The Chronic Complainers

As I have said, "identation" is nit a synonym for "inovation," conformity " is bot its simple antonym, and innovation is not the automatic consequence of creative thinking. Indeed, what some people call conformity in business is less related to the lack of abstract creativity than to the lack of responsible action, whether it be the implementation of new or o;d ideas.

The proof of this is that in most business organizations, the most continually creative men in the echelons below the executive level are men who are actively discontent with the here and now. They are the creative men, but they are also generally known as corporate malcontents. They tend to complain constantly about the stand pat senility of the management, about its refusal to see the obvious facts of its own massive inertia. They complain about management refusing to do things that have been suggested to it for years. They often complain that management does not even want creative ideas , that ideas rock the boat (which they do), and that management is interested more in having a smoothly running (or is it smoothly ruining  organization than is having a rapidly forward vaulting business.

In short, they talk about the company being a festering sore of deadly conformity, full of decaying vegetables who systematically oppose new ideas with old ideologies. And then, of course, they frequently quote their patron saint, William H. Whyte Jr., with all his misinformed moralizing and conjectural evidence about what goes on inside an operating organization.