Disrupt Yourself Before Someone Else Does? (#174)
The Confident Leader
BOOST YOUR LEADERSHIP IN UNCERTAIN TIMES
A few years ago I was helping a CEO and her organization define their core values. They surfaced all the standard options: accountability, excellence, teamwork, etc… Then, the CEO blurted out another option that surprised everyone.
“Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.”
― William Pollard (American physicist & Manhattan Project participant)
This Week’s Edition
Do you feel like your organization is a little complacent? Are you concerned with your offering being obsolete? Consider disruption as a proactive strategy.
Clarify Your Thinking
During the core values conversation the CEO blurted out, “disrupt.”
The team looked puzzled.
“Disrupt ourselves before someone else does,” she said. “We live in a highly competitive environment. We sit in this conference room constantly fearful of the next emerging technology that will take our market share and send our stock tumbling.”
At this point her impassioned speech began to catch on. You could see the energy in the room moving from defense to offense.
Leaders of successful businesses can often fear losing their momentum to something unknown like a fierce competitor’s secret strategy. They dread waking up to find that their business’s tried and true product or service is obsolete.
Old Thinking: We’ve got a good thing going. Let’s just keep going. Secretly, I fear we are not doing enough to innovate or keep pace with the changing tastes and preferences of our clients.
New Thinking: I’m not going to cower in the shadows. I am going to lead from the front by evaluating our offering to see what we can “disrupt” to continue to move us forward.
Thoughts Lead to Actions
Today’s customer has never been more fickle. Only 8% of global consumers say they are committed to the brands they purchase. So, disrupting yourself (before your customer leaves you for someone else) sounds like a good “leadership” idea, but what does it actually mean?
The CEO I was working with approached the concept of disrupting her business by considering how a competitor might strategize to take more market share. Here is a synthesized 3 step process she used:
Step 1: Evaluate your core offerings.
- How are they succeeding?
- How are they falling short of what customers need?
- Can they be updated or evolved?
Step 2: What are some adjacent markets or product verticals that can be explored?
- What is emerging in the market that can be studied?
- What information/ideas does your customer service team have?
Step 3: Determine the resources you can allocate to the research and development of new initiatives.
- Be open to that fact that pursuing new things may render current products/services obsolete.
Boost Your Performance
While the story in this week’s video is from a few years ago, it is relevant today as nearly every leader we work with is actively seeking how they can disrupt themselves. Find out more in this week’s video.
What’s Your Opinion?
What part of your business do you need to consider disrupting? If so, share it with me at robin.pou@robinpou.com.
If you are going to be a leader, you might as well be a good one. Don’t let doubt count you out. Have a confident week!
Robin Pou, Chief Advisor and Strategist
We live to make bad leadership extinct so forward this newsletter to others who strive to be confident leaders.
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What is “The Confident Leader”?
During the Covid-19 Pandemic, I began a video series called “Panic or Plan?” It was designed to equip leaders to navigate the doubt they experienced and to rise in the confidence they needed to lead during turbulent times. It took off. I then started this newsletter to equip leaders in the same fashion each week for the doubt that crashes across the bow of their leaderSHIP.
