Notable Successes of Unreasonable behaviour

If I look at the soaring success of Apple when Steve Jobs came back into town – don’t you think that included a little bit of unreasonable thinking? No-one was calling for simplicity, magic and infectious chemistry on their desktop in 1997. Microsoft and Dell had more or less monopolised the computer marketplace and they did so built on function. There was no room for a failing Apple range of computers. On paper this was not good sense, but they did it. Steve Jobs acted very unreasonably and built Apple to be the leader of stylish personal computers (now known for much more). In fact, along with their marketplace ownership of style, this year they have finally overtaken Microsoft on profits too. Sexier and richer, not bad for an unreasonable approach.

When Jason Fried and his team at 37 Signals created Basecamp, they acted with the epitome of unreason and the thinking was absolute ingenuity. They didn’t out-do their competitors (which would be a reasonable strategy), they under-did them (which is most unreasonable, quite frankly). They stripped away anything that wasn’t essential and made the simplest, cleanest and likeable project management tool in the world.

Austin Kleon, creator of Newspaper Blackout basically took the concept of poetry and turned the whole thing on its head. Instead of starting with a blank piece of paper and adding to it as all convention will tell you, he starts with words and removes what he doesn’t need. Words initially in articles from the New York Times, he blacks out the rest, and with those remaining, he creates magic. As he himself confesses, he was a jobbing, grafting scriptwriter. He needed an edge to grow and be recognised. Thinking unreasonably gave him that edge. He’s never looked back.

Micro-level successes

Let me share with you a fabulous story on a local level at a solicitors’ practice I know very well. An eastern-European woman had booked a consultation with one of the Partners at the office. She duly paid her £195 for the brief meeting and entered the private room to begin her meeting. Instead of getting out her papers and going through the normal practise of explaining what she needed legal advice on, she sat tight in her chair, looked directly at the Partner, smiled and began to explain that she wasn’t there for a consultation. She in fact asked for a job. The Partner was taken aback for a moment, but for the shear entrepreneurial way that the lady went about her method of job hunting (and the slice of luck needed as there was a vacancy coming up), she got the job. Acting reasonably would be going through recruitment companies, answering applications with a CV, joining the queues with everyone else. Acting unreasonably is doing what she did, and she got what she wanted. The job.

Also like a guy I once met who built up a chain of Cornish pasty shops now worth many millions of pounds. He told me that when they first started and had just the one store, business was tough. On the same high street where they were located, there were other more traditional fast food outlets – healthy and not so much – and they all seemed to be more popular. The idea of a pasty was frankly more associated with Cornwall and van drivers, not so much the general public. But the truth they knew was that when people were in their store and they could experience the taste and smells of the moreish cuisine, they loved it. So, with a bit of cunning tact, they decided to break council laws by creating lots of ventilation outlets on the front of the shop. They did this so every time they baked pastry and cooked minced meat and vegetables, the wonderful aromas were pumped into the packed streets bringing people into the store led by their noses and a willing wallet. It was like a cunning mastery similar to the Pied Piper’s finest work, and it worked. Sure, it was naughty. But I repeat in case you missed what I just said. It worked. No-one was killed. No fundamental morals were severed. It worked.

On a personal level

So, do I act as I preach?

This year I have gone into business with someone who I’ve never met and is already appearing to be one of the smartest decisions I’ve made. I travelled to India and lived there for a month working remotely meeting a whole generation of Indian entrepreneurs and have built connections and learned new cultures that will keep me in value for a long time. I randomly came up with a rebel idea for a web movement, so I’ve started to launch it despite all of my ongoing business commitments. I do handstands in the most inappropriate of places and photograph the result. Why do I do all this? I follow instinct. I follow passion. I lead myself, I don’t follow others, and I follow my heart. This is how I live my life, and to others it looks like it is without reason. Crazy. Wild. Yet the art of brilliant unreasonable behaviour is that it actually is with a whole lot of reason.

So, I ask you. What are you doing right now that is unreasonable? As an individual, a company or a movement; claim it, and immediately command an edge on those huddled up tight in the Status Quo.