Thursday, May 14, 2009

Happy “Not being stupid” month!

It is amazing how we celebrate everything from “Bosses Day”, “Administrative Assistants Day”, “Mothers Day”, “Fathers Day”, “Black history month”, “Asian history month”, “Breast Cancer month” and on and on…

I remember years ago at one of my previous employers we celebrated “Consumer is Boss Day!” this was the day when the consumer rejected NEW Coke for the taste of classic coke. A very interesting concept for a company in the consumer products business but strangely we never celebrate our intelligence?

How about “Not being stupid” Month?

This is not a joke, people just fail to see obvious things! People are averse to learning new concepts, processes, tools. Wouldn’t it be great if for a month we gave up our apprehensions, our prejudices and recognized “NOT stupid” behavior for once?

Years ago I remember going through training on diversity and if memory serves me right it was called “Micro-inequities” the most powerful concept was the feedback component the training introduced. Every time anyone spotted an inequity, the individual was expected to highlight it “that’s a micro-inequity…”. It was immediate, it was behavior changing, it was direct. I don’t know if we really experienced any real change in diversity but the concept was very powerful, one that appealed to my senses.

How about we do the same with stupidity or inequity for an entire month? Imagine how much change we could enable!