No, not some study on how your name affects your socioeconomic standing (read up on this theory in 'freakanomics') but more the focus we put on developing a name for ourselves in our chosen field of passion or commerce and perhaps the negative effect this has on what else we think we can do.

I have been reading recently about the very human traits of association and routine. These two aspects appear to be the basis for a lot of our social function and also our empirical approach to solving problems.

For example, we make decisions about future events based on knowledge of current events and we look to current solutions to known problems and try to apply these to new problems. It can obviously argued that this is fundamentally what learning is about however I tend to favour the contrarian argument that learning comes from the success and failure of creative (read: unexpected or different) thinking in solving new problems. In some respects being taught to solve a problem is schooling, if I can paraphrase the famous Mark Twain quote "..I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.."

I used to work with a guy (an older guy and one who was happy to admit to not being a Rhodes scholar) but he consistently came up with out of the box solutions simply by not knowing what to ask. Put simply, he wasnt bound by the constraints of what he knew about a problem because he didn't understand it to begin with.

I would suggest that we also tend to pigeon hole people into what we believe they are able to do, primarily based on what they have done (successfully or otherwise) to date. This re-enforcing behaviour combined with the peter principle (promoting someone to their level of incompetence - http://money.howstuffworks.com/peter-principle.htm ) has a potentially disastrous effect on the ability of an organisation to innovate.

I met with a colleague today and they discussed how two senior people in different parts of their business have completely swapped roles. In a major institution this would seem a rather risky play (especially in the current market) but the stated reasons were to

1. enable the two business units to better understand each other (from a mgt perspective) and thus collaborate better

2. to bring new thinking into each part of the business

The likely benefits it seems far outweighed the risk of poor performance by each 'underskilled' person in the others role.

I think a third important benefit was being derived from the swap and from this I take my cue. By pulling these people out of their known and comforted roles they have forced change on them and as such require them to deal with change, to challenge their thinking and to learn on their feet. It is almost a boot camp for the real world where no doubt in the not too distant future, regardless of whether they are in this role or the previous, an external force is going to impact the business in the same manner.

But coming full circle to my original point, what is in a name? Our beliefs in what we are able to achieve are fundamentally impacted by what we are told by those around us ("Whether you think you can or you can't, you're right." -Henry Ford)

Why do we always seem so surprised when someone totally changes their chosen career. I think we should be encouraging this change.