Displacement versus Disruption
How to become more efficient and sustainable, whilst recognising the impact our businesses are having on the world around us.
Originally published in 2019 with the assistance of professional writer Ian White. Inspired by the idea of leadership and what that means in the digital age, I travelled across Europe to interview some of the most exciting leaders working today. These conversations allowed me to explore what the concept of leadership means, the challenges for leaders today and how they grow and evolve in the role.
Firstly, I would like to make a statement.
Let’s re-examine our processes and policies and commit ourselves wholeheartedly to global values that will make our businesses more productive and effective, so that while our businesses grow and prosper we can focus on creating a legacy that benefits everybody, not just ourselves.
I want people to thrive, explore their potential and build towards their ambitions and fundamentally I want to help create systems that achieve that goal. This what I’m passionate about, systems — or more importantly sustaining systems. I wrote these short stories to help clarify and demystify, in my own mind, a lot of what I believe is required. I also hope they’ll encourage you to re-examine how you are moving through the world and why and how you’re trying to do it so you can innovate successfully towards a more sustainable future.
But, before we can do any of that, I believe we need to reframe the language a lot of people particularly in business are politics are currently using — which brings us back to the title…
Displacement versus Disruption: What’s in a word?
On paper, ‘disruption’ and ‘displacement’ don’t seem that dissimilar. After all, they both involve initiating change. But, where business is concerned, I believe there’s a huge difference between the two terms.
For example, ‘disruption’ is the buzzword that most people are familiar with but how many of them have ever stopped to consider what ‘disruption’ really means, or the enormously negative consequences ‘disruption’ actually brings? When was the last time your work was disrupted and you felt good about it? Probably never. Or how about when you’re at the airport and something disrupts your flight? That’s not going to put a smile on your face. ‘Disruption’ is a word that’s loaded with so many unpleasant connotations it’s completely the wrong word to use to describe a positive indicator for change.
On the other hand, ‘displacement’ is a much more positive terminology, especially as we all innovate towards more sustainable practices. Why? Because, while ‘disruption’ suggests pulling everything apart to see what happens and then dealing with the potentially destructive consequences afterwards, ‘displacement’ is about adapting our people, resources, values and processes to achieve change in a more mindful and sustainable way.
Doesn’t that sound like a better idea to you?
Let’s take a practical example…
BP and Shell are both multinational oil and gas companies but they’re not actually in the oil and gas business — they’re in the energy business. As such, their role in wider society is to make sure we keep our lights on and that our cars keep moving down the road. How that’s achieved isn’t important. It could be by using oil, gas or coal or it could be via solar, tidal, wind, or maybe even an energy source that hasn’t been discovered yet. The fact is, if we ran out of oil tomorrow BP and Shell would simply reorientate themselves to meet the challenge. Why? Because they are energy companies at their very core.
But how would they do that?
Because BP and Shell have been innovating since the very beginning, squeezing as much as they can out of the oil they’ve pulled from the ground, out of the car, out of the boiler, out of every energy source they’ve ever encountered. The knowledge and talent they’ve gained from all that continuous learning and experience has given them transformative skills, and all they have to do is displace those skills to stay on top of any new emerging energy market.
Notice we said ‘displace’ not ‘disrupt’. If they disrupted their skills the results would be very different, and that wouldn’t be good.
Let’s take Tesla as another example. Tesla are the flagbearers for battery-powered electric vehicles but their board is primarily made up of top executives from ‘traditional’ automotive companies. Tesla hired the very best talent they could find to achieve their ‘EV’ objectives and now, because they’ve opened up that emerging market, their competitors (Mercedes, BMW, Audi etc.) have recognised the requirement to explore EV technology and been compelled to follow. Mercedes haven’t been economically or culturally disadvantaged by Tesla, they’ve reconfigured their approach to meet a growing market demand and accommodate an important new technology. That isn’t disruption, it’s displacement.
Displacement is sustainable. Disruption isn’t.
When a business can’t survive because of disruptive technologies or disruptive behaviours, everyone loses. The local economy suffers, people suffer, opportunities are lost and skills are wasted. You only have to visit towns and cities with once thriving economies that predicated on the income of now out-dated modes of energy production to see how much of an impact a disrupted market can make.
When an industry is displaced it uses the talents its people already possess to give them new roles or re-educate them in the skills required to take the economy in a fresh direction. Sometimes it might even mean redeploying those people entirely (after all, change will almost always require some degree of upheaval.) But, unlike disruption, displacement has genuine economic and social benefit. It adds value to a business, value that can be delivered to customers and shareholders as well as the community where the business is based. It’s also hugely attractive to investors because displaced businesses are inherently sustainable and ethical and, as such, are a far less risky proposition. In most cases businesses that think act, and operate with a clear set of values, but agile and willing to invest in displacing to address emerging opportunities have more stable investment returns, see Walmart as an example of that.
That’s why I’m challenging you to throw ‘disruption’ out of your vocabulary and become a Displacer.
