Purposeful Disruption

A tingle from a fish, static shocks, the effects of a lightning strike— all are disruptions indicating that something is there, and it’s powerful! From these disruptions experienced by humans for thousands of years came your electric bill.

During the development of this blog about disruption, Hurricane Helene erupted onto the scene. She wasn’t even known when the ideas for this article were developing. The day this blog was supposed to be posted, Helene made landfall and disrupted the blog on disruption.

As of this writing, over 100 people in five states are known to have died, and hundreds are still missing. This 350-mile-wide storm with peak winds of 140 mph inflicted absolute upheaval on lives from the coast to the mountains on a path of some 800 miles. My youngest son is a lineman and has been working no less than 18 hours per day to restore power to hundreds of thousands in the area of South Carolina he is serving.

Disruptions on Earth can be as minor as microscopic viruses and bacteria and as massive as hurricanes spanning hundreds of miles and visible from space or the profoundly personal upheaval of multinational wars. The impacts can be catastrophic, but destructive disruption isn’t the only type.

Another realm of disruption language comes from the tech world, where the theory of disruptive innovation was birthed almost 30 years ago. Just look at your phone, which you are probably reading this on. Think of how far they have come from hanging on a wall.

The idea of disruptive innovation is not really considered to be “cutting edge” anymore, and some would say it has faded out for techies.[i] I think the fading is more about lingo and the cool factor than the idea of disruptive innovation fading. Disruption may not be called disruptive, but nomenclature doesn’t stop the effects.

However, I don’t know if disruption has been freely utilized as a mode of innovation in the nonprofit, community development, and human services space. I believe that is partly because of the level at which survival mode is standard operation because disruptions are already there. Why add more?

Disruption is a rupture in normal. A boundary of normal or an established standard is somehow breached. Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) is broken. There has been an undoing of things as they should be, or at least as they have been known to be for a while. Most of us tend to have an aversion even to the word disruption. The uncertainties and unknowns of disruptions are not always attractive prospects.

Undoubtedly, for some disruptors, there is a “let’s just mess things up” impetus behind the upheaval. There is no real vision for creating new for community good. However, for others, humility and good can be found at the heart and soul of their efforts to be helpful through their disruptions. The latter are the people I seek to stir up here.

What if we could make people shake their heads in a good way as they are amazed and captivated by what came from the disruption? If you were to look across the landscape of my writing, you would probably find a thread of “messing with the status quo.” The reason for the pattern is that many of us in the community development and human services world are not satisfied with our results over the years.

As shown below, disruption can have a couple of places in the experienced orders of life. In all of them, there is impact. How that impact is received can be a determining factor for the kinds of effects the disruption creates.

Disruption that leads to  Determination that leads to Design

Determination that leads to Design that leads to Disruption

Determination that leads to Design that leads to Disruption that leads to Design

In this blog, I propose an approach to community development as a team that looks to disrupt on purpose for the community's good—a determination to design for disruption in order to design from disruption.

Shared Determination
Determination is a choice made (WHAT to do) and energy committed (to DO the what). First, when it is a shared determination, you have determined what you want to do together with at least one other person. This sharing is true of collaboration in general, but it is even more necessary when responding to disruption and even another level if determining to create disruption.

Determination expresses a level of commitment and energy use. As I work with individuals, families, and communities of people, I find that the existing state of life, if relatively long-standing, is perceived to be the easiest and most energy efficient—body, mind, and emotions. Why change what we know how to manage? We have figured out how to survive each day just the way things are. We know the commitment needed.

Is that the determination level your community has decided on for building now into the future, or do you want to disrupt with shared determination?

Determination is also a selection. Where there is more than one option, and a choice needs to be made, a determination is made. If you choose to stay where you are, you are choosing not to venture into other possibilities.

Has your community chosen to stay where it is, or have you determined together to pursue a different present and future?

Open and available is a powerful state of being for determining possible options and the energy you will give them.[ii]

In their book Switch, Chip Heath and Dan Heath describe the company Brasilata as making its employees “inventors” by inviting new hires to sign an “innovation contract.” Management always challenged their teams to watch for innovation potential.[iii] That is shared determination that goes beyond just getting a job done to earn a paycheck! Creating an atmosphere that says, “We want to go after other options with great energy” is a shared determination that can bring about lasting, life-generating effects.

What if your nonprofit and a coalition of non-profits had a shared determination to go the next step to create a needed change? Determine together the area that change needs to be, what the change is, and what disruption it will take for it to happen. Don’t accept “it can’t be done” for an answer. Determination won’t settle just because the pursuit is difficult.

Shared Disruptions
In a previous blog, I discussed the idea that a return to crisis mode on an issue can help shift energy and other resources toward solving the problem.[iv] Crisis is a disruption that eventually causes us to move one way or the other. Whether turning unexpected disruptions into purposeful disruptions or creating disruptions on purpose, it is best when done together.

