new options for how we work, when we work, and even where we work.  Digital nomads are embracing the new options and landing jobs which are all-remote or remote-friendly and taking their work on the road.

Digital nomad options

A new study by Reviews.org used key criteria such as download speed, number of free Wi-Fi hotspots, cost of accommodations, airport availability, climate, and outdoor experience to rate the best cities for remote work.  These are:<ol><li>Seattle, Washington</li><li>Portland, Oregon</li><li>Chicago, Illinois</li><li>Atlanta, Georgia</li><li>San Jose, California</li><li>Washington, D.C.</li><li>San Francisco, California</li><li>New York, New York</li><li>Philadelphia, Pennsylvania</li><li>Denver, Colorado</li></ol>The worst cities are Mobile, Alabama; Albany, New York; and Portland, Maine.

Best locations for digital nomads

When you want to become a digital nomad, consider the following key things about yourself and your work:<ul><li>Whether your work lends itself to being away. Could your employer handle you being away for 6 to 12 months at a time?</li><li>Your career. How will being a digital nomad contribute or detract from your career goals?</li><li>Your transiency. Do you want to be in 3 cities in a year, or 10? </li><li>Your reach. Do you want to stay in the U.S. or branch out to other countries?</li><li>Your goals. Do you want to experience different cultures, climates or natural environments?</li><li>Your people. How will close relationships be affected?</li></ul>

The digital nomad lifestyle

Digital nomads will find everything from a good internet connection to natural landscapes in these cities.

remotework

Remote Work

Where to live if your company is sticking to remote work

To succeed in presenting a business case  to the customer, you have to answer their primary question: “Why should I pay for that?”Salespeople use business cases to sell products.Employees use business cases to persuade their bosses to invest in equipment, hire more staff or provide more training.Job seekers effectively present a business case to potential employers. If you’re looking for a job, you are both the salesperson and the product.

Creating A Business Case

<ul><li>Business cases usually come in the form of a cost-benefit analysis</li><li>Calculate the total cost of owning and operating (TCO) of the solution you're proposing</li><li>On the other side, calculate the financial benefit you gain from owning/operating the solution</li><li>If the solution can help the company do things faster and more efficiently, then you can calculate how much money the product will save you</li></ul>

Building Your Business Case

<ul><li>Businesses regard investing large sums of money, be it in equipment, extra staff, or staff benefits, as a larger risk that needs to be justified with a bigger payoff.</li><li>Write a brief introduction, then in the second half write your recommendations and a very brief summary.</li></ul>

Presenting the Case

Look at advertisements for various products and services and ask:Would I buy it or not?If I buy this, how much does it cost in my local currency and how much would I benefit in local currency would I gain from not buying it?

Developing The Mindset

Try creating your own business cases. Start with a side-by-side table. Is there a real business case there?How would you describe the proposed investment in 100 words?Some of your figures will probably be estimates. What are they based on? How did you calculate them?  What’s the worst question your customer’s accountant could ask you? How would you answer that? Write that answer down in the extra information section.Now you have your business case written down. Is it short? Is it sharp? Is it convincing?Show it to a colleague for feedback.What did your colleague think of it?

Practice Makes Perfect!

The principle behind creating and presenting a business case is that you have to answer your customer’s question: “Why should I pay for that?” Your customer ultimately wants to know what's in it for them, and it's your job to answer that as effectively as possible.

marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

“What’s In It For Me?” The 3-Stage Guide To Answering This Question

The metaverse can be best described as an evolution of today's internet. It is something we are immersed in, not something we look at. It is a vast digital world that is parallel to our physical world. The metaverse presents an opportunity for marketers to engage consumers in new ways and push internal capabilities in new directions. Marketers should take the opportunity to embrace a test-and-learn mindset and start exploring what the metaverse can offer.

