Tempered Radicals:
A Conversation with Debra Meyerson
by Douglas Newcomb
Douglas Newcomb is Managing Director, Communications for the Special Libraries Association.
He may be reached at: doug@sla.org
What Kind of Radical Are You?
Tempered RadicalsHow People Use Difference to Inspire is Change at Work
by Debra Meyerson will be released this month by Harvard Business School Press (www.hbsp.harvard.edu). Meyerson professor of management at the Simmons Graduate School of Management in Boston, MA, will present Tempered Radicals: Change Agency in the 21st Century Organization on December 5, 2001, as part of SLA's 2001 Virtual Seminar Series.
Meyerson took some time to sit down with Douglas Newcomb to talk about the new book, change in the workplace, and exactly what a tempered radical is.
DOUGLAS NEWCOMB: Your new book, Tempered Radicals: How People Use Difference to Inspire Change at Work, was published in September. Can you tell us a little bit about what a tempered radical is?
DEBRA MEYERSON: Tempered radicals are organizational insiders. They have regular jobs in an organization and they want to contribute and succeed in their jobs, but at the same time they are treated as outsiders because they represent ideals or agendas or values or even identities that are somehow at odds with dominant culture. So they are both organizational insiders, but they feel like and are often treated like organizational outsiders. They are people who want to succeed. They want to fit in, they want to get ahead, they want to contribute to the organization, and they want to also act on what makes them different from the majority in the organization. They are constantly straddling the tension between fitting into the status quo and shaking it up a little bit by being different.
DN: There is a wide middle ground that lies between the extremes of conformity and pure radicalism. Can you give me some examples of the extremes and then the middle?
DM: Conformity is when people do their best to learn what it takes to fit in without making waves.
So if I am an environmentalist and I notice that there are very few practices in an organization that support sustainability, I just check my values at the door. I don't look for ways in which I might encourage recycling or buying recycled products. I just check all of that at the door, so that I don't make waves.
If I am extreme or very strident, I would challenge basic manufacturing practices. I would be very public and very loud in measures, and I would organize as many people as possible to join me in my cause.
I would develop a social movement within an organization if I was more strident about what I believed. I would worry less about finding solutions that fit into the existing practices that were justifiable with the existing logic. I would be much more challenging in my approach.
There is a huge middle ground between those two extremes, and in the middle are small winsways to work within the system and make change.
If I stick with my environmental example, I would find ways of making it easier for people to recycle that wouldn't rock the boat and wouldn't be challenging, but would help people be environmentally conscious.
I might go to the corporate cafeteria and find ways of packaging in a more environmentally friendly material. I would find ways within existing practices of creating these little small winsof being very opportunistic and making changes at the margin that can add up and that can get people to think differently, but not so differently that they feel threatened by the change.
DN: How do tempered radicals change the organization in a way that other revolutionaries cannot?
DM: The main thing is that they have legitimacy and appreciate the mind-sets the organizations work under. So, if it is about diversity, they understand the culture and what it means to fit in. They understand what it takes to get legitimacy in the organization. They do not undermine themselves or try to threaten the people in power.
For example, I work with a lot of women in organizations that want to remove barriers for women leaders. I do a lot of work with women who are concerned with glass-ceiling barriers in organizations.
The women who are often involved in this are successful within the existing system. They get what the concerns are. They know how to address men's concerns. They understand how to operate within the status quo, yet they also want to make changes.
For example, if it has to do with an organization where billable hours is the metric of evaluation and determines who gets ahead like in a consulting firm or a law firmthe women may understand how to succeed under those kinds of constraints and at the same time understand that the culture of billable hours is basically stacked against anyone who has primary responsibility for dependents, children, or parents.
They may try to make changes to create a career path for people who can't or don't want to compete under this regime of billable hours, but they understand the logic of it. They succeeded in the past under that regime and want to create an alternative.
DN: How can the tempered radical and the extreme radical work together to effect change? Let's say they have the same agenda.
DM: It is very hard for extreme radicals to survive within a traditional organization. Often, extreme radicals find ways to work outside of traditional organizations or they have some way of protecting themselves. But I think extreme radicals who are working in an advocacy organization or litigating are important for tempered radicals because they define the agenda in some way.
A woman who is trying to change the culture of billable hours and wants to create more opportunity for women should be incredibly grateful to the women and men who are taking up litigation and changing the nature of public policy and law.
What are often problematic are radical radicals who think that tempered radicals sell out and tempered radicals who think radical radicals are too extreme. Yet the two are also complementary.
I often use the example of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Martin Luther King might have been thought of as a radical had there not been Malcolm X. Malcolm X defined what "radicalism" is and made Martin Luther King an inviting person for the establishment to work with in comparison. So they coexisted and they both were very important.
DN: Debra, can you give an example where a tempered radical approach was successful?
DM: In one case, there was a woman who was very collaborative, wanted to give responsibility to her subordinates and nurture them. This could have been a man, but it happened to be a female. Her organization was much more individualistic. People would claim credit for themselves and be much more autocratic and tough.
The woman was unable to act that way and refused to work in this individualistic climate. She stuck to her guns and developed her people. She developed a reputation for being one of the best managers. People loved working for her because she was the only one in the organization who would give them a chance.
