By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to stir your creative juice way beyond your comfort zone. Reading time: 2:14.

To get ahead, be unreasonable.
No you don’t have to become demanding or condescending.
No, you don’t have to sharpen your arrogance or deepen your ignorance.

Just be willing to squeeze your creative juice without rhyme or reason. As author George Bernard Shaw noted:

“Reasonable men adapt themselves
to their environment, unreasonable men
try to adapt their environment to themselves.
Thus all progress is the result of the
efforts of unreasonable men.”

Leaders, by definition, are unreasonable. Here are a few examples of unreasonable behavior that may spark your own flair for the unreasonable.

A freezing rain blankets the nearby ski slopes. Your eyes are nearly frozen shut. So what? Be unreasonable. That’s what Ed Pauls did. He invented a pulley-driven machine he could use to go snow skiing indoors. He invented the Nordic Track in 1975.

It’s a cold snowy day in New York. So what? Be unreasonable and write a song about the balmy south. That’s what Dan Emmett did and today we sing his song --Dixie-with a happy go lucky zip :

“I wish I was in Dixie”

Be unreasonable and you could become like the man who solved the problem of broken milk bottles-not by making stronger bottles, but by making them less permanent. Victor Farriss invented the waxed paper (paraffin) milk carton in 1932.

Make Something Out of Nothing

Be unreasonable, leaders can and do make something out of nothing, just like Arthur Dehon Little did in 1921. He made a silk purse out of a sow’s ear” to prove to himself he could make the cliche come alive with his creative genius. The silk purse is now on display at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington .

Be unreasonable and you might become like the 4 -year old girl who was mailed to her grandparents in 1906 for 53 cents-the going rate for mailing chickens.The girl rode in the mail car with postage stamps attached to her coat.

The leadership lesson is clear: Be unreasonable and become a leader.

Today’s ImproveMINT

Be unreasonable to keep your leadership thinking in mint condition.

SUBSCRIBE: Have a Leadership Mint delivered to your E-mail every business day. It’s free. Just click the SIGN ME UP box in the upper left column.