A shift in how we use the internet

<ul><li>The metaverse encompasses immersive environments, often using virtual- or augmented-reality technology.</li><li>It is always on and exists in real-time.</li><li>It spans the virtual and physical worlds, as well as multiple platforms.</li><li>A fully functioning virtual economy powers the metaverse. It is often built on cryptocurrency and digital goods and assets, including nonfungible tokens (NFTs).</li><li>It allows people to have virtual identities, presence, and “agency”, including peer-to-peer interactions, transactions, user-generated content, and world-building.</li></ul>

Characteristics of the metaverse

Critical elements of marketing are similar to brand experiences in the physical world. However, the application can be very different. <ul><li>Define your metaverse marketing goals. For the near term, the primary goal shouldn't be driving sales directly.</li><li>Identify which platforms provide the best opportunity and brand fit. Examples include Roblox, Fortnite, Decentraland, and Meta’s Horizon Worlds.</li><li>Design experiences appealing to target audiences.</li><li>Experiment with money-making models.</li><li>Leverage and partner for new metaverse capabilities.</li><li>Proactively plan for risks.</li><li>Rethink how you measure marketing success.</li></ul>

Rewriting the rules of marketing for the metaverse

The metaverse gives companies many opportunities for brand building and marketing. A few questions will shape its longer-term evolution. <ul><li>How will it work in the metaverse to transfer digital avatars and assets across multiple worlds? What are the implications?</li><li>How will the social contract and legal framework for the metaverse evolve? How will user safety be ensured?</li><li>How will first-party consumer data be stored, managed, and protected?</li></ul>

Shaping the longer-term evolution of the metaverse 

technologyandthefuture

Technology & The Future

Marketing in the metaverse: An opportunity for innovation and experimentation

Now that millions of employees have enjoyed the ability to work remotely and shape their schedules, workers are increasingly reticent to give up flexibility – and would consider making sacrifices to have accommodating jobs. Earlier in the pandemic, large swaths of workers reported willingness to take a pay cut if they secured the benefits they wanted. But in recent months, a shift has occurred: while flexibility is still high on the list, pay is moving centre stage as a priority for job-seekers.

Back To The Green Dough

Both knowledge- and blue-collar workers with particularly in-demand skillsets are enjoying sharp salary rises, as labour shortages impact some industries. These hikes are coming as workers of all stripes are facing rising living costs – and wondering if they, too, could find a better-paying role elsewhere.

Looking For Better Paying Roles

<ul><li>Flexibility and company values are still important factors for workers, but they're only the difference-maker when the salaries are comparable.</li><li>The companies "winning the race" for staff will be those who can offer both the work-life balance policies workers say they want and competitive pay.</li><li>With inflation causing workers' pay to drop in real terms, we'll see almost a re-evaluation of those top-five reasons why people move jobs.</li></ul>

Asking Both Work-Life Balance And Competitive Pay

<ul><li>More than half (56%) of executive managers in a recent survey said they were starting to be faced with pay compression, where existing staff end up on lower salaries than new recruits</li><li>Petrol prices are at an all-time high; transport fares have increased, and food and other essentials are on an upwards trajectory</li><li>Some companies are offering financial and other incentives to tempt unhappy commuters back</li></ul>

Talent Shortage Across All Sectors

<ul><li>Rising costs mean that workers who can do their jobs from home are understandably reluctant to head to the office unless they absolutely need to.</li><li>Some companies are cognisant of employees' concerns and are offering practical solutions aimed at alleviating costs related to office days.</li><li>For example, media company Bloomberg is offering its US staff a $75 daily commuting stipend, which they can spend however they want.</li></ul>

The Extra Perks And Subsidies

<ul><li>Graduates are being handed six-figure salaries as a recruitment tool amid the current labour market conditions.</li><li>In some cases, these workers may find themselves trapped in jobs they hate, especially if workers have built lifestyles around earning big pay-outs.</li><li>Such wages can also skew young employees' perception of pay, blocking them from pursuing more meaningful career paths.</li><li>Huge salaries can also weigh on young employees with a psychological burden.</li><li>Companies themselves may not necessarily get what they pay for.</li></ul>

