Deviant Leadership for Researchers
At the AMA Marketing Research Conference, Greg Reid, CMO, YRC Worldwide, outlined eight principles for a different kind of leadership: deviant leadership.
A leader is anyone who can influence at least one person “to passionately embrace a new idea, follow a new direction or chart a new course”. Leaders do not need to be managers with direct reports.
Corporate culture works to eliminate deviant employees, to discourage deviant ideas and even to punish deviant behaviors and attitudes. “And of course, as a result, most large companies lose the opportunity to discover the future and get there first,” write Ryan Matthews and Watts Wacker in The Deviants Advantage. Deviant leaders have to struggle against that culture, since such leaders are “the source of all innovation, new ideas, services, personalities and ultimately new markets.”
The 8 principles of change for researchers to become deviant leaders:
Plan: Know the company’s strategy.
Position [within the organization] doesn’t matter. Employees need to consider how they can create change, how they can fulfill their responsibility to their employer to help it succeed.
Eliminate project mentality. Embrace the broader picture of what you are doing not the tactics of a project.
Profit: seek ways to improve the bottom line. Are you in the research business or your organization’s business?
Accelerate the Pace of change. Skate to wear the puck is going, don’t go where the ball has been. Deviant leaders discover the future and get there first.
Don’t succumb to the Pressure. Nothing produces more pressure than an office environment; have meetings outside the office. Exercise, pursue outside interests.
Develop partnerships. Build relationships with resources.
Perfection: Forget it. We’re not trying to do more with less; we’re trying to do lots more with lots less. Quantify the risks of not having perfect data, but go with the data you have.
A leader is anyone who can influence at least one person “to passionately embrace a new idea, follow a new direction or chart a new course”. Leaders do not need to be managers with direct reports.
Corporate culture works to eliminate deviant employees, to discourage deviant ideas and even to punish deviant behaviors and attitudes. “And of course, as a result, most large companies lose the opportunity to discover the future and get there first,” write Ryan Matthews and Watts Wacker in The Deviants Advantage. Deviant leaders have to struggle against that culture, since such leaders are “the source of all innovation, new ideas, services, personalities and ultimately new markets.”
The 8 principles of change for researchers to become deviant leaders:
Plan: Know the company’s strategy.
Position [within the organization] doesn’t matter. Employees need to consider how they can create change, how they can fulfill their responsibility to their employer to help it succeed.
Eliminate project mentality. Embrace the broader picture of what you are doing not the tactics of a project.
Profit: seek ways to improve the bottom line. Are you in the research business or your organization’s business?
Accelerate the Pace of change. Skate to wear the puck is going, don’t go where the ball has been. Deviant leaders discover the future and get there first.
Don’t succumb to the Pressure. Nothing produces more pressure than an office environment; have meetings outside the office. Exercise, pursue outside interests.
Develop partnerships. Build relationships with resources.
Perfection: Forget it. We’re not trying to do more with less; we’re trying to do lots more with lots less. Quantify the risks of not having perfect data, but go with the data you have.
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