"All progress depends on the unreasonable man"

The Irish playwright (and winner of the 1925 Nobel Prize in Literature) George Bernard Shaw wrote, "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.  Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."  The quote comes from his 1903 play, "Man and Superman", a four-act drama written in response for Shaw to write a play based upon the character of Don Juan.

When I first saw this quote, I really liked it, mostly because it made me think.   On first glance, one could argue that Shaw is suggesting that some individuals are particularly self-centered, which makes them unreasonable.  But then when you read the rest of the quote, he suggests that it is exactly the unreasonable man who is responsible for all of the progress made in the world.  Shaw himself could be very unreasonable at times, so maybe he is taking credit for advancing some of his political views and calling that progress?  I wouldn't know, but I want to focus more on the words and less on the individual who said them.

Mahatma Gandhi once claimed, "If you want to change the world, start with yourself."  In other words, you are the one who has to change first before you can change the world around you.  That seems a little counter to what Shaw was saying, doesn't it?  Maybe not.  The key here is to think about the world as static or unchanging for a moment.  Here, Shaw's "reasonable man" changes or adapts to the world around him (I am using the masculine pronouns to stay consistent with Shaw's quote, but the quote could apply universally to anyone, regardless of gender).  Please note here that nothing changes, except the individual's views, attitudes, beliefs, or actions.  How is that progress?  Gandhi suggests here that in order to catch up with everyone else, individuals have to be willing to change their own attitudes and beliefs.  That makes sense if we are personally behind the times and need to catch up with everyone else around us.  But what happens when we have the same views, opinions, or attitudes as everyone else? If we really want to change these prevailing attitudes or actions, we have to be a little bit unreasonable.

Shaw suggests that in order to make progress, we have to shake things up a bit and be a little disruptive (hence, "unreasonable").  I am again reminded of the leaders who I worked with in the past who challenged and pushed our organization to move out of our comfort zone and achieve things that we didn't feel were possible.  We used to feel at that moment that these leaders were pushing us too hard or being "unreasonable."  However, after we achieved some "stretch goals" and transformed the organization, we looked back at these same leaders and discovered that their "unreasonableness" was exactly what we needed at the time.

We all need to be pushed at times.  In order to make progress, sometimes we need to push our teams beyond their comfort zones.  When it comes to organizational transformation and progress forward, be unreasonable!