Anyone Can Disrupt
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If you’re one player in a big company, you can’t be a disruptor, right? Wrong. You were hired because you are smart, educated and innovative. You have a responsibility to disrupt the way things are done when it will serve your company and its stakeholders.
In my book, Provoke, I write that employees are critical players in the Culture of Disruption. When I speak to corporations, I often have several hundred employees in the audience. When I start talking about their “power,” I always get skeptical looks, followed by questions like “Don’t you know I am only one of more than 100,000 employees?”
Several hours later, when the talk is over, I’m always surrounded by dozens of those same people, talking excitedly. The same people who were cynics a few hours before are now talking about what is possible and how much power they have. That turnaround in attitude keeps me going. It’s a thrill to empower people to be centers of disruption.
I explain to my listeners that their corporation is made up people who make decisions. Every one is an employee just like them. I remind them that they are there because the company recruited them for their talent, intelligence, skill and drive. So what happens from hiring day to the present? These talented folks get slotted into repetitive, uninspiring legacy projects. Add politics, performance review worries and the implied pressure to go alone with the status quo (as well as, today, the fear of losing a job) and it’s easy to see how geniuses can become cynical drones convinced that nothing can ever change.
However, here is the secret I impart to these designers, programmers, engineers and mathematicians: they have a strong voice. No company ignores true talent. They might misuse it, but they will always leverage it when they know about it. When someone speaks up, takes charge and offers solutions, management listens. The problem is that the many highly talented people have given up or are giving up. That once-coveted engineering/design/biotech/research/ job has become just the means to a paycheck.
Then, instead of 20,000 vibrant, talented, creative people who are centers of disruptive thinking and innovation, we have 20,000 robots in structured groups with narrowed focuses, delivering minor updates to legacy garbage when they could be changing the world. What company doesn’t want genius? Who can afford to lose talented people?
This is the part my audiences dislike: the responsibility for putting yourself in position to be a disruptor is yours. Your boss will not come to you one day out of the blue, declaring that you are a genius who should be given more opportunities. But you can influence the thinking of your superiors. If you are a brilliant, innovative thinker, no one can take that away from you. Many of you whom I meet are extremely bright, driven and talented. If you’ve been at your job for fifteen years and hate it because you could be doing so much more, it’s time to speak up. There’s never been a better time.
There seems to be a mix here of what is and what should be. “No company ignores true talent?” Oh, how I wish that were so universally true. More characteristic of most of the companies in my experience is that a design engineer does not walk into the CEO’s office to propose a new method of designing that is slightly faster or more reliable, let alone to propose that the company should enter a wholly new market space. It “isn’t done.”
If a cubicle-peon tried this, how would the CEO actually react? His job is to communicate the vision and he does it exceptionally well and with passion — that’s why he’s the CEO. So he’ll likely pounce into full-on sales mode, talking right over the engineer until he’s convinced that he has “overcome the objection” to the current direction. CEOs are expected to be talkers, not listeners. Or if the CEO is more of a careful detail-oriented type who came up through the ranks, he’ll have a tizzy because this is bypassing the chain of command, plus of course he doesn’t really understand the idea anyway, he only knows of engineering in terms of what it costs and what the schedules are, so he’ll immediately tell that engineer to go talk to his own supervisor about the “details of implementation.”
That is my experience, and that’s the better companies. I haven’t even gotten to the ones where design engineers are in a remote office that doesn’t get management’s ear in the first place, or where a mid-level manager actively eliminates any ideas that weren’t his.
I agree with Linda’s assertion that every member of an organization should feel empowered to “disrupt” culture or production. Of course, it’s management’s responsibility to ensure that reasonably structured avenues exist for employees to put forth & potentially implement disruptively innovative ideas. I would only add that in many environments, especially conservative corporations, employees that are interested in lengthy careers should take great care to communicate their ideas effectively. They should know themselves and how people react to them, and they should know their peers and superiors and understand the most effective means/styles of communication. I have many innovative team members that come to me on a weekly basis with great ideas. My first question is: “How do your peers feel about this idea?” The answer used to be: “they don’t know, I didn’t tell them. I was hoping that you would like the idea and make them follow it.” Yes, certain ideas need to be implemented immediately. Others need team development. If an innovator can’t convince their peers & make them an advocate, how likely is it that the idea is going to thrive? The answer: not likely. Great disruptors that are poor teammates, salespeople, and communicators are lone entrepreneurs (and probably not very successful ones).
Linda, I agree with your premise, but I think we need to be more clear in the types of innovation that each level of employee can contribute. While this is not said to quash creativity, and certainly innovation should be promoted at each level through the open ears of management, not all audiences or levels of employees are able to be given the reins you describe and provide quality innovation. For example, in the past I’ve managed a team of entry level employees for an organization with over 300,000 employees.With the exception of 1 or 2 employees, many of them had been in the same role for over 10+ years!! The stagnation, which had not effectively been addressed in years prior, blinded any type of contribution these employees could garner. Their foresight did not escape past their cubicle or their front door. Strategic thinking and organizational advancement were off the table in attempted discussions.
So what am I saying here? I’m not advocating that these employees should be ignored, simply that there needs to be clearer guidelines as to what innovation to expect from each level of an organization. The lines will be blurred as grassroots ideas can happen, but a clearer dilineation of expectations will mean more to your audiences in my opinion. What do you think?
Employees do have the power to bring change or disruption to their organization. The question is, how does one create change or disruption? I used to have a manager whom always used to say bring me your solutions not your problems. I think this is ultimately how one should deliver their ideas/ innovations up the managerial chain. You’ve mentioned before that people should write a business plan for their directors. I would argue that not everyone knows how to write a business plan. Perhaps a better idea is creating a ppt you can email you boss stating what problem you have identified, how you would like to fix it, and any supporting data/ implications for your proposed solution. I’ve found from previous experience that if you don’t put anything in writing and there aren’t any pictures you’ve already lost the battle for change.