‘The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.’
I’m quoting George Bernard Shaw. And thinking about Steve Jobs.
He had a reputation for being unreasonable.
(As do many super successful CEOs.)
Jobs simply wouldn’t accept the word impossible. In fact, it seemed to trigger him.
When he wanted something done and the person stood in front of him said it was impossible, he would simply challenge them to ‘get their mind around it’ and make it happen.
When he wanted something done and the person stood in front of him said it was impossible, he would simply insist that they ‘get their mind around it’ and make it happen.
No, I didn’t just repeat the same sentence there.
Read them both again – can you see the difference?
More importantly, can you feel the difference?
Jobs would ignore any justification people tried to give him about why something was impossible, literally cutting them off mid-sentence as they tried to explain ‘reality’ to him.
Colleagues dubbed this insistence the Jobs ‘Reality Distortion Field’ (a reference to an episode of Star Trek where aliens created an alternative reality through mental projection).
By all accounts, it wasn’t always a particularly pleasant thing to experience, but by mentally projecting the outcome he wanted Jobs could literally get the impossible out of people.
And that’s the real story behind how Apple became Apple.
Maybe you don’t have the same personality as Steve Jobs (heck, maybe you wouldn’t even want to have his personality!) but still …
You might want to consider how much more progress might be possible for your business if you became a little less reasonable.