If there's one thing that terrifies a lot of managers, it's having employees that are smarter than they are. Or, even scarier, having employees that hold a dissenting viewpoint.

This is absurd. I'm not sure who it was that thought the military's systematic style of getting people to fall in line could be applied to the world of business without serious repercussions--maybe Henry Ford contributed in a big way with his assembly line--but it's got to be stopped, before it goes any further.

Individuality, when it adds value, becomes a point of leverage...for the individual. Systems tend to educate this out of us. They want us to be the same as one another because it makes us easily replaceable.

Trying to get everyone on the exact same page is the worst thing any boss could attempt to do, simply because the lesson of diversity rings pretty clear: diverse groups are better are solving problems than groups comprised of people all trying to do or say the same thing.