[Productivity Tip #10] - Disruption: challenge the?"normal"

“Challenge yourself, your teams, your employees; seek for potential areas to disrupt, before an external, unexpected disruption impacts your productivity” (Tim Ferriss)

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While are living in a moment of transition where the impact of changes and innovation grows exponentially. To pick just one example, we expect 800 million jobs to be displaced due to Artificial Intelligence and automation in the next 9 years.

Why does that matter to you, especially if you are in a different field?

All technological disruptions are interconnected (article coming soon), which means that the way you work and the way your company functions are going to need increasingly frequent adaptations [all this, already without considering the case of a pandemic].

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So, how can you prevent disruption and adapt to?it?

First of all, let’s keep in mind that many huge innovations have gone undetected by “conventional wisdom” until the outsiders turned the market upside down. To understand how this could happen, consider the following question: how many people do you know who think that their perspective is “the right way” (because of their education, years of experience, seniority, accolades, etc)?

And the problem here is not about being right or wrong: knowledge can make you wise (which is a good thing) and it can also make you more easily follow the most beaten path, in ways such as…

• “this is what I learned” (how many years ago?), or
• “everyone does it like this” (how successful and unique are they?), or
• “we’ve always done this way” (which Catherine DeVrye judges as the most expensive words in business).

To quote Laurie Stach , from one of her MIT courses I attended:

“education teaches you that there is ONE answer to a problem…. but that is not how real life works”.

Now to be extremely clear I do believe in the power of education (how couldn’t I, given how much I invested — and still invest — into it).

The point is that many people love discussing what is wrong; they are even able to show why, they complain about it, but they do not go against the status quo — not in a constructive way.

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What has all this to do with productivity?

Everything.

Staying on top of productivity means to constantly improve the way you do things. Your goal is to have effective people giving their best on what they are great at, and efficient systems so that they can work properly. Have periodic sessions where you disrupt your way of thinking and the “we already have a process for this” default answer.

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Think outside the box, evaluate different perspectives, and bring constructive criticism to the table. Be aware of the cost: you might upset someone. But, as Seth Godin said: “If you’re not upsetting anyone, you’re not changing the status quo”. Challenge the status quo, the current state of things, with a genuine interest in improving it.

That would make you grow both as a leader and as a person.

How can you apply positive disruption to your?company?

A simple and effective framework I can advise is the Quadruple-Loop Learning.

Sounds like a big word; it just means to have four different ways of challenging your assumptions and perceptions.

As the name suggests, it was created to get a deeper understanding of something (learning); given its power, I reworked the model to adapt it to companies and Entrepreneurship.

You analyse the reality, analyse the results you have, and then you ask yourself:

• Single-Loop: how can I do the same thing, but better? (change your behaviour and decisions)
• Double-Loop: how can I do the same thing, but differently? (change your insights and paradigms)
• Triple-Loop: how can I do something different? (change your principles and purpose)
• Quadruple-loop: how can I embody different, higher values? (change your values and high-level perspective)

Of course, the deeper the analysis, the more important it is, the less frequently you will probably do it; this depends of course on your specific business and strategy. Just as an example, you may decide to go for a Single-Loop feedback of your results every month, a Double-Loop every quarter, a Triple-Loop every semester, and a Quadruple-Loop every year.

This will allow your company to reinforce your vision, your mission, your identity, your values… and the sense of purpose that is so directly linked to productivity and profits.

This method helps surface inefficiencies and conflicts, improve decisions, improve the outcomes and, especially for the Triple and Quadruple Loops, it allows you to look further ahead for potential external disruptions or internal innovation drives.

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The great productivity you have today will be barely sufficient tomorrow, and it will be outdated in the next future.

In a world of smart working and fast-changing conditions, who can help you constructively challenge your perspectives and achieve sustained productivity that lasts?

Get in contact to enhance your results in 3 to 6 months!

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