“Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.”
So much to think about in this quote from Cecil Beaton – described on Wikipedia as a British fashion, portrait and war photographer, diarist, painter, and interior designer, as well as an Oscar-winning stage and costume designer for films and the theatre.
So yeah, one of those arty types.
But it could have been uttered by Branson, Jobs, Musk or Bezos – right?
Or if I might be so bold, even little old me 😉
Because right now that quote describes exactly where my team and I are at as we reimagine our business and ‘assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers’ in our industry …
So that we can serve our clients in ways that have never been considered before.
Phew!
Just writing that makes me sort of breathless at the rate of change we are embracing right now.
There’s a couple of words that really stand out for me in Cecil’s quote …
‘BE IMPRACTICAL’, he said.
As you can probably imagine, as a CFO running a firm of growth CFOs, I’m kind of a practical creature – you could say it’s part of our ‘job description’.
But what I’ve found is that you have to be willing to start at ‘impractical’ if you are going to innovate in a way that is actually going meaningful to your clients.
And then you go to work and figure out how to make it possible.
Because you can’t ever really ‘be daring and different’ whilst you’re shackled to being practical.