In our Intelligent Disobedience workshops we regularly discuss the risks associated with engaging in acts of Intelligent Disobedience. Why would a person take those risks? The answers our workshop delegates provide are varied and often personal in nature. Examples include addressing a long standing issue that reaches such a level of frustration that people are compelled to act or to address a pressing need to take action to protect a valued manager. The most common and compelling reason for taking the risks associated with acting via Intelligent Disobedience however is the need to take action to preserve one’s integrity or moral stance.

“It was simply the right thing to do” is the best expression that describes this motivation. Engaging in extraordinary acts where one’s personal integrity was at stake push the boundaries outward for acceptable actions of Intelligent Disobedience. True leaders are compelled to ensure the appropriate business outcome is achieved, or to ensure a shortcoming of something viewed as “wrong” was quickly corrected.

These moral stance positions represent the most significant acts of Intelligent Disobedience conveyed to us by workshop participants. They are inspired by a compelling requirement to “be true to one’s self.” The leader in this mode simply cannot get up and go to work with a feeling of integrity if their objective is not pursued.

This surfaces a healthy question for leaders to ask the person in the mirror – is our hesitance to engage in an act of Intelligent Disobedience compromising our integrity at work (or at home)?

Recently, we had a potential client ask us a very pointed question…”What will I see in my organization on day one after my staff sits through one of your Intelligent Disobedience workshops?”

It is a great question…yet I hope our answer was even better, and reflected our embracing of Intelligent Disobedience by saying something different from what is expected (yet conveys the truth). What was our answer? Nothing, you won’t see a difference at all on day 1 after a workshop.

Training workshops, ours or others, dealing with an “edgy topic” such as Intelligent Disobedience or a basic Project Management techniques course provide significant POTENTIAL for improvement on day 1. What causes improvements in an organization is the development of new habits – new habits that are coached and reinforced over several months in order for them to become commonplace. Those new habits should then be reinforced by a change or adjustment to performance measurement systems so the new habits and techniques being proposed are embraced, and their value realized.  Only then is improvement going to appear.

In his latest book Linchpin, Seth Godin discusses making a significant mark in your workplace by doing things differently.  Godin says “We need you to stand up and be remarkable. Be human. Contribute. Interact. Take the risk that you might make someone upset with your initiative, innovation, and insight – it turns out you’ll probably delight them instead.”  (Go to www.sethgodin.com for more of Seth’s wonderful thoughts.)

In our Intelligent Disobedience workshops we concentrate quite a bit on helping people realize the capabilities they have, but might have forgotten or “put away” as being too risky. As we are influenced by cautious thoughts in a struggling economy, we are less apt to “rock the boat.”

We at Mindavation are of the firm belief that those who simply keep their heads down and do what they are told are MORE at risk of getting laid off – as their contributions are not notable. Those that engage in Intelligent Disobedience – and are doing so for the sake of improving their businesses and in turn, their lives – make a difference. They stand out from the crowd. And people who stand out from the crowd are rarely the ones who are laid off.

Many people hesitate to engage in acts of Intelligent Disobedience because they believe they increase their risk of being fired. We firmly believe that acts of Intelligent Disobedience that improve the posture of your business and the success of your manager will end up doing just the opposite – they will make your position in your business more secure, and improve your status.

Don’t just follow the crowd – TRY something different!

Some of the best conversations we have had with influential stakeholders involved suggested actions that were ultimately rejected. In most cases, these were proposed acts of “intelligent disobedience.” Why were they still great conversations? Because they helped us as individuals stand out. As an employee, they reflected a desire and willingness to step away from being an every-day, replaceable “part in a process” and demonstrated initiative.

Often, these “failed suggestion” conversations bring new information to light, and other actions are proposed that improve a given project, or smooth the operation of a business process. Some of the very best ideas we have thought of for acts of intelligent disobedience were never executed at all, rather they served as catalysts for improvement by enlightening a senior leader, or causing a group to frame a problem in a different manner.

In an economy where the “manufactured piece” is continually being moved to markets where labour is less expensive, the products we can bring to work that are of greatest value are our ideas, innovations and perspectives. Intelligent disobedience involves removing  all but the legally binding boundaries from our thinking. This helps us come up with different means of serving our businesses and our clients. Frequently, all this  takes is the courage to surface an idea  and make a suggestion.  This could put your career in a whole new light.

Project professionals are always taught to focus on the critical path - that string of tasks that constitutes the longest path through your project network, therefore representing the shortest possible time that you can complete a project.

There are times however - especially when recovering a troubled project - that making the critical path tasks a second priority may actually be prudent. During a troubled project, morale is low, and key stakeholders have usually lost faith in the project. It is time for a victory - that is, it is time for a VICTORY PATH.

The victory path is a string of tasks that will create a fast, short term deliverable that adds business value, and/or increases the faith stakeholders have in the project and the project team. A client of ours has put this into practice whilst recovering a troubled project, and the results are promising. They are using the term “victory path” within the organisation to describe this approach.

Our client sent us this note on the actions they are taking:

“I formulated a ‘strike team’ to ensure we focus on the victory path (key milestones for end of Feb 2010 and May 2010 ) after I had the discussion with my CEO and management here at my location. The “victory path” term is quite appealing to people here since I added it to my vocabulary – it’s got leverage!!!

