MODEL MAVERICKS

Help companies grow and perform

BY Jayashantha Jayawardhana

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently…” So says the famous manifesto by Rob Siltanen, which launched Apple’s hugely successful and award-winning ‘Think Different’ campaign in 1997.

Despite their unreserved and almost universal appreciation of the brilliant advertising copy however, most business leaders consider nonconformists and rebellious employees to be troublesome entities.

From the time we are toddlers, we’re taught and pressured to conform to the norms of socially acceptable behaviour. For instance, when growing up in Sri Lanka, we were taught to wear white to funerals, eat only with our right hand and act on our teachers’ instructions without questioning the reasons behind them.

At kindergarten, school and university, as well as in the larger world, the need for conformity was highlighted over and over again. Nonconformists were viewed with suspicion, met with hostility, ridiculed or ostracised quite unconscionably. Sadly, the workplace isn’t a refuge for nonconformists either.

Behavioural scientist and Harvard academic Francesca Gino writes in her illuminating Harvard Business Review (HBR) article titled ‘Let Your Workers Rebel’ that “throughout our careers, we are taught to conform to the status quo, to the opinions and behaviours of others, and to information that supports our views.”

“The pressure only grows as we climb the organisational ladder. By the time we reach high-level positions, conformity has been so hammered into us that we perpetuate it in our enterprises,” she adds.


Summarising the key findings of a survey of more than 200 employees across a wide range of industries, Gino observes that nearly half the respondents reported working in organisations where they regularly felt the need to conform and that more than half of them found their organisation didn’t question the status quo.

This clearly indicates that from C-level to mid-level executives and staff, people checked much of their real selves at the door. In her seminal article, Gino cites three major reasons for our conformity on the job and spells out how to promote nonconformity at the workplace.

SOCIAL PRESSURE Early in life, we learn that significant benefits accrue from following social rules about what to say, how to act, how to dress and so on. Conformity makes us feel accepted and part of the majority.

Conformity to peer pressure is so strong that it happens even when we know it’ll lead us to make poor decisions. In other words, we tend to make bad decisions simply to fit in.

Gino says: “Conformity at work takes many forms – modelling the behaviour of others in similar roles, expressing appropriate emotions, wearing proper attire, routinely agreeing with the opinions of managers, acquiescing to a team’s poor decisions and so on. And all too often, bowing to peer pressure reduces individuals’ engagement with their jobs.”

STATUS QUO Even when we know the old ways of doing things at work don’t yield optimal results, we rarely seek to deviate from them. Instead of changing due to thoughtful rational choices, many traditions endure due to routine or what psychologists call the ‘status quo bias.’

Because we weigh the potential losses of deviating from the standard practices so much more heavily than we do the potential gains, we support decisions that maintain the status quo.

But conformity to the status quo inevitably leads to boredom, complacency, stagnation and eventual collapse, as we’ve seen in the likes of Borders, BlackBerry, Polaroid and MySpace. These fallen giants were once indomitable leaders in their respective markets.

SELF-SERVING Most of us tend to prefer new sources of knowledge such as books, research papers, websites, documentaries on YouTube etc., which confirm our existing beliefs and theories over those that contradict or question them.

Unfortunately, this holds back positive growth. Without stopping there, we tend to view unexpected or unpleasant information as a threat to avoid – a phenomenon that psychologists call ‘motivated scepticism.’

Now that we know why conformity is so prevalent, as business leaders we should start uprooting the deep-seated myths about conformity in our organisations. It’s certainly not easy to turn the conformity tide because the aforementioned reasons encompass a vast domain that you must conquer.

You don’t have to promote nonconformity for the sake of it. Instead, you can encourage constructive or productive nonconformity to drive your organisation’s innovation, performance and growth.

This will result in critical and creative thinking, better engagement and greater contribution. Remember: this must be at the heart of your people strategy.