Dine on Disruption!

If Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast, Dine on Disruption.

If Culture eats Strategy for breakfast then, we must dine on Disruption if we are to thrive, now and in the times to come.

You may think Disruption diminished with the pandemic but this sustainable source is amplifying. It’s shocking. We remain woefully ill-prepared.

“We” the elite, “We” the global leaders, “We” the strong believers; the futurists, the innovators, the optimists and action-takers, we are lagging behind. Increasingly we’re becoming reactionary rather than visionary, responding to the calling of disruption rather than stopping to eat it, digest it and use its energy advantageously.

When legendary management consultant Peter Drucker coined the suggestion that Culture eats Strategy for breakfast, he implied that even a brilliant plan will never pass if the people purposed with delivering it, do not fundamentally believe what they set out to achieve. Culture; the rules, rituals and reinforcements reflecting the essence of our communities, impacts on our physical actions more than we account for or prioritize.

If we, as people, intend not only to survive but to thrive — today and in the future — in work and in our personal lives, then regularly, we must dine on Disruption. Disruption should be on the menu, in chunks we can digest, so we may dine on it regularly, before it is able to swallow us whole.

During the pandemic we got swallowed. Disruption disarmed almost everyone. Fear and confusion drove actions of delusion. Norway laughed as UK shoppers dismantled toilet-towel aisles only to later discover they had panic-bought Imodium! Italian leaders stopped people running?! Others ordered instant annihilation of anything else living, spraying bleach everywhere. You’ll remember what the then leader of the free world had to say?! ‘Anything but reality and it will go away’. “We” were in panic!

Of course, at the time of the Covide-19 threat, we did our best in response to rapid-learning. What if we knew how to do better? What if culturally we were more resilient; mentally more adaptable and stronger — better equipped with skills and tools, to thrive on disruption rather than being overwhelmed by it? We’d more enjoy a higher-quality of life with better returns from work.

Businesses operating with high-performance cultures know this to be true. They invest heavily in advanced thinking and collective decision making to drive innovation ahead of time. People with such perspectives embrace change and chase transformation. They actively go looking for disruption to influence their position. They dine on it regularly, digesting it efficiently to add energy to inventive ideas.

Dining on Disruption is therefore about setting time aside to be deliberately disruptive. It’s a fire drill, if you will. A chance to practice how you might behave should the fan start spinning as your digestion starts thinning… ideally, before it does. In real time, enabling us to all be better prepared.