iStockSUMMING UP
Is 100 Percent the ‘Magic Percent’ of Rebel Talent Every Organization Needs?
How much “rebel talent” is a necessary minimum? How much is too much? And how should it be deployed, especially when it comes to management? For several thoughtful respondents to this month’s column, the answer was “it depends.”
Arie Goldshlager, for example, commented: “If the organization is on the right track, it certainly can have too much rebel talent. In this situation, the rebel talent could prove largely disruptive and counter-productive.” The problem, he continues, is that most organizations are, at once, on many right tracks and wrong tracks. “The right question is therefore not the amount of ‘rebel talent’ but how to focus it on the right causes.”
David Wittenberg concurred. As he put it, “organizations should hire and assign rebels to work on unfamiliar and intractable problems while hiring and assigning conventional managers to deal with more familiar and common tasks and goals.”
“The right question is therefore not the amount of ‘rebel talent’ but how to focus it on the right causes.”
Grace was more cautious. “I applaud Ms. Gino for encouraging diverse thinking. Out of the box gets us new ideas. On the other hand, I cringe at the thought of effectively managing a ‘herd of cats.’” Santosh Patil added that “as much as I like the rebels in my team, it is essential for me to have order since I am very organized and disciplined, too.” When there are too many rebels in the pot, “we need to channel the energy through coaching to effectively use the energy.”
Shann Turnbull commented that rebel talent often encounters the real problem: us. As he put it, “humans, like all other social creatures, are hardwired by their DNA to possess contrary-complementary behavior. The traditional and ubiquitous command and control hierarchies of modern society inhibit, frustrate, and deny our natural instincts.” He suggests stakeholder forums as one means of supporting the thinking of rebel talent.
Zufi, at arts4refugees, supported the concept wholeheartedly. “I don’t think you can have too much rebel talent. You can have too many people who don’t understand how to rebel in the business environment.” Sean Kennedy joined him in saying that, “You could have too much ‘rebel talent,’ as Gino defines it. It’s also possible to eat too many vegetables, but most people are in no danger of reaching that threshold… But you can’t successfully leverage this kind of talent with the old style of management… Compliance-oriented approaches just won’t cut it. Leaders need to invoke shared purpose to pull their rebel talent together in service of something worth fighting for.”
For her part, Prof. Gino emailed me on January 29 as I was putting the column together. She proposed an inclusion that I purposely didn’t use. It was: “Ask Gino what the magic percent of rebel talent any organization needs, she’ll give what may seem a surprising answer: 100 percent. Why? Because rebel talent, at its core, means engaged minds and hearts.” Does she have it right? What do you think?
Original Column
Can an Organization Have Too Much 'Rebel Talent'?
In a recent book, Francesca Gino argues the value of staffing an organization with leaders and employees possessing what she calls “rebel talent.” She backs it up with extensive research, much of it her own.
Gino, the Tandon Family Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, builds her book around the “five core elements of rebel talent.” They are:
- Novelty (“Seeking out the new”)
- Curiosity (“Asking why, why, why")
- Perspective (The ability to “constantly broaden (one’s) view of the world and see it as others do”)
- Diversity (“The tendency to challenge predetermined social roles”)
- Authenticity (Remaining open and vulnerable in order to connect with others and learn from them")
These five elements are pathways to human engagement with the energy, loyalty, productivity, and creativity it generates both on and off the job. She says, “At their core, rebels are engaged.” In other words, if you’re seeking strategic agility and innovation, staff with rebels. Once having done so, stifle rebels at your own risk.
Most important for us, what do rebel leaders do?
First, they create rebel organizations, where employees and leaders alike understand that influence is much more important than power, as determined by where you sit in the organization or how big your title is. Rebel organizations are places where leaders focus on making others better as they drive positive change. To maintain your credentials as a rebel leader, she recommends: (1) “seek out the new,” both for yourself and your employees, (2) encourage constructive dissent, (3) open conversations, don’t close them, (4) reveal yourself—and reflect, (5) learn everything—then forget everything, (6) find freedom in constraints, (7) lead from the trenches, and (8) foster happy accidents [through, for example, ways of bringing diverse employees together on a daily basis].
One might conclude that an organization staffed with rebel talent and a passable strategy should win over an organization relying heavily on rules, procedures, and coloring inside the lines. However, other research emphasizes the importance of engagement based on trust resulting from leaders and employees who are predictable, who do what they say they will do, and who try to be as transparent as possible in their dealings with others. It’s important to note that these findings complement, not necessarily contradict, those of Gino’s.
Organizations exhibiting so-called rebel qualities have been found to incur higher organizational and agency costs as the price for agility and innovative outcomes. Take diversity, for example. As Gino herself points out, research has found that “greater diversity produces better outcomes exactly because it is harder to work among a mix of perspectives,” and “diversity often fails to take hold for the simple reason that homogeneous teams can feel more effective.”
Challenges to rebel leadership
One of the challenges of employing rebel talent is that the process of developing a cadre of rebels quite likely has to begin at the top if the philosophy is to be inculcated in an organization. To do it from the bottom could lead to the frustration caused by managers and leaders reluctant to change. This suggests other questions: Can rebel leaders be trained or do they have to be hired and deployed? If the latter, where are they found? To what extent does the saying, “hire for attitude, train for skills” apply here?
There are many attractive features of rebel talent and what it can achieve. But is it an unalloyed competitive advantage? Can an organization have too much “rebel talent?” What do you think?
Reference:
Francesca Gino, Rebel Talent: Why It Pays to Break the Rules at Work and In Life (New York: Dey Street, 2018).