Do you want to be a rebel or a pirate?
Those are your options. Or something in between. I just finished reading two recently published books: Be More Pirate and Rebel Talent.
They are both books aimed at people who want to get more stuff done, who look at the hierarchies that so many people seem to be locked into and think “that looks rubbish”. They have very different approaches to offer however.
Be More Pirate
Be More Pirate is a gutsy, passionate exhortation to be inspired by the Golden Age of Pirates, to rebel, rewrite the rules and get stuck in to solving the problems you see before you. Using pirates as a model is an attractive idea (once you’ve come to terms with how pirates actually made their money) and Sam Conniff Allende presents a compelling case that pirates actually have much to inspire us: with one pirate one vote, workplace accident insurance and wage transparency to name just a few of their innovations.
Be More Pirate wants to inspire people not to change the system but to bring it down, from the outside. To create a new, and better system to replace it.
Rebel Talent
Rebel Talent is a much more conventional business book. Not a great surprise since it’s written by Harvard Business School Professor, Francesca Gino. She also makes a case for rebellion from within organisations not from outside of them. She asks us to be inspired by chef Massimo Bottura and animation company Pixar.
Rebel Talent wants us to inspire people to stand up for authenticity, candour and fairness within their companies, corporations and governments. Not to tear down the system but to make it better.
Be more rebel or be more pirate?
I’m utterly sold on the need to for change, at least in public services.
And nothing changes unless people do things differently.
And if you agree (and let’s face it plenty of people do) that we need to change the way we do things in public services, should you choose the radical, romantic way of the pirate or the slow and frustrating path of the rebel?
Rebels, in my reading, are insiders, pirates are outsiders. If I can extend this metaphor a bit further, rebels are of the hierarchy, pirates are of the network.
Maybe you can be a bit of both.
In fact I hope you can be a bit of both because I work for a company that tries to help people inside organisations while sitting outside them.
On a dimension between rebels and pirates I’d have to say we’re much closer to the rebel end of the spectrum.
Change the navy or fight the navy?
In January Jo Carter, Esko Reinikainen and I borrowed a cafe up on Caerphilly Mountain and ran a strategy session for the company. The owners saw us with our many, many flipcharts and, while we were all walking their goats*, they asked us about our business. We explained that we help people working in public services understand why it is hard to drive change in hierarchies and we give them some tools to make it a bit easier.
“If you see problems in what public services do, why don’t you just go and fix them?”
they asked.
That’s the pirate approach. It’s exciting. I’m not saying it’s wrong. It’s not the one we’ve taken. Instead I now see that we’re trying to create and support rebels in organisations (in fact in some ways we’re trying to create organisations of rebels).
The golden age of pirates came to an end. Hierarchical navies ultimately defeated the agile and networked pirates. But those navies, and the societies they served, did change and evolve. Maybe, as Be More Pirate argues, they actually ingested the ideas that pirates had developed in their ships and colonies.
The fairness of pirates
Be More Pirate shows that pirate ships had radical approaches to power and wealth distribution. Pirate crews shared their plunder on a transparent and pre-agreed basis, they also distributed power from the captain to the whole crew.
Rebel Talent covers the same areas as well. But on this one I come down firmly with the rebels. Pirates shared wealth and power between themselves. Radical certainly but not enough. Rebels, in public services at least, should be looking to share wealth and power across society.
I’m taken with the ideas in Be More Pirate. I think we probably do need more pirates. But we need many, many more rebels too.
[Updated 17 May 2018 to clarify the reference to walking goats]
*Actual goats.
Not a reference to Sara Long’s post on The Goat Model of Leadership.
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