The strike team is essentially a few of my engineers with 100% of their time ‘striking’ a specific body of work that I planned/scheduled (on a micro task level so I can keep a tighter watch on it).

This approach has re-energised their project and re-engaged senior stakeholders; the first critical steps to successfully recovering a troubled project.

So, another act of intelligent disobedience, going against the norm and focusing on a set of tasks not on the critical path, but those that create a short term deliverable.

Recently in a legal document I encountered a section titled “Reasonableness”. It read as follows: “Wherever a written consent from a Unit Holder is required it shall not be unreasonably withheld.”

That struck me as wholly subjective and therefore rather unusual in a legal document. The sentiment is admirable, surely. Be reasonable, sign this document. But how can we possibly know that what is reasonable to us is reasonable to others? If you think about it carefully, reasonableness must be the most subjective of terms. The Oxford English Dictionary describes it thus: “The quality of being reasonable or rational; rationality or The fact or quality of being amenable to reason, or of acting or thinking in a sensible manner.”

What is the point of this? Well, reasonableness can be contentious in a workplace or team environment. After all, what is a perfectly reasonable work request or directive to you might be considered completely irrational by someone else. What you think is a reasonable response to a work request or directive also depends very much on the ear of the beholder. That is to say unless you take the trouble of providing context and define what you consider reasonable, sensible and rational. Otherwise, you might be in for a surprise. We cannot assume that our reasonableness is universal. What is perfectly rational and sensible in one team, is frowned upon in another. What is reasonable in one culture is irrational in another. Workplaces are no exception.

Intelligent Disobedience involves expressing your best ideas, AND encouraging the expression of the best ideas of others to gain the greatest level of understanding. Those who embrace Intelligent Disobedience would not stop at the mediocre level of understanding represented by “reasonableness”, but would engage in the discussions required to reach a deeper more substantial position, and provide a more optimal bit of direction.

- Contributed by Marjolein Towler

Leadership requires an extraordinary degree of skill and integrity – the ability to know when to intervene, when to teach, when to coach, when to provide feedback and in what venue to provide all of this.  Leadership requires very deliberate and thoughtful consideration of those you are trying to lead - versus simply manage. The leader is more of an artist.

And what makes a good artist? Well first, there are those indescribable creative juices flowing from their very being onto the canvas.  Inspiration, flashes of insight, conceptual models taking shape with artfully crafted brushworks.  To be a good leader you need to draw on sometimes highly personal gut level decisions – when for example in a meeting to directly challenge a powerful senior leader whose new production changes will entirely throw off your budget allocations, or when to tell your highly talented new hire to back off on their new and risky approach for a technical solution. We have to assess our own risk profile against the potential gains to push back with these key business colleagues. The best leaders take these risks – and succeed – on a regular basis.

 One of the keys to doing this is to realize that we all look at the world through different lenses. We all have our own truth, and that truth differs from person to person. Understanding that the world is viewed via different lenses, and not just yours, is instrumental in conducting the sensitive conversations we have discussed here, and doing so successfully. Gather a “full set of pictures” through the many “lenses” people bring to the table and rich possibilities of how to proceed can come into focus. So, next time you feel the need to impulsively jump in and state your position, examine it from another person’s point of view.  Intelligent Disobedience is NOT about being silent, or holding back your opinions, it is just the opposite – it encourages us to speak up. However, it also encourages us to understand that our approach is not the only way, or the only view to a situation. The Intelligently Disobedient leader does jump in, but only after seeking to look at a situation through the lenses of others in addition to her own.

- Contributed by Elaine Krantz

Political Correctness(PC) in the sense that it is regarded as too prescriptive is often seen as stymieing frank debate. Too many rules on how, or what you can or can not say. And it makes it only too easy to harp on a point of language (saying ‘person’ instead of ‘man’ to indicate generic ‘human’), rather than a point of content (i.e. about what the person is, or should be doing).

This is not to say that language is not important, it is. Language is the first way we express our perceptions, and as the saying goes: “perception is reality”. So if the colour of a person is pertaining to race, why not call the race instead of the colour, so ‘Aboriginal’, rather than ‘Black’? This is not being ‘PC’, this is being clear and unambiguous as well as respectful with language.

So Political Correctness fulfils its function much better than it has been given credit for. Language reflects attitudes in culture, be it an organisational culture or in society at large. The use of terms can embed attitudes, thus perpetuating fixed ideas and prevent them from being re-assessed. In this argument ‘fixed embedded terms’ lead to ‘fixed unmovable minds’.

To keep this argument to a corporate environment, a management system that does not contain policies that identify wanted (PC) behaviour, will lead to unwanted (unPC) behaviour.

This then is an argument for PC Corporate Policies, policies that will not only prescribe wanted behaviour, but then model that behaviour by making sure that all relevant processes and procedures are aligned and measured against those policies, with all processes and procedure to be audited against them annually. And from the very tip of the corporate pyramid, to the very bottom. Good examples make for good following.

Contributed by Marjolein Towler