The Art of Strategic Disruption

Can collaboration and disruption unite to positively influence a workplace and grow the bottom line? My next Off the Rak guest built a venerated career at P&G doing just that. As the sales lead to Walmart, Tom Muccio and his team revolutionized how retailers and their supplies did business together. The story of that reinvention —?and some advice on how to be an agent of change when you face incredible resistance — are why I hope you’ll tune in to the next episode. See you Thursday, November 21 at noon EST here on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, or waltrakowich.com.

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? Resisting conformity with strategic disruption

A great paradox of our times is the tension in the marketplace between change and conformity.

On the one hand, the world is changing at a historic pace and we, as individuals and organizations, face the near constant threat of being left behind if we don’t adapt. On the other hand, as Craig Groeschel pointed out earlier this year at the Global Leadership Summit, “All the forces in society are conditioning you for conformity.”

So how do we respond to leadership challenges in a world full of change when it also conditions us to conform?

I believe we have only one option: To resist the pull toward conformity by practicing strategic disruption.

Groeschel called conformity the “quickest path to mediocrity” and rightly pointed out that “average never changed the world.” There are times, of course, when conformity is required and provides the best path forward. If a police officer stops you, for instance, I recommend conformity. But if you are striving to adapt to change, personally and for your team, then it pays to regularly challenge the norms that might make you obsolete.

We do that, Groeschel said, by identifying where normal is broken and then granting ourselves “permission to obsess” over the right things in the right way. Then I believe we can strategically disrupt the world around us and create something better.

Groeschel started with three areas in which leaders should obsess.

1. Focus – Leaders too often try to look busy and thereby create the illusion of importance. But it’s not how much you do, but how well you do what really needs to be done. Only focused leaders change the world.
2. Care – “You can’t lead people if you don’t love people,” Groeschel said, and I totally agree. The way I think that plays out is by getting to know people and expressing gratitude. Over and over and over.
3. Commit – We reflect our commitment by showing the depth of our passion for what we are doing, not the quality of our plan. That commitment keeps us going when the changing world makes things difficult or asks us to conform to normal. It also keeps us from chasing the next shining obsession before we’ve completed the work we started. As Groeschel put it, “If you always need something new, you never had anything great.”

The key, of course, is identifying the right personal obsession. Groeschel offered three questions to answer that will help us find the things in life that are worthy of such passion: What do you love irrationally? What breaks your heart? And what drives you crazy or makes you righteously angry?

When you (and your team) find the right purpose for your obsession, you can strategically create the disruption needed to make it a reality.

In the next episode of Off the Rak, I’m going to visit with one of the all-time greats when it comes to leading an organization out of conformity by creating what he calls “collaborative disruption.”

Tom Muccio started and led a team for Procter & Gamble that worked with Walmart to literally reinvent how retailers and vendors interact with each other. His new book, appropriately titled Collaborative Disruption, details the history of that massive change and how he and his team overcame considerable resistance to invent a better future.

Tom knows all about breaking the chains of conformity. He will no doubt offer great insights for dealing with what he calls the “swamps” of bureaucracy and the organizational “deep state” (those who are in power and don’t want to risk disruptions to the status quo). I promise he will entertain us with his “Muccio-isms” and prepare us with practical tools we can use to lead our teams through times of change.

Muccio-isms? Let’s just say Tom has a unique gift for turning phrases like, “A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking” or “If everything seems to be going well, you’ve obviously overlooked something.”

Tune in when I talk to Tom for more Muccio-isms and get ready to overcome conformity with your own obsession.

? About Off the Rak

Walt Rakowich's passion to help shape a generation of leaders who lead with honesty, humility and heart inspired him to launch Off the Rak: Conversations on Transformative Leadership. Featuring rich and raw conversations with notable leaders across different industries, Off the Rak inspires curious leaders to embrace challenges, seize opportunities and become positive influences in their world.

Learn more about Off the Rak and watch past episodes here.

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