Every company has a powder keg, that person who is emotionally volatile and prone to explosions without notice. Powder kegs tend to act irrationally, sometimes with only a limited understanding of the subject matter. They are the embodiment of knee-jerk. You don’t invite powder kegs to meetings, do you? Not if you can avoid it.

But guess what? You need powder kegs. You need to learn how to deal with them. And if you don’t have a single powder keg in your place of employment, you need to become one.

I talk a lot in this blog about the things that drive innovation. I don’t think I talk enough about the things that stall it. The biggest stalling agent to innovation might surprise you. It’s not our fear of the unknown, or organizational inefficiencies, or even ridiculously stupid legislative action. It’s our aversion to people we consider to be “unknown quantities.”

That’s a silly phrase, isn’t it? As if the sum total of any of a person’s traits – even only those related to her business acumen – could ever be known or quantified. As if a person’s predictability somehow correlates to the caliber of work that person is capable of producing. A known quantity? Forget desirable; is that even feasible?

A meeting filled with known quantities is likely to be a very boring meeting. And I’ll take it one step further: every memorable meeting that you’ve ever had was memorable because something unexpected happened. And that unexpected thing was likely facilitated by someone you consider to be an “unknown quantity” – a powder keg.

Powder kegs are disruptive. They approach logical issues with emotion. They become frustrated when they don’t understand what’s going on – and they will kill off procedural inefficiencies until they get what they need. They are blunt and brusque, and put things in a language that everyone can understand. And until their work satisfies their expectations, they’ll let everyone in a five mile radius know that they think the work they’re doing sucks.

Yes, they’re over the top sometimes. But here’s what you need to imagine. Your business is a sculptor. It has a whole lot of tools for carving stone – chisels, hammers, and awls of various descriptions, and so on – but none of them help free a chunk of marble from a quarry. The thing that makes a 9-foot marble statue possible is a strategically placed stick of dynamite that liberates a 10-foot hunk of rock from the ground. Is a stick of dynamite over the top sometimes? If you’re trying to carve fine details into your sculpture, yes. If you’re trying to get a 4-ton rock out of the ground, it’s the right tool for the job.

So you want to execute a great concept? You need to liberate a great concept from the brains of your so-called “known quantities,” who would otherwise hack at it with chisels. Your powder kegs will help with that.

Dealing with powder kegs is hardly an enviable task. But it’s manageable if you think about the nature of a powder keg:

• Generally, a powder keg sees things through a highly polarized lens. Things are right or wrong, good or bad, easy or impossible. Anything that falls in the middle of this spectrum must be broken down to its fundamental elements, which can each be evaluated as a binary value.
• If a powder keg senses something is wrong, they will not stop being upset about it until it is made right. Even if the work goes on to win awards, the powder keg will always speak derisively about it if at any point it failed to meet her standards. If the work is taking a different tack than what the powder keg demands, don’t try to get the powder keg to “suck it up” – she never will. Instead, try to use her logic to arrive at the conclusion that this direction is the right one.
• Powder kegs tend to have sizeable egos. Anything you can do to make them feel like the best ideas are their ideas, do it. The more influential the powder keg perceives herself to be, the happier and more manageable she will be.

That’s all well and good. But what if you don’t have a powder keg? How do you become one?

That, I’m afraid, is a question with no good answer. Not to pat myself on the back, but reading this blog is probably a good start. I also recommend finding people who are disruptive and asking what they read. Learn what disruption looks like. Then, when you see an opportunity for innovation, emulate the disruptors. Think to yourself, “What would Steve Jobs do in this situation?” That’s really the best advice I can give you (though perhaps some of my loyal readers will help me out with some tips on being disruptive? I’ll be your best friend forever).

As for me, I’m proud to be a powder keg. And I fully intend to keep on exploding big ol’ rocks from the ground.

Kablammingly yours,

–MS