Rebels at work (book by Kelly & Medina)

Rebels at work

Lois Kelly and Carmen Medina

Rebels at Work

This book is intended to help people who think differently navigate their organizations. The authors describe a good rebel as a person who observes things that are not working and suggests ways to change. A bad rebel just complains. The authors observe that rebels are not always the right people to actually lead a change, but they are often the right people to instigate the change. People become rebels in many ways and times in their careers. Some start immediately in their career and some become rebels later in their careers. Some rebels are “created” by a problem and retire as rebels when that problem is addressed. Other rebels find one problem after another to solve.

The authors compiled a list of terms to compare good and bad rebels. Good rebels tend towards curiosity, questioning, organizational focus, opportunities, optimism, listening, and creativity (a partial list). Some bad rebels start that way, but all rebels face frustration, and many people who are generally good rebels have periods where they are “bad”.

The big benefit that rebels bring an organization is that they tend to see problems and opportunities before others, and craft possible reactions to address the issues. A constant issue for rebels is that they see these issues before others do and thus they are ahead of “their time”.

Time-orientation is a major characteristic of the rebel mindset. The authors point to a measurement tool (www.mindtime.com ) to help people get a sense of their time orientation. Simply, people can be past, present or future focused. Past-focused people want data and desire good accuracy. Present focused people seek stability, control and predictability. Future focused people are possibility-oriented and seek out the possibilities that create opportunities. Of course, people live on a spectrum of these orientations, and their orientation might be different in different areas or at different times. Also, every organization benefits from having this diversity of time perspectives. Trouble arises when people restrict themselves to a single perspective.

The consequence of this future orientation is that rebels may work ahead of the main organization and in quite different ways from others with other time orientations. Finally, rebels are often different in some important way than those around them. The book uses the example of a person who trained in the military becoming a school teacher. Their background would give them different perspectives on some issues than a person with a more conventional teaching background. Companies often make space for people who are different as part of their diversity efforts, but they don’t make space for their perspectives.*

The book contrasts some of the differences between the three time orientations. Past oriented people are guided by rationality, while present-oriented people prefer practicality and future-oriented people prefer intuition. The three types work best with data, processes and ideas, respectively. They look for meaning, usefulness and opportunity, respectively. Given this short list, it is easy to see that a future thinking person presenting a new idea can be out of sync with the many people with present and past orientations common in organizations. They don’t have data, have not figured out how to execute the idea completely, and may be responding to a future situation that might not occur at all. It is easy to dismiss such ideas from present and past orientations.

Because of these orientation differences, a good rebel needs credibility. That credibility comes from a combination of listening to other perspectives, showing respect to others and their ideas, recognizing how new ideas involve real uncertainty that need to be addressed, and from showing that others in the organization are also interested in the idea. Most of these suggestions are advice about being a good person. Building an alliance to support an idea is different, and may require actions like creating informal discussion groups, recruiting helpers and joining other people’s efforts to create a network of resourceful people. It is quite powerful to build a coalition of others in the organization who see the use in the idea. It is unlikely that a single person, working alone, has all the information to make the idea suitable for application. Finding others make take time and effort, but pays big dividends.

New ideas will face resistance. Some of the resistance is the result of the idea coming at the wrong time in the organizational planning cycle. It may result from being the wrong kind of an idea for the organization. Ideas gain traction with they match up to the organization’s purpose. For example, a customer-centric organization will be interested in different kinds of ideas than a mission-centric organization. It is usually not worth the effort to fight against these forms of resistance; the idea may need to be adapted to suit the organization’s focus to gain traction.

Even when an idea is a good fit for an organization, there will be resistance. The book identifies four types of resisters. Bureaucratic black belts understand the organization’s norms and are dedicated to following the existing rules. They are typically present thinkers who desire practical ideas that will help the organization complete its current plan.  Tugboat pilots have learned the organizational landscape and have learned how to get things done. These are troubleshooters in many ways, but also conservative. One of the first things a troubleshooter learns is to avoid making trouble. Conversely, if they see the idea as a way to avoid future trouble, they can be a strong advocate. Benevolent bureaucrats want to help you along, but the accidently bog you down. They see ways to make your idea a bit “better” by waiting to include a forthcoming element or linking you up to some other emerging process. These additions are always tiny improvements, but they make progress harder. Wind surfers are like bureaucratic black belts in their mastery of the organization, but they use this mastery to advance their own prospects. They are very sensitive to the desires of people who can advance their careers and so are unlikely to advocate for a challenging idea. The four types care about rules, results, process and themselves, respectively. This is what you must find a way to appeal to, if you want these resisters to give way or become advocates.

