Transcending the limits of the barriers that held us back, we strive to accept the lessons presented…
Trust is a hard thing… a very hard thing.
Here at Inclind, all of us are highly motivated to grow and achieve and succeed. Our growing client list, the projects and products we’ve created, the talent we attract - these things are strong indicators supporting this assertion. We are a successful and success-driven organization of committed and talented people. We are successful because we have been given the talents and drive to produce and attain.
Successful people are successful because they have learned to be independent, to trust their instincts, to learn and grow, to outpace and outrun the competition. This competitive spirit that is engrained and imbedded in these people has the capacity to create progressively higher levels of attainment. They tend, in time, to learn to trust themselves and to do whatever is required to attain their goals and objectives.
But, how does this independence affect our ability to interact as part of a team? We have learned lessons that have taught us to rely not on external influence or the whims of others, but on ourselves. We have learned to walk away from the weaker link; we have learned to stand alone and tall; we have learned that our success is our responsibility; we have left, in part, the collective ability of humanity in an aggressive pursuit for self-realization and reliance.
Seems, it’s natural, actually. It’s lonely at the top of the food chain. We learn to smile patronizingly at those around us who would offer us advice and suggestions. We learn to succeed at any cost. We learn to stand alone. For as long as we can remember, we were the smartest kid in the room… and the most driven.
But then something changed…
Like attracts like. Brilliance and success attract brilliance and success. Creativity and innovation attract creativity and innovation. Smart and driven people tend to cross paths with other smart and driven people. Occasionally, there is a mutual decision to stay together for a time - as employers, as clients, as employees, as coworkers… as a team – a team moving toward a common goal – a team of creative and motivated independent people.
Dependence in a team of independents…
So, these independent people have chosen to form a team. How can they create cohesiveness, maximize productivity, and reduce stress? There are many answers to this question: cooperation, deference, confidence in the ability of others, recognition of diverse talents, etc. All of these answers though have one thing in common; they all rely on the choice to trust. To cooperate, we must choose to trust that cooperation will yield benefit; to defer to another, we must choose to trust the other won’t take advantage of our exposed throats; to be confident in the abilities of others, we must trust in our own confidence and trust that the other will make good choices and produce decisions and results that won’t harm us or the team. Finally, recognizing the abilities in others requires trusting that another can indeed think as well, produce as productively, and be driven enough, to do a job equally as well or better than we can individually.
Beyond trust in another – trust in the team…
With a spirit of confidence and humility, we can choose to not only trust ourselves and trust others, but to trust the team as a whole. Confidence and humility are not mutually exclusive. We produce at our highest levels, cooperatively and jointly, trusting in the skills and talents and motivation and drive of others and of the collective team…
Trust in the team…
When the day was over, we got down to the next order of business: a proper preemptive bon voyage to one of the most despised burdens of the web development world: Internet Explorer 6.
Today was a bit of a milestone, with Microsoft having announced a decision to roll out Internet Explorer 7 as an automatic upgrade to certain corporate users still using IE 6. For more insight about the roll-out, about why IE 6 sucked so bad, and why the upcoming IE 8 isn’t much better, head over to 
Graphics Designer Tom Brown (who has probably been tormented by IE 6 the most, having to constantly come up with creative ways to get IE 6 to render websites correctly) did the honors of annihilating the demon-logo with a wooden handle while Shaun held on for dear life keeping it steady. We certainly hope that someone from Microsoft will stumble upon these pictures and take our frustration to heart when deciding whether or not to make Internet Explorer 8 finally comply with decade-old standards.