Be Subversive!
Most of us have have had the experience of not saying what is on our mind at work because the environment demands that we stay in the box, yet we are also expected to think out of the box. Sometimes we feel inadequate because we don’t fit the mold. We conform or adapt to what we think is the norm in order fit into a corporate culture, a team, or an idealized vision of a leader.
Our institutions, from universities to boardrooms, are fundamentally competitive and individualized. We compare ourselves to others and whether we are students or executives, we are made to feel inadequate if we are not labeled an “A player.” Business school students are taught that their “soft skills” (relational and creative) that are less valuable than their “hard skills” (analytical and cognitive). Women are told they need to “toughen up” in order to lead.
We might intellectually understand the value of celebrating mistakes and failures, yet we stress over them and are afraid of their consequences. We know it’s good to unplug but we buy into the notion that “successful people work 24/7” so we wake up, grab our phones that sit on our night tables, and check our emails while we still have sleep in our eyes.
A few years ago an article in HBR caught my eye – The Heretic’s Guide to Getting More Done by David Brendel, MD, PhD. The headings of each section of the article make me smile:
DAYDREAM AS OFTEN AS YOU WANT
STOP PREPARING FOR MEETINGS AND PRESENTATIONS
SPEND LESS TIME ON KEY DECISIONS
BE MORE “MINDFUL” THAN FOCUSED
SHORTEN YOUR WORKDAY
When I am coaching people I give them permission to be subversive, defined as seeking or intended to subvert an established system or institution. Being subversive in a business context (and in all walks of life) frees us from the constraints of doing business as usual, which is all too often confining and prevents us from giving full expression to our creative capacities. We live in a historical moment where many of our institutions are failing us and our children. It is a moment that demands innovation, leadership and a new vision of what our country and our world can become.
We don’t have to conform to the rules, we don’t even have to conform to the rules that we established for ourselves! We can, in appropriate ways, be subversive. We can be heretics, we can bust out of the conventional ways that we learn to play certain roles. What do we do instead? We write a new play for ourselves, for our co-workers, for our fellow Americans and citizens of the world! Let’s develop work environments for innovation, leadership and creativity.
All of this demands that we PERFORM, PLAY and BE SUBVERSIVE!