I just watched “Dallas Buyers Club,” a movie in which Don Woodroof, an electrician and sometimes hustler, has contracted AIDS and is given only weeks to live. He does not accept this death sentence and proceeds to find a doctor in Mexico that is giving his clients a concoction of supplements and vitamins to combat this deadly disease.
Intrigued and CURIOUS with the results, he fights a system that is entrenched in a slow and methodical process of approving drugs, while thousands are dying from the disease, even though he is clearly proving that his method is getting far better results than the use of AZT.
It is that curiosity, paired with his tenacity, that propels him to live years beyond the original diagnosis, and it is that same curiosity that has hundreds of people flocking to Colorado seeking the hope of a miraculous cure to their ailments through the use of marijuana derivatives.
I found it so frustrating to see how entrenched the DEA is in enforcing the established procedures in “Dallas Buyers Club,” when there was clear evidence that the alternative methods were producing far better results.
It is that obstinacy to follow established procedures, patterns we are zused to and the desire to not rock the boat, that has doomed so many companies, new ideas and innovation in general. What will it take before the DEA is willing to aggressively follow the progress (or lack thereof) of the people now using marijuana derivatives to treat their ailments?
It is my mission to help you break the mold, get you out of the rut and thinking freely, so that you may adapt, innovate and prosper.
From the perspective of the FDA, they where protecting the public by not allowing Don to sell his “cocktail” of pills to his desperate clients. However, their myopic view of the world condemned thousands of people to death, “because they had to follow procedures.”
There is no question that procedures needs to be established to have an orderly process. But you HAVE to implement a process that allows your employees to challenge the current thinking so that you can accelerate change, and ensure that you are not missing opportunities that are smacking you in the face.