It is easy to think of this resistance negatively, but as the end of the previous paragraph suggests, many of these people have an important and legitimate interest. This makes it incumbent on the rebel to understand and respect these perspectives. If you can empathize with their motivation, you may be able to work with them to move an idea forward.

The advice for convincing people to take action on an idea is fairly standard.

• Demonstrate that the organization is missing an opportunity
• Describe what could happen if the idea is implemented
• Demonstrate that implementation is practical

When the idea helps the organization’s leaders get what is important to them and seems practical, they are much more likely to support it. However, it is also important (credibility) that the uncertainty associated with the idea is also clear. Decision makers want to know that you’ve done some research and have a detailed plan, but they probably don’t want to see/hear about the details. This is one place where credibility has an outsized role. Don’t fill meeting time with presentation; provide the essence of the proposal and allow at least half of the time for them to ask questions and discuss the proposal. It’s been observed that an idea that gains the support of 10% of a group is likely to be approved (many people are followers – even in a group of leaders). Perhaps the biggest barrier to action is the feeling that action is not urgently required.  Insure that the consequences of no action are clear to the decision makers.

So far, the discussion about rebels and ideas has skirted the fact that many ideas are proposed and accepted with no problems. The reason it is worth thinking about rebels is that some ideas provoke stronger resistance because they challenge some aspect of organizational normality or orthodoxy. When the person presenting the idea gives up in the face of initial resistance, this is not rebel behavior. It is the persistent effort to overcome resistance that characterizes a rebel. In the simplest case, resistance takes the form of disagreement. This is often due to differing perspectives or understanding of the opportunity. When the idea is mildly challenging, a good discussion can lead to resolution. For the person proposing the idea, this means an emphasis on listening to the questions, accepting the questions as valid, and being willing to acknowledge what is uncertain or unknown. Keeping a focus on the idea – not the people resisting the idea – is critical. These discussions can feel like winning/losing conversations, but it important to understand that the conversation is about the organization and the idea (not you and the idea). Being less emotionally engaged (in the sense of remaining calm and flexible) will help the issues get resolved.

Some higher-impact ideas go beyond this stage and tension rises; people begin to take sides on how to proceed and the idea becomes controversial. Real change often entails controversy. If people begin to invest their emotional energy in promoting or resisting change, the change is more likely to be important to many people. There is no avoiding controversy when the ideas matters. This is when allies and credibility become important. Every idea has weaknesses, but this is not the time to hide them. Be clear about the weaknesses. It is still important to focus on the content and impact of the idea. Stay away from all-or-nothing positions. It is very important to let people express their resistance and for that expression to be accepted by you. Most of the time, the opposing perspective is also true – which is why there is a controversy. People come to support ideas by discussing them, not from hearing a presentation alone. You want to give everyone time to express their concerns….

When controversy escalates into conflict, damage to people and the organization becomes a possibility. It becomes much harder to focus on the idea itself. The escalation almost always involves emotional elements and people get angry and over-committed to their arguments on both sides of the issue. The anger can lead rebels to say what they really think. This might work in waking people up to the need to act. It may also lead to the organization sidelining or ejecting the rebel. Colleagues may shy away to avoid being tainted. The key to succeeding in conflict situations is not to act in anger. It is OK to be angry, but it becomes important to learn what is driving the anger and then set it aside. This may require some time itself. Then get the facts, prepare a plan and coolly explain why a change is needed and how it can be accomplished – but it is time to be clear and direct. Sometimes you need to step back, gather your resources, and then proceed forward again.

When disagreement begins, so does anxiety. Rebels may worry about being losing respect from peers, losing a promotion, or even their job. There are lots of things that someone can be afraid of. The book provides a detailed list of fears. To counter these fears, it helps to think about strengths. The organization probably hires people based on their strengths. Use of these strengths has built credibility. And the combination of strength and credibility is the counterweight to fear. When you step back from conflict, some of the time is used to understand and manage fear; don’t strive for fearlessness, just control.

The authors suggest five guidelines to be a good rebel.

• Play within the rules – breaking rules is the shortcut to losing the game.
• Keep your sense of humor – It is hard to develop allies when you are sullen or angry.
• Be an idea carrier – not an idea warrior – A successful idea does not belong to one person. The sooner you get others to share the idea, the sooner it will become reality.
• Don’t play the hero – Heroism does not work as a strategy and it does not work as a result.
• Find your true rebel calling - One idea is good, but unlikely to be enough. Understanding what’s important to you so that you can build the alliances and series of ideas to move in that direction helps you become more effective.

