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This next postcard, written with Robert Chapman Wood, talks about how
to change large institutions (private companies and intergovernmental
organizations such as the European Union) and what the effective strategies
are for activists at any level of the organization.

ODD REVISITED

Ordinary professionals often don’t know their own strength. A powerful
yet little-studied way large organizations can innovate is for groups of
activist managers and professionals to join together to change routines and
alter taken-for-granted ways of thinking. The evidence suggests such
activism can be far more powerful than most people—including activists
themselves—realize. Such activism is gaining more attention (Meyerson,
2001). Kleiner (1996) wrote an early study. Rao (2009) recently published
a book on market rebels. Activism is changing basic thought processes. It
represents a new approach to enabling large, established firms to innovate
[for example, Shell Oil (see Hamel, 1999)], quite distinct from strategic
planning (Ansoff, 1988), reliance on “emergent strategy” (Mintzberg,
1990), or the deliberate chief executive decision making that journalists

This chapter is modified from an article by Robert Chapman Wood and Liisa Välikangas,
“Managers Who Can Transform Institutions in Their Firms: Activism and the Practices That
Stick,” in The SAGE Handbook of New and Emerging Approaches to Management and
Organization, edited by David Barry and Hans Hansen, SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks,
CA: 2008. Reprinted with permission from SAGE Publications Ltd.

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