Carmen Medina, a former CIA officer, shared her experiences and insights on being a 'rebel' within a bureaucratic setting during the Tent Talks session. Medina spent 32 years at the CIA, starting her rebellious journey in the mid-90s when the digital revolution sparked her interest. Despite facing resistance, she continued to advocate for digital adoption within the organization. Her narrative provided a wealth of advice for those keen on driving change within their organizations, emphasizing the importance of empathy, patience, and understanding organizational dynamics.
Heretical Change and Organizational Resistance:
- Initial efforts to introduce digital adaptation at the CIA met with resistance due to the organization's contrasting ethos around secrecy.
- Encountering resistance led to a realization of the importance of aligning change proposals with organizational orthodoxy or finding overlapping interests.
Approaching Change through Adjacency:
- Using adjacent areas of interest to bridge the gap between new ideas and existing organizational priorities.
- Emphasized the importance of practical steps and new metrics to avoid getting trapped in old processes.
Importance of Allies and Bureaucratic Black Belts:
- The necessity of gaining and keeping allies throughout the rebel journey.
- Befriending 'bureaucratic black belts' who understand the organization's workings can be crucial for successfully navigating change.
Pacing Change and Prioritizing Ideas:
- The notion of pacing oneself to ensure the organization can tolerate the rate of change.
- Prioritizing ideas based on various criteria including cost, practicality, and potential support.
Operationalizing Empathy:
- Advocated for avoiding embarrassment and humiliation when interacting with others.
- Mentioned the phrase "connection before correction" to emphasize understanding before making corrections.
Building Trust and Empowering Teams:
- Trust was described as a muscle that needs to be strengthened by testing its limits.
- Creating an environment where team members willingly provide discretionary energy towards excellence.
Avoiding Common Pitfalls:
- The 'ego trap' where narcissism is hidden behind the language of innovation can be a common pitfall.
- Being cognizant of one's speed when pushing forward new ideas to ensure others can keep up.
- Understanding one's status within the organization and sometimes conforming to existing ways before proposing new ideas.
Notable Quotes from Carmen Medina:
- "Innovation is the opposite of policy."
- "Avoiding the Athena complex telling stories appealing to emotions."
- "Leadership involves disappointing your followers at a rate they can tolerate."
- "An act of trust implies that you are not certain of the outcome if you let a particular individual handle the task."
- "You need to operationalize empathy... Stop embarrassing people."
- "You have to be really aware of what your status is in the organization...you have to become proficient in doing things the way they're done before anybody will listen to you and your new ideas."
- “Oftentimes narcissists, hide their narcissism in the language of innovation. Which is a sad thing. It’s their idea. They’re the one that can save the organization.”
About Tent Talks
Chicago Camps hosts irregularly scheduled Tent Talks with people from all across the User Experience Design community, and beyond. Who really likes limits, anyway--If it's a cool idea, we'd love to hear about it and share it!
What is a Tent Talk? That's a great question, we'd love to tell you.
Tent Talks are short-form in nature, generally lasting from 10-20 minutes (ish) in a recorded format--we like to think of them as "S'mores-sized content" because that's pretty on-brand. Tent Talks can be a presentation on a topic, a live Q&A session about the work we do, or the work around the work we do, or really just about anything--we don't want to limit ourselves, or you.
You should send along an idea or topic of your own so we can learn from you, as well! You don't have to be a published author or a professional speaker on a circuit to be good at your job, so please, put yourself forward, and let's have some fun, talk, and share your experience with others!
