Nilofer Merchant on Bringing Your Ideas to Reality

Sam. Have any of you ever been told that your ideas are too weird, too wild, or too much? One of the things I want to do is tell you right now that anyone who has ever said that to you is wrong. Because in fact, it is our wild and disruptive ideas that create the future. And yet most of us don't have a shot. And so several years ago, I started studying how do seemingly powerless people make a huge difference in the world? And I want to share one of those stories. Today, she has something to teach us. Kimberly Bryant went to Vanderbilt University and then showed up at dupont. So excited to be an engineer, eager, excited to join this team. And her boss introduced her this way. He said, with Kimberly Bryant, we get a twofer. You see, Kimberly Bryant is a black woman in tech. And what he was doing in that very moment was otherizing her, showing how she was different from that team. Not what she was uniquely capable of doing, not what her passion snower, not what she was there to build. Instead, otherizing actually negates someone's ability to contribute that which only they can. Kim was sad but not surprised when her daughter Kai experienced the same thing. She was going to a summer coding camp, super good gamer, excited to do that work, and shows up and gets home that following week and says, mom, they treated me like a novice. And Kim thought, I thought that this generation that came before we were the first and the onlys would actually create change. But it didn't. And so she decided to do that. And she started designing some curriculum on the back of some paper and borrowed some computers from friends and gathers these kids around her kitchen table, ages 8, 9, 10, and weekend after weekend, starts teaching them to code. And soon other people started joining in and said, hey, can I borrow that curriculum or can you come to my city? And then Black Girls Code was born. And that program has since trained 10,000 girls to code, helping fill the 1.6 million jobs that will be created by 2040. She didn't do that because she felt powerless. She did that by standing in that spot in the world, only she stood. And seeing that problem and acting on would be easy to look at what Kim did and say, well, she was bold and she was brave and she had grit and she was perseverant. And all of that is true, but that's not actually the key instructive piece. What she did was far more structural in nature. Kim shows us that power is not just personal, it's also social. Because as Kim acted on that purpose, that she saw other people saw her act and joined in. And then they went together to create this change in the world. This connection, it turns out, is really key. But most of us don't have that connection. The Data says that 61% of us actually figure out how to give up our ideas. It's called covering. We show up at work trying to act like the people that we work with. Some of the stories in the research, a young man wore glasses to work when he didn't need glasses because he wanted to look old enough to have ideas. A young man also said that he didn't want to reveal how much he wanted to be a stay at home parent because he didn't want his colleagues to think he didn't care about his work. And we've seen it over history when leaders like FDR wouldn't allow themselves to be shown in a wheelchair lest it be seen that they're not a good leader. When we do this covering, we're doing it because we think we can sneak in the window of the castle and maybe no one will notice. But when we're doing it, we're actually giving up all of our original thinking and passion, the things that make us so distinctly our own. We're giving up our power. Now sometimes people wonder why I went on this long search for these research stories. Why do I care so much? And I could explain to you the business context, but my own personal story is probably far more revealing. I was 18 years old when I had come home from going to community college and found my house full of aunties and uncles. And right then they were celebrating the fact that my arranged marriage had been, well, arranged and I was four. And I'd been raised in America since I was four and a half. And it had always been clear to me that my job was to marry well, that this would help provide for my family. And I'd always thought, well, that's kind of what I'm going to do because that's what I've been raised to do. But I had also wanted an education. So I had turned to my uncle in this festivities and said, hey, did you ask the guy if I could get an education? And my uncle says no. We didn't want to add anything to the negotiation table. So no, you have to ask later maybe or never. I waited until all the aunties left the house because I wanted to be polite. But then I did this sort of theatrical thing. I grabbed a box from leftover from groceries and I put in five bucks and one outfit and no toothbrush, mind you, because I did not expect this to actually be real. And I turned to my mother and I said, I am the product, so you can't do the deal without me, so just go ask the guy. And Fi says, no, that's different. Right, but at least ask on my behalf. And she said, no. And so I walked out the door not knowing where I was going to head. And I ended up, wouldn't you know it, at a donut shop, as one does, and ate an apple fritter and a donut hole, biting time until I could call home and be like, so you changed your mind, right? A day went by, two days went by. 30 years went by. I was disowned from my family, homeless, penniless. That power that I had was social. And it was the first of many times I would notice how much when you are seen by a grouping, your power is diminished. Well, it works both ways, right? So in that case, my power was diminished because what my family saw me as was as an Islamic Indian girl. I'm not sure which one of those three was the key criteria for my lack of power, but Islamic Indian girl is supposed to marry well. And when I didn't step into that role, what they said is, you're out. I went on to a career at Apple Computer and a bunch of other places, and I would show up in meetings where they would say, hey, your job is to show up and brainstorm ideas. And I would show up so excited again, like Kim was. And it became really clear that it wasn't the admin that they wanted the brainstorming ideas from. They wanted the MBA types and later, more groupings, more groupings. People were only being screened. Their ideas were only being screened in based on the status of the person, not on who they actually were and what distinct ideas they had to bring. So it's probably not very surprising that when I saw this innovation trend happening that was allowing ideas to come from anywhere and everywhere, using platforms and mechanisms to create scale, I was thinking, what if this is actually the shift in the economy that would let far more ideas participate? And I started to wonder, could that mean that each of us could be seen and valued for the distinct ideas that we had? And I coined this term, this idea that I had, onlyness, combining two pieces, each of us stands in a spot in the world only you stand in. It's a function of your history and experience, visions and hopes. And now, in connectedness through distributed networks, you can actually scale those ideas because you no longer need to fit into those hierarchies. And you could maybe Just maybe have a shot at denting the world. Now, sometimes people hear the word onlyness and they start to think about it as the singular hero story, which is so common in the media, as if it's just about one person. But onlyness itself follows the word individual. Individual is the smallest measure of the human species. That person is never separated. They are always connected. And in the same way, onlyness is the same. It is the connected you based on the things that you care about and what gives you meaning and your passions. From that place, you can now find the other people who care about the same thing and go act in concert to make that happen. In that connected you is your power. So what does all this mean? When I studied the nearly 300 examples like Kim, what I started to realize is that we often make power about the individual. We think it's about being bolder or maybe braver or maybe better branded, but that's not it. The call to action is actually to figure out what is it we care about and then to act on that. And then others join in and you create a movement. As you find your purpose, you find your people. As you find your people, you find your power. Power is the most social thing, and yet right now it's been limited to just a very small group. And I believe there's a real possibility that as we act, we can actually manifest a much bigger reality that each of us, maybe even all of us, maybe even 7.5 billion of us, have a chance to contribute that which only we can to be seen and valued for simply who you are. Sometimes this idea of onlyness gets called a little too weird, a little too wild, a little too much. I had an advisor even say that this idea was audacious. Too audacious that may be. I'll know when people join in as we step into a future that allows each and every one of us to be seen. And you might even remember back to a time when someone really saw that which was so true to you, so distinctly yours, where you shone. And they said, that is amazing. Could you come bring that to the world? And you probably stood up a little taller and were able to contribute that which only you could. What if all of us had that? What if all of us could bring our ideas to bear? What new solutions might we offer? What new creativity could we bring? And what new answers could we do and build that solves humanity's greatest problems? I hope you join me in that. Thank you, Sam.