If you're not confused, you're not paying attention.
Interpretation
Confusion can indicate deeper awareness and critical thinking. It suggests that engagement with complex ideas requires careful consideration.
This quote by Tom Peters highlights the importance of confusion as a natural part of the learning process and critical thinking. Instead of shying away from confusion, the quote encourages embracing it as a sign that one is actively contemplating and engaging with complex concepts, rather than passively accepting what is presented.
In practice
In a workshop about innovation, this quote can be used to encourage participants to embrace uncertainty when generating new ideas.
My half-baked reading of history is that we continue to go through these waves of entrepreneurial explosion followed by merger mania and consolidation. Out of that come big sluggish companies that eventually collapse under the weight of what they've created, and are killed off by the next wave of entrepreneurs.
The simple act of paying positive attention to people has a great deal to do with productivity.
Nearly 100% of innovation-from business to politics-is inspired not by "market analysis" but by people who are supremely pissed off by the way things are.
Leaders don't create followers, they create more leaders.
The little people will get even, which is one of a thousand reasons why they are not little people at all. If you're a jerk as a leader, you will be torpedoed. And usually it won't be by your vice presidents; it will be on the loading dock at 3am when no supervisors are around.
Champions are pioneers, and pioneers get shot at. The companies that get the most from champions, therefore, are those that have rich support network so their pioneers will flourish. This point is so important it's hard to overstress. No support systems, no champions. No champions, no innovations.
It is not enough that your designs, nay that your actions, are intrinsically good, you must take care they shall appear so.
Keep looking below surface appearances. Don't shrink from doing so just because you might not like what you find.
People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do.
The human mind cannot create anything. It produces nothing until having been fertilized by experience and meditation; its acquisitions are the germs of its production.
If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.
When you seek advice, do not withhold any facts from the person whose advice you seek.
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