Don't Panic Presents - Famous Writer Sam Coniff

Taking More Creative Risks

& Being More Pirate with Sam Conniff at Shoreditch House

We love taking creative risks, and love hearing from those who take risks too. This week, we invited the legendary author Sam Conniff Allende to Shoreditch House to tell us what we can learn from his book 'BE MORE PIRATE: How to take on the world and win'. Here are his afterthoughts.

Making a creative impact

Companies know they need innovation to continue to be relevant, but many have a hard time creating an environment that fosters change from within. The two main corporate strategies for dealing with disruption seem to be:

• Non-Aligned Alignment; where team members agree on ‘radical transformation’ in meetings, but become silent saboteurs the moment they realise the threat/cost/effort involved.
• Permission-Based Change; where well-intended ‘New Thinking’ is sent to an early grave in PowerPoint charts and email threads, suffering the death of a thousand ‘thoughts’.

Perhaps today’s businesses are just broken, or maybe many in Suite C fear that “transformation” would force them out of the company for both employees and management. Either way, a new path is needed that doesn’t follow current rules.

It’s time for Professional Rule-Breaking

Before I get attacked by managers across the country, this is not about chaos; this is about change. The art of rule-breaking is in the rule re-making. Knowing that most of us are hard-wired to follow the rules, and aware that I’m entering dangerous territory in already fractious times. I searched for role models who meet the needs of a workforce looking to break out of stasis - and break into their future. I examined the leadership of the Civil Rights Movement, the Suffragettes and all the movements of the sort of scale and significance that the challenges of our times demand. And to my surprise, I found the role models we most need in the form I’d least expect. I found them in the Golden Age of Pirates. I discovered the romantic rogues we know in Jack Sparrow and Captain Hook are only half the story; the other half being of dynamic organisational structures that rewrote the rules of a broken system and stood up to a self-interested establishment to help change it forever. The lesser-known story of Pirates was written out of the history books by the establishment it threatened and now demands your attention today.

These Pirates were the millennials of the early 1700s (average age 28) facing huge disruption, industrial innovation and a lack of visionary leadership. The similarity in context is interesting, but it’s their response that makes them essential reading.

BE MORE PIRATE: How To Take on The World and Win

My new book, BE MORE PIRATE: How To Take on The World and Win, is the case for the relevance of pirates to 21st century professionals and shows how Pirates became pioneers. Pioneers of open systems, self-organising teams, facilitative leadership, fairer workplaces and a raft of even more surprising organisational innovations with an eerily contemporary ring, e.g. pay gap anyone? There was no gender pay gap on board a pirate ship, or any pay gap for that matter, regardless of gender or ethnicity. Pirates were prescient on many more business challenges we face today. They had a system of agile networks for smaller organisations to operate at scale. Without the drag of infrastructure, the average diversity ratio stood at around 33%, and their early holacracy and open decision-making dynamic meant every member of the crew had a voice in shaping strategy.

Bestseller

BE MORE PIRATE is now a bestseller in the UK, with a dozen more markets to follow this year. To my ongoing surprise, my call to arms for a modern mutiny at work has been met with a wave of enthusiasm. However, it’s not just about facilitating Rule Breaking at work. If the rules won’t bend enough, it’s also about giving people the power to jump ship, and rewrite their entire rulebook. At first, I was terrified - what have I started?! But gradually, I’ve begun to talk to the mutineers, and the message I’ve heard is of relief, not just for the chance to forge your own path, but the most important rebellion of all; liberation from our own self-imposed limitations. The same will work for you, even for those of you in the largest, most constrained corporations. As soon as you find your crew and start to rewrite the rules that need it most, you’ll find a deeper responsibility to your own rules and strength to prove your way works. These are the risks that are worth taking.

Creative Risk

So, if you’ve chosen the right rule, and broken it just enough, then hold fast, because when it comes to being a Professional Rule Breaker, I’ve decided that the best indicator you’re being genuinely disruptive is nearly getting fired at least once a year. ‘Nearly’ being the important word. This event was organised by Don’t Panic LDN at Shoreditch House on the 5th February 2019.

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