Banking and Red Shoes
When I worked in Banking Product Management it was a time of severe change in the industry as fin-tech had upended the world and banks were struggling to catch up.
I was at a large regional bank and one of the initiatives was to put together Agile-like teams for business units that could get things done quickly to respond to these incursions into the space. They did the normal things like get rid of cubes, put story points to things, do trainings, etc.
None of that was what stuck into people's consciousness.
In the mid-2010s, banking was still stuffy. When I had started, most people dressed in business casual to business formal. It was not uncommon to see PMs and even developers in blazers and ties.
So, one day, one of the Product people had had enough - nothing was getting through. They came in the next day in a pair of bright red shoes adorned with their traditional business casual uniform. It took off like wildfire and pretty soon it was fashionable to wear red shoes as a statement of do different, so much so at the all hands the head of Consumer Banking appeared in red shoes. It made the message so much more clear than anything else could have. It didn't magically change thinking overnight, but I and others could feel we were more free to try new things in the months following.
I don't remember what he said or how it was exactly explained, but to this day I put on a pair of red shoes at my work to remind me that people can change and be inspired. We may not always choose our circumstances, but we can choose the reaction. We can always choose to be better.