Breaking the Rules

“I love to break rules!” So said Joe Miller, Chief Technology Officer at Corning, in his keynote address at the Industrial Research Institute’s Annual Meeting a few weeks ago. Describing Innovation at Corning, he went on to say, “There is no prescribed process for success.” I work continually with individuals of integrity, embedded in organizations, who realize they need to risk “breaking the rules” to be innovative or simply productive. But it is exceptional to hear a senior executive acknowledge it.

Despite all the processes and programs on the market to promote innovation, research confirms that “Champions (in innovation) are essentially political actors who are not prepared to abide by organizational rules.”

Leaders deviate from established norms or generally accepted standards in order to realize their mission and accomplish their goals. They break the rules – with integrity.

I am not, of course, referring to being deceitful or dishonest or doing anything illegal. Indeed, compliance in industry is essential for safety and environmental reasons as much as fiscal responsibility. All the same, conscientious individuals in today’s hard-driving high performance organizations know that in order to accomplish innovative breakthroughs they need to break the rules.

There are no rules for rule-breaking. But here are three suggestions to guide you, if you want to go where no one has gone before:

1. Take your time in responding to pressure from others to break the rules; confirm that you are connected to your own best sense of self when blazing a new trail.
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2. Whether simply speaking up in a meeting or a much more defining act of defiance, consider the risk you are willing to incur when taking a stand.

3. Strive for internal alignment; over time your decisions and actions should be consistent and congruent with your commitment to a given direction or deeper purpose.

Breaking the rules may be difficult to justify in the moment but is essential to realize the promise of the future. Do you agree?

Hurry Up and Slow Down!

"I am not this steeply sloping hour in which you see me hurrying." Rainer Maria Rilke, German Poet

I am not hurrying even though I am in motion, constantly. I am managing my fear that everything I am supposed to be doing will end in my termination. The relentless pace of meetings and reviews hides the hopelessness I feel. Productivity trumps innovation; activity supplants creativity. My attention is not focused because my purpose is unclear. I have passion, but it mostly scares me these days. If I lead with passion and inquire about purpose, I'll lose my job. Meanwhile, I am losing me.

Identity precedes productivity. The courage to be is rarer today than the impulse to do. This is not just an excursion into philosophical speculation. It is a fundamental principle of high performance.

Are we a Research organization with a capital "R" or a development organization that will continue to place our bets on short-term incremental improvements on products already in the market? A student with whom I spoke not long ago at the African Leadership Academy in Joberg described himself as "an Egyption from Cairo who is Muslim who is also African, though my skin is not black, who wants to be a global citizen." He is actively claiming who is!

I am enacting the motion of working hard but am hardly working, in terms of my own deepest values. No matter! Management just asks for more. And I keep on keeping on.

Do you know who you are? Will you speak up? It does matter!

Innovators Break Rules

Last week I was with an R&D group who were lamenting the lack of entrepreneurial spirit in their ranks. This week I am at the African Leadership Academy with students from across the Continent discussing entrepreneurship and the hero’s journey. One student cited the text: “Successful entrepreneurs make bold leaps that break contact with the familiar and leave behind a clutter of obsolete products and processes.” (“The Entrepreneur as Hero”, Candace Allen). She continued by describing her uncle who broke family and tribal norms when he went to China for an engineering education. I am inspired by the readiness of these students to make such bold leaps as they shared who their heroes are.

In today’s corporate environment heroes are more difficult to identify. Why? Failure to break the rules? This is a difficult but essential inquiry as we try to sort out the “rule-breakers” who have violated our trust and squandered millions of dollars from those who are innovators, if not heroes. Daniel Vasella, CEO of Novartis, commented recently (McKinsey Quarterly Conversations with Global Leaders) that he doubts that “tons of new controls will improve the situation. …Innovation is always, 'How do I circumvent certain rules to make more and better returns?' " He comments further on the “trust gap” that must be closed and the integrity that is required to do things differently.

Leaders deviate from the norms. They go where no one has gone before. Innovators do break rules. But they must do so with integrity in an environment where the vision of what could be and the shared values are more powerful than the instinct to comply with rules and processes. Perhaps the lack of entrepreneurial spirit correlates directly with the lack of understanding of the hero’s journey inside the corporate world. The students here in Joburg certainly have prompted me to be thinking about it more this week!

Profitability and True Value

Several important people in my life, including my son, urged me to read David Brooks op ed column in the New York Times several weeks back now. I only recently got to it. Alas, "In Praise of Dullness" challenges much of what I hold important in my life and work. Brooks asserts that recent research proves that “warm, flexible, team-oriented and empathetic people are less likely to thrive as C.E.O.’s. Organized, dogged, anal-retentive and slightly boring people are more likely to thrive.” He even cites Jim Collin’s seminal work, Good to Great in support of his argument.

As one reaches the conclusion of his column, the “political” nature of his argument becomes blatantly apparent. It reinforces the need to test underlying assumptions (which are frequently very political in nature) and examine common practices for sustainable value. For example, Brooks equates political talent (ala Washington D.C. in any case ) with “charisma, charm and personal skills”. If politics is indeed about the inevitable exercise of power and struggle for control, then political skills are much more about persuasive influence and effective management than Brooks leads the reader to believe. And such political skills are important to successful leaders, regardless of position.

The current economic climate does not speak well of the “success” of American businesses, including the leadership of many CEOS. If innovation is indeed required to maintain or regain competitive strength, the human all too human factors in the work environment, including the need for trust and some measure of personal fulfillment, are essential.

Insufficient criteria for success are confused with generating sustainable true value. Paradoxically, “breaking the rules “ of what many have deemed “profitable” may be what is required.

The Cost of Integrity

Several years ago, while discussing integrity and leadership with a client group in Seoul, Korea, a participant fluent in Mandarin asked if he could step to the flipchart and draw a Mandarin character. He drew the character for integrity which consists, he explained, of three parts: ten eyes, one heart, and a moving target.

We live and work these days in a land of moving targets. A person of integrity dare not be static or stuck in one place. Multiple perspectives, including that which has not even been imagined, are required - at least "ten eyes". The virtue of integrity is not a matter of truthfulness but rather openness - openness to all that is yet to be discovered. I need to pause and ask myself, "Do I really believe that?" I do believe it, but sometimes I am incredibly impatient with my own orthodoxies and well-established assumptions.

Scientists have historically been among the greatest "heretics". That makes advancing in the performance rankings really tough! The courage to be open and to be different often comes with a cost.

The heart is the source of courage. As leaders it is essential that we stay close to our hearts. How scientific is that?