If you want to make your organization more successful while simultaneously having more fun, you might need to get yourself a rogue.
Rogues
Role-playing games have generally been around since the 1970s. These games are incredibly fun, because they generally put players into interactive and evolving stories. All players bring their own creativity to enhance the story. The more players get into their character roles the richer the story becomes and the more fun the game becomes. These games are immersive stories, where players can do some amateur acting and creativity to bring life to the imaginary world.
New players often want to play traditional hero roles. When I first entered a game, I wanted to play the noble paladin—the good knight. I soon found that paladins can be frustrating to play and boring. They are always honest and forthright. They adhere to a strict code of behavior. Having to follow the rules and always doing the “right” thing removes much of the creativity and fun from playing. To make matters worse, playing a character that has to follow the rules makes the character open to manipulation. Paladins have to keep promises even if the other party has no intention of living up to their end of the deal. The point is that many characters, especially the ones who profess to be “good” or “evil” are predictable. Predictable characters are boring.
If given a choice, I play rogues. Rogues make their way through intellect, cunning, and daring. They are the thieves hiding in shadows. They are the con artists or entertainers that can charm people out of valuable information or items. They are the silver-tongued bard who spin tales to get themselves out of a jam. Rogues have little respect for rules, but are not above using them for if it benefits them. Few rogues care to indulge in the oversimplified, binary choice between good and evil. When you have so few restraints on your behavior, you can really have a lot of fun by doing completely unexpected things. On one occasion, my party of adventurers met with a goddess. Each person, in turn, gave their meek, respectful greeting with bowed heads and averted eyes. When it was my turn, I choose to compliment her on her good looks and made romantic advances toward her. All the players around the table laughed uproariously, even if the other characters in the game expressed surprise and dismay.
Rogues have more fun.
The Organization Rogue
But rogues don’t have to only exist in a role playing game. Role playing works because we see that the same interactions that occur in the game echo real life. There are people who strongly believe in ideology, hierarchy, and structure. In fact, these kinds of individuals are all too common in organizations and they often fill vital roles.
On the other hand, some folks have strongly antiauthoritarian impulses. Admittedly, it is not common to find these people in organizations, but they often can be found as private contractors or vendors (or as adversaries and protesters). In work, as in all social settings, people are different. Some people rely on structure and rules. Clearly defined roles are of great comfort to them. Other folks bristle against highly structured work environments. They despise being “handled” or “micromanaged”.
The rogue’s flexible approach to situations make them ideal managers. Armed with the virtues of pragmatism and ideological indifference, they are only concerned in getting the job done as quickly and painlessly as possible. Rogues can work with a variety of people who have different preferences for order and support and allow them the flexibility to unleash their very different ways of seeing the world to interesting and creative ends. Simply put, if you want to build highly diverse and creative teams, you would do well to place a rogue or two at its center.
If you play the role of a rogue in your organization, you can be the pragmatic problem solver, who finds a way to work with anyone. The rogue believes that, “It’s much better to say I’m sorry, than ask for permission.” Rules are guidelines for the rogue because rogues possess a healthy perspective on rules. When rules enable productive work, rules can be respected; but if rules start to hinder what they are supposed to help, rules can and should be ignored.
