Floogie Bird was a toy made to fly only backwards. He made it
famous by seizing on this fact and dubbing his critics “Floogie
Birds.” He puckishly described them as resisting progress, want-
ing to fly only backwards.
Floogie Birds abound; it’s counterproductive to demean them.
In fact, we will likely learn something from listening carefully for
valid points. But even as we take criticisms in stride, looking
through a lens of humor can help. For instance, in one loosely
structured organization, regional leaders with internal political
power would come to the outfit’s summit meetings voicing resis-
tance to new plans. The organization’s leader, preparing his team,
described these men as Mongol chiefs mounted on war horses,
riding up over the ridge to confront them. This image drew a lot
of knowing smiles, helping those who had to meet the Mongols
to relax a little.
The Graham team, as noted, was well known for appropriate
humor. Like condiments, a light touch often makes experiences
more palatable.Unabashedly Grope
The innovative process is far from straightforward business
analysis, audience research, application, and rollout. Over the
decades at CTI, we’ve often used the word gropeto describe it—a
process like groping in a dark room for a door handle. The word
has various meanings, including the sexual one, but as we’ve
reflected on the process of finding solutions to “unsolvable prob-
lems,” we kept coming back to it. Sometimes a solution was so
simple that we asked, “Why couldn’t we have come up with this
four meetings ago? Why did we need to grope through all this
analysis and dialogue?”
That’s why we were glad recently to come across this state-
ment by Albert Einstein: “How do I do my work? I grope.”
The innovations most of us try to develop fall far short of
breakthroughs in nuclear physics. But the commonality of dig-
ging deeply, even when we don’t see the immediate application
to the problem, is universal.
The Leadership Secrets of Billy Graham