Comment and interpretation:

• What the book does best is explain the rebel perspective and approach, and the contrast to the typical organization’s members. For rebels, who may wonder if they are the “only one” out there, this is useful information.
• I have been on the other side of provocative ideas and certainly a source of apparent resistance. The quote, “People come to support ideas by discussing them…” rings true to me. One of the more productive periods of my work life involved a partnership with another person developing strategy and tactics for a small business. We would propose ideas and then argue about them. We would switch sides in the middle of the argument (without any formal agreement to do this) so that we could talk ourselves into an idea. One person who watched us do this, asked me how we could argue so intensely and then happily go to lunch together. I realized that we were preparing ourselves to discuss with others, who might find these ideas controversial. If we could not support the idea after such a discussion, it was probably not good enough. I wonder how much we would benefit if we could tell people that were going to fight their idea to see how that felt – and then fight for their idea to see how that felt. We would decide how we felt about the idea after fighting on both sides.
• Many rebels struggle with organizational life and the conformity and bureaucracy that is often involved. Over time, organizations swing between more open or more resistant to change. From an individual perspective, sometimes this is simply a matter of changing supervisors. A change to greater resistance causes some rebels to change organizations. Some go into hiding and wait for a better environment. Most successful rebels know when it is time to go into hiding. One of the first books on leadership that I read was called Servant Leadership (Robert Greenleaf). The author worked for ATT in the 1930-1960 period. People asked him why he would work for such a bureaucratic organization – which they assumed was very resistant to change. His reply was that other organizations might be easier to change, but few organizations were more important to change. Given the leverage of ATT at the time, a small change could make a big difference. This may be one reason that some rebels would rather spend time waiting for a better environment than leaving for one. They think the benefits of staying outweigh the risks of staying. Sometimes they are right.
• The book has a chapter dedicated to the problem of fear, but I think it misses some key points. Fear is a real force on your thinking. To quote Frank Herbert’s book Dune, “Fear is the mind killer.” Fear prevents clear thinking, but fear loses its power too. When you recognize that you are afraid – just acknowledging the fear decreases its power. If you can wait to act until the fear passes. You can be much more clear-headed while remaining energized. In my own experience, anger is a clue that you are afraid of something – just something you are not consciously aware of yet.
• I think the book underemphasizes the importance of persistence to rebels. A good rebel is simultaneously impatient and patient. A colleague and I used to joke that we were like glaciers (glaciers were not really shrinking at the time), we moved slowly, but inevitably. For all of the talk about paradigm changes, we can see in many domains that change is slow for a really long time – and then it’s fast. People might notice the fast part, but they miss the slow part. Good change advocates live in the slow parts.
• The book does not say this, but most business organizations have an intensely present focused culture. People are recognized and promoted based on results – which occur in the present – often based on the past. Most administrative effort is devoted to the present – for example, monthly or quarterly earnings. When there is a conflict for resources between activities that will generate value in the present or the future, the present almost always wins. The present is less uncertain than the future, so favoring the present feels like lower risk. This presents future-oriented people a challenge. The first challenge is to recognize that present-oriented people are under pressure to be present-oriented. The structures, practices and metrics focus on the present (cash flow) or present-past (ROGI), and any metrics about the future are “soft” by comparison. Costs come today and benefits tomorrow, and people are measured by today’s results. Second, it can be hard to explain the origin of a future-oriented idea when the future issue is still one of many future issues. For people in a company that sells to other companies, the present-oriented people in that company may not see the issue yet either. This may be why so many companies feel blindsided by “sudden” shifts in demand. Finally, there are many possible futures and some are incompatible with others. This can be very confusing. The present data for competing futures can be equally strong. There is a logic to waiting until the future is closer to the present to make a choice – even if it is frustrating to a future thinker.
• There are many types of fear and one important fear is that of creating social discomfort. People don’t like to say or do things that make other people uncomfortable. The story of the Emperor’s new clothing is about this fear. To protect each other, we will ignore something that is clearly happening. Sometimes a rebel must make a person or group uncomfortable in order to get a good hearing for an idea. This can be as simple as being direct and factual about the situation. It can involve the more intense act of reading the riot act to people to drive home the importance of action. Ideas that lead to real change will cause social discomfort and rebels must overcome their fear to make progress. I had a now-retired colleague who liked to go to meeting with me because “I said what I was thinking”. I am careful about what I say, but I have a low fear of creating social discomfort which allows me to be direct when I want to be.

*text in italics is directly quoted from the text