Will it play in Peoria?"
No offense to Peoria, but who cares?

Statements of convention like this feed our need to know what everyone else is doing before we decide to do likewise. Everybody else is doing it, so it must be the thing to do. Conventional wisdom, the term often credited to economist, John Kenneth Galbraith, limits new ideas, enhances mediocrity and opposes the introduction of contrary thinking because of convenient beliefs that are assumed, most of the time long after they grow outdated.

Convention has nothing to do with leading and everything to do with following. It's what's predictably expected and ordinary, not innovative or groundbreaking, and certainly not the thinking that will drive a thriving business.

"Only dead fish go with the flow" --Anonymous

Consider how often you "go with the flow", doing things or comparing your business practices in terms of convention - what everybody else is doing or expects...
Norm for the industry
Standard protocol
Market average
Within acceptable limits

Think about it, if you are only standard, average or (heaven forbid) merely acceptable, why should anyone beat a path to your door to do business with you?

When every household was baking their own bread and desserts from scratch every day, Arm & Hammer baking soda was there on the shelf as a staple ingredient. Conventional wisdom would have us believe that even as times and preferences changed, the only use for baking soda was, king, If Arm & Hammer was going to survive, it needed to buck convention and re-invent itself to bring new value to new customers. How many things do you now have in your household that contain baking soda? Kitty litter, carpet cleaner, laundry softener, e list seems endless. They successfully innovated, created demand for the same product (with the same name!), and now we can't seem to get enough of the stuff! That transformation took vision and exceptional leadership.

Forget convention if your goal is separating your business from how the market views it and the competition. Get an outside facilitator and pull the team together to brainstorm a list of ideas and concepts without the limits of practicalities. Remember, the results of brainstorming aren't the end. Rather, the ideas generated will drive innovation as the best ones for truly unique products and value added ways of doing things are actually implemented. It takes leadership and courage to risk being a salmon - braving upstream against current thinking and daring to be unique!

"Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary."
--Cecil Beaton

Do anything but go with the flow!

Marilyn Lustgarten, president of The Star Makers Group based in Rockland, ME, is an organizational strategist, coach and consultant to leaders in good companies that want to be great! She also speaks and writes on leadership issues, strategy and organizational transformation. Contact her at