Rebels at Work ─ A Handbook for Leading Change from Within

Learn how to stand up and contribute your best ideas to your organization’s most important missions. Rebels at Work challenges the assumption that leadership comes from a position of power or authority. With practical advice and guidance, authors Lois Kelly and Carmen Medina—rebels in their own right—will help empower you by transforming the way you present your ideas and engage your coworkers and bosses.

By focusing on the soft-skills needed in the workplace in order to present positive change within your group or company, this book explores common fears that hold you back in the workplace, and shows you how to conquer those fears to get your ideas out. Rebels at Work provides insight to spark a revolution in the workplace, boosting employee engagement in IT, healthcare, education, and professionals in other industries.

Lois Kelly, an author and marketing strategist, counsels executives in large corporations like FedEx, SAP, HP, Fidelity Investments, Dunkin' Donuts, TJ Maxx, SAS Institute, University of Massachusetts, The Conference Board, USAA, Sapient, Communispace, and many more. They hire Lois presumably for help on communicating change and mobilizing word of mouth marketing. The unstated, real reason they hire her is that they are rebels at work, looking for a rebel emeritus who can guide them in successfully shepherding their change agendas inside large, complex organizations – and outside to customers. Being a rebel can be dangerous, and they recognize the value of having an experienced guide.

Carmen worked at the Central Intelligence Agency for 32 years, rising to become one of the highest-ranking women at the Agency.

During her career at CIA she achieved positions of apparent importance, such as the Deputy Director for Intelligence and the Director of the Center for the Study of Intelligence (CSI.) But she thinks her greatest achievement is that most people who worked for her are still her friends. She had many ideas about how the CIA could do its job better—not all were welcomed. Being true to yourself, being a rebel at work, Carmen learned, means you will often feel uncomfortable and not welcomed at work.

Since her retirement from the CIA in 2010, Carmen has led two new careers. One with Deloitte Consulting and the other as a curator, connector, and synthesizer on social networks. At Deloitte, she continues to support the Intelligence Community on issues such as social networking and future trends, and mentors Deloitte’s consultants about how to become innovative and independent thinkers. (She prefers to think of it as being their Yoda).

She tweets regularly under the handle @milouness (She started on Twitter while still at CIA so chose an obscure user name; she has 2,504 followers.) She also writes regularly both on her own blog, recoveringfed.com, and on the joint website with Lois Kelly, rebelsatwork.com.

Debra Cameron is president of Cameron Consulting. In addition to her love for Emacs, Deb researches and writes about emerging technologies and their applications. Her latest book, Optical Networking: A Wiley Tech Brief, published in 2002 by John Wiley & Sons, covers the practical applications of optical networking and was written in the hope that true broadband will be more widely deployed. Deb also edits OReilly titles, including DNS and Bind, DNS on Windows 2000, TCP/IP Network Administration, HTML and XHTML: The Definitive Guide, Java Security, Java Swing, Learning Java, and Java Performance Tuning. She has presented numerous videos for WatchIT.com, covering security and networking as well as e-business topics. She has moderated roundtables on PlanetIT on advanced networking and intranet design. Deb resides in Gaithersburg, Maryland with her husband Jim and their three children, Meg, David, and Bethany.