Incredible = Misunderstood

you won’t believe this, but the inspiration for this post came from a robot-generated spam message to one of my websites. the body message read “to be incredible is to be misunderstood.” i’ve often wondered about the tradeoff in business between the need to do something great (or to represent something remarkable) and the general public’s ability to recognize and value it as such. if what you’re doing is so special, then how can you expect those who are less special to understand and hold it dear? could it not just fly right by him or her? when i ran my first firm in the 90s (zinc agency), we often struggled with this. in fact, a particularly astute colleague compared us to tricky, the british music producer and performer whose music was commonly referred to as “ahead of its time.” is that good in business? i think not. i think you need a blend of great and better than average things, with the latter getting more easily noticed and embraced by the masses. it’s like the saying goes — it’s only clever if people get it. fellow business leaders: keep plugging away at this! you’ll hit the right mix soon enough.