“Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people” — so said the famous Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw.

For organizations seeking progress and change there seem to be too many reasonable people about! Where are the people who will take the lead on controversial issues and take a stand for change? Not many I fear! This is quite understandable, of course, when we are all concerned about hanging onto our jobs for as long as possible in a bad economy.

But if organizations are serious about change they need to hire unreasonable people—the kind of people who are irritating, go against the grain, and generally don’t fit in. Most hiring processes, however, are designed to do exactly the opposite. Quite a paradox.

Did you know that oysters produce pearls only when a piece of grit enters the shell and irritates the hell out of it? Maybe our US organizations would have a higher rate of production of the kind of “pearls” of new products and services we need in our sagging economy if there was greater acceptance of unreasonable and irritating employees. So the tip for today: try to hire for diversity of thinking and don’t necessarily dismiss the outsider who may turn out to be a pearl producing piece of organizational grit.

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Quote of the Day

Leaders need to be optimists. Their vision is beyond the present. ~ Rudy Giuliani