Seth’s Blog: Optimistic enthusiasm as a form of realism:

If your organization is both pessimistic and operationally focused, then every new idea is a threat. It represents more work, something that could go wrong, a chance for disaster. People work to protect against the downside, to insulate against the market, to be sure that they won’t get blamed for anything that challenges the system. In organizations like this, a new idea has to be proven to be better than the current status quo in all situations before it gets launched.

Seth’s Blog: After you’ve done your best:

If you believe that righteous effort leads to the shame of personal failure, you’ll seek to avoid righteous effort.

Successful people analytically figure out what didn’t work and redefine what their best work will be in the future. And then they get back to work.

Tom Green – Google+ – Once more in public: The news that Adobe is killing Flash…:

“Welcome to your new careers. If you can’t deal with this sort of change on a regular basis… there’s the door. Go get a refund and go drive a beer truck.” It was a great opportunity for me to review all that had been going on, what happened, and what it means for them.

The thrust was technology changes and you either embrace change or get out of the way. Change is a fact of life in our business and, as a teacher, it is a fact of life for me.

(Via The Shape of Everything)