One of the great misperceptions about rebels is that they are trying to change everything or thrive on rocking the boat. Not so. They want to do great work. They want to change things that hold the team back from being its most effective. They are not anarchists. They don’t want to reinvent every wheel. They’re much too practical to change what’s working well.

They do, however, put a lot of effort into eliminating business practices and bureaucratic rules that slow progress without adding value. Bureaucracy creeps slowly. Consensus bloats processes. The “need to know” inflates what needs to be included in standard reports. Legal and quality control “extra safeguards” minimize risk and lengthen the time it takes to get work done. Insecure and inexperienced people add layers instead of revising what exists.

After a while, few people inside the organization can see what’s dragging things down or even understand what the regulation or rule means. If they do, they don’t know how to fix it. That’s where the value of rebels comes in. Unlike troublemakers who rail and rant about how screwed up things are, rebels are often fixers of bureaucracy and unproductive processes. They want to change the rules to reduce the chaos of complexity, creating streamlined order so work can get done faster.

In fact, the mantra of rebel Lars Bjork, CEO of Qlik, is “Love order; hate bureaucracy.”

“Order is where you put a process in place because you want to scale the business to a different level,” he says. “Bureaucracy is where nobody understands why you do it.”

While many people talk about problems at work, rebels recommend possibilities. Whereas troublemakers can become selfish, pessimistic, and obsessed with railing about problems at work, rebels recommend what can work, bringing in ideas from outside the organization and remaining optimistic about what can be accomplished.

Did you notice in Table 10-1 that we said rebels reluctantly recommend solutions? Most rebels are not motivated by recognition, nor do they want to be viewed as heroes. They simply want to solve problems and improve how things are done, either at a small tactical level or by suggesting wide-scale strategic shifts. They want to make a difference. They have a hard time ignoring a problem that they can see a way to solve. Some find it impossible.

Rebels also care more about their organizations than many people. That’s why they’re willing to engage in the controversy and conflict necessary for change and to risk being snubbed for unpopular ideas.

A rebel’s ideas and relentless energy can exhaust or threaten their colleagues and bosses. People sometimes keep rebels at arm’s length, even those who appreciate the value they bring. You may appreciate the rebel’s ideas, but not really want to deal with what’s needed to create change. Good rebels are not “yes people.” They like to really dig into a problem or opportunity, challenging assumptions, asking probing questions, and brainstorming possibilities. Because so many at work like to quickly get to consensus and move on, they sometimes want to avoid a rebel’s creative process. (And we wonder why organizations aren’t more creative and innovative.)

When a rebel clearly understands what the organization is trying to accomplish and why, he can focus his energy on creating ideas that support that goal or vision. Without a clear vision, a rebel may go off in many directions, some helpful and others not so much. It’s hit or miss because the rebel doesn’t know what success looks like to you. It’s important to clarify:

With this clarity of purpose, the rebel can find better ways to achieve your aspirations. Your role as manager of a rebel is to set the vision, not to tell the rebel to follow a prescribed process or rules to get to that vision (unless, of course, there are significant legal or regulatory risks that could jeopardize the organization if you adopted a different approach). If there is an easier, faster, more rewarding way to get from here to there, why wouldn’t you want to consider it?

Your goals may seem crystal clear to you, but don’t assume they are to your employees. Rebels frequently lament the absence of clear organizational goals.

Clarity about values and outcomes also becomes the filter through which you and the rebel can evaluate and prioritize. This takes away some of the drama and disagreement over whether you like an idea. The filter is more concrete: “How does this idea help accomplish our goals? How does it improve upon the way we do things today?” Again, rebels express enormous frustration over the fact that their ideas are often dismissed without being evaluated based on sound criteria that align with organizational objectives.

How you respond to ideas sends a signal to your entire organization about just how safe it is to propose something new. If you provide thoughtful and useful feedback, approve some experiments, and provide people time to further explore a possibility, they will see that you welcome new ideas and that people in your organization can grow professionally by going beyond their job descriptions. Your organization will become known as a place people want to work because it’s open to doing things differently and better, and you, the manager, believe that employees are a great source of new ideas. Encouraging talent attracts talent.

The most important aspect of creating a safe environment is often the most difficult thing for a manager to do: make it safe for people to disagree with one another and with you.

