Normally the epitome of fine humor, my good friend was seething. She had devised a zany and artistic marketing concept for her agency. Securing the funds, designing a content material technique, hiring a inventive company, after which doing all of the associated work had consumed Alex and her crew for a full six months. This was on prime of their already demanding jobs.
After which the unthinkable occurred.
“Earlier than the thought was introduced, one among my coworkers, a PR man, shared the thought—my concept—with the CEO and CMO.” I watched her tempo round my kitchen, her face getting redder and redder. “Whereas he didn’t precisely say he’d completed the work himself, how he talked about it made it seem to be it was all his.”
“Did you inform anybody, go to your supervisor?” I requested.
Alex stopped her pacing. “I did, and he stated, ‘Whenever you’re inventive, folks will steal your concepts—it is best to simply get used to that reality.’”
As we talked, I may hear that underneath Alex’s anger was one thing else—curiosity. About what this all meant. About what she may have, or ought to have, completed in another way.
Was she the issue? Did she want to determine play the sport higher?
Was the PR man the problem?
Or her boss? And if it was her boss, did she must stop?
These had been the improper questions.
It’s not you or them. The issue lies within the norm of tolerating unhealthy habits. When workplaces say, “Inventive concepts get stolen,” hurt turns into a given, not a selection.
Concepts get stolen as a result of there’s no accountability.
To be clear, generally an concept is simply within the air, and two or extra folks come to it across the identical time. And oftentimes, we create concepts collectively. I’m not speaking about these moments.
I’m speaking about when it’s absolutely obvious what is occurring—concept theft, the place one occasion takes credit score for the work of others—and the way that theft is tolerated. Analysis reveals that information employees are keenly conscious of concept theft; almost one-third report having had it occur to them.
Work typically treats concept theft as no huge deal.
However the associated fee is actual.
• Integrity is misplaced when concepts are disconnected from their supply. The depth of the idea or the completeness of the pondering is misplaced. Downstream selections are made with out the rootedness of the unique inspiration.
• Theft demotivates the subsequent concept. When concepts are stolen usually, concept era shuts down as a result of nobody volunteers to be violated.
And Alex’s boss was proper about one factor: Alex will definitely create extra concepts. Folks create once they really feel protected sufficient to think about one thing new. That—by definition—is why regulating unhealthy habits issues.
The concept that was stolen? It grew to become one of many agency’s most profitable efforts that yr. It impressed the corporate’s subsequent advert marketing campaign and even a Tremendous Bowl spot.
However they didn’t have any follow-up to this one-off success.
Why?
As a result of they not had Alex.
The Counterintuitive Perception: We Can Take Care of Our Commons
Most of us are taught to remain quiet. Don’t make a scene. Go alongside to get alongside.
And when somebody crosses a line—steals credit score, dominates conferences, dismisses concepts—we assume somebody in authority will repair it. However that assumption hides a deeper reality: the foundations of our workplaces will not be enforced by leaders alone. They’re enforced by what we tolerate collectively.
In 2009, political economist Elinor Ostrom received the Nobel Prize in economics for proving one thing that ran towards many years of financial orthodoxy.
Earlier than her work, economists extensively believed within the “tragedy of the commons”—the concept when a useful resource is shared, people will inevitably overuse it and destroy it. The one resolution, it was thought, was top-down management: personal possession or authorities regulation.
Ostrom proved in any other case.
She confirmed that communities, left to their very own units, typically devise extremely subtle methods of shared administration—methods the place penalties don’t come from a distant authority however from the group itself.
The individuals who rely upon one another may also maintain one another accountable.
Her work wasn’t about workplace politics. But it surely applies.
Each crew shares one thing. It won’t be water or grazing land.
However belief. Power. Credit score. Voice.
And identical to pure sources, these intangible items are depleted when folks act solely in their very own pursuits on the expense of shared pursuits.
When a supervisor takes all of the credit score. When somebody interrupts continually. When emotional labor all the time falls on the identical shoulders.
What Ostrom teaches us is that we don’t should dwell inside that dynamic.
We are able to shield shared items—not with permission from the highest, however by practices we design ourselves. By way of penalties we create and apply collectively.
Shared areas survive when the folks inside them shield them.
Change the Norm
When one thing dangerous occurs at work, our instincts break up: ignore it or wait for somebody in cost to deal with it.
However silence has a price.
It makes us complicit in what we ache to alter.
Monica Lewinsky—dragged by the mud of a scandal she didn’t create alone—calls on us to be upstanders: individuals who don’t simply stand by, however rise up. Who see cruelty and select braveness. Who see hurt and refuse to deal with it as regular.
Analysis reveals that when bystanders step in, bullying stops inside seconds—proving that empowering friends to behave can minimize unhealthy habits in half.
What we enable turns into the rule of the room.
When somebody steals an concept, and nobody says something, the norm survives.
When somebody names it—calmly, clearly—the rule adjustments. However let’s be clear: This isn’t work any of us do alone.
If unhealthy habits is tolerated, it grows. When it meets penalties, it stops. Unhealthy habits isn’t mysterious—it’s merely a criminal offense of alternative, repeated when nobody intervenes. This isn’t a private drawback. It’s a social drawback. It’s as much as those that see it to behave—to create the implications. Not simply to guard the harmed, however to cease the hurt from spreading.
Habits doesn’t change as a result of folks instantly turn out to be higher.
It adjustments as a result of somebody names what’s taking place and refuses to deal with it as regular. Whenever you do, you received’t do it alone. One other individual will take part. After which one other. Till groups resolve, we will be clear, truthful, and agency with one another. That our shared area is value defending, defending.
Let your self run towards that hazard, not away from it.
Tailored from the e book Our Finest Work: Break Free from the 24 Invisible Norms That Restrict Us, by Nilofer Service provider. Copyright © 2026 by Nilofer Service provider. Reprinted by permission of Harper Enterprise, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
