“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” George Bernard Shaw
I came across this quote today, and it felt like more than a clever line. It felt like a challenge, and a timely one, as we step into 2026.
A new year often invites familiar promises. Better habits. Better discipline. Better execution inside the same systems we already know. But real change rarely comes from optimizing what already exists. It comes from questioning why it exists at all.
Shaw’s distinction between the reasonable and the unreasonable is uncomfortable by design. The reasonable person adapts. They learn the rules, fit themselves to the environment, and make peace with constraints. That approach brings stability, predictability, and short-term efficiency. Most organizations rely on it to survive.
But progress has never come from survival alone.
Progress comes from people who look at the current shape of things and decide it is not inevitable. People who refuse to accept that the way things work today is the way they must work tomorrow. People who are labeled difficult, disruptive, impractical, or unrealistic long before they are proven right.
The unreasonable ones are often the hardest to manage. They ask questions that slow meetings down. They challenge assumptions that feel settled. They push against phrases like “best practice,” “industry standard,” and “that’s just how it is.” Yet without them, systems become more brittle. Organizations become efficient at repeating yesterday.
As we move into 2026, that tension feels especially relevant. Technology is moving faster than our structures. Work is evolving faster than our policies. Customers are changing faster than our mental models. The gap between how things are and how they should be is widening.
This year will not reward quiet compliance. It will reward thoughtful resistance. The kind that is grounded in purpose, not ego. The kind that challenges defaults in service of something better.
Being unreasonable does not mean being reckless. It does not mean ignoring reality. It means refusing to treat today’s reality as the ceiling. It means choosing progress over comfort, even when comfort is easier to justify.
So, as this new year begins, maybe the question is not how well we can adapt ourselves to the world as it is. Maybe the better question is where we are willing to apply a little constructive unreasonableness.