This is Why You Don’t Fight Stupid

Yesterday, today, tomorrow: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

While there are certainly many great places to work, and some great leaders around us, this is about the not-so-much. The let’s-say-rare (ahem) moments, when you have to deal with less-than-great. This is about corporate stupidity.

Corporate stupidity is rampant. And it affects you. Bigly.

Fight For Things, Not Against Others’ Problems

“Don’t fight stupid. You are better than that. Make more awesome.

“If you are trying to make a difference, to make something happen, and you keep bumping into ‘No’ … no one who will say ‘Yes,’ no process that will help you, no appeals … you are going to have a long, slow, painful death,” advises this hero.

“Get out of there! Every time I tried to win over stupid, I regretted it. And every time I moved on, I was glad I did. Don’t fight stupid!”

That’s Jesse Robbins, who, years ago, earned the title The Master of Disaster for translating his emergency preparedness as a Seattle volunteer firefighter to Amazon’s back-room operations. His role was to triage and fix emergency incidents in Amazon’s server centers and tech infrastructure.

“My operations experiences at Amazon had a lot of parallels to fire fighting,” he shares. “You don’t build the buildings, but you’re responsible for putting the fires out quickly when something happens, and going to great lengths to minimize the damage.”

Robbins is now CEO of Orion Labs, a firm that creates real-time communications for teams — inspired by years of communication lessons with firefighters and EMTs.

Even though his leadership role at Orion occupies most of his time, he still serves as a firefighter at Burning Man, the annual alternate-universe event in the Black Rock Desert.

He learned the lesson about Don’t Fight Stupid whenever he did try to win that fight: “I’ve never looked back and said, ‘I was right and they were wrong and I’m so glad I won.’ On the other hand, every time I’ve gotten a chance to build something new with great people, I remember every single one of those. If the organization or your boss is incapable of changing, it’s time for you to move on,” he concludes. “There are a host of opportunities waiting for you elsewhere.”

(Adapted from my interview with Jesse for Disrupt! Think Epic, Be Epic.)

Three Quick Alternatives

1. Live for Daily Happiness: Always ensure that happiness is a daily goal, not something that’s just reserved for later… Live a life where you always seek out, create and demand happiness instead of enduring stupid crap! (See Shawn Achor’s TEDx talk, The Happiness Advantage.)

2. Delete More, FOMO Less: For more than 20 years, Jensen Group research has found that the average person loses 2—4 hours per day on cluttered, unfocused, and unnecessary communication. And technology and overload and meetings and emails are not the problem. You are! Deal with your Fear Of Missing Out and you’ll be a lot happier, and dealing with a lot less stupidity!

3. Quit: If there’s too much stupidity, and its end is nowhere in sight, as Jesse says, it’s time for you to move on.

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Bill Jensen Site, Twitter, FB. Bill’s latest book, Future Strong, is about the five deeply personal choices each of us must make to be ready for all the disruptive tomorrows heading our way.