Disrupting yourself means taking an enormous risk

....but not disrupting yourself can be even riskier.

Here's the scenario:

You're standing at the edge of a cliff with unknown waters far below. You don't know if the water is deep enough to jump into or what you may encounter when you hit it.

...but you have to do something because there is a pack of wolves not far behind you and they will catch up to you any minute. There is little chance you will survive their attack.

What do you do?

Charlene Li, the founder of Altimeter Group and author of The Disruption Mindset: why some organizations transforms while others fail, calls this a Big Gulp Moment. As she describes it in our podcast interview:

"(A Big Gulp moment) is a time when you are thinking about executing and making a decision to go forward with a disruption strategy and you're staring into the abyss and it looks like, how on earth are we going to make this happen? I know we can do and I know we have to do it, but it's awfully scary. So you take a big gulp, you hold the hands of the people around you and you jump."

You have to go forward. You may have some time before the wolves catch up to you, but they will catch up and the damage is certain. Taking the leap is risky - you could hit rocks, there could be sharks - but there is at least some chance of you surviving and even thriving.

This is very different from being a disruptor -- or whatever we call the startups that come in and shake up an industry. Disruptors usually have less to lose. Their entire strategy is the leap...they have no wolves following them and they just need to clear a path. In the analogy, they are the wolves.

As an entrepreneur, I understand the anxiety around this moment. In fact, when I typed it out, I felt a tightness in my chest. I have invested a bunch of years and my own money into building something. I have an office full of people who look to me for stability so they can continue to pay their bills. If you add a board of advisors and investors onto these pressures, the leap seems even scarier. Whether you're eaten by wolves or sharks, you will be blamed. That's why you're (hopefully) paid the big bucks.

And what if your fate at the jaws of the wolves isn't certain? What if you can fight them off successfully? This adds another level of complexity.

Charlene addresses this, too. Her advice? Don't wait until you're running from the wolves to make the leap. You need to stay one step ahead of yourself at every juncture. Be the wolf yourself! She warns against the curse of complacency:

I like to say to companies, "Your customers - your best, most beautiful, most profitable customers - are a curse! Because when you have an installed base you just want to keep them happy. That's the thing you're supposed to do, right? But it's just the opposite!

We've all watched companies rest on their laurels and lose their edge, whether we're customers, employees or analysts, we can usually see the beginning of the end before the people in the boardroom notice. Their noses are in spreadsheets and their eyes are to their biggest competitors. All too often, they ignore the scrappy upstarts until it's too late.

Charlene says that, in order to avoid being myopic, companies need to empower every single person in their organization to speak up (don't just listen to executives!). She advises:

I think one of the best things you can do is to expand it beyond the traditional market research team and to make this a responsibility of every single person in the company.

There are many companies that have failed their self-disruption strategies, but there are also many that have succeeded. And we can all recite the companies that waited too long for the wolves to ascend. Charlene gives some terrific examples in her book and we discuss them at length in the interview.

Phlywheel is how we're disrupting ourselves at Truly, burning boats on business development opportunities (we are, purposely, limiting new business so we have more space to build out the product, but that means we shorten our runway and put ourselves into a vulnerable position). Some days, I feel as if I'm standing on the edge of that cliff and it makes me question if I'm doing the right thing.

However, after reading Charlene's book and having this discussion, I feel more prepared. If you're finding yourself in the same position, you'll want to listen:

And please share your examples of companies who've either been great at getting ahead of their own disruption, avoiding disruption, taking the leap and not being successful or getting eaten by wolves!