(Nov. 7, 2024 ● Oslin Pierrette)
If you want true innovation. Innovation that actually brings companies and corporations big success, defining moments success. What’s going to give you the best opportunity is having a team, a collective of people who have interconnected shared goals and visions. Usually you need unconventional minds, who are able to expand the horizon for certain creations. And there has to be some belief system that allows them to operate, even if “experts” disapprove of their unconventional views. You’re going to have to take risks, and you’re going to have to invest in unproven ideas. If you want to embark on new innovations, then you have to believe in things that haven’t been done. This understanding and mindset, this beautiful creative harmony has brought us some of the greatest innovations that are vital to our modern day world. But this creative and innovative ideology is one that many corporations and executives hate. And that’s what this film speaks to. Companies self sabotaging battles of creatives & innovators vs the suits, the executives.
So many corporations, I’d say most are bureaucratic disharmonious systems, that are full of dissonance & confusion. And it’s like why do companies run like this, don’t they want success, why not operate with more competence, and why are they so incompetent? And when you start to observe and analyze these bureaucratic systems. It’s not multiple people collectively under one company, that doesn’t really describe what this is. It’s more a collective individuals who are all seeking self interests and the best positions for themselves. Multiple self interests steering in multiple directions, instead of everyone working towards a shared goal and vision. So things are running absurdly, something any competent person would expect in a system like that. Let’s make the possible, impossible basically. Simple things that can probably get finished in the matters of minutes, are backed up for weeks through the reductive and inefficient systems of bureaucracy. With all these ridiculous rules and regulations that breed these inefficiencies. Like Ken says, you grew up to live a life to enforce wimpy rules & regulations of the most minuscule and ridiculous aspects.
That’s why the products sold from these companies get worse and more redundant over time. The entire company is so disjointed. All these different sectors within the company, for like different parts of the product, these sectors run very separate from each other. It’s not an interconnected company that has different sectors, but all with shared visions. They just run separate sectors, and put together very disharmonious assembly lined products, creating product absurdity.
Too many voices with different goals, most likely self interests. These types of committees are bad for creative success. All these execs are so risk averse, to secure the safety of their positions. You see this fear & anxiety that causes this docile sterile rigidness from this chain of commands. Every boss has another boss to adhere to. Where you see they operate in a way to give themselves leeway to play the blame game. Seek safe blame games, instead of actually being productive. Where you’ll see no one wants to take initiative, that would make them accountable for failure. No one is seeking productivity, everyone’s seeking safety. Which is basically an absurd phenomenon of nothingness happening.
To the point these self interested egos rather the company or team fail, if it’s for the selfish interest of their own betterment, parasitical monkeys. A shark eats shark world. This parasitical disharmonious incompetence just doesn’t stop, it leads to this abyss of absurdity. And basically the film is trying to make their most groundbreaking innovations under this absurdity, but really trying to avoid and get around the absurd bureaucratic system as best as they can, just to get some breathing room to actually create and innovate something.
Absurdity comes when you have these talentless execs leading projects. They don’t even have any expertise for the projects they lead, even for the entire industry they are in. Maybe they were a part of successful projects that reported great sales, and they finessed their way into promotions because of that. It’s the stupidest conundrum. The sales guys, execs, basically money guys, being valued higher than the actual creatives, who create the value for the company. These guys try to make it seem like and make people believe, the creatives, they’re not great salesmen & marketers, that actually generate the revenue for these companies, that’s why they need us, the sales team, the execs, the money guys. When in actuality, the creatives sometime creates so much value, it gives these nothingness execs and money guys so much leeway to fuck up their company. This is why incompetence is so dangerous, because these money guys are great at making it look like they’re the expertise, with their confidence. It’s absurdity and insanity, they convey a strong sense of confidence on the foundation of their nothingness.
These execs probably completely rely on data and trends, because they have zero sense of taste or what actually works. They don’t have the inner mechanisms that would bring them intuition or insight, so they aren’t assured themselves about anything. So when you have these nothingness talented execs creating, it’s this outer body surfaceable manufacturing. Their “creations” are so artificial and contrived. They mimic confidence and a great image, but they’re truly junk like many of the products they create.
Look at the difference between Ford and Ferrari. Ford is about generating revenue and worrying about shareholders. Which can and has led to cheap low quality products, that they mass produce and mass market. And it has over time lowered the quality and cachet of the Ford name. Known as the company that sells junk. Where Ferrari embraces artistic & performance perfection. An Italian brand, where their companies over there usually have the cachet of high quality. Italy is known, at least in the past when they were more family run, as having these artistic integrity companies. You have the creative head who wants the best performing and quality products. So they get the best quality in every avenue, to come together for the shared goal and vision of the best cars, and you get this harmonious beautiful innovation. Like it looks like it was made with such harmony. Where the opposite Ford, they’re making disharmonious cheaper junk. But when Henry Ford II sees that his name is being spat on, he wants to prove others wrong, especially Ferrari. Which forced him to embrace the creative and innovative ideology. Invest as much as possible, take the risk, and hire the most creative and innovative people to see through the vision, where even Ford could surpass Ferrari.
But going back to bureaucracy. When risks and actually investing gets you this level of company success. Why are creative companies run so bureaucratically. And when you observe these systems, you see it’s riddled with individualistic insecurity, that would benefit people like those incompetent money guys. Also it’s nefariously power oriented, in a way where if you see someone who could challenge your position, you will do your best to manipulate and sabotage that, destroying any threats to your power. Also keep a wall up with maybe having multiple “regulation” middle men, to obscure visibility, so you can more freely do your wrongdoings in the dark. Also hire people that enforce your power and position. Basically these are pure parasites building parasitic structures. They siphon all the value and revenue they can for themselves. While doing the bare minimum to keep anything afloat. They don’t care about anything outside the status and power of their own name, and money that they siphon. That’s how we get this absurd landscape of all these absurd landscapes operating. That’s why you see this same story of the true innovators and creators of society being used and abused for their genius.
Also one virtue I saw from Ken Miles. To get to the peaks and epitomes of life, you have to let go of protecting the safeness of the world to fully live. Let go of the world, let go of risk, and push the limits, and good chance you’ll be on the cusp of what the current peaks of life are, pushing those limits farther. When you’re so close to death risk wise, is sometimes when you’re most close to life, living the most, when it’s the most real.