Do you have a disruptive mindset?
Are you consciously, purposefully disrupting the status quo and driving a future you desire or do you feel you're being disrupted?
Lead Into the Future Today (LIFT) is brought to you by Louise Mowbray of Mowbray by Design, the creative Conscious Leadership Consultancy. If you’re reading this and haven’t yet subscribed, you can do so here:
Be Disruptive. Purposefully. Intentionally.
As leaders in today's world of work, we know it's not enough to have a vision and well thought-through strategy. We also need to be creative, innovative and purposefully disruptive. Why? Because the future doesn’t exist. We aren’t there yet and if we are to have any say in creating one we desire to live in, a disruptive mindset will go a long way.
To be disruptive simply means to prevent something from continuing or operating in a ‘normal’ way. Disruption always results in change.
Recently, I was invited to contribute to a global innovation programme for leaders at all levels titled Innovation: Mindset & Toolset. For those who know me well, you'll know I love working with innovative programmes to help us to be disruptive and drive change. Saying this, change in itself presents its own set of issues.
Change, more often than not, sparks resistance. We tend to only enjoy change if we’re the one’s driving it! I like to think of change we haven’t created as ‘factual’ i.e. change has occured, it will occur on a certain date or we suspect it’s likely to occur in the future. When we reframe change in this way, all we’re left with is our resistance, which we can then begin to address.
Change is quick, it's exponential and way easier to adapt to than we might realise. We are all embracing it incrementally with a myriad of things that make our lives easier.
A friend had me laughing out loud this morning. She was telling me a story about how she had her iPhone in her hand and was asking Siri for some info, however, was mistakenly calling Siri ‘Alexa’. She was shocked when a voice from the back of the room (Alexa) answered. Not so long ago, this would have lived in the world of science fiction, which we now accept as science fact.
My big takeout in all of this is related to tech, science and people. If we accept that tech and science already can - or will be able to do most conceivable things and more, the big Q is all around our mindsets, beliefs and our relationship to disruption. Are we consciously disrupting and driving a future we desire or are we being disrupted?
Q: What is your relationship to the words disrupt or disruptive? Were you ever accused of being disruptive at school? Or perhaps you had a sibling or friend who was? If so, it might have a negative connotation. It helps to be aware of your relationship to words and if it’s not helpful then reframe it for yourself!
If you were schooled in the way I was, you had to choose the sciences or humanities as an education track. This means that most leaders in senior roles today, who were schooled in the former, believe that creativity and innovation is something other people do.
And yet, we’re all inherently capable of being enormously creative and innovative and as a result, disrupting the status quo. We just need to reframe our understanding of what being disruptive looks, feels and sounds like.
If you’d like to explore this for yourself and your team, please feel to arrange a time for us to have a conversation.
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Until next time, take good care of yourself.
Best, Louise