You understand the Revolutionary imperative. You feel it in your bones. You're vibrating with excitement at the thought of doing something new, building something radical, and you can't shut up about it. But your industrial-era boss, with a black belt in corporate gamesmanship, is immune to your ramblings. Every time you start to pitch your idea you get "the look" - you know the one I mean - the look that says, "Who hired this idiot, anyway?"

So whaddya do? Beat your head against the walls of your cubicle? Throw yourself in front of the chairman's limo? Bide your time until the morons recognize your genius and promote you? Take early mental retirement? Enroll in a seminary? Steady on. There's another option - a path, too seldom trod, that is rocky and steep but leads to opportunity. It is a path unfamiliar to corporate types, but well known to thousands of otherwise powerless individuals who've succeeded in knocking history out of its grooves.

A middle-aged woman who takes on the Marcos oligarchy in the Philippines. An African-American woman who refuses to sit in the back of the bus. A group of mothers who press lawmakers to stiffen drunk-driving penalties. A 12-year-old kid who founds an environmentalist group that ultimately attracts 25,000 members. A Czech poet who stands up to totalitarianism. These are the people who change the world. And you can't change your own company? Give me a break.

Of course no one is going to give you permission. You're not going to get a "mandate" from on high. But you've got to decide. Are you a courtier, kissing corporate butt? Or a rebel challenging your company to reinvent itself? Are you there to buff up top management's outsized ego, or are you there to help your company stay relevant in a revolutionary world? If it's the latter, you're going to have to learn to punch more than your weight and to cast a much bigger shadow across your organization than you do right now.

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