Business is operating in age of disruption. We’re facing geopolitical instability, the growth of the gig economy and of course the digital disruption and automation of business practices. Many people fear for their businesses, livelihoods and jobs. That’s no less true for people in the boardroom as it is for people on the front lines.
In this disruptive age consultants and commentators aren’t short of advice. To succeed in a disruptive age, we’re told, we need flexible and agile leadership.
Disrupting the Disruptors
But when have we not needed leadership that can pivot and adapt to rapid changes?
It may be true that the pace of change is speeding up and it’s an understatement to say that living through a period of major change is disconcerting. But disruption, technological and political, has always been with us.
Humans have lived through empires that have come and gone, scientific discoveries have revolutionized business, and dramatic societal changes have reconfigured how we live. Just think of the two world wars in the last century; or the consequences of the Reformation in Europe 500 years before that.
Our current age of disruption in the workplace, typified by digital transformation across all business functions, is only new in terms of the technology that’s available to us. It may not be a comfort, but disruption has been with us at every turn of human history. From the dawn of agriculture, to the arrival of the printing press, to the invention of the steam engine, that disruptive 18th century technology that ushered in the industrial revolution.
And those disruptions had evangelists and naysayers just like our current tech, economic, and workplace culture transformations.
Leadership is Disruption
Where does that leave leadership today?
People worried about the prevailing winds have forgotten one simple fact: disruption hasn’t just been a constant in our societies. All those years ago when humans first figured out to use fire (now there’s a major disruption) through to our current tech enabled age, disruption has been the driver of society.
And that can only mean one thing: leadership isn’t about responding to disruption. Leadership is about redefining the disruption. We can either adapt our businesses to take advantage of the current disruption, or pivot the disruption itself to take it further. And that means leading society forward.
In the 18th century when John Fitch commissioned a full size locomotive engine he did more than move the idea of factory steam engines on. He redefined the steam disruption. When Bill Gates saw a future in software when everyone else was selling hardware, he redefined the computer disruption.
And we as leaders need to do more than just respond to disruption too. We too, can take a disruption and redefine what the disruption can do.
Rediscovering a Leadership Mindset
To do that requires us to draw on our innate ability and mindset to lead through change.
Qualities like flexibility of mind; a genuine curiosity, and a determination and resilience to overcome seemingly impossible setbacks, are the innate human qualities we’ve drawn on countless times through history.
Those are just some of the qualities of a leadership mindset.
And it’s that mindset we need to rediscover in our current age of disruption.
Do that and the most disruptive thing of all happens: we’re no longer leaders being blown around like kites in a storm; we become kite flyers holding the wind in our hands.