I’ve been reading a lot about Steve Jobs in the last few days (who hasn’t?) and thinking about some of the great quotes he’s given on business management.
One of the really interesting quotes I’ve read is around the way that Jobs injected creativity into the development of the Macintosh.
“Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.”
His point was that people with different backgrounds bring different perspectives to your business and can see opportunities where others can’t.
Now, hiring a zoologist in accounts or a poet in engineering might not necessarily be the best way forward for your business, but there are simpler ways to capture some of this creativity.
When you look at a job candidates resume, pay a bit more attention to their background. Have they studied another discipline or do they have a passion interest in an unusual area? If so, try and flesh this out a bit in the job interview.
Another idea is to get someone from a wildly different industry to talk to staff and share some ideas about creative thinking.
Get it done – today!
