HIRE A FREAK

Though staff may indeed be as valuable as bosses make out, corporate structures and attitudes are seldom sufficiently flexible to accommodate and profit from individuality. — It is no longer possible either to create or continue to sustain a monolithic culture in any large organization. Nor is it better to succumb to the tyranny of the minority. The lessons of evolution are as relevant to organizations as to life — nurture your variations, enlarge your gene pool. You never know which will be the fittest next.

Paul Thorne
People Power: Managing Diversity in Mature Corporate Organizations²
International Management; Dec. 1991

comment-In rough  terms, my experience is that the  number one sign of variations being squished is compliance to the organizational ‘chain of being;’ through which creativity, smart analysis, and novelty is prevented from moving upward. In other words to nurture variation is to also allow ‘its’ vitality to flow where it can literally alter the course of organizational evolution. I wish I had a nickle for every boss who wielded the fallacious Appeal to Authority as support of their being ‘the smartest person in the room,’ when in fact real intelligence was something they were mortally fearful of.

This said, as an employee I developed the ability to be extremely compliant for the sake of sustaining my employment! I don’t enjoy working in those environments but I appreciated learning how to be complaint!

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