People do what they do. Have everyday rituals and breaking a habit can be quite challenging. There is the category of household habits, but there are also the company habits. How often don’t you hear, this is how we do it or we’ve been doing this for years and it works great. The question of course is, does it?
When you do what you’ve always did it means you miss all the new exciting stuff that is around. You miss that the people who buy your products change, or there is a new group of people who could buy your product but doesn’t because it does not fit in their lifestyle.
One department where you see old thinking is the HR department. When CV’s are not according to expectation you go on the no-pile. Did you know there are programmes that scan CV’s for key words to make the first selection? And when you pass the first selection and sitting opposite the interviewer you are expected to tell what you have been doing the last years, which is exactly the same they are looking for so you will fit perfectly in their big machine.
The problem is that companies need to innovate and change. And if they hire always the same people, who do the same work for years, you can’t expect change. Why not talk to and hire more often the, as Apple put it years ago, the misfits, the rebels, the crazy ones, the troublemakers?
Part of my job is to always bring something new to the table. I come in as a consultant and they know I won’t be there five days a week, eight hours a day. (Not sure if companies could handle that, or I for that matter.) I notice that the energy starts flowing, that people get inspired, and I always propose to start with small changes, because I understand it can be hard to break these old habits of ways of working. And there are people from organisations I speak to that love this, and there are organisations who find It a bit scary but they take the chance because deep down inside they feel that this is a good energy, and there are organisations who say; wow, this is different, and it is good, but we need more from the old stuff. These last organisations won’t make it. The first two I advise to break the habit of only hiring the so called perfect candidate, but mix it with a little bit of craziness, with a misfit here and there and find the rebel within you. Guaranteed that the energy will change and that people are starting to let go of these old habits.