Book report: Orbiting the Giant Hairball

This book was recommended to me by a colleague who's in a similar role as mine in New Business Development. Basically, the analogy goes like this... the "Giant Hairball" is all the structure, systems, and processes that a corporation has. It's all tangled up, some companies have bigger and more tangled hairballs than others. Somehow to be creative and innovate, we hafta not be caught up in that hairball. However we can't be so out there that we fly away either.



The author is a creative type that works for Hallmark, the company that makes all the greeting cards and such. It shocked me at first that a company like Hallmark would have corporate bureaucracy. Then I figured of course, any company that big is inevitably gonna be like that.

The book is pretty outside the box, with random sketches and drawings and a lot of random stories. It was getting borderline over-outside the box, but it settled in nicely near the middle. He told comical, Dilbert-like stories about how he bucked the system within Hallmark. One of my favorites is when he was given a "special assignment" which usually is a role that you kinda hang out in until you retire or are asked to leave. He only accepts if he gets to name the role. He ends up naming the role "Creative Paradox." And since no one knows what the role really is, the role gets a false perception of power and he spends his remaining days at Hallmark as a "Creative Paradox."

There are many more stories like that... I really enjoyed the book, and have fantasies of doing some of those things in my corporation...