Be your own superhero

Zachary Aldwin Milkshake in the Boardroom
Hollywood has sold us a myth. They have done so incredibly well and in so doing have sucked us into a rut of bad thinking. The myth is this you have to wait for your big break before anything amazing will happen in your life.

Superhero movies top the charts at the moment. Many superheroes (and villains) get their powers by accident – they were ordinary people pottering around doing obscure things before they got their big life altering moment.

Now they are super and can do great things, often with much collateral damage. The problem with this message is that if you wait around to be noticed there is a pretty large chance that you never will be.

There is the other type of superhero however; men and woman who have no powers other than some skills and training, training that came at a great price.

These are the Batman’s and Hawkeye’s of the world who if shot will die but despite that vulnerability step into the forefront of danger and confront things head on.

Waiting to be noticed puts the responsibility for your success on other people. You can blame your failure on other things or people “there are not enough start-up incubators in the country” or “the Government didn’t enable the right legal framework for me” or a dozen other excuses for why others failed you.

The alternative is to show up, to step forward and make a difference. Not in the negative, annoying way where you are the obnoxious playground bully no one wants to play with because you force your way into the group and try steal everyone’s Smarties, but in a generous manner where the quality of your work shouts so loudly for you that people cannot help but notice.

It may take a while to generate enough reputation or garner enough support from your chosen market but perseverance partnered with creativity will win.

The other myth that gets propagated is that conformity is a safe, risk free place. In many ways it is safe (or at least it used to be) there is just no reward with it either.

As Emerging Ideas pointed out this week it is the unnecessary things that build you an extraordinary company.

The necessary things are the humdrum basics like accounts, answering the phone, getting to work on time.

Unnecessary are those things that go beyond the call of duty; delivering a bunch of free ideas to a client, throwing a surprise party, having a ping pong table for staff, handing out random bonuses.

Those are the elements of a corporate culture that make it unique and stand out in a boring world.

You are responsible for being your own superhero. You get to decide what your story is and how you tell it.

I cannot do it for you, I can only challenge and inspire you to be better at what you do.

Four years ago I was given an opportunity to show up every week and share my work with you. Four years ago this column was founded with the promise to share patterns and principles that, while not always mainstream, can work in a new and creative manner to boost your business.

Armed with a cup of coffee and a keyboard, being asked to start this column seemed like a superhero moment.

What many people do not know is that for at least five years before that I had been “showing up” on a different platform, writing away on a regular basis in a manner that prepared me for the greater prospect of this column.

Two hundred articles later I still get to bring a smile to your face every Thursday. So my thanks go out to all of you Zachians who have read this column month in month out.

To those of you who have written in and engaged in dialogue that has sharpened both of us you have my sincere gratitude, I love hearing your stories. A huge shout out to the team behind the scenes who bring this to print every week.

So in Milkshake in the Boardroom tradition, I would ask that you grab a mug of steaming, aroma-filled coffee and, as we close out another year, raise it in a toast to being the superheroes we are all meant to be. Now step out onto the pitch of life, step up to the plate, it is your turn to bat.