Skewing The Career Perception For Youngsters

<ul><li>Six-figure starting salaries will probably continue to be the norm in certain high-paying industries like Big Tech and Big Pharma.</li><li>It's unlikely there'll be much of a trickle-down effect for entry-level workers in less elite sectors in other sectors.</li></ul>

Not For Labour Jobs In McD Or Amazon

Flexibility has long been touted as the ‘it’ perk. But as pay packets swell, workers are increasingly prioritising bigger salaries over other benefits.

career

Career

startup

Startups

Why workers are choosing big pay packets over flexibility

When you start a company and want to do really well, you need to work super-hard.
Working hard means working every waking hour. If someone else is working 50 hours and you're working a hundred, you'll get twice as much done in the course of a year.

Work really hard

Your product or service has to be really great. Unless it's an untapped market, your product or service needs to be much better than your competitors.
It can't be a little bit better; it has to be a lot better. Consumers will always buy the trusted brand - unless there is a huge difference.

Ensure whatever you're doing is a great product or service

If you're creating a company of it you're joining a company, it is vital to attract great people. 
So, either join an amazing group that you respect or if you're building a company, gather great people. The success of the company will depend on how talented and hardworking that group is and the degree to which they are focused cohesively in a good direction.

Attract great people

Many companies spend money on things that don't really make the product better, For example, Tesla never spent money on advertising but instead puts all the money into R&D and manufacturing and design.
Consider if your efforts are resulting in a better product or service. If not, stop those efforts.

Focus on signal over noise

As you get older, your obligations increase. Once you have a family, you start taking risks not just for yourself but for your family as well. Then it gets much harder to do things that might not work out.
Now is the time to take risks. Do something bold. You won't regret it.

Now is a good time to take risk

Dig into this collection about Elon Musk to see how his brain works, the future he envisions for the world, and a lot more.

books

Books

problemsolving

Problem Solving

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

Inside The Mind of Elon Musk

“Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive and determination of the people who do it as it is about the product they sell”  — Elon Musk. This Video is Part 1 of Elon Musk's Five Rules How To Create a Company. ► Check Out Part 2 → https://youtu.be/Q6NnT6vpjdc ☀︎ Savanteum is on a mission to inspire the next generation of creators and innovators. ► Subscribe to Savanteum → https://www.youtube.com/savanteum?sub... Tools I Use/Recommend: TubeBuddy (great for analytics and optimization -- free to install, but upgrade needed for extra features): https://www.tubebuddy.com/savanteum Credits & Sources: In Video / Additional Sources Below Music by Whitesand - Eternity, Creative Commons License YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCe96... Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/martynlaur Twitter: https://twitter.com/MartynLaur Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/martynaslau (Please Follow and Support Independent Musicians) Video Notes: Elon Musk is a is an engineer, industrial designer, technology entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer/designer of SpaceX; co-founder, CEO and product architect of Tesla Inc.; founder of The Boring Company; co-founder of Neuralink; and co-founder and initial co-chairman of OpenAI. Thank you for watching & follow us below! ====================================================== ► Follow Savanteum: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/savanteum Website: http://savanteum.com/ ======================================================

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

videos

Videos

“Starting and growing a business is as much about the innovation, drive and determination of the people who do it as it is about the product they sell”  — Elon Musk.

► Check Out Part 2 → https://youtu.be/Q6NnT6vpjdc

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Thanks for watching, happy creating and innovating! 🔥 #elonmusk #entrepreneur

Welcome to savanteum – a gym for the mind; a place to learn and get inspired! 🧠💪

We are on a mission to enable and inspire the next generation of innovators and promote life-long learning through engaging stories about entrepreneurs and creators.


