Some time ago I watched one of the millions of reno shows. This one was called Restaurant Makeover. In this one, guest designer Cherie Stinson took on the renovation of The Town Grill restaurant.
The good news was that Stinson is high Orange. The bad news was that both restaurant partners were high Green. The first quarter of the show was Stinson attempting to convince the owners that their place was “dingy, dark, 1990s decorations, crappy clutter and a bar that looked like it was built by a 10-year old.” It became apparent that she wanted to (make that: was going to) gut the place, whereas the owners had been looking for a new paint job, at most.
But when it comes to creativity and visualizing renovation, or decorating changes, always bet on the high Orange and trust them on this! The same holds true for most high Blues, it’s just that designer Sherry Stinson’s high Orange wasn’t going to cave in, settle, compromise, or make a deal of any kind. (She was also the reason this episode had a course language warning – not something that would be necessary with a high Blue designer).
Her solution to the impasse? Agree to “minor changes” and just get the owners to leave for the week. But then, the typical Orange mindset tends to be: I’d rather ask for forgiveness than permission or: Yea – whatever – I’m going to do this and you’ll LOVE it when I’m done! (Yes – news flash: they do that in your office, too!)
In any event, within a couple of hours, her crew had gutted the place. But imagine the look of horror on the face of the owners. “Well,” said Stinson, “we might as well keep going now…” which simply had the hyperventilating owners leave again. While she may have had no credibility with the high Green partners, the end result was worth it when the comments started with “nice” and “good”, but quickly escalated to “awesome and amazing.”
Whether it’s your Christmas party, creative ideas for your team, or some renovations at home, make sure you have a high Orange involved. After all, we can’t be specialists at everything – but this is an area where your Orange friends or teammates will shine and really come through! For a high Orange, something like this isn’t work – it’s fun, an awesome challenge and they’ll win – and you’ll love it!
Kind of like the words of a bumper sticker: Sit down, hold on and shut up.