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明星潮流|The shiny object? 闪亮之物


Reader question:
Please explain "shiny object" in this sentence: This one is all about priority, and it is so applicable to all of us in this amazingly distracting “Era of the Shiny Object.”
My comments:
This is the era of the shiny object?
Well, that"s an apt description. Today, in the age of social media, our attention is caught in the moment, by what"s trending, what"s in topic. And the moment is fleeting. The trending topic changes by the week, by the day or hour. The "in" topic for now may be "out" the next day, even the next hour.
Anyways, under the circumstance, our priorities also change accordingly as we try to keep up with what"s currently trending and popular.
And what"s currently trending, what"s currently popular, what"s currently fashionable, what"s currently "on", what"s currently the "in" thing to do is the shiny object, something we"re all attracted to.
Or distracted by.
The shiny object as an idiom, can be learned in association with the proverb "all that shines is not gold." Gold nuggets, however little in size, glisten in the sunlight. If you"re a gold digger on the bank of a river, for example, your eyes will constantly by attracted by pebbles that glisten and shine. But alas, since not all glistening objects are gold, your time and effort might be wasted while you go for all the shiny stuff. Maybe you should dig deeper into the ground, as a gold digger do, but you"re distracted by all the shiny objects on the surface of the earth.
See the point?
Yes, the shiny object stands for anything that attracts a great deal of our attention because of its superficial values and characteristics. In actuality, the shiny object can be misleading and a total waste of time.
The shiny object is also called the bright shiny object. People who fall for the shiny object is said to suffer from what"s known as the shiny object syndrome.
Here are media examples, one of each - shiny object, bright shiny object and shiny object syndrome:
1. Beware of bright shiny objects!
That could be a lesson contained in J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings trilogy when we see characters who find themselves in difficulty because they have strayed from their moral center. Today the term “bright shiny objects” is used in reference to organizations that cannot formulate a strategy, or if they do develop one, they fail to adhere to it. As a result such companies end up chasing after things that on the surface look appealing but upon investigation prove to be untenable.
Examples of this abound. Companies try new product lines as a means of growing their business. For some companies, like 3M or W.L. Gore, introducing new product lines is second nature; it’s endemic to their mission but for other companies they are better off sticking to their core products and seeking to improve them rather than wasting resources in unproven markets.
But the bright shiny syndrome is not reserved for companies. We see examples of it occurring in organizations when senior leadership fails to provide the steady hand the enterprise needs. All too often executives have told me they fear when their CEO or COO travels abroad or even attends an industry conference because they return to the office full of new ideas for new products, or even new processes, that may be strong on ingenuity are weak on feasibility. That is, pursuing them would be costly, and drain corporate coffers. Worse, such a pursuit takes management’s collective eye off the target; they become distracted and as a result fail to act on their core objectives.


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