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So you want to be a progressive manager, right? You’ve read Reinventing Organizations like it’s a spiritual guide, you’ve listened to the Brave New Work podcasts in reverent silence and you check the Corporate Rebels Twitter feed before you say hi to your kids in the morning.

You’ve soaked up all of these cool ideas and are full of enthusiasm. And then you bounce into work ready to change the world!

But, guess what? Nobody cares. Or, more likely, some people care, but they don’t really want to do anything. And some people care because they think you have gone insane. And other people care because they want to stop you in your tracks — rebels are bad news dude, they make us think — stop rocking the boat!

So after a day or a week or a month of frustration, your heart sinks and your will falters. And you say to yourself, “if only I was in charge, think what I could do!” But because you are not the boss, you slowly give up and sink back into your pod of despair.

If you find yourself in this place I am here to say, don’t give up, just pivot a little and think about what you can do to make your environment better. There is always something you can do wherever you sit in an organisation.

One way I like to do this is to imagine that I am a bat. Not the kind you swing in the little leagues, the kind that flies around at night.

As well as being cute (to some people), bats are famous for their active use of sonar (SOund Navigation And Ranging). This allows them to essentially see with sound. Basically they make a sound and then listen for the echo back as the sound hits the objects around them. That tells them what the environment is around them and they can figure out how to navigate through it.

So, imagine you think it would be cool to have an Agile approach to projects (or some other funky new thing you’ve heard about). But your organizational culture uses waterfall project management— just because “that’s the way we’ve always done things around here”. Over the space of a couple of weeks, try dropping a phrase into conversations or small meetings. Nothing too obvious, just something like, “Hey Chuck, do you know anything about Agile? I hear it is pretty cool. It could work around here, maybe?” Or, “Hi Mary, you know that project you’re stuck on, have you thought about Agile? I could send you a podcast about it.”

Chuck might look at you aghast. Mary might tell you she needs real help, not crazy ideas. It doesn’t matter for now. What matters is that you sent out some sounds.

Next, just listen.

Worst case, you never hear an echo. Nobody ever mentions Agile again. That probably tells you that that particular idea isn’t right for your organization at the moment. So move onto the next idea and send out some more signals.

Your ideal scenario is that a couple of weeks (or months) later somebody with influence or seniority says, “I really think we should be Agile now, does anyone know how to do that?” And you can maybe offer to help, because, well it just so happens that you know a bit about it.

Be prepared that, most often, you’ll never get any credit. Nobody will even know that they are reacting to echoes that came from you. But you can smile to yourself because you know the impact you had. They are dancing to your bat tune after all.

And hey, when you are CEO you can try to build an organisation full of bats. And you can be like Batwoman or something.

{I think you’ve taken the bat analogy to its limits now thanks, please stop :Ed}

You could have massive bat ears to hear all the signals…call your organisation the Batcave….sleep upside down maybe…

If you like this, you can join me on Twitter or LinkedIn for more of the #HippyInASuit vibe.