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Employers are recognizing the disconnect between college and career readiness. Google, for instance, changed its hiring strategies after Laszlo Bock, senior vice president of people operations, analyzed their data and found no correlation between job performance and an employee’s GPA, SAT’s, or college pedigree. Google now considers an applicant’s ability to collaborate and to perform authentic job-related challenges. Now, they hire many new employees who never went to college. Opinion: America desperately needs to redefine ‘college and career ready’ By Ted Dintersmith and Tony Wagner, Aug 8, 2016, MarketWatch.com.

The lesson I like here is similar to what the book Moneyball illustrated about American baseball. They both showed that the common wisdom was just plain wrong and that by just looking at our own numbers, we could easily see the disconnect. However, it often takes us forever, because we are so locked into what we are sure we know to be true, to finally see that the common wisdom is not wisdom at all. Challenging conventional wisdom is often seen as career-limiting but if we want to actually be successful beyond the normal of mediocrity, we might want to take that chance.

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What conventional wisdom in your project or organization looks like it might be worth challenging in order to clear the way for your project to be more successful?