Seth Godin wrote an interesting article about Sheepwalking. Personally I call it Grinding. Sheepwalking is when you only do what you are told to. Examples are:
The TSA 'screener' who forces a mom to drink from a bottle of breast milk because any other action is not in the manual. A 'customer service' rep who will happily reread a company policy six or seven times but never stop to actually consider what the policy means. A marketing executive who buys millions of dollars of TV time even though she knows it's not working--she does it because her boss told her to.
I call them Grinders. People who punch in at 9, punch out at 5 and wait for the paycheck. They grumble when you ask them to do something out of their job description. Basically, just grinding it out.
At Uni, whenever I discussed technology with my fellow engineering classmates, it saddened me to see them as Grinders. I had spent many a night in the lab to get something working while my team mates went home at 6pm.
Google was a company that defied it all. But lately, all the good people are leaving after cashing out their stock options and they are being replaced by Grinders.
