Related to my "There are less [sic, fewer] rules than you think, do something slightly weird" post where I mentioned adding plants and blankets to my college science department to make the environment less sterile, someone reached out to me asking "What do you do when you take direct action to fix something, but people do reject it/throw it out, etc.?"
To be clear, I've just been very lucky so far in that people have been willing to let me try things or just haven't fought me when I've tried things without anyone's direct permission.
If someone is throwing out/undoing your efforts to fix things, there are two things I can think to try:
1) Create an official looking sign that says "Do not remove," etc. Be sure this won't get you in trouble and/or keep the warning vague enough that you couldn't get in trouble for misrepresenting who is behind the sign. Ex: My plants in the science department did get stolen occassionally, so I got stickers printed that said "Official Science Department Plant. Do not remove," and stuck them to the pots. Did I have permission to represent the science department? Not quite, but at the time I was both student and staff, so I was like "fuck it, if I'm not a part of this department, who is?" And no one cared, so it was fine. This did reduce plant thefts, but I still had a bit of an issue with it, so I printed up informational posters stating clearly that the plants and blankets were a student project for the benefit of everyone in the department because I figured if students were taking the plants, it's because they had a grudge against the science department (reasonable) and thought that would inconvenience the department rather than another student. Both measures helped, and now that people know why they're there, respecting the plants and blankets so that they can benefit all students has become part of the culture. Also, think about this: How often have you actually seen the person who put up a warning sign like "Do not remove from room," "Keep door closed," etc.? Pretty much never, right? But do you abide by them with the assumption that whoever is behind the sign has some kind of authority? Most people do. Most people do not see a warning sign and think "Did whoever put up this sign have the right/authority to do so?" unless the sign is objectively ridiculous.
2) As much as I love direct action, sometimes you do have to go through a hierarchy to give your idea staying power. I'd imagine this is probably the case in the workplace a lot where there are a lot of internal regulations that may or may not have a good reason and may or may not be applied too aggressively to stuff that's objectively harmless for the sake of conforming to policy. Ex: As part of my job, we had to go have a conversation with a building manager about a space where we wanted to put up a big informational poster. This was just for my regular job duties, but imagine I just thought we needed a big informational poster and put one where I thought it was needed. It would have been thrown out in this case because the poster would have been large enough to reduce the path next to it below 36 inches wide, which violates ADA compliance. Is that a valid concern? Yes. Would I have known that? No. Hence why we needed to consult the building manager.
Sometimes hierarchical business people are capable of recognizing a good idea but are also just kind of entitled/petty. Ex: I had a friend leading a meeting where they needed to redesign part of a factory floor with input of higher-ups who were not normally at the facility. Meeting was a trainwreck because they were trying to verbally describe rearrangements to people who didn't know the layout of the factory. So he went and printed blueprints of the facility for each guy and cut out the pieces they needed to rearrange so that they could see and physically move the pieces. Got the meeting back on track, and they figured everything out. His bosses were furious that he did that without asking them first because them not knowing about it basically cheated them out of some credit for a good idea from an employee below them (i.e. if they had just gotten to approve it, which they would have, they could at least claim credit for recognizing and promoting a good idea). Is this stupid? Yeah. But had he gone through the hierarchy, the good idea would have gone through with no trouble.
So if someone in the hierachy above you is destroying your solution, you may need to turn your direct action into a pitch and negotiation deal where you explain to the relevant higher-ups what problems you're seeking to solve, and discuss with them to make sure it conforms or can be adjusted to any relevant business policies (or fragile egos).
Direct action is definitely a tool I think people hesitate on too often because the invsible weight of social pressures tell us "that's weird, don't do that," or "you're gonna get in trouble!" even if you're not breaking any rules. However there's always the chance that someone will take direct action to undo what you did, and making your change more permanent may require going through bureaucracy in order to get people behind maintaining or defending your project.
The nice thing about doing direct action then pitching the idea to someone else is that you've basically already done a proof-of-principle pilot launch of the idea.
