This is part 2 of an on-going series about managing ‘difficult’, but valuable staff (i.e. ‘mavericks’) in a technology-intensive businesses.

Classically, mavericks ignore standard procedures when it suits them and are impatient with the diplomacy needed to garner support from corporate power centers. For these reasons, they’re often disliked. Paradoxically, they may also be admired for their originality and anti-authoritarianism, though these qualities are potentially disruptive to the business since an entire organization behaving without regard to corporate norms results in chaos.

To the extent that originality coincides with nonconformist attitudes, an ambitious business should seek to channel a maverick’s creativity while blunting their potential to distract the organization. Line managers are an important, but under-appreciated element in establishing this equipoise. The organization minimally needs to be aware of the challenges maverick’s present and provide training to their managers about assessing a maverick’s actual worth to the organization and determining how much effort should be expended to keep them productive – or keep them at all.

To exploit a maverick’s talents, their manager needs to fit a square peg into a round hole. The manager will have to explain the nonconformist to the organization and vice versa – though the maverick frankly may not care to understand the organization. Despite this, the manager should seek to teach business savvy to the maverick, what rules must be followed, where power resides and how to conform, at least nominally, to behavioral norms. Having a manager who is a good listener while also setting boundaries is important – it’s a bit like parenting. Particularly, the manager should coach the maverick about effectively developing their ideas within the confines of the business.

The manager also must mitigate the perception that the organization lets mavericks break rules that everyone else must follow. Concerns about favoritism will obviously erode team camaraderie. Certainly, there is justification for many business rules including keeping the feds off your back, the CEO out of jail and ensuring process consistency, predictability and scalability. Nonetheless, every organization has ineffective processes and mavericks may reveal processes that stymie progress for everyone, not just themselves. The line manager benefits the organization by escalating the nonconformist’s experience. This can improve a flawed aspect of performance across the organization.

The tricky art of harnessing employee talent and encouraging a creative work environment while keeping an organization focused and maintaining discipline is one test of an effective manager. This is especially true in technology-intensive businesses, utterly dependent on novel, pattern-breaking innovation. What follows is the first of a series of three postings that touch on this important topic.

Introduction

How individual talent is mobilized for the enterprise’s collective good is critical to business success. However, employees vary in their allegiance to business goals and processes. While most company staff members are at least nominally respectful of business process and habit, organizations also have mavericks unconcerned with allegiance to corporate culture.

Central to this discussion is that mavericks must add significant value to the company; though they may flout rules, their activities must ultimately lead to significant improvements in the firm’s products or processes. Otherwise, they are simply difficult employees who may be terminated. Thus, the organization needs to weigh the worth that a maverick adds (e.g. patents filed, research breakthroughs, new products developed ahead of schedule and under budget) with the disruption that they cause.

While not all mavericks are inherently creative and productive, innovation may well require breaking with past practice and ignoring paradigms, so some exceptional staff may well demonstrate maverick behavior. Balancing the challenges of tolerating – perhaps sometimes encouraging – nonconformity with the benefits of innovation resulting from that nonconformity is a topic that subsequent postings will tackle.