The Master's Tools.
The Master’s tools will never dismantle the Master’s house.’
Those who built the team, department, organisation, community, society must either change it or defend it - usually the latter - often under the banner of ‘stability’.
Those who choose to join the team, department, organisation, community, society must confirm and defend the reasons for doing so, and thus the integrity of the entity.
That’s the social contract between two or more people who benefit from membership.
Reform needs at least one person to identify change is needed, and the tools to do so.
Both must get past the gatekeepers.
The insider can easily do so, because they are a member. But what of their tools? How can they smuggle ideas past the gatekeepers?
It takes courage and what the military strategist Liddell Hart called ‘the indirect approach’.
"Throughout the ages, effective results in war have rarely been attained unless the approach has had such indirectness as to ensure the opponent’s unreadiness to meet it… In strategy, the longest way round is often the shortest way home. A direct approach to the object exhausts the attacker and hardens the resistance by compression, where as an indirect approach loosens the defender's hold by upsetting his balance".
Or as Sun Tsu wrote:
"In all fighting, the direct method may be used for joining battle, but indirect methods will be needed in order to secure victory.
The Master’s house will usually not be dismantled by persuading the Master - who would otherwise have initiated the demolition.
The sowing of ideas among conversations, meetings, projects, and forums. Harnessing mediums such as podcasts, team posts, blogs, videos for others to incorporate into their work and make their own. These are the indirect approaches.
Or you can quit and take your ideas elsewhere.