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Maybe You Should Reinvent the Wheel.
When and how to break rules and conventions
Howie Chan
July 28, 2024
Welcome to Legend Letters - A rebellion against the ordinary, where you redefine success and live your version of legendary.
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HEARTSET
“Don’t reinvent the wheel.”
This metaphor attempts to convey the idea that we should not be wasting time improving something that inherently doesn’t have many flaws.
But it makes a huge assumption about the wheel or any other product or service that exists today - that there is no room for improvement.
That because the same idea has existed for so long, we should not pay attention to challenging or changing it. That’s in direct contradiction of what it means to be legendary isn’t it?
You’ll appreciate this.
In 2014, David Patrick went onto Shark Tank with a reinvention of the wheel (Watch initial pitch here)
Traditional wheel designs are circular, his new design is a hybrid of a sphere and a cube, taking on the properties of both in motion. The initial Kickstarter campaign reached nearly eight times its initial goal and even attracted the attention of Tony Hawk and used by other skateboarders who placed in various competitions around the world.
Traditional wheels if thin, have lower traction and if thick have lower speeds. The Shark Wheel has the best of both worlds - high traction and high speed. In addition, this new design can push debris out of the way instead of hitting them straight on, giving a smoother ride.
Shark Wheel
They landed 3 sharks in 2014, and achieved $2.7 Million in revenue in 2020. Pretty good for not following that old adage of “Don’t reinvent the wheel”!
Image credit: The Bustle Entertainment
What if we challenged conventions and broke certain rules?
MINDSET
Sometimes you need to break the rules in order to rule.
When and how should you challenge and break the rules?
SKILLSET
Seven B.R.A.V.E.S.T principles about challenging norms and breaking rules:
1/ Be well-informed
Whether it’s dogma or a rule, the first step is to understand it - why is it there? What was the context when it was formed? Who is it trying to protect?
Some examples of what you might face:
Federal law: Don’t trade stocks based on insider information.
Corporate policy: Don’t accept gifts from vendors you do business with.
Corporate policy: All new ideas must go through the innovation process.
Grammar rules: Sentences must have a noun and a verb, place adjectives before a noun they describe
Career advice: Network to build relationships before you need them
Rules about insider trading and vendor gifts are meant to protect fairness and ensure integrity.
The innovation process is meant to make it easier for management to track and support ideas because it got too messy and costly.
Understand them, learn them, before you consider breaking them.
Even the legendary Pablo Picasso learned, practiced and mastered traditional art conventions and rules before he broke them.
2/ Risk analysis
Do the benefits of breaking them outweigh the risks? Break the law, and you might go to jail, break corporate policy and you might be fired. Once you have a clear understanding of the stakes, you can then think about whether the benefits outweigh them.
3/ Aim for the greater good
When looking at the benefits, think about whether breaking it helps the team, the organization, the community. Sometimes it might hurt you personally, but impact the collective good.
This might factor into your decision.
4/ Value alignment
When you know your non-negotiables, it makes it easier to break rules and conventions. Protesting a new law, taking a new idea and keeping it out of the corporate process - I’m not saying you should always stick to your values regardless of the consequences, I’m just saying you should reflect on them before you make a decision.
Aligning with your values is a vote for the person you wish to become.
5/ Execute with intent
“You don’t learn to walk by following the rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.”
‘Firestarters’ is a nickname for those who spearhead change. They choose when and where to ignite it and they do it with purpose.
To be a firestarter, break rules, upend conventions because you have a cause, and you have an intent. Breaking rules for the sake of breaking them is a self-serving rebel.
6/ Strive for creativity
The creative act is an act of rule breaking. To stand out from the rest, to do things that are not socially normal. Interestingly, behavioral scientists found that dishonesty correlated with creativity.
This does not mean you should start lying and cheating! Approach rule breaking as a creative act and take it into consideration before you start that fire that cannot be extinguished.
7/ Thrive in discomfort
You will be uncomfortable break any convention, rule or social norm.
Think about this statistic: when a women from a smaller city moves to New York City, there is an 86 percent chance that she will ditch her flats and wear high heels.
The pressure to conform to norms is self-imposed but it’s an act of self-preservation, cultivated from thousands of years living as part of a village or tribe, which is the primary reason humans survived and thrived. Early man perished when they were banished or exiled.
Like with anything, rule breaking, convention busting is a skill. The more you go through the process of identifying which rules to break, the better you will get at it.
“The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.”
Break some rules, Live your legend 🤘🏽,
Howie Chan
Creator of Legend Letters
Sources:
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