This reminds me of my first partner in our software/consulting service business. He was absolutely fearless.<p>We would always arrive at appointments very early so he had an excuse to "poke around". He'd ask anybody, the receptionist, someone in the breakroom, even the janitor. He'd see what was going on in the parking lot, the loading dock, even in the warehouse or factory. Seeing him in a business for the first time was like watching a kid in a candy store.<p>In our first meeting, he always knew something about the client's business that they didn't. He'd say things like, "Automating the inventory won't help if Fred and Jean are counting 2 different things." This always led to interesting discussion and often, follow-up business.<p>Once he even spent a week of his own time on third shift, going over procedures and reports with factory supervisors. They didn't know who he was; they just figured someone from the main office sent him. He did a complete analysis in Excel which we used in a proposal. That got us hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of work.<p>I often challenged him, "You can't just do that," I would say. To which he would respond, "These people need help and don't even realize it. We have to find a way to show them." Then the inevitable, "It's better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission."<p>Looking back, it didn't always work. It pissed off some people and burnt those bridges. But when it did work, we often concluded that nothing else would have.<p>I learned a lot in those days. I'm still not as fearless as my partner was, but I'd like to think I'm getting there. Thanks for the memories.
This is especially good advice if you work in a large company. Banging your head against the wall is often more pleasant than getting permission to do something new or different. So my solution is to just mock up a prototype before I tell anyone about it. It's <i>easy</i> to say "I want to do this, and can prove it's not all that difficult". Even better if you can say "I had this idea that was so great I went ahead and wrote it!" People are a lot more likely to take your work seriously after it's already been written than before.
The outcome of this story was favorable (which is why we're reading it). I wonder, however, if there are far more stories that begin the same way but end with "You're being fired for insubordination" or something similarly negative.
"It’s Better to Beg for Forgiveness than to Ask for Permission", Grace Hopper, one of our pioneers. She also coined the term "debugging" and was one of the creators of COBOL.
If I were to follow this philosophy more often I'd try to be damn sure I knew exactly what I was doing before I did. Going off on your own to do something because you know others would not agree is a bit arrogant. It has to come from a belief that you know more than they do. So if you are going to do something when you know your boss/colleague/co-founder would disagree then you had better make sure you do know more than they do.
If you enjoyed this article, you will probably love Randy Pausch's Last Lecture: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Last-Lecture-Randy-Pausch/dp/1401323251/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1276700690&sr=8-1" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Last-Lecture-Randy-Pausch/dp/140132325...</a><p>I had already watched the lecture on YouTube and thought I wouldn't get much from the book but I was wrong.<p>The story of Pausch muscling his way into Disney's Imagineer team is fantastic.
Why do people put distracting animations next to the content which they presumably _want people to read_? I don't care which Twitter users looked at your page, and if I did I could very well find that information without the animation drawing my eye to it.<p>EDIT: Thankfully there's Readability. But I'm sure the author would rather I read it as he presented it.
Sometimes it's better, sometimes not.<p>Life is complex and subtle. That applies to business, personal relationships, friendships, personal hobbies, society, culture, everything. If you bind yourself to the naive "official" level of policies, rules, and regulations then you will miss out on the rich vein of interactions based on tacit and implicit knowledge, culture, and norms.<p>Flirting is a perfect example of this sort of thing. Full of subtlety and complexity and none of it 100% direct and straightforward. All of life has similar elements. If you treat your job, for example, as a mechanistic process then you'll probably have about as much success as if you treated romance the same way.<p>Developing the skills, experience, and judgment to know how, when, where, and in what way to "break the rules" and when not to is a an ongoing, lifelong adventure for everyone.
Tangent story [Asking for Permission]<p><a href="http://kbiri.blogspot.com/2009/01/lens-story-about-yesterday.html" rel="nofollow">http://kbiri.blogspot.com/2009/01/lens-story-about-yesterday...</a>