Question

how to write " Personal Disruption Narrative"

Answer 1

PERSONAL DISRUPTION

Personal disruption is the act of applying the framework of disruptive innovation to an individual. In the case of products and services, a disruptive innovation is a silly, little thing that ends up taking over the world like Toyota did to General Motors, like the telephone did to the telegraph, or like the car did to the horse and buggy. With personal disruption, you start at the bottom of the ladder, you climb to the top of that same ladder and then you jump to the bottom of a new ladder.
We typically think of disruptive innovation as a means of moving the economy forward, an innovation that originates with a product or a service, a company, or even a country. Yet the fundamental unit of disruption is actually the individual. Companies don’t disrupt – people do. So if we want to move innovation forward inside our organization, remember that disruption happens at the individual level first, not the organizational level.
Popularized by EM Rogers in his book, Diffusion of Innovation, the S curve in the context of disruption, helps gauge how quickly an innovation will be adopted. It also illustrates just how unpredictable disruption is. So if you think about the bottom curve of an “S”, growth is going to be very slow at first. Once you reach 10 to 15% market penetration, you’re going to accelerate into hyper growth – the sleek steep back of the curve. At the top of the curve, typically 90% market penetration or saturation growth tapers off.
What I’ve done with the S curve is I’ve re-imagined it to help us understand the psychology of disruption. So anytime you start something new whether it’s a role or project, it’s an opportunity to disrupt. The S curve tells you that initially when you’re starting out, growth is going to be very slow, an expectation that helps you avoid discouragement. If we’re hiring people, it helps us to avoid frustration recognizing that there is a low end to the curve and it’s going to take them a while to get up to speed.

As you put in the days, weeks, months, and sometimes years of practice, you’re going to accelerate into competence – that sleek back of the S. This is the exciting part of the curve where all of your neurons are firing and you’re building confidence.

At the top of the curve, you’re approaching mastery. Things are going to become very easy for you, but because you’re no longer enjoying those feel good effects that come from learning, you can actually get bored. If you don’t jump to a new S curve or a new ladder, your plateau can become a precipice.

The key with personal disruption is to learn to surf those S curve waves of learning and mastering. The more quickly and adeptly you can do that, the more successful you will be as a disruptor.

Finding work that correlates with your strengths is actually the easy part. Often you hire a person, and it turns out they’re in the wrong seat not because they’re not capable or high performing, but because they lead with what they do well rather than what they do best. On their resume they put the things they worked really hard to learn how to do, but not the things that have come easily for them.

Once people are truly attuned to what they do best, finding work that correlates to their strengths actually isn’t that difficult to do, because people come to you. One of the smartest things you can do is be willing to listen to the compliments that you get every day, especially the compliments you’ve “heard a million times.” If you go out and find a job that allows you to use that skill that people repeatedly compliment you on, you will have no trouble getting work that correlates to your strength. Sometimes we struggle to find work, because we simply aren’t willing to look for a job or projects that will leverage what we do best.

Disrupting yourself on a grand scale begins with disrupting yourself on a micro scale – finding ways to give yourself just a little bit more time to think a bit differently.

Look for opportunities to play where other people aren’t playing, where other people don’t want to play. You will be surprised how many opportunities come to you when you’re willing to play in those unusual places.