As a contrarian, I'm learning it can be better to follow the herd.

I heard a quote once that says something like this: "it's so difficult to be a non-conformist these days when everybody is doing it". It speaks to the idea that appearing to be a rebel is often just about following a fashionable trend. Getting a tattoo today is no longer the rebellious anti-social thing to do. And in business, talking about disruption feels like a gathering stampede to be the most extreme and crazily innovative. Has "innovation" become so commonplace now that it is no longer any meaning? Has it become a new dogma, with its own guru priests in hoodies offering commandments to 10x your business?

Silicon Valley Think

I am born contrarian and I have come to realize it is mostly unhelpful. For example, in the past, I was very skeptical of "silicon valley think" and moaned about how its crazy economics don't apply outside the bay area. I developed an allergic reaction to the herd that laps up every tweet or meditates on every page written by the Titans of San Fransisco. It all looked like hype and dogma to me.

Unfortunately, I also ignored everything that would undoubtedly have helped me in my businesses. It took me years to realize our approach to sales management was very weak and ignored best practices. I thought our business was special and that we had to hack an entirely new way of selling. I was wrong.

Some skepticism is necessary

The self-help guru (a charlatan to some), Tai Lopez, advertises that the average CEO reads 52 books a year and his company will help you achieve this. It is genius but it is also a lie. The genius is that CEOs are afraid of being left behind in a world of super-fast innovation and disruption. But research shows that people in that bracket read about 15 books per year! And that includes a harmless fictional novel here and there, not a stream of powerful and life-changing books. Even if a CEO reads 15 life-changing books every year, where do they have the time to digest and implement these fantastic insights? So the contrarian in me feels justified to ignore the hype in this trend.

But, on average, contrarians are wrong

We live in a world of mean-reversion, i.e. most long term trends overpower short term deviations (unless there is a strong correlation driving the relationship...). Traditions, culture, norms and best practices carry with them centuries of accumulated wisdom that are nudged along by short term contemporary ideas, shifted slightly by disruptors and innovators. For much of my business career, I made the mistake of ignoring the depth of knowledge available in best practices because being innovative meant dispensing with all that old and outdated hogwash, at least so it seemed. At the same time, my contrarian viewpoint meant I eschewed any new trends as well! A case of too much skepticism and too little humility (in other words, arrogance).

Where is the balance?

I don't know the answer to this problem of balance between skepticism and acceptance of accumulated wisdom. These past few months I am trying to find and apply best practices before trying to innovate. I petition whoever appears to be an expert in the field and ask the question, "what does good looks like?". It's not great for my ego as each time I realize my depth of knowledge in most fields is poor (ouch, just got slapped by the Dunning-Kruger Effect).

I will rather base over 90% of what I am implementing on a strongly established methodology and limit the innovative and contrarian impulses to the remaining 10%. At this level, I still feel like I am forging our own path while building on what others have already figured out a long time ago.

It's embarrassing to say this, but so far the results have been staggering.