What happened to the angry monkeys?
Be passionate! Dream Big! Live a happy life! You are the owner of your own life.
We are exposed to such kind of phrases which sound like public campaign
slogans from morning to bed time. It is not hard to find people repeating these
phrases as if they were some popular hit song lyrics, as these are too prevalent
in our daily lives. But, now let’s be a little bit more frank to ourselves. Are you
not tired of such motivational slogans?
Of course, these words are worthy to bear in mind. It is good thing to live with
passion and dream. Everyone wants to live a happy life. Everyone wants to be
the designer of his or her own life.
However, I can’t deny that I feel somewhat uncomfortable when hearing such
inspirational talks. I feel guilty every time when I find myself determined to
accomplish new projects and soon give them up in a few days for lack of
passion. Many say that we should dream, but, in reality, most people even don’t
know what they really like and want to do in their lives. It makes me really sad to
see people vow to live better lives when they hear some success stories-the
stories about people who made their dream come true people-through books
and televisions.
Let’s listen from our real inner voice. Do you think you are living a happy life?
Isn’t it that you feel depressed and oppressed rather than feeling happy? Do
you think you are the leader of your own life? Sadly, in reality, you feel frustrated
everyday, but still believe that you will be better off in terms of social and
economic status, as a result of enduring today’s hard work. Don’t pretend you
don’t know anything. Just look at your supervisors. They are the self-portrait of
yourself five or ten years from now. Are you sure that they seem to own their
own lives? Am I the only one who thinks that they seem to be lonely and blinded
by self-righteousness rather than happy, although they make better salary and
enjoy higher status? Let’s take a look at Google’s 80/20 Innovation Model where
spending 20% of our time on activities related to personal interest and passion
has positive influence on the rest 80% of time we are engaged in our main work
tasks. You may think Google is superior by any measure and feel frustrated that
your company seems to treat you only as expendables. You may hope your
company will adopt Google’s model, but I am sure that such thing will never
happen, if your company is a typical company which considers meeting
deadlines as important as life. A company which allows its employees to spend
their time on something else other than their work tasks may be considered as
negligent in managing its employees, although the employees there believe that
the two biggest barriers to their achievement are 2M, which are Meeting and
Manager.
The era of creativity has come. Needs of customers has diversified as their
number increases. Companies are faced with a challenge where they are
difficult to survive if keeping stick to the old way of doing things. It has become
increasingly difficult to earn the heart of customers even with a product with
good performance and a reasonable price tag. Moreover, as widespread use of
SNS shifted communication style from dot-to-dot to face-to-face communication,
stories of individual has gained power as powerful as mass media.
As the speed of change and trend accelerates, what people say about a
company rather than the company’s brand itself has become more important
source of competitiveness. What should we do to breakthrough this crisis?
Creative Management was suggested as the answer for that question.
Nowadays, the importance of ideas is valued more than ever, and new big and
small attempts are made to inspire new ideas and innovation. So people began
to come up with idea suggestion system as well as new training programs which
focused on enhancing creativity. And the word ‘creative’ was found on almost all
new systems, policies and slogans such as creative thinking, creative
organizational culture, and creative leadership. The word ‘creative’ was used
widely across the society as like a syndrome. And it has become very familiar
word that any word without “creative” sounded outdated and it has become
common to measure CQ (Creativity Quotient) as well as IQ and EQ. But I see
nothing has changed..
Being passionate and creative without internal motivation is same as doing
unsustainably intensive diet. It might work out well in short term, but, eventually,
you will come across the bigger side effects like yo-yo phenomenon. You can’t
be passionate just because you want to be passionate. If you do not understand
where passion is originated, you will end up with only distressing yourself. Then
where does passion come from? Passion is originated from curiosity. It also
comes from taking an interest in something. Kids are passionate because they
have endless curiosity. The same thing applies to love. Curiosity and interest in
others lead to passionate love. Curiosity is caused by an internal stimulus that
takes place in our minds. We feel curious when the information you are already
familiar with is connected to new stimulus. Einstein also once said that his
genius talent is thanks to his vigorous curiosity, not to his gifted talent.
Creativity can be defined as being connected to something different
things.
Steve Jobs pointed out that creativity is just all about connecting dots. Creative
people say that they happen to come up with new creation. They happen to
have different perspectives as they were offered opportunities to go through
various experiences. They say they were able to find serendipity when they
came across something new, based on their past experiences. They stressed
that it is important to build a relationship with people with the perspectives and
experiences different from mine, rather than colleagues who share with me
same daily experiences, because creativity is connection between new
experiences. That is why we can hardly expect innovative ideas when urging
employees to propose good ideas. It is not that creativity is aroused when we
do workshops, play football, and have a drinking party together. Meanwhile,
Robert Fabricant of Frog Design said, “creativity is not in us. It exists “between”
is. It means that creativity is all about connection and exists in some space
between us. Doesn’t “space” mean hollow and empty? This is not true. You
need to know that the rest half of a cup filled with half cup of water is not empty
but filled with the air. In Asian countries including Korea, it has been common to
fill only half of a cup when drinking liquor, thinking the rest half would be filled
with stories and friendship. It was that flavor and taste of liquor were able to
become delicate with trust and passion as well as personal charm of the
drinkers being melted into a glass of liquor. Passion is able to maintain its flame
because of chemical action between something that exists between us.
