Page 153 - The Resilient Organization

140 Part Three: Step 2. Building Resilience into the Organization

its business implications. Granted, it took the new Swedish intern some 20
drafts before the point got across. But persistence paid off: Anders—the
intern—managed to get himself into the corporate jet with several executive
vice presidents for a transcontinental journey. (Anders was one of the more
daring ODDsters who had no qualms in calling an executive vice president
and asking for a ride home from Seattle to New Jersey on the corporate jet.)
A frantic call to the ODD headquarters immediately followed: “What
should I talk to them about?” which resulted in the conviction that the
executives needed to understand the significance and implications of the
very protocol to begin with. So Anders gave a prep class to AT&T execu-
tives on IPv6 some 40,000 feet up.

ATTRIBUTES OF AN ODDSTER

ODDsters were, indeed, an odd group of individuals. Their backgrounds
included psychology, journalism, business, chemistry, biology, physics,
engineering, and materials science. Moreover, they were self-selecting. The
founding group of four expanded not by overt recruitment but by attract-
ing its own kind—like ants to sugar. Anders, for example, met up with a
few ODDsters at an industry conference. After dinner and a few follow-up
discussions, he was convinced that he wanted to be part of the mission.
Anders then called daily, faxed articles he had written for an IT publication
he founded in Sweden, sent references, and, in general, did not give up until
he was hired. ODD attracted several “unofficial” members as well:
AT&Ters who were “formally” employed elsewhere in the company but
spent nearly all their time working on ODD projects. ODD was not the
place for rapid career development; it was a mission. ODDsters’ attributes
were many: a willingness to ignore bureaucracy, the confidence to work
without permission, and an unfailing capacity to deal with rejection. They
exhibited common sense and pragmatism. They were sensitive to feedback,
rabidly curious, and focused on the big picture. They were also natural and
aggressive networkers.
The relationship of ODD with the AT&T establishment is noteworthy.
ODDsters were not diplomats, and they certainly weren’t sellouts. But nor
were they suicidal. Instead, ODDsters maintained a position on the