Practical Radicals

Name: Debra Meyerson
Occupation: Professor, Simmons Graduate School of Management; visiting professor, Stanford University; author of Tempered Radicals
Aspiration: "This is not a revolutionary style. But it is the stuff of change. It is the true content of leadership."

Ever since she arrived as a child from Mexico, Maricela Gallegos has heard the same question: Couldn't she Americanize her name? "Mary" would be so much easier to pronounce. "I say, No, my name is Maricela. All my brothers and sisters changed their names. They always said to me, 'Why do you go against the grain? Roll with the punches.' But I could never do that. I'd be shortchanging myself."

This has been one small act of rebellion for Gallegos, 48, a stance that asserts her authentic identity in an alien culture. There have been other acts since. A few years ago, Gallegos was working in the human-resources department of a Hewlett-Packard factory located in California. She grew compelled by questions of affirmative action and diversity, but her managers at the time didn't consider race and gender to be pressing problems. Instead, they agreed to let her work on programs for employees with disabilities.

"It was a foot in the door," she recalls. "I knew that gender and race were important issues. But I needed to work on something that the organization was willing to support." She organized a local network of workers with disabilities, then used their numbers to convince a small group of managers to declare a "disability-awareness day."

"They didn't realize what I was going to do," she says. What she did was bring in people from 30 nonprofit organizations to educate employees. She also borrowed 100 wheelchairs so that people at hp could feel what it was like to work in one. She got 100 sound-blocking devices so that people could experience deafness. She blindfolded employees and sent them on an obstacle course.

"That made all the difference," Gallegos says. "It transformed the work site." She organized the same event for four more years, then started organizing networks for women, people of color, and gay and lesbian employees. She won the confidence of senior managers, and, with their support, she produced workshops that dealt with racism, sexual harassment, and homophobia for thousands of employees. "These things were risky," says Vicki Martinez, who was a staffing representative at hp at the time. "But they paved the way for change."

There are Maricela Gallegoses everywhere -- in the cubicle next door, perhaps, or in a remote regional sales office. You know the sort: They operate deep within big companies, well beneath the cultural radar, and are practically invisible to the top brass. They are part of their organization, yet somehow apart as well, professional irritants who are tolerated more than embraced. They survive and persist: Employing many different styles and strategies, typically waging small battles rather than epic wars, they work slowly to change the rules.

Debra Meyerson calls these individuals "tempered radicals." From her academic perches at Simmons Graduate School of Management and Stanford University, Meyerson, 43, has studied such people for more than a decade. Her forthcoming book, which is tentatively titled Tempered Radicals (Harvard Business School Press, April 2001), will document the phenomenon.

Meyerson defines tempered radicals as employees who operate on a fault line. They are committed to the organization that they work for. To some measure, moreover, they want to advance on their employer's terms; their company's success is theirs too. At the same time, though, they are at odds with their company. Marginalized by gender, race, or ideology, they identify with causes that defy the dominant culture. While they feel bound to their organization's goals, they also aim to stay true to their own personal ideals.

And so they pursue change, constantly challenging the status quo. It is often a personally torturous path. Because tempered radicals pursue goals that are rooted in their own identities, their efforts tend to be passionate. But because they also happen to sympathize with their organization, the changes that they introduce are mostly incremental. They are ambivalent, cautious catalysts, and they are content with small victories that, over time, lay the groundwork for something grander. "This is not a revolutionary style," Meyerson says of the tempered radical's approach. "But it is the stuff of change. It is the true content of leadership."

In these early days of the Internet Age, we have grown accustomed to the harsh language of revolution. Startups vow to "overthrow" big-company rivals. New CEOs promise to "reinvent" the companies that they've been charged with leading. And that transformation is supposed to arrive in a flash, because everything is supposed to happen fast.

But here's the reality: Revolution isn't all we'd cracked it up to be. Most real change doesn't occur instantaneously. To bring about change, people need to have a leadership style that's different from that of the starkly aggressive, abusive captain we once lionized. It requires people working patiently inside organizations, seeking only modest progress. It demands radicals, surely -- but radicals of a more considered sort.

Tempered radicalism, then, represents a truer picture of change. It's not dramatic. It doesn't meet our craving for instant transformation. But it's how real leaders really operate.