In the early 16th century Mercury was the go-to treatment for syphilis. Several centuries and plenty of research demonstrating Mercury’s toxic properties later, Mercury is now the antithesis of health.
In July 2015 the healthcare startup Theranos was valued at $10 billion and poised to revolutionize blood testing. By March 2018, after scathing critiques from The Wall Street Journal, multiple failed deals, and charges made by the SEC, the once-promising aura of Theranos was no more.
In 1999, no one in the valley wanted to touch Nick Swinmurn’s idea of selling shoes online. After partnering with Venture Frogs (run by Tony Hsieh) and several years experimenting with different business models, Nick’s company — known today as Zappos — would go on to be purchased by Amazon for 1.2 billion dollars.
Perception is in a constant state of evolution for all work: people make observations, they learn things, they update their opinions, repeat.
In other words, the work is never truly stuck.
This means you can always make the work great for the people you’re aiming to serve provided that you create enough reasons over time for the work to actually be great.
Or the opposite.
If the way you are showing up today isn’t helping the work evolve in the direction you want, now is a good time to think about how you’d like to show up differently moving forward.