She had her choice of people who wanted to work for her. Her superiors gave her a very hard time because she wasn't in the limelight. She was giving the limelight to the people who worked for her, but as she slowly gained this reputation of being such a great manager, people started to take notice and slowly started to give her credit for her way of managing.
The people she groomed managed in a very similar way. It was an evolutionary change. The kind of management style that became acceptable in that organization evolved as more people appreciated it and began to emulate it.
Initially, she was given a very hard time because she allowed her people to give talks and make presentations, and that was how you got ahead there. She was expected to give the presentations.
DN: I was captured by your introduction to Tempered Radicals and I would like to know how you came about to writing this book. Could you share with us how it all started in your mind and how it progressed?
DM: I was a doctoral student at the Stanford Business School and I felt at odds with the dominant ideology of business schools and the ideology that I was not only being trained to internalize for myself, but being trained to teach.
And I wasn't the only one. I had a very close friend and colleague named Maureen Scully. We shared a little office as doctoral students together. We really struggled with how different we felt from the dominant ideology of our profession, but we both wanted to get ahead. We were committed to succeeding. We wanted to get jobs in universities, but we came to graduate school primarily because we believed that the workplace can be a place of humanity, not just profitability. We wanted to find ways to change the workplaceto make it a more humane context for people.
The questions related to that kind of vision and our own concerns were the ones that were not good to ask in our program. For example, we were advised not to ask questions about how to maintain a feminist ideology and get ahead in corporate America.
We were advised against asking how to act on a radical humanist ideology and still succeed. So we looked at that and decided we had to negotiate this tension for ourselves.
Our mentor in graduate school, Joanne Martin, the first woman at Stanford Business School to be tenured, was also in this situation. She was a feminist, yet she was at one of the most highly respected and conservative business schools in the country. She also had struggled with this tension in her career.
So we put our concerns on hold until we both had jobs in business schools. Then we came back to our general concerns about the feminist executive. And by "feminist" I mean men and women who seek social justice in the context of organizations that aren't necessarily just.
While we came back to our concerns, we also broadened the set of questions we asked about these people and the net of people we were considering. We gave them the title of "tempered radical" at that point to capture the notion of being both moderate and bold at the same time.
DN: You open your book with the quote from Robert Kennedy:
"Each time a man stands up for an idea, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build on a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, and the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or greater intelligence. Yet, it is one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change."
Why this quote? What part of its essence struck a chord to propel you to open with it?
DM: It is that each tiny act sends a ripple of hope. That passage that really struck a chord and I think it speaks to the essence of what I am trying to communicate.
My book describes ways in which little tiny actsacts that aren't even intended to affect change and just represent someone standing up for their idealsare things that challenge the status quo, bring hope to other people, and represent alternative ways to be in an organization.
They add up in ways that are very hard to see and very hard to recognize. But they add up and they make a difference. So it was that passage that resonated to the central message of my book.
DN: Your publication certainly contains a lot of knowledge and insights into human behavior. How did you go about getting this vital information from the people you interviewed?
DM: It was an accumulation of interviews. For 15 years, I have been watching this phenomena and giving my students assignments and having them write about it. So the interviews were certainly useful and I draw primarily from the interviews. It was the interviews where people would tell stories about the challenges they faced
The one thing that I learned in the process of interviewing was the idea of a spectrum, which I tried to communicate in the book.
I had hoped to develop some sort of patterncertain types of tempered radicals who face similar tensions would rely on certain kinds of coping responses. I had hoped that I might learn that African Americans in predominantly white organizations would rely primarily on one kind of strategy and white women would rely on primarily a different kind of strategy to manage the tensions. But that is not at all what I found.
Depending on where they were, what their objectives were, and how they felt in a given time and place, people were all over the spectrum of strategies and I couldn't find any relationship between people's identity and the type of strategy they used. It was much more based on circumstance and individual preference.
So it became very important for my book to communicate the spectrum because most people move back and forth across it.
DN: In Tempered Radicals, you talk about witnessing the loss people suffer in the course of compromising their sense of self and silencing their commitment to fit in. What do you think is the greatest loss to a company when individuals check their values at the door and what is the greatest loss to the individual when they check their self at the door?
DM: To companies it [the biggest loss] is learning. You can't learn if you just have people who speak the same truth that is dominant in the organization. The organization doesn't learn with extreme homogeneitywith people just emulating what is already true and what is already believed, unless there are people who question very basic assumptions and who suggest alternative ways to be. Organizations can't learn if everyone is thinking and speaking in the same tongue.
In this changing world, organizations have to adapt, and they adapt by being sensitive to all the cues that are available to them, picking them up, responding to them, and learning from them. So the most important benefit [a diversity of opinions] to organizations is learning and the adaptation that comes from it, and that is what they lose.
People lose their spirit if they check their values at the door. For example, my book profiles people who are different in some fundamental way. They may be set apart by virtue of their values, what they believe about the environment, what they believe about trade practice, or what they believe about how people should be treated. But it could also be their identity that sets them apart from their peers. It could be their religion. It could be their race or gender.
