If there’s one thing that big corporations tend to have it common it’s that they’re stifling. And I don’t mean just a little bit stifling, I mean a LOT stifling. Between meaningless management-speak and org charts that look like a work of string art, you can go mad if you don’t keep your wits about you.

What makes it worse is that corporations – or at least, the middle managers in corporations that determine the day-to-day life of a company – believe that this kind of processing, this kind of bureaucracy, is the right way to get things done.

So, what happens when you take someone who’s used to working autonomously and try to plug them into the corporate assembly line? Well, you get a mess. I’m living proof of that.

I’ve been an entrepreneur in the tech field for a long time. I took my startup and built it into a successful company in under five years. After I sold off the company, I was up for a challenge. I turned, in my naiveté, to the corporate world.

I was looking for something I could sink my teeth into. I was looking for something exciting that would challenge me. Little did I know I’d be challenged, not just in my creativity, but also in winding my way through the corporate bureaucracy in order to truly innovate.

I went from running my own new/small company, to selling it to a medium-sized company, to working for a monster-sized organization that’s over a century old. That means a century of bureaucracy, a century of entrenched systems, and a century of politics. Talk about culture shock.

The problem isn’t unique to my company, of course. In fact, my company has, at its heart, a desire to innovate and encourage creativity. Any company that’s been around that long presents some serious challenges in the way of bureaucracy.

But, I’m still here. I’m doing the work, day in and day out. How do I handle being the Director of New Media in a company that has so much entrenched bureaucracy, and doesn’t intrinsically foster freedom and initiative? – That’s easy. I change the company. Along the way, I use three guiding principles to help me maintain my freedom (and sanity) working within the bureaucracy:

1. I build on institutional strengths. It’s easy to see the limitations and the useless structures at work in a 110 year-old company. In fact, some days you can get so caught up in the restraints that you miss something: there’s a reason that company has been in business for 110 years. There is something there that’s kept them successful and in the market. Figure out what that is, and put it at the core of everything you do, and you’ll find your efforts will be rewarded even if they’re unconventional.

2.  When you get scolded for thinking outside the box, redefine the box. This isn’t always easy to do, of course. But you need to be able to demonstrate how innovation and creativity have paid off in other endeavors, especially ones internal to the company. Don’t think outside the box, make a bigger one.

3.  Produce demonstrable results. You can’t argue with success. If you want to be encouraged to be creative and free, then demonstrate that you’re able to produce results because of your creativity and freedom. For any given endeavor you want to propose, include some form of metric measure its success.