Organizations are like giant hairballs. Stacks of rules, red tape, sacred cows, and memos from 1998.
Gordon MacKenzie, the corporate misfit at Hallmark, encouraged people to orbit the hairball. Don’t get sucked into it.
Warning Signs the Giant Hairball Has You
- You call a brainstorming meeting and pass out a 17-point agenda.
- You invite accounting to your innovation meeting.
- You ask for innovation and follow up with a risk mitigation form.
- You kill someone’s idea by saying, “Let me tell you how we’ve always done it.”
Escaping the Giant Hairball
- Adopt some of the language of the Hairball.
- Build trust with rule-followers. Don’t attack. Add value.
- Deliver results, so you aren’t confused with an irrelevant freak.
- Encourage mavericks, don’t managing them into mediocrity.
- Say “yes” before you figure out “how.”
- Let people color outside the lines, even if you need to clean it up later.
Remember MacKenzie’s rule: “The most potent force of creativity is the freedom to be yourself.”
3 Ways to Save Your Org from Hairball Gravity
- Declare one day a week Hairball-Free. No meetings. No forms. No “reply all.”
- Celebrate failed experiments.
- Promote one slightly crazy idea every quarter. Make sure it makes someone raise their eyebrows.
Orbiting the hairball isn’t rebellion. It’s vitality.
Orbiters don’t escape the system—they influence it.
Stay tethered to your organization but not tangled in bureaucracy. You can’t lead from the parking lot. You’re irrelevant when you’re too far out.
What parts of organizational bureaucracy would you love to eliminate?
*Inspired by Gordon MacKenzie’s legendary weirdness and wisdom. Buy his amazing book: Orbiting the Giant Hairball.
