Hire mavericks: a classic piece of management advice, trotted out since at least the 1980s — and almost impossible to enact successfully. Still, big organisations continue to boast that they recruit and develop rule-breakers and renegades. “Status quo challenger” has even become a popular self-description on LinkedIn.
Leave aside the fact that a break-all-the-furniture disrupter is unlikely to spend much time updating his or her LinkedIn profile, let alone join the graduate trainee programme at a multinational: corporate success is often based on what already works.
Companies must strike a near-impossible balance as they design their hiring and leadership development policies. They need to cultivate enough changemakers to advance the company, but curb revolutionaries’ instincts to abandon the organisation’s core values, breach acceptable behaviour or swerve recklessly away from tried and tested approaches.