Page 131 - HBR's 10 Must Reads 20180 - The Definitive Management Ideas of the Year from Harvard Business Review

Let Your Workers Rebel

by Francesca Gino

T

THROUGHOUT OUR CAREERS, we are taught to conform—to the status
quo, to the opinions and behaviors of others, and to information
that supports our views. The pressure only grows as we climb the
organizational ladder. By the time we reach high-level positions,
conformity has been so hammered into us that we perpetuate it in
our enterprises. In a recent survey I conducted of more than 2,000
employees across a wide range of industries, nearly half the respon-
dents reported working in organizations where they regularly feel
the need to conform, and more than half said that people in their or-
ganizations do not question the status quo. The results were similar
when I surveyed high-level executives and midlevel managers. As
this data suggests, organizations consciously or unconsciously urge
employees to check a good chunk of their real selves at the door.
Workers and their organizations both pay a price: decreased engage-
ment, productivity, and innovation (see the exhibit “The perils of
conformity”).
Drawing on my research and fieldwork and on the work of other
scholars of psychology and management, I will describe three rea-
sons for our conformity on the job, discuss why this behavior is
costly for organizations, and suggest ways to combat it.
Of course, not all conformity is bad. But to be successful and
evolve, organizations need to strike a balance between adherence to
the formal and informal rules that provide necessary structure and
the freedom that helps employees do their best work. The pendulum

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