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How to Create a Company | Elon Musk's 5 Rules

Rebranding–which can include updating your positioning, messaging, visual identity, website, and more–is a big investment of time and capital. To the outside world, it signals an intention to mark a new moment in your organization’s history and to be perceived differently. When done effectively, an updated brand can undoubtedly create powerful new opportunities for impact that more than justify your investment. But a rebrand, in and of itself, is not transformative: It will not change your organization. Rebranding is actually a record of a transformation that has happened or is already underwa<warningtag>y. </warningtag>

Effective rebranding

<ul><li>If your organization rebrands but doesn't actually transform, it's in the throes of an identity crisis</li><li>Rebranding is actually a record of a transformation that has happened or is already underway</li><li>Your current brand simply isn't a reflection of who you are as an organization anymore, and that's a big problem</li><li>Organizations, the people that make them up, the world they exist in-all these things are constantly evolving. Your brand needs to keep up with all that change to actually do its job.</li></ul>

Brads and identity crises

How to avert a branding identity crisis

<ul><li>Attracting exceptional people is a startup's most important task outside of finding product-market fit.</li><li>The most effective way to hire extraordinary people is to be so persistent it hurts.</li><li>Persistence and pestering are twins with scarcely a mark to distinguish them.</li><li>Find the right words, the right message, you can persist - if you fail, you pester.</li></ul>

Be Persistent

High impact work requires concentration, often for hours at a time. Levels Health gives its team the maximum possible deep work time by actively discouraging tools like Slack and meetings.This creates a business that runs asynchronously, reducing interruptions and protecting unbroken deep work.

Maximize Deep Work Time

Every successful company cares about serving its customers to some extent, but very few are genuinely obsessed with pleasing them in that word's truest meaning.To please your customers, you must obsess over them.A good example of true customer obsession is Coupang, who take extraordinary measures to improve their service, including giving delivery people a manual outlining the most esoteric details.

Obsess Over Your Customer

Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives.

As tech insinuates itself into every aspect of our lives, companies and protocols act as pseudo-nation states with enormous impact and broad scopeTerra, a crypto project, takes inspiration from the founding of Singapore and how prime minister Lee Kuan Yew fostered prosperity.

Think Like a Nation-State

Sometimes aligning incentives involves tinkering, like spinning out part of the team to capitalize on an idea directly.The goal is the same: maximum incentive alignment.Example: AngelList constantly tinkers to align incentives for its many experiments.

Align the Incentives

Move to a space that captures instant eyeballs, especially if you have missed the early train.There is a difference between having a well-known brand and an influential one. FTX has made one of the most ambitious attempts to secure the latter.Entering the American market late, the cryptocurrency exchange has sought to capture attention and influence by partnering with beloved sporting institutions, buying the naming rights to the Miami Heat's arena, and sponsoring MLB uniforms.

Invest in Soft-Power

Built optionality into the product by designing the platform to host the long-tail of assets.<ul><li>Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah founded OpenSea when NFTs were scarcely a blip on the world's radar.</li><li>They preserved optionality by keeping burn low and bringing in money through fees.</li><li>When "PFP" collectibles like Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks took off in 2021, OpenSea was well-positioned to capitalize.</li></ul>

Provide Optionality In Products

Focus on how you can intensify your most pronounced advantage.For example, Tiger Global focuses on its greatest strengths by moving quickly and relying on an encyclopedic knowledge of successful business models to pick winners, even at the cost of outsourcing commoditized operations.

Intensify Your Advantage

Define yourself by what you're not.<ul><li>Telegram has defined itself as a user-friendly private alternative to Big Blue's surveillance state.</li><li>As Facebook has fumbled through data breaches and congressional hearings, Telegram's allure has only grown more pronounced.</li></ul>

Find Your Counter-Positioning

Great businesses never sit still. They are constantly in a state of reinvention and internal bottoms-up disruption. Doing so opens new opportunities and protects against competitive displacement.To stave off staleness and disruption, businesses must innovate from within.

Proactively Reinvent Yourself

Nice pointers for businesses to go from also rans to success.

After publishing over half a million words on some of the world’s most innovative businesses, these are the 10 lessons I come back to again and again. You’ll find tactics from Stripe, FTX, Tiger Global, OpenSea, and other exceptional organizations.

