Practical Radicals

"And these are people who should be natural allies," Meyerson says. She recalls working for a year at Stanford's Institute for Research on Women and Gender. Finally, she thought: Here is an environment where I won't be seen as a radical, where I'll fit right in. Instead, she found, "I was seen as suspect because of my affiliation with the business school. I was viewed as one of them."

The phenomenon of mistrust is even odder given that radicals' degree of temperedness often fluctuates over the course of their work life, as their financial status or their role within their organization changes. Individuals who feared standing out early in their careers can be emboldened over time by advancement into positions of greater authority.

Or they can travel the other way. Michael V. Littlejohn, an African-American executive, had no problem voicing his opinions on the deficiencies in minority hiring and retention while a rising manager at Price Waterhouse. He admits, actually, that he probably pushed too hard or too visibly, creating resentment among his peers and superiors.

Littlejohn, 42, is currently general manager of IBM's Learning Services in the Americas, running a division of 1,500 employees. He remains true to his identity as a black man: His office is filled with African-American art; he hires several minority interns each year; and he heads his division's Black Executive Network.

But he also feels more visible now, and he feels more responsibility to appear to be acting in all employees' interests. In a way, he admits, he has become gradually more co-opted by the organization that he works for. "The higher you rise, the more people look at you and wonder, Are you the sort of executive we need? So the higher I've risen, the more risk-averse I've become. I'm not sure if that's maturity, or coming to terms with greater power. I realize that I'm walking on thinner eggshells now."

Ultimately, tempered radicals' failure to cooperate with each other across the continuum of radicalness only serves to accentuate the sense of isolation that most of them experience. Operating on the organizational fault line, afraid to affiliate too closely with any one group, such individuals can be, simply, lonely.

"It was very hard sometimes," Maricela Gallegos recalls of her time spent championing diversity at the plant level. "You feel very alone, trying to move hard and to convince people to embrace change. You have to look at making change over the long term, because day to day, you don't really see it. That was my struggle for 10 years. It was important for me to think about the company's future. But sometimes my efforts to bring about change hurt my career. You don't move as fast in your promotions, because you're offending the people who have a say in your career path."

Today, however, Gallegos is thriving. She has moved from the local plant to hp's Global Diversity office, where she helps create strategies for disability programs worldwide. She is also working with the company's Latin-American operations to tackle diversity issues. She serves on both state and presidential committees serving people with disabilities. She has reached a place, she says, where "it's okay to challenge."

Likewise, Roger Saillant is now operating near the top of Visteon. After making little progress for the first 15 years of his career, he was selected to launch a new plant located in Mexico -- a role in which he excelled. Based on that success, he was quickly promoted two more levels. Kirk Tucker, having survived his exile from Harley-Davidson's headquarters, now has a senior-management job at the company's biggest plant. And Dixie Garr reports to a senior VP one level below the chief executive at Cisco, one of the most successful companies in America.

These tempered radicals, in other words, have not been killed off. They are irritants to their organizations in the way that pearls are irritants to oysters. There is something about these individuals that their organizations want to keep and nurture -- even if the relationship is mutually painful. "I got here because this place has the capability of creating people like me," Saillant says. "Ford could have ground me to chalk, or at least diminished what I was trying to do. But it was curiously enabling."

The relationships between individuals and institutions are mutually enabling, actually. Tempered radicals stay where they are in the face of ongoing frustration because they appreciate the sheer power inherent in their big, if flawed, employers. "Why have I stayed here?" Saillant muses. "I could go out and become a top officer in a lot of different companies. And yet, if I make a change here, it will have a huge impact globally. Just in my division, there are 12,000 people in 11 countries. Why play in New Haven when you have a chance to play on Broadway?"