Many managers mistakenly believe that a workplace with little disagreement is a healthy workplace. Others just can’t stand the uncertainty and disruptive nature of disagreement and controversy. It’s unlikely that any meaningful change can happen without controversy. People would rather do what has worked than have to learn something new or admit that a process or program they created is no longer relevant.

Controversy and disagreement are not about fighting, with one side right and the other wrong. It is a process of examining different views, honestly and frankly discussing the possibilities and potential downsides, and learning. Collaboration requires frank conversations and occasional disagreement. Unlike in sports or public debates, there are no winners or losers. There is no right or wrong in disagreeing at work; it’s about learning to make the ultimate decision stronger.

Make it safe for people, especially rebels, to disagree with you and others in the organization, to ask provocative questions, and to challenge programs, processes, and even (perhaps especially) your opinions. It’s your responsibility to ensure that people feel comfortable asking honest questions and raising genuine concerns. This runs counter to the “strong leader” archetype many of us carry around in our heads, but it is nevertheless essential if you want to ensure that your organization considers all points of view. (This archetype, by the way, provides a convenient excuse for individuals in the workplace not to be more proactive in offering suggestions.)

Meetings are an especially important place to create such an environment. To encourage honest opinions, carve out as much time for questions and conversations in a meeting as you do for the presentation. As the manager, set the tone by asking questions like:

Go out of your way to tell rebels that you’re interested in their ideas. Find time to get to know them outside of official occasions that bring you together. Listen without defensiveness. Engage your curiosity. Ask good questions to understand their thinking and share your thinking and experiences. Try to see through a new lens. Tell them what you appreciate about their ideas. Challenge them to take their thinking further and figure out how they might create experiments to test whether the idea would provide the assumed benefit.

And never shoot the messenger, the bearer of reality, the person who is brave enough to tell you the truth. The rebel is your ally and possibly the one person who can save or improve your reputation by alerting you to danger and recommending a new way forward.

Similarly, don’t make the rebel a hero no matter how good her ideas or yours.

The problem with the heroic leader or rebel is that there isn’t such a thing, at least not for long. An organization incurs considerable risk if it becomes overly dependent on any individual as the wise decision maker. The person anointed as hero is also at considerable risk of believing what people say about him. As former Secretary of Defense Bob Gates once said, “There is something about having great power…that skews people’s judgment.” Work environments are at risk without sound judgment. Never risk this by getting sucked into hero worship.

While managers espouse transparency and employee authenticity, they often judge a rebel’s ideas by how he looks or talks. “If only he were more professional and understood how to work in an organization like ours,” managers often say, which is code for “It’s hard for me to take his ideas seriously.” Or simply, “He’s not like me.”

Take an inventory of your biases. Be fearless when you do, then stay alert to them. (Ask a trusted colleague or two to help you identify your blind spots.)

People should be able to come to work as they are, not trying to look, speak, and use language like everyone else to try to fit in. Effective rebels are both authentic and transparent, sometimes to a fault. They care more about ideas and making a difference at work than they do about creating “the right” impression.

A question to consider: do you inadvertently evaluate people more by their appearance and demeanor than by their ideas?

Another ingredient of creating an effective work environment for a rebel—and perhaps all employees—is to cultivate healthy organizational habits so that change is less disruptive. You might think innovation is about bringing out the next groundbreaking digital device. It’s not. It’s simply imagining and implementing new, better, more satisfying habits.

How can you as a manager create a culture that adapts to change and even looks for opportunities rather than fights new ideas? Such a culture, in effect, might eliminate the need for rebels.

Consider regularly asking questions that make you and your team think about what you do. During your annual planning process, hit the pause button and set aside time to reflect and discuss things like:

“Innovation is one of my employer’s five key values,” an MBA student told us, “but I feel many of the organizational leaders don’t embrace it. It’s just talk.”

Innovation can’t be just a word in your mission statement or something that a special task force works on. The climate for new ideas and suggesting ideas needs to be welcoming. Rebels keep telling us, “Management can’t just shoot down our ideas if it wants to grow and prosper.” They also keep asking questions like, “What can we do when management treats us unprofessionally when all we are trying to do is to protect the company from risk and help it succeed?”

