Disrupt Yourself

1. Embrace Personal Disruption to Accelerate Growth

Disrupt yourself is critical to avoiding stagnation, being overtaken by low-end entrants (i.e., younger, smarter, faster workers), and fast-tracking your personal and career growth.

The S-curve model explains personal disruption. At the base of the curve, progress is slow as you learn new skills. As you gain competence, you enter a phase of hypergrowth, rapidly scaling to new heights. Eventually, you plateau, signaling it's time to jump to a new curve.

Benefits of personal disruption:

• Prevents stagnation
• Keeps you ahead of competition
• Accelerates personal and career growth
• Leads to unexpected opportunities

To disrupt yourself, identify unmet needs in your field, match them with your distinctive strengths, and be willing to take calculated risks. This process often involves stepping back or sideways in your career to ultimately move forward.

2. Take Calculated Risks to Drive Innovation

Market risk is less risky than competitive risk.

Distinguish between competitive and market risk. Competitive risk involves entering established markets with proven technologies, while market risk involves creating new markets for unproven ideas.

Key points about risk-taking:

• Market risk offers higher potential rewards
• 37% of firms entering new markets surpassed $100 million in revenue, compared to only 6% in established markets
• New markets generated $62 billion in accumulated revenue, versus $3.3 billion for established markets

To take smart risks:

1. Identify unmet needs in your industry
2. Assess your unique skills and experiences
3. Look for opportunities where no one else is playing
4. Be willing to start small and scale up

3. Leverage Your Distinctive Strengths

A distinctive strength is something that you do well that others within your sphere don't.

Identify your unique talents by asking yourself:

1. What skills have helped you survive?
2. What makes you feel strong?
3. What exasperates you about others?
4. What made you different as a child?
5. What compliments do you shrug off?
6. What are your hard-won skills?

Once identified, match your strengths with unmet needs in your field. This combination allows you to create unique value and accelerate up your learning curve.

Examples:

• A neuroscientist becoming a naval aerospace psychologist
• A lawyer leveraging social media skills to become a partner at 32

4. Turn Constraints into Catalysts for Creativity

The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self.

Embrace constraints as they:

• Lead to faster feedback
• Help solve one variable at a time
• Improve focus
• Foster creativity

Types of constraints to consider:

1. Money
2. Knowledge
3. Time

Strategies for leveraging constraints:

1. Move from victim to transformer mindset
2. Break path dependence
3. Ask propelling questions
4. Reframe to "can-if"
5. Seek new sources of abundance
6. Activate emotions

Examples of successful constraint-driven innovation:

• NASA's LCROSS mission using off-the-shelf technology
• Dr. Seuss writing "The Cat in the Hat" using only 225 words

5. Combat Entitlement to Foster Innovation

Entitlement, the belief that something is owed to you by life, comes in many guises, and it is on the rise.

Types of entitlement:

1. Cultural entitlement
2. Emotional entitlement
3. Intellectual entitlement

Strategies to overcome entitlement:

• Cultural: Immerse yourself in new cultures and open networks
• Emotional: Practice gratitude and express thanks
• Intellectual: Listen to dissenting voices and practice humble inquiry

Benefits of overcoming entitlement:

• Increased innovation
• Better decision-making
• Improved relationships
• Enhanced personal growth

6. Step Down, Back, or Sideways to Grow

Sometimes the only way up is down.

Benefits of strategic career moves:

• Access to new learning curves
• Opportunity to develop new skills
• Potential for greater long-term success

Considerations for stepping back:

1. Assess your current growth trajectory
2. Identify skills gaps
3. Evaluate potential long-term benefits
4. Prepare financially and emotionally

Examples of successful backward moves:

• Dave Blakely moving from engineer to program manager at IDEO
• Carine Clark taking a pay cut to become CEO of a smaller company

7. Learn from Failure to Fuel Success

Failure itself doesn't limit dreaming and personal innovation—shame does.

Strategies for dealing with failure:

1. Recognize failure is inevitable
2. Redefine success
3. Acknowledge and share sadness
4. Jettison shame
5. Learn from the experience
6. Know when to quit

To extract value from failure:

• Ask: "What valuable truth did you discover about your present and future prospects?"
• Apply the "five whys" technique to understand root causes
• Use failure as a catalyst for growth and innovation

8. Adopt a Discovery-Driven Approach to Career Planning

With discovery-driven planning, you begin with the premise that little is known and much is assumed.

Key steps in discovery-driven planning:

1. Create a reverse income statement
2. Calculate the cost
3. Compile an assumption checklist
4. Prepare a milestone chart

Benefits of this approach:

• Flexibility to adapt to new information
• Ability to test assumptions
• Increased likelihood of finding unexpected opportunities

Examples of discovery-driven careers:

• Linda Descano evolving from geologist to head of social media at Citigroup
• Tom McGuire transitioning from accounting to business intelligence

Remember: You can't see the top of the curve from the bottom. Be open to unexpected opportunities and be willing to adapt your plan as you learn and grow.

Last updated: November 16, 2024