Looking for creative and innovative people? You’re probably better off hiring wackos and malcontents instead of the best and the brightest.
That’s what the Harvard Business Review touts. The article says:
- Hire mavericks and misfits who’ll drive you crazy because they don’t go with the flow and bull-headedly champion their own ideas.
- Hire novices who don’t know how things have always been done.
- Encourage employees to defy their bosses
- Keep creative types away from customers – and anyone in the organization focused on money.
- Get your happy and content employees “fighting” over ideas.
You get the picture. To shake things up, you actually have to shake things up. And HBR says the payoffs can be huge.
Filed under: Finance, IT, human resources, marketing, sales | Tagged: difficult people, innovation, morale, motivation
Oh boy, this will get some folks’ shorts in a knot…you know, the kind of people who haven’t had an original idea in years (if not their lifetime)……too funny – but true! If you can effectively manage people like this the possibilities are endless. Far too many egotistical and self aggrandizer types out there today – few, if any, really self confident leaders who could handle this. Great post.
Sounds like a good way to get new ideas and creative solutions. The potential downside, of course, is that you hire someone who truly IS a wacko and malcontent and has no really good ideas, but is convinced he/she is the greatest mind in the business. I’ve worked with many…I may even BE one and not know it. I guess one must go out on a limb from time to time. I just try to avoid people who might find it fun to cut the limb off after I’m out on it. Great story. Thanks.
diSruPtiVe pEopLe ArE aN AsSet
If you’re a large company, maybe that’s an okay idea, but as my first boss always said, “Be careful who you hire. Add one person at GE or GM and if they don’t work out it doesn’t make that much difference, but hire someone who doesn’t fit in to a 10-person firm and you’ve just changed 10% of the workforce!” Working for a small firm, I assure you he was absolutely right!
At the risk of greatly oversimplify a subject which can be detailed in several tomes, minds should be classified as any tool by their productivity [creativity+delivery], toughness [duration+resilience], and precision [quality+fineness] (to mention just three factors).
There are wackos, malcontent, mavericks and misfits with knowledge, goals, and discipline and also the ones without them. To screen personnel, I created and tested a simple numerical code to profile personal and also professional characteristics. Knowledge, goals and discipline can be taught if, and only if, these human resources have the willingness and flexibility to become better as persons and as professionals.
I use these codes not only to determine who has the willingness and capacity to be trained but also to assign initial duties and to create individualized training packages for these potential leaders and innovators. In my experience, wackos can become great assets; unfortunately, a high ratio of them fear losing their comfort zones and does not lose their bad habits.
Salvation is there for all of us, but only the ones who are shown the way and work for it will get it…
About hiring mavericks, I think it depends on where yoru organization is at. In other words, if you are a company “stuck in a rut” always afraid to try someting new, but watching sales growth dwindle, then yeah…a maverick may be just the thing. But I’d do my homework to make sure the employee had a good reference and some experience in my line of work. Smart, successful, mavericks can be great for an organization…egocentric, novice mavericks can quickly cause more harm than good.