Everybody Is Born A Genius.
Mediocrity Is Learned
The Power of a relevant idea
It is said that Henry Ford once declared
that if he had asked his team what the
next project was to be, they would have
told him that the next big thing was to
make horses that run faster and definitely
not the production of cars. The big take
out from this is that it is not enough
for us to have ideas. Our ideas must be
relevant.
Relevance is the process of aligning your
senses to present day realities. This is the
number one quality that will keep a leader
in office. Many people do not have their
senses aligned to the reality of the time
they are living in nor the environment in
which they are operating. Once your ideas
are no longer resonating with people,
your circle of value will begin to shrink
and once that happens your relevance is
over. The truth is that most great ideas are
rejected by experts at the onset but one
common attribute of great ideas is their
ability to gain traction against all odds
and against the opinions of the experts.
Many people watched in shock as the
numbers rolled in during the last US
elections and it became obvious that
Donald Trump was going to be the new
President of the United States. Around
the world people did not understand how
it could happen. How could someone who
had so many scandals around him, who
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was caught on tape saying unprintable
things and who was not even a politician
in the first place emerge from defeating
all the big names in the establishment and
become president. Well, his message was
not hidden. He had written this message
in his books about the state of America.
His message was that if America was a
ship it was the titanic and headed for an
iceberg. He blamed Americas impending
doom on the fact that there was a huge
social security bill which the government
would never be able to pay. He then said
that the key to fixing this was to bring jobs
back to America so that Americans can
generate more money internally. He also
What is the point in
being present if your
presence is not mak-
ing a difference? The
difference that you
make is the yardstick
for measuring your rel-
evance. Never forget
the fact that you are the
salt of the earth. Your
relevance comes from
the value you bring and
the value you bring will
come from the quality
of your ideas.
said illegal immigration was putting more
weight on the system and so immigration
had to be fixed.
Apparently that message resonated with
enough people to put him in the White
House in spite of any allegation that was
against him in other areas. The message was
relevant and it resonated strongly enough
to bypass all his apparent shortcomings.
That is the power of relevance. There are
few things as powerful as an idea that
resonates.
For an idea to resonate and become
relevant, it must be solving a problem. The
problem may not even be obvious to the
people that have it. For instance, Mark
Zuckerberg had an idea to connect people.
Now the truth is that we did not know that
we wanted to connect with each other. We
did not see the problem. We did not know
that people would be interested in seeing
what we did on vacation or what we were
eating or our new car.
Zuckerberg saw a problem we did not
know we had and brought a solution we
did not know we needed. His idea passed
the relevance test and in the process he
built a half a trillion dollar behemoth
called Facebook. The ability to identify
a problem that people do not know they
have and develop a solution that they do
not know they need is nothing short of
sheer genius. The question therefore is
that is this a skill that can be developed
by everyone or is it just reserved for a few
geniuses?
I subscribe to the idea that everyone is a