‘Must be a positive disruptor’
I saw this on a job description, a requirement to be a positive disruptor.
They might need a positive disruptor but do they want one? Two very different things.
So many people get recruited into roles because they are ‘the fresh perspective’ ‘the change that is needed’ ‘the different one’.
It’s well intended. But the organisation, the leaders, the managers, have also got to want this, to be working on it as well. Otherwise your positive disruption becomes negative annoyance and before you know it you are in a chat with HR about if this working.
If you have been in that situation, they brought you in for your fresh ideas but your fresh ideas were not what they wanted, then take comfort. You maybe had to be the person that did the hard work, the ruffling of feathers, the start of the rethink. But your work maybe didn’t end when you left. Maybe you left a trail of thoughts and ideas that actually just needed time.
Not everyone can join you where you are at that very moment. Some people need time. And they might not know that. Change is not linear, it’s not even a curve. It meanders and loops, and goes backwards and leaps forwards.
When a disruptor, or a disruption lands it drops on the trampoline, it makes people tumble around, some people love it, some people are terrified, and then it realises and people are flung all over the place, some go forward, high in the air, some fall off.
Positive disruption is an uncomfortable concept. ‘Please come and be different but only be different in things we want to hear’.
Disruptors are not responsible for what happens next. They can not know how people will bounce. They are there to disrupt usual thinking.
If you are brought into an organisation to disrupt, know that your work isn’t to convince anyone. Your work is to make people uncomfortable. So you have to be ok with that. And your work is not to be positive. That’s up to others to do their work. And know that your work might only really start making an impact way after you’ve gone and moved on.
What do you think?
eleanor