Back in 2010 I wrote a blog where I ranted about a trend I was noticing with my family, friends, and clients. They were becoming “crack” addicts at an astounding rate. They were not addicted to the drug, they were addicted to the this new, disruptive technology known as a “crack-berry.” Yes, blackberry had become such an epidemic that we coined catch phrases to explain it’s rampant rise. Blackberry was the definitive “next big thing.” Everybody had one and everybody, suddenly, couldn’t live without one.
Today the term falls on deaf ears just as the device has drifted from our collective conscious. Why?
Blackberry, like so many before and so many yet to come, simply married the status quo a “second” too long. You see, all systems tend toward a state of equilibrium by default. Leaders bring structure and order and help their team establish norms. And, leaders disrupt these same productive systems – on purpose. The leader jolts the system from within before the market force disrupts it from beyond. Steve Job’s, like his style or loathe it, was the poster child for purposely disrupting Apple. He made sure the market reacted to them – not the other way around.
Your business is a system and it’s tending toward equilibrium. This is neither a positive or a negative, necessarily. Wise leaders build structure and order along with purposeful disruption. Wise leaders, remember, understand that high performance teams live “just this side of chaos.” Wise leaders understand that just this side of chaos comes from purposeful disruption from within. When outsiders disrupt your system it quickly moves to “just the other side of chaos” better known as crisis.
Whatever system you are attempting to lead, remember, your job is to build structure and order and put systems in place to establish a status quo, if you will. And, your job is to purposely disrupt the same system before an outside force does. Blackberry to crackberry to bumberry to noberry is what happens when you wait just a bit too long.
Build structure, order, systems, establish norms, AND disrupt it sooner rather than later. We’ve got some building to do, my friend. Actually, some building and some breaking…
BUILT TO LEAD 