How to be a Rebellious Zebra
Top Five Things Internal Professional Rebels Do
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Ask a handful of pioneers working in big companies how they deal with obstacles and they’ll tell you they don’t see them. This is what being an internal professional rebel or a ‘rebellious zebra’ — so-called because they change the herd from within — is all about. To learn more, we treated three of them to dinner and made a list of the top five things internal professional rebels do.
Internal Professional Rebels:
1. Trust themselves
“If you are self-confident, you can do anything,” says Niels Hardam, who had a 12-year long career in the Royal Netherlands Marine Corps. “When you trust yourself, you have enough confidence to let things happen. You are willing to be responsible for projects, while delegating aspects you’re not good at to other people. You need to do this in order to create a team.”
2. Become zebras
“You should see the organisation as a herd of zebras,” says Joacim de Kam, stakeholder manager at Rijkswaterstaat, the Dutch governmental agency responsible for roads and waterways. “You will scare them off if you approach them as a lion. In order to build trust, you have to become a zebra.”
Joacim uses this metaphor to explain that you have to run with the group in order to get its support for your project. In other words, being aware of your surroundings is about knowing how you should behave in order to influence others.
3. Stop asking permission
If you want to push a new idea forward, there comes a time to stop being considerate and start being considered a rebel. When that times comes don’t be afraid to do things that are different and don’t ask for permission either. Walter Zantinge, Innovation Manager at ABN AMRO explains that to innovate within a company, you need a certain level of resistance.
One of Walter’s inspirations on this matter is American entrepreneur and investor Jeff Bezos who says: “You have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.”
4. Don’t give up
Now as a considerate yet confident rebel you managed to win some people over and get them on board with your idea. Now is the time to be persistent. When going against the grain, you might face resistance from within your company and find that the existing systems and control mechanisms work against change. Don’t give up. Large companies instinctively fear failure and your role is to challenge unfounded fears and management statements like “but we’re doing so well already”.
5. Focus
Lastly, to get it done, you need to get focused and remain focused. “Staying focused is the biggest challenge for anyone and it will only become harder in the future,” says Niels.
Don’t let yourself be distracted by other possible projects. Do one thing at the time. This is something we’ve heard many times before in the start-up scene, but we still believe that this it’s absolutely essential to become a professional rebel and drive change from inside a big organisation.
Rosanne Alderliefste is Research Trainee at Professional Rebel and dives deep into the world of intrapreneurship. Her aim is to understand the needs of these internal professional rebels and find ways to connect them with each other.
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