Seek Out and Promote the Disruptors & Out-of-the-Box Thinkers

Most of us have grown up in life, and especially in life-at-work, in which the unspoken, and often spoken, mantra is conform – don't rock the boat, be a team player, our way or the highway...

Starting from kindergarten or earlier, with advice like "don't paint outside the lines!", to work, with onboarding advice like "this is the way we do it around here", and instructions like, "follow the rules", it is a wonder to me that we have as many disruptors as we do. And yet, in organization after organization we see evidence that we don't have enough disruptors. We see too many instances where being called a disruptor is not a validation of what is wanted and needed but a criticism of behavior that needs to be corrected.

In spite of the rhetoric, we see too many managers and leaders who discourage thinking and acting outside-the-box. They discourage it by the way people are incentivized; by the way new ideas are dealt with; by the way the organization responds to failed experiments, and in so many other implicit and explicit ways.

Isn't it interesting that so many significant market disruptions do not come from the market leaders, for example:

1. Zipcar with car sharing. The obvious contenders for new ways to serve car rental customers were Hertz, Avis and Enterprise. However, when you have an unquestioned paradigm that includes things like rentals by the day, from a company authorized locations, with document signing before taking the car, and so on, it is not surprising that Hertz Connect and Enterprise WeCar were late to the Zipcar model and are now followers.
2. Apple has caused so many disruptions that they are now without equal: We would have expected the music industry to have created iTunes; or Sony to have invented the iPod; or Motorola or Nokia to have invented the iPhone; or HP or Dell to have invented the iPad...

So if there is a commitment to nurture and develop disruptors are there any useful things to do to increase the odds that your organization will be the one that creates the next breakthrough in your market? We think so, here are a few:

1. Make sure everyone in your organization understands the paradigm you operate in –  yes you operate in a paradigm not what most people call reality. Make sure people know that paradigms include a host of elements that, left unexamined, will limit and constrain what people can see and what people can do
2. Have regular and rich conversations for possibility and make sure people understand the difference between possibility and pipe-dream
3. Design the mission and strategy in such a way that it calls for breakthroughs – and together, they are an unequivocal invitation to people to invent, generate and discover how to realize the strategy as a means to make the vision a reality
4. Connect people with their passions, their vitality, their enthusiasm, their hunger to make a difference, to contribute, to be acknowledge as players in a game really worth playing – unleashed you'll have genius
5. And remember, organizations are not mechanisms – you are not dealing with head-counts, with bodies, or any of the other dehumanizing HR speak – organizations are complex, adaptive, intelligent, human, social systems. So practice being less or a controller and more of an attractor for out-of-the-box ideas that translate into a market altering impact that brings your collective vision closer to realization.
6. Oh, and make it a fun experience!