Do you Have a Sacred Cow Holding you Back?

According to Wikipedia, the term sacred cow is used for a person, institution, idea (often a theory) or ideology that is immune (usually unreasonably so) from criticism or opposition.

A frustrated co-worker once came to me to vent about a problem that he had during a brainstorming session. The purpose of a brainstorming session, he (correctly) explained, is to get all of the ideas out, and then narrow them down based upon their feasibility. The problem that they were having was that too many people had gone to the session with pre-conceived notions of what wouldn't work. So much so, that every time a creative idea came out, it was shot down. The results they walked away with were less than desired.

He went on to tell me that his biggest frustration in his professional career has been all of the sacred cows that he has encountered. He explained that every company that he has ever worked for (and probably every company in existence) has self imposed, unnecessary constraints that limit their problem solving creativity and ability to innovate. Frustrated, he told me that every once in a while you need to go out and slaughter one of the cows.

I couldn't agree him more. In todays world, change is inevitable. Each one of us must decide whether we are going to embrace it or fight against it. The choice to embrace change will likely lead to improvements in the efficiency and effectiveness of what we do. Fighting against change will probably result in anger, frustration, and wasting time and in the end you will still have to make the change anyway.

We all have sacred cows at our jobs and in our lives. It seems like successful people and successful entrepreneurs are able to recognize those unreasonable constraints, slaughter some cows, and discover new and better ways to do things.

Adam McFarland owns SportsLizard.com - an online marketplace for buying and selling sports collectibles.

SportsLizard.com was recently awarded honorable mention in the Microsoft Start Something Amazing Awards.

You can read Adam's blog about being a young internet entrepreneur by going to http://www.sportslizard.com/blog/

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