If an African American checks everything about her that is culturally identified when she goes to work, there is a big part of her that is stifled and dead. She will not feel valued. And when you don't feel valued, you lose your spirit and you are much less effective at work in terms of speaking up, in terms of speaking what you believe, and in terms of valuing who you are. That takes a huge toll on your self-esteem and confidence, which then affects the kind of risks you are willing to take, the ways you will put yourself out there, and the kind of work you will do.
DN: How have organizations created the circumstance that requires people to operate as politically tempered radicals?
DM: Well, I think organizations punish people when they act out too much. Most organizations don't appreciate diversity.
It could be everything from how long people are expected to work, how late people are supposed stay at night, what kind of pictures people are supposed display on their desks, and how people are expected to act in a meeting. There are norms of behavior and most organizations don't want those norms questioned. The norms allow for a certain amount of stability.
So, when people upset those norms or challenge them directly, it is risky. The conditions that shape whether or not people challenge existing practices have to do with how safe people feel, how legitimate it is to act differently and question norms, how much someone has at stake in a given situation, and how protected they are. But the backdrop of all of this is the basic circumstance of needing to fit in to be accepted.
DN: If someone reading this interview relates to being a tempered radical, where can that reader go to find kindred spirits?
DM: Well, that is actually one of the biggest problem for tempered radicals. They are not radical with their agenda. They are often not loud and so they often feel very alone and have a hard time finding other people who have similar agendas.
One of the themes in my book is the importance of acting in some way, shape, or form. Part of the reason is that if you don't act on your values or your beliefs, you will stay alone because you won't be able to identify people who appreciate those actions.
So if you are a woman who wants to improve conditions for other women and you stay completely silent on that agenda, you will never find the other women who feel the same way and are equally silent.
Action is not only necessary to make changes and to sustain one's values. It is also the best way to find people. It just uncovers people who have their own stories. For example, a gay man or lesbian in an organization who just puts a picture of their lover on their deska simple, but brave act in many contextsmay discover gay colleagues who walk by the desk and say, "Oh, there is someone else I can talk to here. There is someone else who also faces the same kind of pressures."
Whether it is values, sexual orientation or identity, I think taking action and expressing who you are in some big and small ways is the best way to find people.
DN: What advice would you give to SLA members to affect change in their profession or organization?
DM: That is a hard question, and I am often asked that question. It is so dependent on circumstances.
I think that the kind of action one takes has to be right for the person. Finding kindred people is important. I think the most important thing is for people to take inventory of the kind of change they want to advance. I rely on the metaphor of trying to identify what is negotiable and non-negotiable. What is a principle or a value that you feel so strongly about that you feel it is non-negotiable? And what are those things that you would like to change, but you can compromise on if need be?
It is important to identify that because if you don't, you won't know what to go to the mat for and what to compromise on.
So I think it is important to find a place to be comfortable and experiment with small changes, given what is important to your self. The experiment may be smallwhat you wear or in what you put on your desk. I have a whole chapter on very subtle ways people express their selves. These self expressions often ripple and they often open possibilities for others. People may want to do more than just express their self through behavior. The point is that small acts can make a large difference, particularly if they spark conversations and ultimately learning.
DN: Debra, our members often like to know some personal facts about our interviewees. What is the last good book you read, and why?
DM: Well, the last good book I read was The Human Stain by Philip Ross because it was fiction, and that's what I needed to read at the time and he is so fabulous.
DN: As a writer and researcher, what keeps you awake at night?
DM: I guess right now what is keeping me awake at night with respect to this message is that tempered radicals burn out. One of the reasons that I am so passionate about the message in my book is that I think people do need to find each other and tempered radicals often do feel very alone. It is often because they keep all of this tension to themselves. They feel like they are the only ones who feel differently or at odds with the majority. I get literally hundreds of e-mails from people who say, "Thank you. You named it. I feel so alone," when actually I know they are not alone in the organizations.
So I often am awake at night because I know there are thousands of people who feel this way and who don't know how to find each other. They feel victimized by it rather than claiming it as a source of change and learning.
DN: Debra, is there anything else that you would like to discuss or emphasize?
DM: Well, the only thing that seems important for your members is the example I gave about billable hours and about women. A lot of the tempered radicals I have studied are women who want to make a workplace more humane and more equitable for women. The tempered radicals I studiedthe ones who come to me and the ones who I advised are womenas a majority, beyond a majority.
The second point is that so much of what tempered radicals do is to provoke learning. They create conversations. They point to an alternative way of thinking and being. They start new conversations in organizations. I think your members are in that business of starting the conversations, creating new ways of thinking, and so I think that creating learning in an organization is what tempered radicals ultimately do. That is why organizations should care about them.
I am often asked to speak to very senior executives who want to nurture this kind of learning. I advise them to go to the unexpected place in the organizationto the unexpected people. You have got to ask around for people who think differently because these are people who are unexpected sources of learning and wisdom.
I use the term "everyday leadership" as another way that describes what tempered radicals do. They lead in these everyday kind of mundane ways, but they lead with the purpose of creating learning.
DN: Thanks you for spending some time with me this morning.
DM: Thank you. 
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