Disruptive innovation and change have become the norm. Most of us know that if we don’t proactively innovate and change the game, someone else will rewrite the rules for us. Just think Blockbuster, Borders, Blackberry, and Kodak.
At the same time, business culture reinforces the idea that uncertainty should be avoided at all costs. Control is the goal. No wonder every management book using the word “surprise” in its title focuses on preventing the phenomenon from occurring.
Can you change? Of course, you can. Everybody changes every day. But how versatile, agile, and quickly can you adapt yourself and your organization to stay relevant in today’s society?
Organizations are always evolving. What’s different now, is that we set new speed record of change on a daily basis. Technology gives us unprecedented possibilities. And this sea of opportunities is pushing the traditional bureaucratic, controlled and hierarchical organization into an identity crisis.
In a disruptive era, the only viable strategy is to adapt and that is especially true today. With change seeming to accelerate with each passing year, every organization must transform itself. Those who are unable to change often find that they are unable to compete and soon disappear altogether.
There has been a long-running debate about whether a change should be top-down or bottom-up. Some say that true change can only take hold if it comes from the top and is pushed through the entire organization. Others argue that you must first get buy-in from the rank-and-file before any real change can take place.
But here’s the problem. Disruptive innovation and change aren’t predictable. Whether we’re intentionally innovating or responding to competitive threats, today’s leaders and employees must live with constant uncertainty and continually respond to the unpredictable.
A few weeks back I was asked by a senior business leader to facilitate his executive team meeting. He explained to me what he believed was the main challenge for his organization: “We have been very successful in the past decades as a company especially because we knew our strong points.
Our entire way of working was aimed at maximizing our strong points without letting ourselves be distracted by other stuff. By doing this we created two kinds of people: the ‘managers’ who managed our products; and the ‘sales entrepreneurs’ who managed our customers.
Now we are faced with a changing market, and we are not capable of responding quickly enough to these changes. Our managers and sales entrepreneurs are both screaming for more focus from the top. But they actually mean: ‘do not disturb us with your change initiatives and let us focus on what we’re good at making our products and selling these to our customers’.
Apparently they do not see that this kind of focus is no longer helping us forward at all. In fact, we need to change our focus, instead of sticking to what we always did. And for this, we do not only need management and entrepreneurship, but also leadership.
Not only at the top, but on all levels in the organization. Leaders who are able to create a shared focus on a new way forward; who are able to align their people around this new focus; who are people, team, collaboration oriented, as much as the product, efficiency, customer-oriented.
The story of this leader shows his interpretation of reality: the pressure to change and adapt demands a new focus. It demands one based on looking forward, on knowing what we want to create together, on why this is important, and on the benefits we see. Focusing on the things we want to change, to create the company we want to become.
Our inherently uncertain environment demands a new set of competencies focused on navigating disruptive change while driving game-changing breakthroughs. Five leadership competencies are essential for success in today’s unpredictable world:
Adaptive plans
Leading disruptive innovation requires managing unsurpassed levels of adaptation. Adaptive planning involves taking action to drive results, learning from them, and then modifying assumptions and approaches accordingly.
Whether these “results” are good or bad, they bring us closer to our breakthroughs since they result in new insights. These new insights shape our future strategies, plans, and actions, which are better aligned to the needs of the market.
Data integration
Most leaders demand hard data when making critical decisions. In times of disruptive change, robust data rarely exist. Leaders must use any information they can obtain from any source inside and outside the company—but then complement that data by using their gut to round out the equation.
Boundary pushing
Pushing boundaries is important on two levels. On the personal side, people who live abroad, work across multiple functions and surround themselves with diverse team members continually broaden their mindsets and enhance creative problem-solving skills. From a strategic perspective, they push the limits of their colleagues, teams, organizations, and partners.
Leapfrogging
Leading disruptive innovation and change involves leapfrogging—creating or doing something radically new or different that produces a significant leap forward. People who possess an unyielding desire to create a breakthrough ensure that everything they do focuses on adding a whole new level of value to customers, the market, and the organization.
Appreciate change
Disruptive innovation and change is a process chock full of surprise—failures, successes, unexpected technological advancements, competitive moves, customer feedback, political and regulatory shifts, and other unforeseen events.
Most leaders assume surprises always should be avoided. But those who realize that surprises are an inevitable part of business (just like life) are best equipped to actually use surprise as a strategic tool—which makes them the most agile and fastest to respond to or capitalize on unforeseen events.
In today’s rapidly evolving environment, disruptive innovation and transformational change go hand in hand. Companies that want to proactively drive game-changing breakthroughs must give their leaders and employees the requisite mindsets, skills, and tools to actually break through—personally and on behalf of the business.
There is a lot of misinterpretation about what ‘being focused’ actually means:
Focus is not about accomplishing your tasks; it is about accomplishing your vision!
The Bottom Line
That is not easy, is it? Most people seem to be able to live with a company focus that is keeping them inside the known territory. If for instance, we need to do more of the same in less time, raise the quality level of our product or service, or produce at a lower cost; we seem to be able to deal with this.
People will maybe not like the pressure that this company’s focus is putting on them, but they will go along with it. Up to the level that all energy and ideas are used and nothing is left. At that moment people reach the limit of what they believe is possible, feel numb and start acting unmotivated and uninspired.
Make no mistake. To change fundamental behaviors you have to change fundamental beliefs. Even if the goals of an initiative are highly technical, to transform an organization you first need to transform the people in it.
The truth is that any transformation isn’t an endpoint, but a journey. To succeed, you have to be in it for the long haul.
Successful leaders create organizations that focus differently. In their organizations, the focus is always aimed at the future, at how we see our desired future, at what we need to do differently to get there, at what we collectively gain when reaching it.
Nevertheless, successful leaders succeed in aligning their people around this focus. And by doing that they create energy instead of draining it! How do they do this? What specific traits do these leaders show? I observe the following recurring traits:
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