Why am I lack of passion and creativity? Why am I not living a heart-throbbing
life? Why am I not happy? This is because we live in an environment where it is
difficult to relate to other people. We talk to the same people about the same
topics every day, and the boundary of our relationship with people grows narrow
as time flows. We are living a life being disconnected from people, rather than
being connected to them. Moreover, we live in a society where our
organizational culture presses an individual to exercise one’s best
competencies, rather than trying to lay the foundation for connected relationship,
failing to realize that passion and creativity already exist between us. We
repeatedly blame ourselves for lack of creativity, passion and dream, and
eventually, fall in the trauma of learned helplessness.
This causes serious social problem. Famous positive psychologist Martin
Seligman pointed out that the real danger of learned helplessness is that it
negatively affects all kinds of social relationship. We tend to jump to negative
conclusions without an effort to understand the root cause of many big or small
social issues and problems at our home or workplace. We think our lives are full
of irritating and annoying routines. That is why anger and slander are prevalent
while conversation and compromise are hard to find.
We all want to live a meaningful life. We expect more exciting and fun events to
happen in our lives. In fact, we all are passionate. But, such passion and
curiosity are burning its flame only inside us because there is no ‘space’ where
our internal passion can be realized. Why do we feel stagnant, depressed and
stifled in our daily lives? This is because we have passion inside us. There is no
reason to feel stifled if we didn’t have it in the first place.
I felt pity that we all work very hard under the organizational structure, but feel
painful and uncomfortable for unknown sense of guilty and pressure.
Organizations where I belong always had to come before my personal life. I had
to run at full speed toward the goal of the organization. Meanwhile, I felt that I
am stuck and regressing as time flied. I couldn’t let my time fly like that. It was
me who needed to change, not the company. In fact, the level of company can
never exceed the level of executives and employees there. I wanted to
rediscover joy of love and friendship and wanted to live an exciting life. I wanted
to be assured that I am the owner of my own life. So once again I wanted to feel
passion and overflowing joy. And I thought that connection with others can
make this happen. So I started to build relationship with people who shared my
idea, and started to create our own stories that exist between us. It was not that
we could be friends with or open our heart to each other just because we met.
We needed to spend some time together to build the connected relationship,
and then laid the foundation where everyone can lead this relationship. And in
one year, we were able to bring about a new change hard to imagine a year ago.
We realized the power of connection and space between the relationships in
such a massive organization like Samsung.
However, this book is not about Samsung. This is about people just like you
who are spending their daily lives in such organization. People work on their
tasks in perfect order, hiding their real self and passion, just like you do. But,
Organizations is logic, but unorganized organization like TEDx is MAGIC.
we started to be connected not by our work tasks, but by our own interest and
curiosity, focusing on something trivial rather than serious, moving from
heaviness to casualness. The people gradually expanded their influence and
turned this massive and cold-hearted organization into a fun company, as the
number of people who joined this movement snowballed from a few people to
thousands. we eventually came up with results.
We experimented the power of connection between individuals through finding
redballoons in the world of Samsung branches, where people are asked to
locate 9 balloons hidden in Samsung branches across the world, using only
corporate mail and messenger. The result? We all find out them! Within 45
hours, moreover surprising thing is all is found within 3 degrees.
The important lesson here is that it is not Samsung that has changed. It is
people just like you who went through changes. They began to aware of the
new world of connection, just as Neo in Matrix swallows the red pill. This book is
dedicated to people like you, encasing experiences of power of connection. It
shares insights on how to find people sharing same curiosity with you and how
to find a space between you and them where passion and energy can be
exchanged.
I believe everything is connected one another. And you will soon realize that
every important thing is not in us, but lives “between” us. You will learn that the
secret key to happy and passionate life is being connected. “Wow” life is
possible in our real lives. I am confident that you will discover amazing secrets
about creativity and passion, feeling thrilled about it. Also, you will be able to
experience how it is amazing and beautiful that human loves human. I really like
to share with you my beautiful journey which changed my life.
I would ask all of you who are reading this book to spread connection virus as
like virus of happiness. Please lend or present this book to your friends and
families, if you are impressed by its messages. Please reach me and let’s
discuss together, as I am always available through many channels such as email, twitter, facebook, and other channels. Let’s lay the groundwork for real
connection together, in order to arouse your inner passion and to truly become
connected to one another, thereby living a heart throbbing life.
Chris Anderson, TED, Curator
it is inspiring, compelling and generally delightful. enormously appreciates all the hard work, and
heart and soul, you have put into these ideas and into TEDx. It is moving to hear about the
journey you and others in Korea and Samsung have been on
Rodrigo V Cunha, Santander, Executive Manager
InHyuk, this is so inspiring, as we are thinking how to leverage the awesome impact we had with
Santander last year. Tks for sharing! I believe this is an important book to motivate collaboration
among employees. I truly believe it cause by what I have seen working in a big corporation is
that it is really hard to motivate people. That is why I believe that you are doing a great
contribution releasing this book. Have a good one!!
Jack Abutt: OakCreekTrail, CEO
InHyuk, a young author, researcher soul searcher looking for answers and looking, like so many
of us for happiness, writes "Be passionate! Dream Big! Live a happy life! You are the owner of
your own life. " His angst is palpable, his search an amazing one that starts at Samsung, a
company he says that's moved from "cool to warm. It's all ab out connection and the "space
between us" he says. Inhyuk in a new school, philosophical approach to our lives, questions our
very existence and why we would want to live a dreary life of certainty and servitude. He wants
control of his destiny and he wants to love every waking minute. He walks the walk and has
made significant change in his own life in order to pursue his quest, his thirst for knowledge, and
to seek no less than a better world order.