I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again:  the surest way to get noticed in a crowd is to stand alone. But how? Some people just naturally go against the grain it seems, but for most of us, it’s hard enough to keep up with what’s going on in our niche while servicing clients and (hopefully) having a life, let alone trying to figure out how we separate ourselves from it. Besides, hasn’t everything already been said or done?

Maybe. But not by you. And not in the way that you would do it.

First, fully immerse yourself in your field. Learn the rules backwards and forwards. Use them to build your career, build your reputation, build your credibility, and even build your influence.

Then, you’ll have an idea that doesn’t seem to fit assumptions you weren’t aware you even had, or you’ll see a common practice and wonder why, or something about the way you naturally want to do things seems to go against the grain. Your heart will want you to do something your head will question. You’ll have doubts. Others might tell you, “You can’t do that. That’s not how it’s done here.”

This is where courage comes in. To really stand alone in the crowd, you’ll have to find a way to share your ideas, methods, or whatever it is for you that breaks the rules. This is where most people stop. This is also where the biggest difference can be made in others’ lives.

Thomas Kuhn was one of the most influential authors of the last 100 years in America. He was trained in physics during the 1940’s and worked as a scientist during WWII. In the 1950’s he left physics to pursue the history of science. Back then, “hard” science, such as physics, was king. It was considered objective and therefore real in a way that nothing else could be, while history and other social sciences were considered “soft” sciences. They were considered subjective and therefore unable to touch on real reality. If hard science was king, soft science was the heathen who needed conversion. The two camps were natural enemies. So when Kuhn switched camps, scholars in physics disowned him for his inability to carry out “real” science, while scholars in history never completely accepted him for what they perceived as his lack of understanding and training in their field. He remained a sort of black sheep, straddling two worlds for the remainder of his career.

And yet, that is exactly what gave him a totally new perspective on the sciences in general. As he stepped further and further into the unchartered territory of what we now call interdisciplinary studies (which didn’t exist back then), he saw that even the hard sciences for all their objectivity were, in fact, not objective at all. They were just as subjective as the soft sciences – an idea that was heresy in the hard sciences (and most of American culture at the time) and akin to salvation in the soft sciences. His book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, shattered the god-like authority of the hard sciences, opening the door to a whole new world of ideas, perspectives, and paradigms we now enjoy today.

First, Kuhn followed all the rules. Then, he started following his heart. He did what others didn’t do, which gave him the ability to see what others couldn’t see. And then he shared what he saw and most deeply believed to be true – changing the field of science forever.

January 2013 Issue