In 'Why I Like People with Unconventional Resumés', Claudio Fernández-Aráoz extols the virtue of unconventional candidates and their ability to self-disrupt. I applaud HBR and Claudio's sophisticated understanding and conviction..
(http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/07/why_i_like_people_with_unconve.html)
I am sorry to say I do not see this attitude, in spite of agonised lip-service, truly present in the marketplace as a whole.
When employers and recruiters post job ads and respond to applications, do they honestly "walk the walk" when it comes to onboarding innovative thinkers and those with capacity to execute on large-scale or skunk work projects?
In short, DO 'THEY' REALLY WANT TO WIN? Or are they among the Kodaks, who talk the talk, but end up in administration?
Do employers and the employees they accept belong to the future or the rapidly-receding past??
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As organisations change - as they must to survive, let alone thrive - I believe employers will be forced to become more creative with respect to role description and the concept of boundaryless behaviour..
For example, the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world are frequently discarded from ordinary, 'standard' college-to-entry level-to management pathways due to their entrpreunerial bent. They are applauded en masse once they succeed, yet are disfavoured by the powers-that-be. The potential Steve Jobs's and Bill Gates's are killed at the outset by cookie-cutter programmed recruiting and marketing..
In the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche - who admittedly had a tenuous hold on sanity, a fact I will not deny - explains that, in the transvaluation of all values which accompanies change, the not-so-fast fall under the waves. Indeed, Nietzsche parodically incites those trapped in old habits voluntarily to go under in order to make way for stronger, fecund beings. I am not certainly not advocating 'Supermen' or Gattaca-sequestration of a rising master class. We live in a democracy, and that is a good thing.
Nevertheless, custom and convention, and our reaction, 're-activity' thereto will ultimately determine our collective and individual futures.
Hence:
WHO ARE YOUR VALUE-CREATORS?
If you are unsure, can you find them???
Do you discount the slightly eccentric project team for your regular operating rhythm: sure, you'll make headway with that new business but corporate needs the funds just at the moment?
Do you overlook the younger girl who outperforms far beyond her role for the tried and true medium-range organisational stalwart? Do you exclude the Zen-meditative hippy caligrapher to make way for the new MBA with all the right credentials and references? (That's not to say you don't have brilliant, tested MBAs).
Do you innovate, or reference innovation in your mission statement?
When does tried and true become 'tired and blue'?
Perhaps these are in terrorem hypotheticals.. Perhaps. But maybe employers, organisations and civil society need to start thinking differently about where we are headed and who will get us there.
In the process, we will need to be inclusive and diverse in our hiring and training practices to build (without Nietzschean baggage) cooperative, imaginative Superwomen and men who will deliver the growth society so desperately seeks.
After all, I'm not ready for another corporate bailout. Are you?
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