Weird Ideas That Work Part II
Before we get to today's book, I want to let you know that yesterday's book, Bit Literacy, is being offered at a pretty sweet discount, plus free shipping, over on the 8cr web site. Go get it y'all!
As you may have guessed, 800-CEO-READ often likes to go against the grain. You want proof? How about the willingness to take a generally disheveled 20 year-old college dropout with no discernable business acumen and turn him first into some form of salesman, then, five years later, re-hire that same kid and allowed him to develop an alter ego as a self-deprecating and often absurd reviewer of business books (ok, not so different from primary ego). You want more proof? They hired two of my brothers!!! Three Schleichers in one office with no partitions...what were they thinking? Didn't they know that we like to throw and catch and bang and strum and draw and paint and do pretty much everything that doesn't require the use of a spreadsheet? AND, to top it off, they just promoted the youngest of us three misfits. They must be out of their mind.
Well, maybe they're not crazy after all. Perhaps they just agree with Bob Sutton, whose book, Weird Ideas That Work, is out in paperback right now. Jack and Todd must have thought about this argument from Bob: "We are told to hire people who fit in; to train them extensively; and to work to instill a corporate culture in every employee. In fact, in order to foster creativity, we should hire misfits, goad them to fight, and pay them to defy convention and undermine the prevailing culture."
Thank you Mr. Sutton for helping make it OK for three riff-raffs to find a place in this fine world of creative business endeavor.
Bob Sutton might be the king of counterintuitive business thinking (see No Asshole Rule), and counterintuitive is just what a lot of the business world could use in order to break free from a staid, stuffy, and stagnant existence. Here's another quick story about 8cr. At our Bill Taylor event, K8cr was delegating responsibilities. I was to be the door greeter, and inBubbleBrother Aaron was the second person seen as he worked the table. I walked up to Jack and asked, "Do you really think it's a good idea that the first two people attendees encounter are a scraggly long hair and a thoroughly tattooed rocker?" Jack's answer was, "It's who we are and I'm proud of it, so yes."
Maybe I'm exaggerating about how riff-raffy we are, but the point holds true nonetheless. So now 8cr has hired unconventionally - what next? How does a manager manage people that don't fit the mold? They've already taken Bob's advice of "Hire people that make you uncomfortable," so now what do they do with those uncomfortable people.
One thing Sutton stresses is "Reward success AND failure, but punish inaction." I love this advice, and it's advice that Jack and Todd follow rather well. As a sales person, I often lost sales because I was a little too goofy and always wanted to push the boundaries of communication. When this happened, Jack usually said something like, "That's OK, you tried something different and it didn't work, but keep trying new things." However, if I simply didn't do something I should have and it cost me a customer, he say something more like, "What the heck diddly doo is your problem?"
One last Bob Sutton weird idea is this, "Decided to do something that will probably fail, and then convince yourself and everyone else that success is certain." Huh? We should spend time doing something we know will fail? That's right. To find out the logic, you'll have to read the book, but I will tell you that the book "shows how some of the best teams and companies use these and other counterintuitive practices to crank out new ideas, and it demonstrates that every company can reap sales and profits from such creativity."
So read this book and be weird. Liberate yourself from convention and see what new ideas you and your team can generate. After all, it's not old ideas that will get you to the promise land.
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