Fire Your Board To Get Better Business Results

an interesting, somehow inspiring article… I’ll shortly comment on something :)

excerpt from the article:

It might seem radical to go against the grain and figure things out for yourself, but some of the greatest success stories of all time have done it that way.

You might just end up doing something absolutely amazing:

1. Sigmund Freud was booed off stage the first time he presented his theories to a group of scientists in Europe.  He went on to win the Goethe Award for his work in psychology.
2. Abraham Lincoln went off to fight in the Black Hawk War as a captain and returned home demoted as a private.  He went on to become Commander in Chief.
3. Winston Churchill failed his sixth grade and lost every public election he ever ran in for more than six decades.  He went on to become Prime Minister at the age of sixty-two.
4. Albert Einstein didn’t speak until he was four, couldn’t read basic words until he was seven, and was expelled from school.  He went on to revolutionize physics with his theory of relativity.
5. Henry Ford failed at farming, being an apprentice, and as a machinist — going bankrupt five times.  He went on to modernize mass production.
6. Stan Smith was rejected as a ball boy for a David Cup tennis match because he was “too clumsy”.  He went on to win eight Davis Cup championships and is considered one of the greatest doubles tennis players of all time.
7. Charles Schultz had every cartoon rejected that he submitted to his high school yearbook and was rejected by Walt Disney.  He went on to create the most popular cartoon series ever.
8. Van Gogh only sold a single painting his entire life — to a friend’s sister for about $50.  He went on to paint over 800 masterpieces; seven of which are worth together almost $1 billion.
9. Leo Tolstoy flunked out of law school and was labeled “unable to learn” by his professors.  He went on to become one of the world’s greatest novelists.

These people weren’t perfect.  And they weren’t always great role models.  But you know who they are because they fired their board and lived life on their own terms.

They didn’t compromise.  They didn’t need approval or permission or empowerment.

They just decided to keep figuring things out until they got the results that they wanted.

That might just work today.

but those guys are exceptions, besides the continuous search and figuring out, the no compromise, no need for approval or permission or empowerment… there should be something more, not that much related to our (educated) attitude and behavior :)

cause I find myself in this description, should I expect to become a genius, and most probably much acclaimed postmortem? :))

but then… how can be the fact that Van Gogh’s paintings are so much loved and expensive now be a motivation and inspiration? He doesn’t know it, during his life he was feeling miserable. Did he get the result that he wanted?

this kind of extraordinary “success stories” happen naturally… it’s not the other way around - I’ll go against the “rules” and thus become (a worthy) extraordinary. my opinion.