Becoming Disruptive: Why disruptive leadership is the key to organizational and entrepreneurial growth.

I am an entrepreneur. I am a rebel with a cause. I am a disruptive leader. 

It has been my experience, as a woman, as a leadership strategist, and as a business owner, that while many favourable leadership styles focus on symptom management, efficiency, and motivation, it is through disruption that real change and growth happens. Disruptive leadership is another way of looking at innovation. Disruptive leaders, as innovators, lead in a way that questions the status quo and norms not only within a specific organizational culture, but also in society as a whole. Disruption, by its very definition, means to interrupt the normal progress or activity of something. Disruptive leadership by extension interrupts “business as usual” which opens up the doors for “business as it could be.” I am a rebel woman in business and I proudly adopt disruptive leadership as both a tool and methodology to create big changes for my clients and myself. Steve Jobs, disruptive and visionary leader, said we are all here “to put a dent in the universe.” Disruption makes your dent my friends, and I’m going to tell you how you can employ disruptive leadership strategies to make a huge impact in your work. 

Formally, a disruptive leader is defined as “someone who is always looking for better solutions and ways to establish new processes and wants to make an impact on the business as a whole, without worrying about shaking up things or altering the paths to obtain the necessary results” (PDA International). There are 3 defining features that a disruptive leadership approach has. 

1.     Root causes and foundational issues. 

The contemporary obsession with efficient, motivation-based leadership, however important for company growth, has one significant flaw; it assumes that the foundation of an organization or business is strong. Disruptive leadership on the other hand, starts with the foundation. It asks, is my structure sound? Are my roots healthy? 

As a disruptive leader, even though my eyes are looking to the horizon, my expertise is in the shovel; Digging out, unearthing what the root is and what the root problems are. Identifying the fundamental problems at this level means I can work through them and propose changes that will lead to long-term sustainable growth. 

Picture a rowboat. Let’s, for my purposes only, assume the boat is pink. Your pink rowboat is sinking. Other leadership styles might look for surface level solutions such as replacing the people rowing the boat, buying new paddles, or cheering the rowers on. But the reality is, you’re still taking on water. You’re still sinking. Disruptive leadership flips that f-ing boat over, and either patches the hole or finds a whole new way to float. 

Another great example is anti-racism work. Anti-racism work focuses not only on the symptom level of who is being discriminated against, what’s being said, what actions are taken etc. but activism also happens at policy and systems levels, which is critical for long-term, systemic change.

Disruptive leadership helps clarify the real problems of a business or organization. Without the clarity, we’re looking at band aid solutions at best. With clarity, we’re talking visionary, sustainable, inspiring growth. 

And it’s not just the foundations of their businesses that disruptive leaders examine, they look at the root issues within themselves that are preventing growth. When I lost my sister, everything on the surface went away and only the root was there. I was forced to look at the very bare and base foundation of who I was and ask myself “what am I doing in my life?” It allowed me to look at what life I truly wanted to live and figure out how to create it. Creating the day to day of you want, is actually just a process of identifying and laying the foundation of your goals, mission, and purpose.  This of course in turn leads to larger shifts and growth in your and your business overall.

2.     Questions the norm

Disruptive leadership gives a big middle finger to the “shoulds,” “supposed tos,” and “we’ve always done it this ways.” It looks at what is the norm, and then it asks how can I break away from that?  Disruptive leadership is really just seeing what’s there, throwing it in the air and figuring out a different way to land it. If you land it face up 25 times, then land it face down the 26th, totally flipping the status quo, you’re disrupting. 

A great example is Starbucks.  I read an article not too long ago about how Starbucks is thinking about getting rid of dairy completely in favour of non-dairy drinks. They have a mission to lower their environmental impact and ditching dairy in favour of dairy-free alternatives is their tangible commitment to that. They’ve slowly been phasing in soy, almond, and coconut options to test the response and lay the foundation for their social impact. And in order to truly be impactful it, they have to completely flip their model. In other words, they are leading with disruption.

Disruption challenges the very core of who we are and what our businesses are. Our core, our normative culture, our safe place in entrepreneurship is shaken up when we start to step into our roles as disruptive leaders. And that’s the hard part. Because it’s so wrapped up in our identity: what we do, the way we are. It’s really hard to actually look at erasing those fundamental pieces of ourselves and going back to the drawing board. That’s why people don’t engage in disruptive leadership as often as they could like visionary leaders do. Because it’s hard and it’s scary to move away from the comfort zone that is known as the norm.

3.     Visionary change

Disrupt. Do it boldly. Risk. And be visionary. 

This last piece is important because you can’t engage in disruption without looking at what’s next. Earlier I mentioned that I have my eyes on the horizon while digging up the roots. The digging up of the roots is critical, but it’s the eyes on the horizon that makes disruptive leaders so successful. We’re tackling the problems with an understanding that we’re moving forward to something bigger and better.

Disruptive leadership and visionary leadership go hand in hand. You get to the root problems, disrupt and challenge normal ways of doing things, then look at the extraordinary possibilities you’ve created and can create through the act of disruption. For example, Michelle Obama famously said, “when they go low, we go high” That’s not the norm, that’s disruptive. That’s actually where the biggest things in society have occurred, in this disruptive space. But what’s visionary about that statement is the “we go high” part. She looks away from the normal response to “go lower” and looks at what impact can be made by standing tall. 

One of the latest conversations I had with a co-worker revolved around schooling. She has kids, they are in a separated house, one week with mom and one week with dad. Public Health told her when the kids go to his house it’s “visiting” and her house is “parenting.” There’s an important feminist conversation to be had about this. Feminist conversations by nature are disruptive, often challenging gender norms and imaging a world where these kinds of socially constructed barriers don’t exist. 

And on the subject of schooling, let’s talk about the pandemic. When the ministry of education, school boards, etc. got together this summer to find a solution for back-to-school, they looked at what they need to do within the classroom, the transportation system to the classroom, and then the triage of what will happen if something bad happens. But what they didn’t look at, was the structure of centralized schooling itself. If they had thought of a decentralized learning model that focused on neighbourhood learning pods supported by an EA, they might have taken different actions and solved some of their original problems.  No transportation is required as it’s all online and localized. It’s no longer about grouping kids by age, but rather by learning types and location. And this creates multigenerational opportunities for learning. These outcomes only happen when you look below the symptom at the structure that upholds the system.

Disruptive leadership is the only way to be a truly visionary leader. Rebelling in your business makes you disruptive and puts you in a position to grow, change and make an unimaginable (to most) impact. When companies start to have a reality check of “maybe this isn’t sustainable” that’s when the big shifts happen. COVID-19 has certainly forced entrepreneurs into a forced state of disruption, but it’s in those shifts, that disruptive leaders truly thrive. 

Embrace the disruption friends. It’s messy, and dirty, and will launch you into endless opportunities.

-Chela