How you can disrupt the game

I recently finished reading the book Disrupting the Game by Reggie Fils-Aime who recently retired as the President of Nintendo of America. In his book, Reggie outlines his career journey and key lessons on how to be a disrupter and innovate along with the skills needed to be an effective leader.

When I look back on my corporate career I realized there were several opportunities that I missed to grow as an early career professional and as a leader. Looking back now knowing what I know I can see the difference in mindset that it takes to create impact and value.?

Habits that I now try to instill to students in my classes - even though it may not seem as important compared to core course knowledge being taught, its in those small details that ultimately will determine how great your career will be and the kind of relationships you build both personally and professionally along with your lasting impact after you leave.

I could write several pages of advice from Reggie’s book but I’ve chosen to focus on 3 key takeaways to help you become a better leader today and to shift your mindset into being a disrupter and innovating no matter what domain space you’re working in.

1. Move beyond your current responsibilities

In every role during your career, you will have an assigned set of responsibilities. These are the tasks that are expected of you. Regardless of your role in an organization, always look for opportunities to add value. In the early days of a new position, employees are typically getting onboarded with training, staff introductions, introductory meetings and getting setup with the required tools and technology needed for the job.?

This is one of the best times to be an observer and to ask good questions. You’re coming in with fresh eyes. You haven’t yet been immersed in the organization’s culture and so to you everything is new. Ask why they do certain things a certain way. Understand how the process works for a given task or set of tasks. Make notes from your observations about how the work is currently being done, how teams are collaborating and sharing information, how meetings take place and are structured. Make notes on all of this - document this process.

Understand who are the key decision makers across the different cross-functional departments. Who depends on who to get things done? Now start coming up with actionable solutions to any problems or new opportunities you’ve identified. As a new hire, teams and managers are open to hearing your perspective. They value a fresh pair of eyes because after a period of time, people tend to accept things as they are once they’re in their day to day hustle.

If you’re in an intern position, this is especially important. When I was working at a major hospital there was a colleague of mine who initially had started as an intern. I remember being told how he went well beyond his core responsibilities to show how fast he could learn on the job and quickly became a valuable member of the team. He identified an area of need which was using technology and became the go to person for all tech related projects and initiatives. Soon after he was hired full time.?

When I was working at a large enterprise software company, during a team wide meeting about career progression, we were told when looking at promotions, the management team is looking to see that you’re already doing the work of the next band level above you. So if you’re currently a band 7 then you need to show that you’ve been doing work that band 8 employees do and the results of that work vs just asking for a promotion.

You want to challenge yourself and see what you’re capable of, what parts of the job and industry you enjoy and what parts you don’t so you can make better decisions about the work you want to do such as staying in a practitioner track vs management track or changing career lines.

Capability and opportunity need to be present to achieve success. Capability was created by the hard work you did at home, school, and while on the job. Opportunity was the moment when you stepped forward to apply these skills you achieve something significant.

2. Choose your mentors wisely?

As you progress in your career, learn from the people who you admire and align to your career goals of where you want to be in the future. The term boss is outdated. Today we think in terms of coaches and guides. A leader’s job is to help you grow in the way that you want to. To help you get to where you want to be professionally.

Learning outside the job is important and there are many ways you can can do that but you can also learn from mentors while you’re on the job and even after you’ve left the job. Some organizations may have an already established mentorship program where you can sign up to be paired with a mentor and you both will set up mutually agreed upon times and frequency to meet.??

Other times you’ll have to seek out these people. As you get more comfortable in your current role, look for people who are further along in their professional career. A mentor doesn’t necessarily have to be on the same team or department you’re in - sometimes it can be valuable to have a mentor who is outside your core team or department because they bring a different perspective on things.

If you’re not sure, talk with your team leads and managers. Let them know you’re looking for mentorship. An organization that values an employees growth will be more than happy to suggest a few names of people you can then reach out to to talk about mentorship.??

A mentor is someone who will talk with you, listen to what you have to say and share their knowledge, skills, advice and experience with you to help you grow. Mentors are in a good place in their careers and now want to give back to the next generation of up and comers.?

Mentorship is really a two way street. As much as we think of this relationship as the mentor providing value to you, its equally about the value you provide back to your mentor through these meetings and conversations A mentor can also learn from their mentee. A mentor isn’t someone that tells you what to do - they can only speak from their experience and share their advice but after that it’s up to you what you want to do with that information.?

