Society has a very annoying habit. It likes to set its own standards for success to measure the effectiveness of unique individuals and organizations. Why have we allowed society to dictate our value? Why do we feel the need to join the homogenized soup that makes everything taste the same?
I have a secret recipe for tomato sauce. It has been handed down in my family for generations. It is uniquely different than any other sauce you have ever tasted. I feel it’s delicious, and I’m not alone in that assessment. People ask me to make it often because they love it. What makes it special? The recipe. Change it, and you change the sauce. Change the sauce, and you change the people who like it. Just because someone has an ingredient they like, doesn’t mean I’m going to let them put in in the pot. It’s my sauce, and only I get to determine what it’s going to taste like.
When did we, as a society, start dictating to companies the ingredients their organizations must utilize? Are we not affecting the product when we do so? Are we not, in essence, making everything taste the same? What’s wrong with diversity between organizations? I’m not saying we need to be exclusive to individuals. What I am saying, however, is ideologies and values affect the products we produce. The key to keeping your organization’s secret sauce is to guard your vision, values and purpose from thieves who would hijack your corporate identity and marginalize you into their version of a homogenized soup that won’t stand out in the marketplace.
You don’t have to be exclusive of individuals to stand out in your market, but you do have to be exclusive of ideologies that affect the taste of your sauce. The market will determine its value. Companies need to start guarding their originality again. Diversity in the marketplace is the product of originality in the boardroom. When we are more concerned with society’s norms than we are with our own personal vision, values, and purposes the marketplace becomes a new vanilla where every secret sauce tastes exactly the same.
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