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It’s Only Common Sense: 2020—The Year of Disruption

Are you ready to make some noise in 2020? Are you ready to throw out the old and bring in the new? Are you the kind of person who thinks, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?” Or do you think, “If it ain’t broke, so what? We could make it better.” Are you the kind of person who sees things as they are and asks, “Why?” Or do you see things as they could be and ask, “Why not?”

In short, are you a disruptor? Do you enjoy shaking things up to see what’s going to happen or what you could improve? Further, are you an innovator? Are you willing to jump out of your comfort zone to experiment with what you or your company could do better?

Let’s look at 10 signs that you’re a disruptive innovator from Mark DeYmaz, author of Disruption.

1. You’ve been called “a maverick” by someone to whom you report.
2. You are driven all the more to prove others wrong when they tell you, “It can’t be done.”
3. You’ve been fired from a job, not because of poor performance, but because your drive, innovation, and personality threatened an established leader.
4. You’ve not been promoted to higher positions of leadership or asked to join governing organizational bodies under whom you’ve served faithfully, responsibly, and effectively, and the reason given does not make sense; that is, it’s spin, and everyone knows it.
5. You are not afraid to respectfully question or challenge the thinking of those in authority over you in the presence of others.
6. When given a to-do list, you decided for yourself what really needs to be done, what does not need to be done, how to do some things differently (or better, in your mind), and you added things to the list, confident that you can justify your decisions if they were called into question.
7. You have barely begun to implement change, and someone to whom you report suggests you need to slow things down.
8. You will not stop perfecting an idea or something you’re working on until you achieve your aim or run out of time. “It’s good enough” is not in your lexicon.
9. You suggest new ways of thinking, being, or doing, and others just smile.
10. You’ve brought a vision to life and stayed long enough to hear others say, “I wasn’t sure it could be done, but you did it. You proved me wrong.”

Does this sound like you? If so, then what are you waiting for? Have the courage to start implementation and make waves. If you are convinced that there is a better way, then try it out. See if it works, and if it doesn’t, then pick yourself up and try something else. Failure only becomes a reality when you quit; otherwise, it is the kindling for success.

Above all, if you are going to try something new or unpopular in your company, you must have the perseverance to see it through. One of the great disruptive innovators of our time, the late Steve Jobs, said this regarding what it takes to be a successful disruptive entrepreneur:

"I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance. It is so hard. You put so much of your life into this thing. There are such rough moments in time that most people give up. I don’t blame them. It’s really tough, and it consumes your life…Unless you have a lot of passion about this, you’re not going to survive. You’re going to give up. So, you’ve got to have an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right that you’re passionate about. Otherwise, you’re not going to have the perseverance to stick it through. I think that’s half the battle right there."

As I look at our own industry, I see many opportunities to make things better and improve the way we do business. If we would just take a closer look at what we are doing, then we could innovate and make things better. As we face a new decade (arguably the 75^th year of the modern version of our industry), isn’t it time that we do better? Perhaps we could find a way to lift our industry average delivery and quality performance into the 90^th percentile or develop better ways to deliver great customer service.

I would like to challenge all of you in 2020 to intentionally focus on finding ways to make your company and our industry better. We all need to seek better ways of doing things.

It’s only common sense.

Dan Beaulieu is president of D.B. Management Group.