Years ago when I was keen to land a role as a games researcher for any gaming studio in North America, I came across an online community that offered mentorship for early career professionals wanting to became games researchers. I signed up and was given a list of available mentors. All were extremely accomplished and senior in their careers. I reached out to one of them and we set up a cadence of how frequently we would talk and for how long. I spent about a year or so working with my mentor and it was an enriching experience

I would ask questions around job postings and requirements, specific questions around skill sets and he would walk me through his experience related to the topic in question and also share with me the type of work he was doing and how he handled those situations.?

When I was in one of my corporate roles, the organization had established researcher coffee chats where you could sign up and be paired with a fellow research mentor whom you would talk with and after a period of time you would be paired with a new mentor. Years later when I moved into education, I would reach out to those mentors to ask for advice and also share with them the work we were doing to better prepare new graduates for practitioner life.?

Even after you leave an organization, if you have a strong and valuable relationship with a mentor, do your best to stay in touch. Let them know how valuable you’ve found their advice and guidance and that you’d like to continue this relationship outside of the organization if they’re up for it. Continue to find ways to add value for them as well especially as you continue to learn, grow, move forward in your career and into new organizations.

If your organization doesn’t have any formal mentorship program, in addition to you seeking out a mentor on your own consider creating a mentorship program yourself. Management love people who show initiative, identify new opportunities and provide actionable solutions.?

And finally as you grow in your career, consider becoming a mentor yourself. It’s important to give back and pay it forward. Likely there have been people who have helped and guided you along your career. Do the same for someone else who may need your help and guidance to grow in their career.

3. Build allies and evangelists inside your organization

Enrolling others to support your ideas is critical. An organization can be quite large with several departments and various moving parts. It’s not always possible to know everyone and how every interaction works. It starts from first spending time to understand your organization. Who are the key decision makers? What are the dependencies across teams and departments? First we need to understand the perspectives of others facing the same problems. Address their objections - this is the first step to enrolling them into your ideas.?

When you understand what’s important to an executive or stakeholder you can then show them how your approach can solve their issues and concerns. Once they’re convinced, they’ll continue to advocate for you in the future. They’ll come to you and also mention your name to others because they know your capabilities and value your skillsets.?

If you try to do everything on your own or have the mindset that you don’t need other people’s help you’ll find yourself frustrated when you aren’t able to do the things you want to do. Just like in sports, it takes a team to do great things over a sustained period of time.

Building strong personal relationships is the foundation for having strong business relationships. You don’t necessarily have to love everyone you work with or spend all your leisure time with them but investing in getting to know your colleagues, team leaders will go a long way in building allies and evangelists for you and your ideas.?

When dealing with someone who is hesitant or dismissive of your ideas, use data, examples from industry, your experiences to back up your perspective and try to find common ground. The better you know someone the more effective you are at working with them. Be open to alternative paths and outcomes.?

When you’re having meetings and discussions around ideas or how to tackle a certain challenge repeat back what was said to you so that the other person knows they were heard. There is a fine balance between staying true to your beliefs vs just being stubborn - separate your desire to be right or win an argument from your own core beliefs. Stay true to your values and beliefs while at the same time demonstrating your understanding of the issue from the other person’s perspective. This helps build relationships and allies long term.

Sometimes a business relationship can start off on the wrong foot. Keep investing the time and energy to improve the relationship. Reserve judgement and continue to get to know your colleague. You can start off on the wrong foot and then create a valuable relationship over time.?

When selling new or provocative ideas, you need allies. Pushing an idea from multiple angles improves the chances that the decision maker will support your initiative.?

As you grow into leadership roles, don’t be afraid of making a decision. One of the hallmarks of a great leader is having the ability to see a problem from multiple perspectives and being able to make a decision. No one has a crystal ball. Dig deep into your experiences, learnings and beliefs. Consider the risks both of going with the consensus or pushing an alternative point of view before making the difficult call. But make the tough call. Once you’ve made a decision, move on and live with the consequences.

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Solutions won’t come from traditional thinking or being afraid of doing something different. You need to disrupt the game. Disruption drives innovative thinking and more effective problem solving.

Once a disrupter, always a disrupter.

~V

The Hustler’s Mindset