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

10 Lessons from Great Businesses

Incubation: build your minimum viable product (MVP) in close partnership with potential customers to ensure you are solving a real problem with a credible solution.Iteration: have customers using your MVP and are rapidly improving the product. Success at this stage is rooted in customer insights – both qualitative and quantitative – not marketing excellenceScale: have product/market fit and are trying to grow your customer base. The goal of this phase is to build a portfolio of tactics that maximize market penetration with minimal – or at least profitable – cost

What growth stage is your B2B startup?

Success is rooted in growing lifetime value through retention and margin, maximizing funnel conversion to efficiently convert leads to customers, and finding repeatable tactics

Leverage your network. This is particularly valuable for founders who are building a product based on their own past experience.Cold calling (or showing up in person). Knock on doors, make phone calls. You have to get used to hearing “no”, but you’d be surprised how often you can get people to try your product once you have a personal connection. A big advantage of paid digital is that you get results immediately.Paid digital. Facebook and Google make up 90%+ of all new online ad spend these 2 channels are generally the best place to start testing online advertising

How do you find B2B customers?  1/2

Paid physical. It’s more expensive to get in front of each person, but you can choose exactly who gets your mail so you only show up in front of people who qualify for and want your product.Events. For almost any industry, there are events and trade shows where you can find customers.Content Marketing and SEO. Content marketing means writing articles and creating content to get in front of people searching for information about your product category.

B2B customer acquisition tactics 2/2

For Incubation…In this stage, you’ll be doing a lot of manual outreach to get your first paying customers, and improving the product based on feedback. The channels above most often used in this stage are leveraging your network, cold calling, cold email/LinkedIn outreach, and going to events.You don’t need much marketing budget in the innovation period, assuming you’re using your own labor for all this outreach. $500 per month to afford tools like Clearbit (to get lists), Reply.IO (To help with cold email) and LinkedIn Pro (To send messages on LinkedIn) should be fine.

When do you use which channels? 

In this stage, you want to get more strangers outside of your network and social circles to try your product.This means an expanded focus on cold calling, email, and outreach. It also means you can start paid digital ads on Facebook and Google. This will help you learn more about what messaging brings in potential customers. For instance, you can find out things like which of your product’s features customers like more by putting different features in different ads and seeing which ad gets higher click-through rates.

For Iteration…

Paid digital, paid physical and content/SEO are the three channels that offer the greatest scale for B2B companies. If you build a strong sales team, cold email and cold calling can both scale, but this involves building out a serious sales organization.The easiest channel to start testing is paid digital because it has the fastest time to get results and the smallest investment needed. You still need a minimum of $5k test to spend in paid digital, and in reality closer to $20k, to get a good idea of long-term cost per conversion.

For Scaling…

Generally, if you’re targeting companies with 10 or fewer employees, use ad messaging that directly promotes your product. For any kind of ad you build, use the SUCCESS framework.If you’re targeting companies with 10-10,000+ employees, use marketing messaging that promotes resources closely related to your project. Resources are eBooks, guides, tools, and things that are useful to customers that are related to the product you’re selling but are not actually your product.<ul><li>Simple</li><li>Unexpected</li><li>Credible</li><li>Concrete</li><li>Emotional</li><li>Stories</li></ul>

What kind of marketing messaging should you use?

<ul><li>Create an automated sales <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/16/how-should-b2b-startups-think-about-growth-not-like-b2c/#:~:text=What%20is%20a,days%20later%2C%20etc.">nurture flow</a> that comes from a sales account.</li><li>Create a marketing nurture funnel – usually with email – for people who fall out of the sales funnel after a month. A marketing nurture funnel is like the sales funnel, but is usually less “salesy”. A good example would be subscribing someone to a useful monthly newsletter.</li><li>Create a task-based system to organize sales calls. The faster you call people after they submit their lead information, the more likely they will convert. </li></ul>

How do you build your sales funnel?

