Sameness Is a Bad Thing

1614 Words7 Pages
Sameness, like discrimination, is a bad thing. By Ken Tucker Our society rightly puts a premium on equality and same treatment for everybody. Discrimination based upon gender, color of skin and culture is a bad thing. It is destructive to people and society. But equality and fair treatment does not mean we should value or extol sameness. Sameness is a bad thing. Sameness, when it comes to innovation equates to failure. Following the same rules as before, asking the same questions over and over again, valuing the same ideas, or only those from the same people, defeats and inhibits innovative discoveries. Similarly, sameness in human achievement merely maintains the status quo. Sameness establishes average as the standard. Often, sameness reproduces mediocrity. Excellence, on the other hand, in innovation and in human achievement, requires difference. Setting a record, inventing a product, instigating a movement all require some kind of difference. Difference, is a good thing. Difference is, as noted above, a pre-requisite for excellence. The good news is difference is a basic human trait. We are all different. But what is your difference? How are you different? Are you able to name the ‘different” in you and qualify how that specifically impacts what you do, feel, say, and produce each day? And what about other people - what does their ‘difference” look like? Do successful people have a “different different”? This seed thought intrigued us, so we set out to investigate if there was a unique ‘difference’—unique trait(s), that highly successful people possess. We began studying data from leaders in health care, government, education, the not-forprofit sector, and corporate industries. We looked at these leaders’ measurements on a variety of respected, standardized tests, including the Clifton StrengthsFinder©, Myers Briggs Type Indicator © (MBTI), CoreClarity © ,
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