Disrupt Disruption

“Instead of looking away when you see something which doesn’t fit into your pattern—something weird, strange, different—pause and ask yourself: ‘Isn’t that interesting?’”

How often do you encounter the problem the product or service aims to solve? (Frequency) • How much time and energy do you spend in the problem space when you encounter the problem? (Density) • How much pain does the problem cause you? (Friction)

Let this sink in for a moment. You will never get disrupted by any one disruptive technology or change. No amount of artificial intelligence, blockchain, genetics, or any other technology will upend your business. Rather, it will be someone combining these technologies in new and interesting ways to create an irresistible product or service.

“The goal of the game we are playing is not innovation nor disruption; it is achieving sustainable relevance. As such, one doesn’t win the game; one plays to stay in the game and keep playing.”

Change is not necessary because survival is not mandatory. —W. Edwards Deming

How can we fulfill the job to be done for the highest number of people, doing the highest amount of good, most economically, and in the fairest way possible?”

Start by defining what you know to be fundamentally true and argue up from there: (1) Identify and define your current assumptions. (2) Break down the problem into its fundamental principles. (3) Create new solutions from scratch.

Digitizing a process requires the challengers to know a business in more detail than the incumbents, and the challengers use systems that thrive with poor starting knowledge”

Businesses need to have activity and investments in both parts of the organization. Conceptually, this is distinct as night and day—alas, nearly every organization we know of struggles with this in their operations. Without a healthy core, the organization simply ceases to exist, and without smart investments on the edge (both capital and operational), the company doesn’t have a future.

To build on what Jim Collins wrote in his bestselling book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … and Others Don’t (2001), it is important to “get the right people on the bus”—but also make sure you put them into the right seats and create the appropriate reward structures for them.

We followed a mantra of “hiring behind the curve”—only adding new members to the team when we knew for sure we needed them and the work couldn’t be done by other team members anymore.

For change to happen, you need to provide both a compelling picture of the future—we like Jim Collins’ acronym BHAG (2001): Big Hairy Audacious Goals—and a solid response to the question of “Why should I change in the first place?”

four key elements necessary to craft your new narrative: your story must speak from your purpose, share your preferred future, include your audience, and show how they share the journey. Integrate those four building blocks into your strategic narrative, and you are well on your way.

in today’s complex and uncertain world, as author Warren Berger points out in his book A More Beautiful Question (2014), the value of a discreet answer diminishes, and the value of a good question increases.

Today’s environment is a highly interconnected and interdependent system with a significant degree of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity—a world commonly referred to by the acronym “VUCA.” (Bennis 1986)