Rebels, Leaders & Other Tide Buckers

I'm a rebel. There. I've said it. I admit it. And it gets me into all kinds of trouble trying to fit into Corporate America. Tracy Goodwin (aka The Red Sweater Lady) of Captivate the Room asked to interview me and titled the conversation When Speaking Your Truth Becomes a Threat and More. Yes, indeed, I have stories. How about this?

Me: There is a major problem here and we need to fix it. We could....
Boss: Yes. We all know there is a problem. You need to stop harping on it.
Me: But [boss] don't you see this is just like story of The Emperor Has No Clothes?
Boss: Yes it is. We all know that this is a problem. Nothing is going to change. No one is going to fix it. We need to stop talking about it.
Me: But we could...
Boss: I don't care. WE are not going to fix this. It's not our problem.
Me: But it's making everything we do take six times as long.
Boss: That doesn't matter. That's how it is. If you are going to work here, you need to deal with it.
Me: But isn't fixing it dealing with it?
Boss: No.

I just spent a year on this merry-go-round working for a large regional bank. I was specifically hired, courted, actually, by my boss to come in to make changes. That was just fine as long as nothing had to change. Huh? I managed to convert a series of allies and bring them along with me to embrace change and work in new ways and they loved it. But it's hard bucking the tide all the time. 

POSITIVE Deviants and Corporate Rebels - Who are they?

My very smart friend Jane Bozarth speaks a lot about the positive deviant, based on work initiated by Jerry and Marilyn Sternin of Save the Children who wrote The Power of Positive Deviance: How Unlikely Innovators Solve the World's Toughest Problems. When attacking a problem, the positive deviant is an outlier, looking for differences and different angles to create a solution. In her article in Training Magazine, Jane notes the following traits of positive deviants:

• They are rule breakers, or at least rule benders, who are always “checking the edges” and see holes rather than the net.
• They are passionate about what they do, which supports them as they work against social convention.
• They look for what is going right.
• They look at resources they do have and figure out where to get more.
• They ask the right questions, flipping the usual ones on their heads: “Why is the staph infection rate so low on Ward 4?” (Bozarth, 2013)

Lois Kelly, author of Rebels at Work: A Handbook for Leading Change from Within, talks about good rebels as people who "just want to do great work. We want to improve things that aren't working and that put our organizations at risk. Our motivation is not personal glory, but introducing new ideas that can benefit our coworkers, customers, or community members. The greatest calling for rebels is helping our organizations evolve from what they are to what they can become, finding thoughtful ways to examine new ideas, identifying when and how to move on them, and taking the first step to get to a better place (Kelly, 2014, p1).

But it scares the crap out of people around them. Especially bosses. Been there, done that! What's so curious, is that within the organization, the corporate rebel/positive deviant has a following. They are known as the influencers. The ones who get things done. The key here, is that we do it in a different way than the norm.
​

managing the maverick

 When I took Sally Hogshead's Fascination Advantage personality test, it completely nailed me as a Maverick Leader. It taught me to create my anthem as a pioneering problem solver. That's who I am. I shared that report with my boss, who found it "insightful". Yes, the same boss who during our interview I told her I would not drink the corporate Kool-Aid, and that I would often be untraditional in getting things done...but they would get done. All fine and good. But I suspect she had a different impression of what that actually meant, since I did exactly what I said I would do, got stellar results from my team, had them positioned for the delivery of masterpieces in 2016, but then bam! I'm gone. I've been delighted to hear back from most of them that they have no intention of going back, and plan to move forward in the brave new world we created.  I know my legacy survives.

When I attended Training 2016 this year, one of the keynote speakers was Jay Shuster of Pixar. He was brilliant, and I loved learning all about the creation of their awesome films and great culture that produces them. At the end in the Q&A section, he was asked how to manage creatives like himself. It stopped him dead in his tracks, so we crowdsourced answers. Here's what came out of the Twitter feed that day:

#managing Creatives

1. Don't expect us to do things your way. Allow for #innovation​
2. Learn from us, and let us learn from others. Conduct a Designers Eye workshop where people #workoutloud and share ideas and critique work.
3. DON'T MAKE US DO PROJECT PLANS. Let someone else mess with that. You get a good project or good plan. Pick one.
4. Let us bounce ideas. Don't expect a solidified proposal at the outset.
5. Remember that mistakes are part of #innovation Think #edison and his #lightbulb
   
6. BIG ONE: Trust us. Recognize the can-do. Stop looking as glass half empty. We see potential in the unfinished.
7. Finally, if you hire us to make change, expect to change.

Moving forward

Shannon Tipton, founder of Learning Rebels and author of Disruptive Learning: Discover Your Inner Rebel advocates that we can no longer do things in the same way. Things are different and need to be handled differently. We must work differently, think differently but also be strategic. It's so easy as a rebel to keep beating the same drum and watching things fall on deaf ears. Most work things under the radar, and just get things done.

Let's not give up yet. Change may be hard. It often takes time. Sometimes, it's the ripple effect of your legacy that makes things happen.

Take another look at the rocks in this picture. As they have been pounded by wave after wave, they eventually began to smooth. Change happens, but through the constancy of the wave. As rebels, we know that the outlier often has the answer. If we don't keep reminding the others, who will?