3 ms·

The Media Lab does present a yearly Disobedience Prize, so...

elliekelly 7y ago
Unrelated to MIT/Ito, your comment got me wondering whether there are any MBA-type case studies on how to foster a culture with the "right" amount of disobedience? Some amount of rules/processes are necessary but (in my little corner of the world at least) the most important skill is being able to gauge the risk/reward of bending or breaking them. I wonder if "disobedience" is a learned skill and whether we should be putting in more effort to teach it.
- smelendez 7y ago
  I think people often point to the "Skunk Works" at Lockheed Martin that built the SR-71.
- ismail 7y ago
  Unsure if you will find anything on “disobedience”. To me it can be broken down to encouraging the following in the culture: 1. Diverse views 2. Confidence to speak 3. candor and honesty 4. agency Having said that there needs to be a minimum amount of agreement on some values/principles/philosophy. Without agreement on this you end up in chaos. What you want is to keep culture at the “edge of chaos” [0]. Also have a look at the adaptive cycle [1] and diversity in perspectives. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_of_chaos https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_of_chaos [1] https://www.resalliance.org/adaptive-cycle https://www.resalliance.org/adaptive-cycle
- neel_k 7y ago
  It's actually super easy to achieve in general: literally (and I genuinely mean literally) tens of thousands of primary schools manage it. You need (a) the members of the culture to have a shared ethos that sees the work as a noble pursuit and work towards, (b) enough money to ensure the system has enough slack that people can take the initiative to do things like help each other without everything falling apart, but (c) not so much money flowing around that the ethos gets overwhelmed by self-interest. The trouble is that at a few million dollars money becomes a motive with a universal adapter, and enough people will let ethics slide to score that trust and shared values become unreliable. So it's nearly impossible to achieve in a VC-backed startup setting. If you really want academic research about how the mixture of altruism and self-interest affects the balance of rule-making and individual initiative, then IMO the best thing to read is the economist Julian le Grand's 2003 book _Motivation, Agency and Public Policy: Of Knights and Knaves, Pawns and Queens_.
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  It's not how disobedient you are, it's who you're disobedient to.
- rz2k 7y ago
  Perhaps "Managing in the Whitespace"[1], where whitespace is an answer to, "how can companies act entrepreneurial when they are programmed to operate in environments with strict policies, focused strategy, and clear authority?" It is supposed to stand in contrast to the black space where formal responsibilities, rules and processes have been inked out. [1] https://hbr.org/2001/02/managing-in-the-whitespace https://hbr.org/2001/02/managing-in-the-whitespace

Unrelated to MIT/Ito, your comment got me wondering whether there are any MBA-type case studies on how to foster a culture with the "right" amount of disobedience? Some amount of rules/processes are necessary but (in my little corner of the world at least) the most important skill is being able to gauge the risk/reward of bending or breaking them. I wonder if "disobedience" is a learned skill and whether we should be putting in more effort to teach it.

smelendez 7y ago
I think people often point to the "Skunk Works" at Lockheed Martin that built the SR-71.
ismail 7y ago
Unsure if you will find anything on “disobedience”. To me it can be broken down to encouraging the following in the culture: 1. Diverse views 2. Confidence to speak 3. candor and honesty 4. agency Having said that there needs to be a minimum amount of agreement on some values/principles/philosophy. Without agreement on this you end up in chaos. What you want is to keep culture at the “edge of chaos” [0]. Also have a look at the adaptive cycle [1] and diversity in perspectives. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_of_chaos https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_of_chaos [1] https://www.resalliance.org/adaptive-cycle https://www.resalliance.org/adaptive-cycle
neel_k 7y ago
It's actually super easy to achieve in general: literally (and I genuinely mean literally) tens of thousands of primary schools manage it. You need (a) the members of the culture to have a shared ethos that sees the work as a noble pursuit and work towards, (b) enough money to ensure the system has enough slack that people can take the initiative to do things like help each other without everything falling apart, but (c) not so much money flowing around that the ethos gets overwhelmed by self-interest. The trouble is that at a few million dollars money becomes a motive with a universal adapter, and enough people will let ethics slide to score that trust and shared values become unreliable. So it's nearly impossible to achieve in a VC-backed startup setting. If you really want academic research about how the mixture of altruism and self-interest affects the balance of rule-making and individual initiative, then IMO the best thing to read is the economist Julian le Grand's 2003 book _Motivation, Agency and Public Policy: Of Knights and Knaves, Pawns and Queens_.
DonHopkins 7y ago
It's not how disobedient you are, it's who you're disobedient to.
rz2k 7y ago
Perhaps "Managing in the Whitespace"[1], where whitespace is an answer to, "how can companies act entrepreneurial when they are programmed to operate in environments with strict policies, focused strategy, and clear authority?" It is supposed to stand in contrast to the black space where formal responsibilities, rules and processes have been inked out. [1] https://hbr.org/2001/02/managing-in-the-whitespace https://hbr.org/2001/02/managing-in-the-whitespace