Hire People You Don't Like

03/29/2023

You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.
Jane Goodall, primatologist

Twenty years ago, Exchange Press co-founder Roger Neugebauer, who often has wonderfully weird ideas of his own, shared this message in ExchangeEveryDay:

Robert Sutton has some weird management ideas. One idea, that he presented in The Grantsmanship Center Magazine (Spring 2003, tgci.com) is that when an organization is looking to innovate it needs to start looking for people who do not fit comfortably into the current employee mold. Sutton observes:

When nonprofit directors want to do things in proven ways, they are wise to drive out variation -- especially when the proven ways still work. Nonprofits that use tried-and-true methods do things faster, cheaper and more consistently than those who rely on new and unproven knowledge....But when innovation is the goal, organizations need variation in what people do, think about and produce....

I am not suggesting you actively seek out rude, insulting or incompetent people...If, however, a candidate seems competent and has skills your organization needs -- but has different beliefs, knowledge and skills than most insiders -- negative emotional reactions or evaluations are reasons in favor of hiring the person. It will help bring in new ideas...by helping [your organization] do one of three things: (1) increase variance in available knowledge, (2) see old things in new ways, and (3) break from the past. These are three basic, organizing principles for innovative work.

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