<ul><li>Lifetime value – Most people do this by calculating out monthly churn (how many customers leave every month) and using that to determine how long customers will keep paying for your product.</li><li>Cost of your sales team – Some B2B products require extensive human engagement. In such cases, marketing will need lower CAC thresholds.</li><li>Vintage periods – For many B2B products, the answer is anywhere from 7 days to 7 months. To calculate the return on your ad spending, you have to track what results came from a given month’s spend, no matter when those sales close down the line. </li></ul>

How should you calculate and use the ROI of your marketing budget?

Over the years, we’ve seen a lot of B2B companies apply ineffective demand generation strategies to their startup. If you’re a B2B founder trying to grow your business, this guide is for you...

How should B2B startups think about growth? Not like B2C – TechCrunch

In business, everyone wants to build or ride a rocket. We talk in terms of “moonshots.” Rockets are a symbol of epic human progress. They’re designed to break free of gravity and launch us to new heights and to new worlds. A rocket engine is just a containment chamber for a barely controlled explosion. The booster is filled with volatile chemicals that, when combined in the proper proportions, blow up. Brilliant engineers plan, build, and test rocket engines so they can harness the incredible power of this explosion and convert it into planet-defying propulsion, instead of destruction.

The Moonshot

If innovation is the lifeblood of any ambitious company, then the next wave of it demands leaders who are outliers, or at least willing to hire and wrangle those historically seen as difficult yet creative thinkers. So how can front-line managers, departmental VPs, and C-suite execs strike that fine balance between the fiery brilliance of Rare Breeds and their potential without culture carnage?  Here‘s how.

Rare Breeds: Those Difficult But Creative People

These firecrackers commonly push against convention and carry provocative opinions. They’re not necessarily difficult people, but they do colour outside the lines. It’s essential to let them know where those lines are regarding conduct, courtesy, respect, and so on.

Hire with Clear, Strict Boundaries–and Equally Clear Rewards

Iconoclasts bridle at the idea of having to conform to something like an across-the-board dress code. If you have a conventional set of rules and regulations for your organization, tear it up and rewrite it to be looser about things that don’t really matter that much, like attire. A great example of this is the Tesla anti-handbook handbook. Keep the stuff that protects you legally but be creative on the rest.

Revise Your Employee Handbook

Creative thinkers hate bringing their ideas to their superiors only to have them shot down out of ignorance. Instead, dedicate design, engineering, and other resources that allow Rare Breeds to begin developing their ideas on their own, without approval from higher-ups. That way, if the idea flops, nobody’s embarrassed. If it soars, they can bring it to you already tested.

Create Zero-Consequence, Early-Stage Development Channels

If there’s a signal trait common to all unconventional thinkers, it’s intelligence. Most have extraordinarily high IQs, and when you combine that with their native intensity, focus, or nerve, they can intimidate the more conventional personalities in an organization. Look for ways to engage teams in supervised collaboration, so the more conventional minds and the Rare Breeds can work together on equal terms. Everyone is heard, and nobody feels like they’re contributing just because they’re less flashy or outspoken.

Get People Collaborating on Equal Terms

To be fair, hypnotic charisma can be a primary trait of this crew, making customers swoon. But in our experience, more of them are so focused on their visions, so obsessive about perfection, or so impatient with what they see as silly questions that they can come off as short-fused. Unless you’re blessed with hypnotic charmers who inspire your customers, it’s probably best to keep them clear of the customer-facing part of the business. The one exception: If your customers are largely Rare Breeds, too, anything goes.

Keep Them Clear of Customers

Courting “risky” people may seem counterintuitive, but so is stagnation. Rare Breeds infuse organizations with bold thinking, and their ideas rocket those organizations into the stratosphere. Stop worrying about hiring people who will fit into your culture, and start looking for people who will break it…just a little.

The Bottom Line

Sunny Bonnell and Ashleigh Hansberger argue that tame, harmonious teams where everybody gets along swimmingly lack the creative tension and hubris to change an organization’s trajectory with their over-the-edge thinking.


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