CHANGING THE GAME How to lead when disruption rewrites the rules

In his book Outliers, the wild-haired Malcolm Gladwell wrote that it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill.1 It wasn’t his theory, but he made it popular.

Somehow, it’s a number that’s slipped into the collective consciousness, and the concept behind it seems to hold water. It’s obvious to most people that it takes commitment, hard work and dedication to become great. In fact, I’m pretty sure that all the famous greats, from Rembrandt to Ronaldo, have spent more than the 416 days of constant practice, as defined by Gladwell, in their pursuit of the pinnacle.

While some may quibble over the number itself, the concept highlights a deeper question in today’s disruptable world. Is the idea of mastering one skill and building your whole business or career on its back still a worthy idea?

Sporting chances Vs real life

Think of some of the greats of sport: Martina Navratilova, Michael Jordan, Lionel Messi and similar superhumans. Barring none, they all spent countless hours rising to the top of their game – hitting balls, throwing balls, kicking balls; studying the greats, finding weakness in their opponents; exploring everything about technology, technique and nutrition – to get the fractional advantage they needed to become the best. In combination with their natural talent, it was that incredible effort that put them among the greatest players of all time.

Success in the realm of professional sport is, however, increasingly divergent from real-world success: an artificial arena with absolute regulation of rules, where the utmost dedication to one approach is the ultimate differentiator. But imagine if the rules were overhauled one day, allowing players to use electronic exoskeletons and jetpacks. That’s what’s happening to the business world as we know it.

The problem with holding on to the 10,000-hour rule is that we think logging that amount of time immunises our lives and businesses against change. As we see repeated in other SHOTs, this is because we’ve been following the deep footprints of our grandparents. In their time, people spent their entire life mastering one skill, because it automatically put them ahead of the competition. We’ve now been led to believe that because we’ve paid our dues, we’re in the same position; that making a lifelong commitment to one field is enough to secure a career.

Repeating the patterns we’ve inherited is a natural result of the linear thinking that’s hardwired into the human condition. We go from A to B, and from B to C, progressing from point to point until we die. Build a shelter. Start a fire. Find food. It’s difficult to decode thousands of years of programming, so we resist it: we use HINDsight to defend our position and stick to the ‘that’s the way we’ve always done it’ story, even when it inhibits the freedom of choice we have earned as a species to live the exact life we want.

Apart from limiting our awesome potential, this perspective is becoming increasingly risky. With the current rate of change, we might one day wake up in a completely different world.

In the course of writing my book, a musical algorithm called Endel has been signed to Warner Music2, the same record label that represents the world’s favourite ginger superstar singer/songwriter Ed Sheeran.

The algorithm uses the circadian rhythms that regulate your body’s sleep cycles, the musical structures of the pentatonic scale, and data such as your heart rate and the weather at your geographical location to create sounds that help you focus, or sleep, or chill.

That’s just a drop in the ocean of disruption. An AI newsreader in China is so ‘human’, it’s almost impossible to tell he isn’t a real person.3 Another AI, known as Sophia, has been granted honorary citizenship in Saudi Arabia.4 It’s impossible to keep track of all the innovation in the world, which means we can never assume that technology isn’t going to turn our world upside down overnight.

In the same way, we can’t assume that making a 10,000-hour commitment to learning a fixed skill will prevent new developments from having a massive impact on the way we learn, live and love one another. Or that progress, in whatever field we specialise in, will happen in a straight line.

Non-linear, audacious action

Our world and the rules that govern it are changing at an exponential rate, so we need to focus our energy on learning to be flexible and adaptable enough to keep up. (See SHOTs 4 and 10.) We need to start thinking in exponential ways.

Living an exponential life is about being audacious enough to leave linear thinking behind, and start with the end in mind. Once you have set the right goals and know exactly what you want your life to mean, you can work backwards to plot a path that will get you there. Because you can clearly see Z, you can rearrange the alphabet of your life into a story that ends with you achieving that audacious goal.

Linear thinking has defined the way we do business, too. It’s responsible for our insatiable appetite for processes, check lists and organisation. We can’t help it: we love to see things happen step by step.

Breaking news: even if you’re using an agile approach or a waterfall structure to cascade information to your team, you’re still moving from point A to point B. These are more efficient models, not disruptive models.

When you take an audacious, exponential approach, you start to see businesses at the limit of what’s possible today, and build the plans to make yours one of them by connecting invisible dots.

If they can do it…

Moving from a linear business to an exponential one is not only essential; it’s easier and more common than you’d think. One of the world’s biggest brands has just done it again.

Apple is already renowned as one of the great disruptors of modern time, entirely transforming the PC, cellphone, music and watch industries (to name the obvious ones). In 2018, it pre-emptively disrupted itself, transforming its entire business model from hardware provider to service platform, and shifting its focus from creating sexy devices with intuitive interfaces to delivering on-demand entertainment.5 Not a single new device was unveiled at the Apple event in March 2019 when the switch became apparent – but they did launch a credit card and a content-streaming service.

What really stands out about this giant leap for Apple-kind is that the company’s current CEO Tim Cook has a background in developing hardware supply chains. His career history is all about figuring out the processes to get hardware from A to B across Asia and eventually the globe. But he saw that future consumers wouldn’t need a smartphone with 25 cameras – they’d prefer fresh content and interest-free credit.

It’s happening in every industry all around the world, and it’s changing the way we define and understand our competitors. In South Africa, the country’s premium medical-aid provider, Discovery, has opened a bank, with the aim of linking financial wealth and insurance to your physical health.6 That’s pretty audacious.

Strategist Alberto Brea breaks it down well on his blog:

If you are NBC, your competition is not just Fox, HBO or Netflix. You are competing against Apple, who is launching its own subscription video, gaming, and credit card services. The more people use Apple, the less need to watch NBC.

If you are Visa, your competition is not just Mastercard or AmEx. You are competing against Apple Wallet, Amazon Pay… The more people use digital wallets, the less need for a credit card.

If you are Toyota, your competition is not just Nissan, Honda, GM. You are competing against Uber, Google self-driving cars, Citibikes… The more people use alternative transportation methods, the less need to buy a car.

If you are Canon cameras, your competition is not just Nikon and Sony. You are competing against iPhones, Android phones, tablets… The more people use their phones as cameras, the less need to buy one.

If you are Facebook, your competition is not just Google or Snapchat. You are competing against all the ad-free subscription services (Netflix, Apple, Amazon Prime Video). The more people spend time watching Netflix, the less time they have to watch advertising.

Today’s competition can come from anywhere. Anyone can be your competitor. The lines have blurred among media, manufacturers, retailers… The only thing you can do is focus on customer needs.

The bottom line

If the people in charge of the world’s biggest brands are thinking like this, so must we. We can’t let fear hold us back. We can’t think in straight lines when the future is fluid and exponential – this is the point of connecting invisible dots. We need to work out where we want to go, and then find our way there.

This is not to say that you shouldn’t focus on a particular field of expertise. Specialists are still critical to the exponential future. (See SHOT 11.) But planning, procedures and processes are only useful in that they allow us and our businesses to pursue a purpose. We can’t allow our perceived specialisation to restrain us.

Imagine how much you could achieve if you dedicated 10,000 hours to practising agility and curiosity. Granted, you’ll (probably) never win a Grand Slam, but you can achieve tomorrow what’s perceived to be impossible today.