Disruption!
Looking
back can be dangerous. Lot’s wife looked
back and it didn’t work out well.[i] A friend recently asked me to look back and write
about what I had learned working in or consulting with organizations: big and
small, complicated and simple, for-profits or non-profits. I’d rather look forward, but I concede that past
is prologue.[ii]
Boiling
down several decades to a few observations is a challenge, but three things
stand out for me: organizations need great leaders, change is never ending and
coming faster, and every organization needs people who want to blow it up.
Good
leaders articulate a vision and focus on it every day. They build strong teams that are mission driven
and then get out of the way. Good leaders
always hire people that are smarter than they are. They know that their organization can only
focus on a few things, well done. Any
more than five or six major goals confuse people and takes focus off what’s
important. Jack Welsh wanted GE to be
number one or two in each of its industries.
If your division was number three or four, everyone knew what they had
to do.
The practical typewriter hit the
market in the late 1860’s. It was
another 100 years before IBM introduced the Selectric model. It was another twenty years before computers
became the norm on office desks because Windows disrupted the way we did
business. Apple introduced the iPhone in
2007. It changed the world in two or
three years. The iPhone X, a technical
platform with AI capability, and facial recognition was introduced this month. It may disrupt the world again. Moore’s law, predicting the doubling of
technology speed in two-year cycles is replaced with the concept of a wave of
change. It just keeps coming.
Years ago, we talked about incremental
change. Today we talk about
disruption. We don’t have the luxury of
taking five years to adapt to new technology.
It will be out of date by then.
Today, everyone needs to be an early adapter.
Marshall
McLuhan said, “If it works, it’s obsolete.”[iii]
Tom Peters advised that “if it ain’t broke,
fix it anyway.”[iv] In today’s world, if you’re doing something
the way you did it two years ago, you just know someone out there is plotting
ways to shock you out of your complacency.
Remember
the kids who always got in trouble in fifth grade, who disrupted the class
because they were bored stiff? The ones sent
to the Principals office on a regular basis.
Hire them!
Organizations
grow and prosper because of the people who breathe, eat, and live change and
disruption. They were always the most
important people, but often labeled as troublemakers by those who didn’t like
change or were wedded to old technology and processes. People who try to preserve the status quo
create a culture designed for the past, they frustrate employees, and they
stifle innovation.
Think
of people who disrupted our lives: Edison, Bell, Vail, Deere, Fairbanks, Ford, Packard,
Gates, Jobs, Watson, and Musk. Do you remember
when we tied telephones to a wire plugged into the wall, or when cell phones
were just phones? Today, your pocket computer
has a phone app along with twenty others.
The largest hotel chain in the world is Airbnb. The largest taxi group in the world is Uber
followed by Lift. That’s
disruption.
Socrates
didn’t have today’s amazing technology, he had to sit on a log and lecture and
ask questions. Our long tradition of
professors lecturing and students taking notes is so BCE. Today, high quality degrees are available
on-line, from the comfort of your home.
At least that is what Charles Isbell, a Dean at Georgia Tech told PBS
News Hour.[v] Got a question for the teacher, ask it. The school uses AI to answer the easy ones,
and the Profs only get the complicated questions. Need a master’s degree, get it on line from a
major university. Colleges are preparing
for huge disruptions in the next ten years that will result in smaller
faculties, fewer buildings, cheaper texts, smaller parking lots, and even the
end to admission angst. Professors who
don’t use old teaching methods are starting to disrupt the campuses.
So, yes, past is prologue. It’s always
been about people, the ones who know how to lead rather than manage, those who adapt
quickly to change, and those who are impatient, and constantly looking for ways
to disrupt the status quo, to create the change. The disrupters move organizations.
The next time you interview candidates
for a job, ask them how often they were sent to the Principal’s office!
September 20, 2017
