Rebel for your own good

Should executives also be Che Guevaras? In this final instalment, we examine the dynamite that sociologists and activists have found useful in sparking rebellions.

	Title:	Market Rebels
	Author:	Hayagreeva Rao
	Pages:	222pages
	Publisher:	Princeton University Press
	Price:	$24.95

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Market rebels – irrelevance?
At first glance, professor Rao’s book may appear of lesser relevance. After all, is not the topic of market rebels somewhat sociological and removed from the hot management issues of leadership, marketing, or governance?

Not so on slower, more focused reading. A crucial lesson of the book is that a strong emotional connect enables causes to heat up, and then reach their targets and gather momentum. The causes speak to people’s emotions, and not only to their reason. That creates the difference between hot cause and cold cause. That also explains the difference between a sweeping (cool) mobilization and dead-cold mobilization.

So although this book often reads like sociology, it holds strong messages on how managers (or ‘anti-managers’ – those Molotov-throwing WTO activists) can create and ride a wave of feeling, for the better or the worse.

Fight not flee
To kick off his final chapter, professor Rao quotes sociologist Albert Hirschman, and his influential work Exit, Voice and Loyalty. Until the 1960s and its wave of contestation, discontent was usually a solitary action, and often meant voting with one’s feet.

With the growth of consumer movements, and then the ease of communication, discontent developed a collective voice and activists acquired new identities. Issues that used to be isolated cases of discontent (or rebellion) could now link up and gather the momentum to become hot causes and cool mobilizations.

Four commandments for activists
In this final chapter, professor Rao reminds us of some important research findings. Shall we start with inspiration from Saul Alinsky? This radical activist proposes four rules for generating passion for a cause, and for making that passion successful. Being passionate is the beginning, but it is not sufficient.

Saul Alinsky clearly understood that emotions were key to making a cause worthy. So he first recommended that activists single out an opposition target and ‘freeze’ it, namely by placing the enemy at the wrong end of the spectrum (polarizing). Another powerful tool for activists is ridicule, since it places the opposition at a disadvantage and obliges a reaction to occur. Lastly, Alinsky emphasizes the importance of the playing field; stay on your own playing field so that you do not extend beyond your capabilities, yet try to stretch the opposition beyond its comfort zone.

Lightning rod issues are important in creating hot causes. They provide a sense of moral shock that can rally activists, just as Robert Nardelli’s excessive compensation package at Home Depot did.

WUNC framework
Professor Rao also underlines the importance of emotion in the mobilization phase. Here, the research of Charles Tilly provides the ‘WUNC’ framework: worthiness – unity – numbers – commitment. Automobiles were a worthy cause because they gave a sense of collective identity and self-worth to owners. Micro-brewers were united by their sense of community and shared the value of tasty beer. Numbers refer to the ranks of activists that show potency. Lastly, commitment can be seen in the participation displayed by the German anti-biotech movement, with its willingness to use grassroots methods and unorthodox communications means.
 
Me manager – you rebel?
Rebellion is surely not on the top of the strategic plan of the C-suite executive. Nor is professor Rao appealing for that revolution. What he does recommend is that the sagacious executive watch for social movements and capture their dynamic.

Here, professor Rao offers the example of Nike’s founder Phil Knight. Although Knight might not describe himself as a market rebel, according to Rao that is exactly what he was when he spotted the growing social movement forming around running and jogging. From humble beginnings as Blue Ribbon Sports in 1962, (then renamed) Nike developed with running clubs and fitness salons… and the rest is history.

“The challenge for managers is to stop thinking like bureaucrats and start thinking like insurgents,” writes professor Rao at the end of his book. He quotes the example from the Maginot line, built by French generals along the German border before World War II. Yet those French generals never predicted the innovation of blitzkrieg – the lightning war that circumvented the well-planned Maginot defense line.

In the same way, managers need to remember that emotions lead to innovations that can be beneficial or detrimental to existing businesses – so best to remain rebellious at heart.


Published in May 2010.
Next issue: June 9, 2010