I wish I was better at breaking rules

I wish I was better at breaking rules. Throughout school I excelled in keeping rules - during university, I learnt how to "bend them" ( I realised I didn't have to be in every Friday 9am lecture because notes could be borrowed). It was during my first proper job as an English teacher in Japan that I realised in life there would be times where breaking the rules was just common sense.

This realisation came to me during a day sitting at my desk utterly bored because the students were all on school holiday but the Japanese way was to use that time to plan lessons. With the understanding that there was only so much conversation practice that could be planned my French and American colleagues and I created a new rule that we would be at our desks for the 9am roll call and then be off doing other things from 9:30am!

Recently I've been wondering if an upbringing of rule-breaking would leave me more equipped right now to be creating a change to create a sustainable event industry.

Definitely playing by the rules has got me far (chairing the event industry's largest association and only ISO sustainability standard) but the reality I see is the rules aren't set up for the existence of a sustainable event industry (or any industry for that matter). For example, the rule that the CEO sets the strategy. The majority of CEO's do not have the context, values or instinct for sustainability that the average Gen Z has, yet the rules say Gen Z have to wait about 30 years (at least!) before they can use those values on setting business strategy.

The old rules don't work, that's my common-sense rationale for why they must be broken (and an understanding that personally I may have got comfortable with the current rules because they are working!)