The Anarchist’s Guide to Corporate Change

Listening to the Ecology of Ideas Podcast with Alexis Shotwell, I got inspired to write this post. The episode is about getting around purity politics to affect political change, and it has some obvious anarchist inspirations. I found it ironic that I use pretty much the same principles to get things done in my corporate job. I guess my youth spent reading Kropotkin wasn’t wasted.

While I don’t claim to be a wise man, I’ve learned some lessons from my time in large corporations. My roles have often put me in a position to build something new, working in units with specific mandates to achieve strategic goals—like speeding up R&D with data science, establishing cybersecurity, or inventing AI security guidelines. You often hear that large corporations are slow to change, and it’s true. But every once in a while, things need to change quickly. It’s not easy, but here is what I’ve learned about affecting change in that environment:

Be realistic, demand the impossible. This is one of many lessons I learned from Jesper, my former manager. Although a conservative at heart, he often acted like a corporate revolutionary. Jesper had a vision for how data was supposed to move, but it contradicted the existing IT architecture, policies, and traditions. Everyone told us why it wouldn’t work. But that’s the thing: if you only work with the options you are given, you will never get where you need to be. Sometimes you have to force change by demanding what you’re told is impossible. Bring a mandate from above, be persistent, and be ready to kick some doors down.

Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good. In the podcast, this is what they mean by purity politics. A common delay tactic in corporate environments is the unit you need to work with already has a “perfect” plan to get where you want to go. It’s just six months away, and the specs are being drawn up as we speak. Or they have a pet project they want you to adopt. Your proposed solution doesn’t perfectly fit what they might do someday, so they want you to stop your work to protect their sandcastle. If you wait for perfect conditions, you’ll never start. I recommend doing what improves things today; we can make it perfect later if and when they’re ever ready.

Work with people you aren’t perfectly aligned with. This is the nature of life. We cooperate to the extent possible. I see every person I can align with for a part of my projects as a resource, even if our goals diverge in the big picture. We work with what we have. This team helps us update OT hardware, that team enables EntraID integration, and another enables us to derive access control groups from HR data. We don’t have to agree on everything. I often break the task into smaller increments and discuss how one step can enable their work down the line. I am willing to compromise, but I also know what is essential for my stakeholders.

I guess I still have some of that fire in me from my younger days. My revolutionary fervor may be far behind me, but I can still revolutionize corporate security.