Thinking About Disruption In Our Work & Life

Over the New Year period I was doing a lot of loose thinking about what I want to be known for. Over the last year I’ve done a pretty good job of doubling down on marketing as my ‘thing’, something I’m proud of and that is absolutely going nowehere. But as I’ve developed and matured as a human and a business-owner, ‘marketing’ doesn’t tell the full story. It’s a part of it, but doesn’t express my bigger purpose of about changing our lives, whether through a business or not. I was trying to encapsulate all the scraps of knowledge and thinking and beliefs and stitch them together into one clear vision.

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As this was turning over in my mind, one word kept following me around: disrupt. To be honest it wasn’t a word I was particularly keen on, and I kept scowling at it over my shoulder. When you hear disruption it’s usually preceded by the word ‘rail’, or used in the context of Silicon Valley start up bros with an idea to disrupt your morning porridge. It’s never usually something positive. But ‘disrupt’ was persistent – popping it’s head round the door when I was in the shower, whispering in my ear before I went to sleep, waving wildly at me across the street. In this case, familiarity bred fondness, and I began to accept that my brain/the universe was trying to tell me something.

I think for all of us, ‘disrupt’ feels harsh. It doesn’t resonate particularly, we don’t see ourselves as disruptors. I spent some time looking up synonyms in the hope of finding a more on-brand version of it for me to use, but they were all even more negative. By now, however, I’d been living with ‘disrupt’ for a while and it was starting to shed it’s old connotations for me. It was feeling inspiring and empowering, like it might be the key to a framework that would bring about great things. I felt like we, all of us, could take disrupt back from the bros and the rail operators and make it into something that fed us.

Of course, as with everyone approaching new things, I felt like I had to do it ‘right’. I felt like a beginner and that I need to be a good student and do my research and make sure I was working within all the right parameters so that at the end out would pop this neat little box labelled ‘disruption’. I know, not very disruptive behaviour. I bought Do Disrupt (affiliate link) by Mark Shayler (no shade to Mark, I’ve heard him speak and is one of the good ones but – all the books about disruption are written by men). I assumed that in there I’d find the right, tick box method of disruption from which I could elaborate a version for us, but after reading only a few pages I realised – this is what I’ve been saying all along.

It was a differently phrased version of what I’ve been teaching and how I’ve been operating this whole time. The only difference was the packaging – in the book it was all joined together cohesively, in my mind it was post it notes stuffed into different folders. I was reminded of my podcast conversation with Susannah Conway – trust that all the guidance and the answers you need are already inside you. No more research. Dig out the files and put this together in a way that works for all of us.

The dictionary definition of disrupt is two-fold:

INTERRUPT BY CAUSING A DISTURBANCE
DRASTICALLY ALTER OR DESTROY THE STRUCTURE OF SOMETHING

On first read it sounds quite negative, but don’t some things need drastic alteration? The patriarchy, systemic racism, poverty are all things that could do with a good dose of destruction. And closer to home – we all have thought patterns, habits, behaviours and actions in our lives that if we altered them our lives would be improved. So this is the first rule of disruption: intent is everything. Disruption is powerful and must be used for good not evil – you want to make something better whether it’s the world, your life or the way you talk to yourself. You must come to it with purpose, and a clear focus on improvement.

Disruption is also interruption. It’s not a long, drawn out process with sub-committees or 6 months of contemplation. It’s the covers whipped off in the morning and the unexpectedly loud video playing through your headphones. To quote Shayler, disruption is “changing the pace and direction of what you’re doing”, and making that change drastically. It’s unpredictable and sometimes uncomfortable but, because it is linked to that purpose, always towards to pursuit of good. It’s the defibrillator of your ideas, jolting you and sending currents of different thinking through your being.

And now we come to the muddy bit which I’m still working out, the methodology of that jolting. A process of disruption, that is safe and accessible for you and me. What I do know is that these things are important:

Questioning – disruption is about challenging yourself to see a problem from completely different perspectives, and questioning is going to be a vital part of facilitating that
Variety – a part of gaining different perspectives is looking outside of your usual sphere of influence – engaging with people who don’t look like you, talking to people who don’t think like you, reading what you’d never usually read
Constraints – creativity needs boundaries, as does innovation and therefore, so does disruption
Permission – we all want so badly to do things in the right way and, particularly as women, society expects compliance. We need to learn to give ourselves to permission to take the thing that isn’t working and smash it pieces in the car park
Space – disruption needs dedicated time and focus, and distance away from expectation, to take hold
Pace – disruption is interruption, it is fast so that we can test and learn, start before we’re ready and learn in real time

And at the end of your sprint of disruption comes implementation. As Shayler says that it’s not enough to have the idea that will change the world if you don’t deliver it; and as I’ve said, the success you want needs intention plus action. Whether you’re disrupting your work or your life, there needs to be an enacted change in order for the disruption cycle to close. Which is why we can use disruption as a tool to always get results.

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I’m going to chew on this a bit more, work on that methodology and test it all out – practise disrupting my own thinking so I can see how it might work for you. But I wanted to write this now, partly because I was excited to tell you, partly to get it out of my head, but also because this is disruption in action – starting before you’re ready, working fast, testing. We are all here because we are purpose-led humans who want to make a difference in the world – even if that’s not quite at the surface for you yet it’s definitely there. We, therefore, are all potential disruptors, and I can’t wait to see what we do next.