In Praise of Weirdness

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In praise of weirdness

George Bernard Shaw once said, “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.”  In this article, we will make a case for  reasoned unreasonableness and  weirdness as our superpowers at work. Let’s explore how.

Paul Erdos was a quirky Jewish Mathematician who would show up at people’s doors in the middle of the night saying, “My mind is open.” Legend has it that once after a long night of brainstorming, when his collaborators (a mathematician couple) went to bed, he went to the kitchen and mischievously started throwing utensils around  He had found a major breakthrough in the problem they were struggling with and wanted to grab their attention with a bang. Waiting for the morning seemed impractical to him.

He was known for such unabashed acts of weirdness. That is why it is puzzling to note that despite all the idiosyncrasies and quirks ,he was probably the most loved, most networked and most collaborative mathematician of all time. Albert Einstein was heavily influenced by Erdos and even today, hundreds of scientists draw upon his research. In fact, “Erdos Number”, the collaborative distance between Paul Erdos and any researcher, is an accurate indicator of smarts in the scientific world.

Erdos made his weirdness work for him because he wasn’t weird for the heck of it. His primary motivation was to make other people great. That is perhaps why his weirdness was seen as playful expression by his collaborators. They knew Erdos was more interested in helping them achieve their goals as opposed to flaunting his weirdness as a badge of honor. This giver-first approach enabled Erdos to establish trust at scale. People remembered the outcomes they got with Erdos’ help and his weirdness became a memorable footnote in the adventure.

So what is the larger lesson for students and young professionals? Be weird if you wish to but remember to empower yourself, your colleagues and your community members along the way.

Weirdness Paradox at the Workplace

Weirdos, non-conformists and outsiders like Erdos challenge status quo and push the frontiers of innovation, but do modern workplaces really have room for such people? Let’s analyze how companies attract talent. Their choice of words reveals their preference.

On average, job descriptions tend to be about 1000 words, roughly the length of this article. They pontificate on buzzwords like teamwork, collaboration, and communication before quickly jumping ship to past experience and academic qualifications. They are designed to attract stereotypical candidates to do stereotypical work. 

Although most companies parrot the virtues of diversity and thinking out of the box, they make it impossible for truly different candidates to apply. Round pegs in square holes are great for advertisements but how often do you see them at work? Perhaps companies like the idea of non-conformity and out-of-the-box thinking but prefer the safety and security of straightjacketed professionals who will do what they are told. Thankfully there are innumerable data points that make it clear that non-conformity with a dash of weirdness has practical economic benefits. 

Economic and Social Benefits of Weirdness

In her book Weird: The Power of Being an Outsider in an Insider World, Olga Khazan shares her reflections of grappling with the crippling anxiety of being a perennial outsider. She is a Jewish refugee from Russia who grew up in Midland, Texas without any friends. Her parents had limited means and didn’t speak a word of English. Instead of being shy of her weirdness, she embraced it—not immediately but with practice.

Her edgy writing and success as a journalist (without the usual pedigree of network and education) can directly be traced to her weirdness quotient and thought-provoking reflections on being a quintessential misfit. Full marks to The Atlantic, her employer, for carving the much-needed space for weirdness in everyday life.

We hosted Olga for a podcast on Network Capital where she explained the relationship between social rejection, weirdness and creativity, drawing upon the work of Johns Hopkins University’s Sharon Kim. It turns out that being a social reject or a weird oddball can augment creativity. Experiments by Dr. Kim suggest that feeling of not belonging opens your mind to make room for new ideas. Such people tend to be adept at handling uncertainty, reconciling conflicting information and analyzing problems from multiple perspectives. Further, outsiders tend to be freer to innovate and change social norms because they are less concerned with what the in-crowd thinks of them. These outsiders are often responsible for some of the most pathbreaking innovations at the workplace.

Fitting in isn’t a badge of honor

A workplace where everyone looks and thinks the same is a boring place. Fitting in everywhere isn’t a badge of honor, nor is deliberately provoking people and shoving your weirdness in their face. I think it is important to remind ourselves that we are all weirdos in some context.  With this in mind, let’s try and design workplaces that are weird-friendly. It is a two-way process: organizations must take concrete steps and we should also figure out ways to make our weirdness work. Such changes are often iterative and time consuming. There is no recipe for instant results but let’s explore some strategies

How to make your weirdness work for you?

Contribute to strengthening the culture and deliver results at your workplace. People who are considered weird are simply those who don’t fit neatly into existing groups. That doesn’t mean there is no appetite for fresh perspectives. It is important to remember that fresh perspectives are appreciated when then lead to tangible results. New ideas dissociated with key results are often considered distractions. It is possible that some ideas take time to demonstrate results, but it is your job to communicate it to your stakeholders how you will achieve outcomes.

Instead of trying to standardize your creativity, you should leverage your diversity of exposure and experience to solve challenging problems within your organization. While it is true that such an exchange of ideas requires safe spaces in the form of working groups that actively seek diverse/offbeat/weird opinions but you can start small. try to find a few like minded people and organize a micro-community to advance your ideas. That is how consensus builds.

Once consensus builds, senior management will realize that good ideas can come from anyone and they will be more inclined to create an idea meritocracy where the best ideas prevail, not just the familiar ones.

Early in your career, it is especially important to familiarize others with the way you operate. You are expected to make the effort and you should. Expecting well-entrenched insiders and senior executives to embrace and understand all aspects of your weirdness is expecting too much. Understanding you is not their priority, delivering results is. If you get results, your weirdness will be seen as an asset.

Seek inspiration from unfamiliar people. If you are a quant, hang out with the poets. If you are a poet, grab coffee with a quant or shadow her for a couple of hours.  The central idea is to look beyond your cubicle, discipline and department for inspiration. You might feel weird for a while but the pursuit of learning from unfamiliar people will augment your creativity. More importantly, it will enable others to understand your unique points of view or contrarian ideas that were previously dismissed as weird. They will be more likely to seek your suggestion next time they want a fresh perspective.

Give a positive twist to your weirdness. Reframe your weirdness  by positioning it as a problem-solving tool.  As we discussed earlier, it is part of your job to communicate to other stakeholders that weird-friendly organizations get better results, are more inclusive and make work fun. Examples always work better than proclamations. Find and evangelize weird-positive case studies.

In an ideal world, existing organizational structures would embrace weirdos and provide them with a safe space without questions. But we don’t live in an ideal world. Instead of waiting for the perfect day, we should do our bit to shape weird-friendly organizations where the likes of Paul Erdos feel at home. It will be a win-win for everyone.

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Masterclass: Harvard Business School alum who created the term “FOMO”

Patrick J. McGinnis is an international venture capitalist and the author of Fear of Missing Out: Practical Decision-Making in a World of Overwhelming Choice (out May 5, 2020). Patrick coined the term FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), as well as the related term FOBO (Fear of Better Opportunities) in a 2004 article in the student newspaper of Harvard Business School. FOMO has since been added to the dictionary and FOBO has become an increasingly popular framework to describe choice paralysis.

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Afterthought:

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of putting broken pottery pieces back together with gold — built on the idea that in embracing flaws and imperfections, you can create an even stronger, more beautiful piece of art.

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