Who I am

This blog is named to honour Steve Jobs – and the other “crazy ones”. And to honour his take on what is means to be “in business”. I was reminded of his stance by this video, today. To remind myself, and inform some other folks, I thought I’d revisit an earlier post about what I believe.

Steve put it like this:

“We believe that people with passion can change the world for the better.”

~ Steve Jobs

and, more fundamentally, this:

“We believe that those people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that actually do.”

~ Steve Jobs

And What I Stand For

For me, i subscribe to the latter sentiment absolutely. In my case, I have for the past twenty years at least, explicitly stood for people. Developers, yes – who are often the craziest ones. But also for all the other people, managers and bosses included. All those people toiling away in oppressive organisations everywhere. Organisations that suppress or ignore our potential and our humanity, and rob us of the joy of working together on changing the world for the better.

“I believe that a Rightshift of knowledge-work businesses brings improved health, wealth and wisdom for individuals, for the organisations in which they work, and for society at large.”

– Bob Marshall (FlowchainSensei)

So, to be clear, I stand for a world in which businesses serve society and people, and not, as all too often today, vice versa. In particular, I stand for Humane Solutions, in a world where the evil twins of Technology and Bureaucracy appear to have the whip hand – and people and their needs generally go by the board.

The massive irony, of course, is that businesses that truly take to heart the idea of serving society and people find they’re much more successful than those which do not.

Would you be willing to share what you stand for?

Daunted

I often feel daunted by the sheer scale of the challenge. I take comfort from things like the story of the starfish:

A young girl was walking along a beach upon which thousands of starfish had been washed up during a terrible storm. When she came to each starfish, she would pick it up, and throw it back into the ocean. People watched her with amusement.

She had been doing this for some time when a man approached her and said, “Little girl, why are you doing this? Look at this beach! You can’t save all these starfish, there is miles and miles of beach. You can’t begin to make a difference!”

The girl bent down, picked up another starfish, and hurled it as far as she could into the ocean. Then she looked up at the man and replied,

“Well, I made a difference to that one!”

— Adapted from The Star Thrower
by Loren C. Eiseley

and this Arthur Ashe quote:

“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”

~ Arthur Ashe

How about you? Do you, as Steve Jobs invited us, “honour people that Think Different”?

Here’s to the crazy ones. I can identify.

– Bob

Further Reading

The Rightshifting Ethos ~ Bob Marshall
Who Is Bob Marshall? ~ Yves Hanouille
A Personal Charter ~ Bob Marshall
Greetings from Munich ~ Video interview