The Myth of the Outsider
We often believe than an “outsider” or someone with “fresh thinking” will enter a situation and solve it, while forgetting the enormous amount of knowledge, skill, and relationships that insiders have which enables them to do the job in the first place. Organizations and processes grow more intertwined and integrated over time, and we over-estimate the ability of an outside party to swoop in and enact chance. Often, intimacy trumps objectivity.
Examples
Every political election has a candidate who claims that being “the outsider” will enable them to transform whatever office they’re vying for. In 2016, we had Donald Trump as the Republican candidate. Trump won the election and found change more difficult than he expected. It became obvious that he lacked a basic understanding of how to govern or the responsibilities and limits of the office, and he had little ability to create coalitions to win negotiations to get any “outsider” initiatives passed (meaning, things that large segments of the government didn’t already want).
In the book “Good to Great,” Jim Collins presents evidence that companies who hired CEOs from outside the organization had poorer outcomes than companies that promoted someone from within.