Most companies screen job candidates to bring in people much like company insiders, who learn how to do things “the right way” quickly, and who see things much like everyone else in the company. These criteria make sense if a company wants people who will repeat its tried-and-true ways of thinking and acting. Companies and teams that do innovative work need newcomers who have new ideas and see things differently than insiders, and especially, who won’t get brainwashed into thinking just like everyone else.
When people don’t know or don’t believe the code [of an organization], they draw on their own knowledge and skill, or invent new ideas or methods to get their work done. When they do what they think is right, rather than what everyone else does, they produce more variation in what is thought and done. This means it is smart to hire slow learners, to tolerate deviants, heretics, eccentrics, crackpots, weirdoes and just plain original thinkers, even though they will come up with many ideas that are strange mutations, dead ends and utter failures. The cost is worthwhile because they also generate a larger pool of ideas—especially novel ideas—than you get from just hiring and breeding fast learners.
©2001 Robert I. Sutton. Reprinted by arrangement with The Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York.
