TEAM PLAYER.

My cat is not a team player. She doesn't respond well to direction. She keeps irregular hours. She occasionally is insubordinate and is always insouciant. But she is a full-fledged member of the household and contributes a great deal of amusement and affection. So we overlook her unwillingness to conform and her sometimes difficult attitude. She is a valuable player and holds a key place in our activities. Companies frequently have talented players who are nonconformists. They often look different, sporting crazy hair and offbeat clothes. They are mavericks too, when it comes to work hours and punctuality. They speak out with alarming candor and have no hesitation about pointing out the emperor's lack of clothes. Some of their ideas sound silly, but often they make a lot of sense.

Not all company mavericks are easily recognized. They may look and dress the same, but they think differently. They may not like the wonderful new products, the new procedure, or the color of the annual report. They think the company should get out of this business and into that one. They may be new with the company and considered too "junior" to be speaking out the way that they do. Occasionally, their constructive ideas are critical of the CEO, another department, or something outside their own purview. Their comments are unsettling and, at times, upsetting.

Sometimes their criticisms are dead wrong and off-base and simply cause problems. But, the trouble is, sometimes they are right and the emperor didn't have any clothes on and the annual report was an insipid color.

Competent and secure CEOs often tolerate having a Dennis Rodman or Latrell Sprewell around and giving them a certain amount of free rein to express their unique talents. They listen carefully to their differing ideas, but do not necessarily accept them. From time to time, a CEO will go out of his way to ask a creative iconoclast to take a look at a particular problem and suggest a solution. It's a neat trick to keep control at the same time you are listening to out-of-the-box ideas.

Usually, these creative geniuses are kept hidden away in various corporate closets in the engineering lab, the ad department, or somewhere in the IT division. Sometimes they are banded together in a periodic "skunk works."

They might go all the way. Steve Jobs at Apple and Herb Kelleher at Southwest Airlines are outstanding examples of contrarian CEOs who led their companies in imaginative ways and who surrounded themselves with unusual people. Admiral Rickover, Peter Drucker, and Georges Doriot always marched to a different drummer and got the acclaim of the crowd. But Chainsaw Al Dunlap was unable to extend his unique managerial style at Sunbeam into a profitable success--and neither were lots of CEOs who clung stubbornly to an outmoded pattern of management at their companies until they had to be replaced.

In this day and age of topsyturvy change, the smart CEO needs to pay close attention to what the rebellious new thinkers in his industry are doing in the way of new products, new marketing, and new services. Today's CEO has to make a place on his team for these unusual people who can find the right way onto the Internet and into the global swim. And it's not only finding the new idea, but it's almost as important to know when the old idea has passed its time and should be scrapped.

As a CEO who likes and values his job, you don't want to end up like the unhappy character in the commercial who found that he had paid too much for his airplane travel, his rental car, his motel--and was lunging for his air sickness bag. It's worthwhile taking a new look at who is on your team these days to keep you on top and in the lead.

Formerly the CEO of F.&M. Schaefer (1972-1977), Robert W. Lear is chairman of CE's advisory board. He taught at Columbia Business School, where he was executive-in-residence until June, 1999. He has been a director of many companies and is on the advisory boards of five small firms. He is a partner of Lear, Yavitz & Associates corporate governance consultants.