How Do We Do Better?

This is the first guest post on the Hygge blog. Duncan is semi-new Hygge member, but he has quickly become a fixture around here. He has a very interesting career history. Stay tuned for a feature on him soon.

It’s no corner office with a view…

Imagine this: A large desk sprinkled with papers, pens and cell phones. There is a pair of floor to ceiling bookcases made of rich mahogany filled with books and knickknacks in the corner. Then three chairs and a coffee table set up next to a bar cart loaded with different colored liquids. Here you sit tucked away in your own little power bubble. Do you believe that your best, most creative, most inspirational work can come from a room that is empty?

I do not.

Why wouldn’t you want to fill your office with your competitors? Wait…what?! Yes, you read that right. Imagine stacking a room with the best of the best in your professional field and opening the floor to a simple question.

“How do we do better?”

You may be asking for disaster, but you just cultivated the greatest collective of creative minds in one particular field. Who wouldn’t want to find out what comes from this? If you are sitting there, holding your cards to your chest and not letting anyone in, can you answer this question?

“Am I performing at a high level and trying to create the best possible thing for the world?”

If you aren’t, you shouldn’t be an entrepreneur. A person who organizes a business taking on a greater than normal financial risk in order to do so, is the definition of entrepreneur. But we all know that it’s more than that.

It is believing in something so much that you will respond to an email at 5:00 a.m. and at 11:30 p.m. You are letting the fear of failing, losing money, or whatever hold you from cultivating something that is potentially special. Don’t let this concept make you sit back and say, “I got this and I am going to play it safe.” Take a fucking chance!

I challenge you to write something on a whiteboard this week — an idea, a thought or something you created that someone might steal. Can you imagine if a friend or heck, a competitor, writes something that is a crazier concept than you have ever thought of?

Since I have been at Hygge, I have come to really understand my goals, the path I am going to take to get there and how cool it is to look at your competitor (or fear) across the table and say, “How can we make this better?”