Reasonable people only survive circumstances; those who are unreasonable possess the tools to shape them

Most of us live and work in an environment that we believe is in need of change. However, very few of us really help transformations happen.

If you listen carefully to your own conversations and those of others, you can hear that a lot of time people talk about their lives and the need for changes as if they were talking about a movie or football match. It is like they do not possess any kind of control over the outcome.

This has reflections in the corporate world. Often I ask people in organisations how long they spend in meetings and how the results of such meetings are assessed. This is while those same people complain that they do not have enough time to perform their tasks properly.

The simple answer for this problem would be to have fewer but more productive meetings. However, this solution easily finds opponents in organisations, all with a long list of why so many meetings are needed and why they cannot be more productive.

Eventually this leads to resignation across the company. Ultimately, people accept the status quo and carry on with the same old routine, without big expectations that things will ever change.

Go for goal

This situation is likely to be familiar to you. In the corporate world, a big chunk of office time is spent in meetings. Add exchanging email and phone conversations (which can also be considered kinds of meetings) and probably meetings take up more than half of your working time.

Note that meetings in themselves are never a problem. Actually, they can be eye-opening, extraordinary, even life-changing. Unfortunately, on average, they are lengthy, unproductive or unsatisfactory. This is largely because many meetings get stuck, owing to lack of commitment to settling differences.

To boost a meeting’s productivity, people should be prepared to commit themselves to achieving a final goal. They should prepare their interventions with that goal in mind. More importantly, people should not just sit there, only reacting to what others say. They should become players, trying to present out-of-the-box options for getting things done.

Co-founder of the London School of Economics and Nobel Prize winner George Bernard Shaw once said: “Reasonable people adapt to the circumstances. Unreasonable people adapt circumstances to suit themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.”

This highlights the dilemma we face when considering how to make fundamental changes in our lives, working environment or business culture. If we expect something to change, we need to be unreasonable and change it by ourselves. Specifically, we need to make unreasonable commitments.

Don’t be a fool

Commitment is the difference between living in a context of responsibility, in which people negotiate to move forward ultimately, and living in a context in which people just endure whatever circumstances they find themselves in, with no clear target in mind. If we confine ourselves only to what we think is reasonable and practicable, we are limiting ourselves, by definition, to more of the same, to living adrift.

Note, however, that being unreasonable is not the same as being unrealistic. To be unreasonable means acting in a manner that is inconsistent with conventional wisdom and common sense. It does not mean being a fool.

In history, any significant change in civilization began with someone who saw a possibility where others at the time saw only an impossibility. If nobody had challenged the status quo, we would still be in the Stone Age.

The answers that allow us to achieve extraordinary results seldom lie in what we already know. The key is in what is beyond our present mental framework.

If we look at reality from a different perspective, our vision will inevitably become wider. Eventually, that will expand our potential for further growth and development.

Gustavo Cavaliere  Hospitality industry expert – gustavo.cavaliere@gmail.com