On the surface, this seems like another generic “leadership” quote you’d see tacked up on a wall in a random conference room. At face value, it’s a simple and quick message about openness to change.

The full quote from George Bernard Shaw is this: “Progress is Impossible without Change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”

A keen eye notices I mis-transcribed the quote onto the message board…we’ll call it creative liberty.

Shaw was a late-19th and early 20th century Irish playwright and philosopher, most famous for his play Pygmalion. The quote above comes from his work “Everybody’s Political What’s What”, and is part of a larger discussion on how creeds, philosophies and religious institutes stand in way of change.

That part that comes next is usually left out, because it’s a lot more direct and often uncomfortable: “Creeds, Articles, and institutes of religious faith ossify our brains and make change impossible. As such they are nuisances, and in practice have to be mostly ignored.”

Well, that’s a more interesting take.

It’s amusing to me how often leaders start regurgitating quotes and principles they heard somewhere without ever knowing the full context. What’s disappointing to me is those same leaders lack the curiosity to go learn more.

George Bernard Shaw, while a Nobel Laureate, was also a Marxist, supported eugenics, opposed vaccination, supported racial equality, and never really nailed down whether he was a Catholic or an Atheist.

It’s amusing to see the ‘leaders’ out there on social media (*cough* LinkedIn *cough*) slapping some ChatGPT generated caption onto a picture of a random quote, and never bothering to see if the quote or the author represents things they want to promote.

If there’s anything to take away from this SignPost, it’s that we should let our curiosity be the driving force to our change.