As you look at habits, consider spending some time on empathy, the ability to understand how it feels to work in your organization, and particularly what it feels like being a rebel. Is it a safe climate? Are ideas welcomed or even tolerated? Do employee ideas ever penetrate the middle-management ozone layer? Without this sensitivity, it may be difficult to create an adaptable organization. You may be creating greater organizational risk because some managers aren’t allowing new ideas in.

An accurate understanding of organizational realities is a real blind spot for many managers, even those who are very good leaders in other respects.

The final ingredient for creating a safe environment is not to respond to a rebel’s idea by asking, “Well, how is the whole thing going to work?” Or worse, “You’ve got five minutes. Convince me this can work.”

This is a real leadership moment for a manager. Don’t be the boss whose expectations for neat and orderly change are so delusional that you force your enthusiastic future-thinkers to become hypocrites and package their proposals in slide decks that promise an unrealistic level of certainty. If you demand certainty, you not only will buy into intellectual fraud; you also will eventually tear the heart out of your change champions. We advise rebels to do their homework before presenting their idea and not to conceal its weakness with clever packaging. For your part, ask good questions and explore consequences, but be realistic about how much you can know ahead of time. The real way to test an idea is to experiment with it.

Approach change for what it is—the normal (and messy!) course-correction process that keeps your organization alive. Things externally and internally are constantly changing, and we adjust and adapt in response. Adaptive change keeps organizations healthy, much more so than the big idea, which rarely happens and is often yearned for so that people don’t have to do the hard work of constantly adjusting to new realities.

Don’t consign rebels to an isolated innovation lab or assign them to task forces that are not essential to the organization’s goals.

Rebels know that being asked to do “rebel work” is a career killer. Most rebels are already distraught at having to choose between speaking their minds and stoking their careers. Rebels often hear in performance appraisal sessions that while their work on such-and-such change initiative was admirable, it distracted them from the organization’s mission. Don’t make this phenomenon worse by heaping more such assignments on them.

Assign rebels to your most challenging problems, when your performance as an organization is on the line. Rebels have a keen ability to create clarity from complexity. They excel at creating new ways to solve problems. Give them a concrete challenge, milestones, and deadlines along with the right resources and support. Take your hands off the controls but coach them along the way.

We have found that rebels can stretch farther and achieve more than you or they thought possible. But as their leader, you must give them cover and protect them from the naysayer chorus who will try to resist or even block their ideas. As a rebel leader, you must believe in your people and what they are trying to accomplish.

Be clear about delegating. Make sure you and your colleagues have a shared understanding of the project. We’ve seen instances in which managers asked a rebel to take on an important organizational assignment and then got cold feet halfway through because the rebel’s approach was so novel. The manager started second-guessing the rebel and asking for more frequent and detailed reports and status updates, distracting the rebel from the real work.

Reports are unlikely to allay your fears, and requiring them sends a signal to the rebels that you’re not sure they can do the job. Instead of demanding reports, drop in regularly on project meetings and ask direct questions about what’s working well and where the group feels stuck or could use help. Unnecessary reports increase unnecessary bureaucracy. Rebels are fighting unnecessary bureaucracy so why heap more on them? Help them with the real work and reduce the busy work.

Consider giving the rebel work that will help him understand how the entire organization works. Every organization has key positions that lubricate all the other processes—positions like executive officer or chief of staff. These are usually filled by classic high-performing hard chargers. Try a different approach. Bring someone who is known for having different ideas into these positions. We guarantee the benefits and payoffs will be huge. The rebels will learn to be much more realistic and effective in their approach to change, and the executive team will benefit from a more nuanced and forward-looking perspective.

Saying that you support the idea espoused by a rebel is significant, but not significant enough. Everyone in the organization will look to see if you back up your words with actions.

One clear step is to provide money for implementation. In some situations (for example, in most government agencies), shifting resources is not that simple or can only be done at certain times of the year.

Other concrete ways to support rebels include inviting them to present their initiatives at senior leadership meetings and boosting their status and recognition, both of which can be far more desirable than even money. Consider providing funding for them to visit another organization that has created a similar program. By funding such site visits, you convey to them—and others in the organization—that you value their work and want to help them learn all they can.

The other type of support rebels need from you is coaching. Rebels at different stages in their careers need coaching in different areas. In general, rebels need particular help and guidance in the following areas.