Can an Organization Have Too Much 'Rebel Talent'? - Harvard Business School Working Knowledge

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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).

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