Rebel thoughts

• One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you/kept shouting/their bad advice. Mary Oliver
• Great climbers are motivated by the climb, not the view. @ValaAfshar:
• The constant danger for @rebelsatwork is balancing on the line dividing skepticism from cynicism.
• Bureaucracies create rules the way way urban freeways create traffic jams.
• Being drunk with bureaucratic power is a particularly bad drunk.
• The greatest calling for @rebelsatwork is to help organizations evolve from protectors of accepted orthodoxy to discoverers/promoters of new ideas.
• “They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.” Confucius
• There is a conspiracy in this world to preserve mediocrity. Most people don't know they are co-conspirators.
• "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Emerson
• You can't expect creativity and problem solving if you reward compliant behavior.
• All commitments are voluntary.
• Those that choose to fit in should expect to avoid criticism (and be ignored). Those what stand out should expect neither. Seth Godin
• Control begets compliance, complacency and complaining.
• Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
• When your horse dies, get off.
• "Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing." Muhammad Ali
• "The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment." Educational philosopher Robert Hutchins. (Ditto on death of companies.)
• Rebels at work want to rock the boat but they don't want to fall out. (or get thrown overboard.)
• Leadership is a long journey into your own soul.  Jeff Immelt
• All commitments are voluntary.
• Taking any action is better than over-planning. David Kelley
• The knowers and seers always live on the outskirts of the village. Always. Patti Digh
• Sometimes you have to play a long time to play like yourself." Miles Davis
• No one is smart enough not to need rebels at work.
• A bureaucrat is  someone whose greatest fear is disagreement. Carmen Medina
• A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner.
• "Tomorrow’s management systems will need to value diversity, dissent and divergence as highly as conformance, consensus and cohesion." Gary Hamel
• Without dissent, there is little discovery.
• "My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems. Give me work." Sherlock Holmes
• Without grit there is no pearl.
• Curiosity s the lust of the mind." Thomas Hobbes
• "There's a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." Leonard Cohen
• All you need to know about a person is whether the define themselves in terms of their fears of their opportunities.
• You can have everything you want if you help others get what they want.
• Rebels are not afraid to have the real conversation.
• Curiosity is the engine of research and development.
• The answers you get depend on the questions you ask.
• A blessing shouted too early in the morn is heard by the neighbors as a curse.
• Audacious missions prompt stronger passions.
• Frequent rebel trap: over-promising good things that change initiative will deliver to gain approval of skeptical execs.
• Worst case scenario: rebels have to be steeled to handle being misunderstood and in dire circumstances Persecuted.
• Rebels have an uncontrollable curiosity. When we ask questions we’re not judging as much as trying to understand.
• Most rebels love the organization just as much as Status Quo defenders. We're just the tough love people.
• Rebels are the ones who chip away at the wall (of Wrong Turns & Dead Ends) long before anyone else even knows it exists.