The 21st Century Disruptor: Challenging the Status Quo & Collaborating Forward

In a recent workshop held on Monday, 11th of April, we reunited Rogers’ 170 business leaders mobilised around the C&C offsite, our “Challenging the Status Quo & Collaborating Forward" performance management programme launched in July 2021.

?This workshop was the occasion to develop our team's disruption mindset further. I emphasise the word "further" because our teams have done tremendous work during the last two years, laying the groundwork for revenue protection, business recovery, and renewed growth.?

?The ever-changing world has kept us all on our toes, and I am sincerely grateful to our teams for their constant mobilisation and efforts.?

?We live in increasingly challenging times, marked by climate change, digital transformation, global pandemics, supply chain disruptions, geopolitical tensions, and now inflation affecting the purchasing power of citizens worldwide. Mauritians and organisations alike are not being spared. We each have a conscious choice to make: either remaining in the status quo and being pushed around by the forces of change or adapting and seeking to thrive as an Agile Disruptor.?

?But how, precisely, can we define agile disruption, and how can we develop this muscle in our daily lives??

?The notion of an Agile leader and Disruptor is not something new at Rogers. These past years, we have continuously nurtured this behaviour across the organisation, a behaviour that positively impacted how the Group does business.

?Doing things differently does have its perks. It creates space for "future pacing" – i.e., imagining how we want the future to be for our businesses and focusing on our desired outcomes, including sustainable growth.

?Sustainable growth implies revisiting the system and adapting it to the challenges we, as humans, organisations, nations and specie, face. And while at Rogers, we have taken up the challenge to turn these testing times into opportunities for our served markets, sustainable growth implies that we also take care of our employees.

?The global situation has hit hard the organisations and nations and, above all, the citizens worldwide. While we could focus on all those things that have been hard these past years, we looked for opportunities within the chaos.

?Mutual aid, empathy and caring about those who struggle the most in difficult times is one of the most beautiful facets of humanity and one of the best examples of its disruptive mindset. Getting out of our comfort zone, going beyond our own challenges and interests, and thinking about the struggle lived by others with goodwill and kindness, is precisely what is a positive disruption mindset.?

?While Rogers is now leading its way again to a profitable future, we must remain conscious of the challenges we face as an organisation. The Vivacis Program was our response to support our most vulnerable employees in the face of the pandemic. Within the current context of rampant inflationary pressures, we will remain agile to find new ways to offer some relief to those who need it the most.

?We all agree that keeping a disruptive mindset is essential to our survival as, with climate change, significant other challenges will arise.?

?These challenges are addressed in Manish Bundhun's latest book, “Disruptor, 9 abilities of agile leaders”, published last week. I have known Manish Bundhun, the Chief People Executive of Rogers, since 2006 and have worked closely with him since 2008, when he took over the leadership of the human resources function within the Rogers Group. I was quite enthusiastic the day when Manish came up with this proposal to pen the Rogers journey and experiences in driving positive disruption across the organisation.

I had the chance to share my insights in the Disruptor book’s preface as, as you will have understood, I am a firm believer that positive disruption is a behaviour that favours resilience, adaptability and positive change for oneself, organisations, and nations.?This insightful book shares many of the tools and examples available that we have used in Rogers to help shape agile executives of the 21st century.

?Manish's book provides tools for all those who are ready to make a conscious choice to transform adversity into opportunity, stretch their limits, build their resilience, and grow and thrive as agile Disruptors.