Why Anarchy?

I think that Jason is several miles away today participating in the annual Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa.  (Ride like the wind brother, and drink lots of water!) Since he is away, it seems appropriate for me to run my mouth a little.

Anarchy. I know.  It throws people off a little bit.  In fact, the word anarchy makes some sphincters pucker up just a little.  But Jason and I were very intentional about choosing the word anarchy, and probably because it means something a little different to us than it might mean to you.  For a lot of folks the word anarchy brings ideas of chaos and lawlessness to mind.  That is understandable, as it is a big part of the actual definition of the word.  The great and powerful dictionary of the interwebs says that anarchy means this:

1. a state of society without government or law.

2. political and social disorder due to the absence of governmental control: The death of the king was followed by a year of anarchy.

3. a theory that regards the absence of all direct or coercive government as a political ideal and that proposes the cooperative and voluntary association of individuals and groups as the principal mode of organized society.

4. confusion; chaos; disorder: Intellectual and moral anarchy followed his loss of faith.

So, there you have it, chaos and lawlessness.  But. We are not actually advocates of chaos or lawlessness…to be perfectly honest, that just sounds exhausting to me.  We are however called to some of the themes touched on in part 3 of this definition…absence of coercive government, cooperative, voluntary…those things do have real meaning to us and we think that there is great opportunity in bringing a bit of anarchy to our organizations which are struggling to find their footing on the 21^st century business terrain.

Through the years, we have been called a lot of things: trouble-makers, rabble-rousers, a-holes and very, very attractive.  We chose Talent Anarchy as the label for our collaborative efforts, which are about asking big questions and spreading big ideas that set talent free.  Freedom.  Liberation. Choice. Self-determination. While we are not advocates for chaos, we are advocates for life, and choice and freedom; and we believe that it is often conformity, hierarchy and the comfort of the status-quo that stand in the way of growth, learning, change, innovation.

Setting talent free is the transformational process of liberating those inner potentials locked up in or lying dormant in the organization and the individual.

This would probably be a good time to check out our manifesto if you have not yet seen it.

These ideas inform our approach to the topics that we speak and write about and also our approach to how we deliver the message.

We are not your typical keynote speakers and we are not everybody’s cup of tea.

Jason is pretty well behaved, and although he is younger than I am, he is probably the adult on the team.  Some of that is natural for him, some of that is probably to compensate for me.  Its not that I am intentionally rude or disrespectful, I think I am generally polite and nice…there is just always a good chance that I will be inappropriately casual in my dress, I may not have bathed or shaved recently and I probably have a little bit of profanity burning a hole in my pocket.  But make no mistake about it, we are both there to do work.

We are probably not going to break anything at your conference (at least not anything really expensive), but we will do some serious work and we will challenge the audience and speak truth to them.  We have spoken individually and together at local, regional and national events, have received a lot of great feedback and have good testimonials.  We have a couple of keynote messages certified for HRCI strategic credits.

We do good work.

We will likely bring a different energy to your stage, in fact we work very hard to bring a different vibe to the events that we speak at, but we are very serious about and on point with the issues we address.  We are not comedians, but you will laugh…even if we have to threaten violence to make you laugh.

If you are in the habit of having a comedian, a magician, a juggler, a juggling comic magician, or a former reality TV star as your keynote, we may not make complete sense to you, but you are probably desperately in need of our services. If you are using last years conference agenda as your guide for planning this years conference, we probably will not make complete sense to you…if you are looking to do something different, you should probably think about having us come and shake our tailfeathers for you.

Anarchy. Run with it or run from it.

-joe