Jack Kerouac Defined High Perfomers in 1957

Jack Kerouac went on the road and wrote down what he saw. On The Road wouldn’t have been the literary sensation it was if Kerouac just sat in a room and imagined the characters he wrote about. He lived it.

And that’s our HR Lesson for the Day: Live it, don’t imagine it. Don’t hang out in your office; get out there and talk to people. Real people. Great HR isn’t theoretical, it’s experiential. Think about how Kerouac described what we’d call “high performers.”

The only people for me are the mad ones,
the ones who are mad to live,
mad to talk, mad to be saved,
desirous of everything at the same time,
the ones who never yawn or
say a commonplace thing,
but burn, burn, burn,
like fabulous yellow roman candles
exploding like spiders across the stars
and in the middle you see the
blue centerlight pop and
everybody goes “Awww!”
–Jack Kerouac, On The Road, 1957

Kudos to brickgrrl, who reminded me of this quote a while ago. She lives it.

[Photo credit: The Velvet Goldmine]

Posted on August 26, 2008 by Frank Roche 
Filed Under Engagagement

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