Conflicts are disruptions within a team’s work together. Patrick Lencioni, in his book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, describes our need for conflict as a team in order to be truly functional and produce the results we desire. He calls the lack of conflict a “dysfunction,” meaning if a team fears conflict and is always at peace, something is wrong.[v] Let conflicts happen with the idea that they are revealing information and perceptions that even if they are bumping into one another, the bumping can nudge us somewhere important.

It's interesting how determined we can be to stir things up a bit, but when the time comes to act, we choke. It’s one thing to say we want to cause purposeful disruption, but another to follow through with it. That’s why shared disruption is powerful. A few of us might have to drag a few of the rest of us across the line of shared disruption. That’s where the conflict journey comes in. Whatever WE agreed to disrupt, WE disrupt.

Guess what the biggest hindrance is to purposeful disruption? FEAR, a failure of nerve. Likewise, the most substantial fuel and guide for shared disruption is someone who can see through the fog of fear well enough to know it is worth the risks. Edwin Friedman describes this person as a “well-differentiated leader.” In his book A Failure of Nerve, he describes this leader as someone who has clarity about his or her own life goals, and, therefore, someone who is less likely to become lost in the anxious emotional processes swirling about.” They are “someone who can be separate while still remaining connected, and therefore can maintain a modifying, non-anxious, and sometimes challenging presence.”[vi]

Move the furniture; clear the land; take out some walls, add some windows, gut the building; adjust staff roles and responsibilities; make a change in leadership; you step down and move someone into your old space…now work in a new role under their leadership; make a shift in how a team is managed, led or facilitated; make a significant change in a community development vision and strategy; as a collaborative that was once about one thing ask, “Is there something more important?” and meaning it. Disrupt something together!

Shared Designs
Now, we put everything—the debris, the pieces, the information, the pain points, the vision elements, etc.—on the table and begin to design. There is abundant power in the joining together of minds. We know more than me. When this design conversation occurs in a disrupted atmosphere where people, things, and processes have been displaced and misplaced, it can reveal previously unknown passageways to explore. Passing through into new kinds of unimpeded discussion can lead to new design ideas for collaborative responses.

Design can come before and after disruption. If design doesn’t come after disruption, the intent may have been to “mess things up,” as mentioned before. Sometimes, sadly, the intent is only to cause division and even destruction.

Purposeful disruption is at its best when the disruption itself is purposefully planned. At times, it may be like imploding a building standing between two buildings you don’t want to come down. I am always amazed at how demolition experts do that. But they can because they know exactly what they want to disrupt and where to put the charges.

What is true of disruptions is that they can uncover, unearth, or simply cause us to finally see what we didn’t know or notice before. A staff member may show a previously undiscovered skill set, or your organization finds you are way better at something you have made a minor role. Through a rupture in the normal stations of responsibility and process, you can find something that you want to do something about, an old problem for which you have a solution.

So, the land was cleared, the house was a skeleton, or there was no standing process for how we do “that thing,” what would we design?

Now, with shared determination, go purposefully disrupt, and then design something together for your community’s good and leave them shaking their heads in wonderment!

Action Points

• How do you feel about disruptions? What if the next time your day is disrupted, you sit in it? Then, do it again the next time. Cultivate your ability to be disrupted and not undone by it. THEN, you begin to see differently.
• What if your nonprofit, in a coalition of nonprofits, had a shared determination to take the next step to create needed change? Determine together the area where change needs to be made, what the change is, and what disruption it will take for the change to happen.
• Hang out a little with a known “early adopter” or “troublemaker.” See what you might learn from them about disrupting in a way that leads to designing new ways for community development.
• Who do you know that tends to live a bit fearless, yet with wisdom (a potential “well-differentiated leader?” Invest some time with them.
• Have a wide-open brain and heart dump day with a bunch of servant-leadership friends. See what emerges as points of shared determinations for shared disruptions allowing for shared designs.

[i] https://hbr.org/2015/12/what-is-disruptive-innovation

[ii] https://www.charitytracker.com/en/blog/what-you-see-part-2-the-solution

[iii] Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Switch. New York, New York: Broadway Books, 2010.

[iv] https://www.charitytracker.com/en/blog/crisis-convergence-and-concentration

[v] Patrick Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2002.

[vi] Edwin H. Friedman, The Failure of Nerve. New York, NY: Seabury Books, 2007.

Do you desire to strengthen your CharityTracker or OasisInsight network to new levels of collaboration and impact? Reach out to Chuck today to schedule your conversation: chuck@simonsolutions.com. 

Dr. Chuck Coward serves as Community Impact Specialist for Simon Solutions, Inc. Chuck has invested over 35 years in fostering human and community development from a variety of places and roles, including as a pastor, non-profit Executive Director, Director of Development, businessman, consultant, university professor, The Struggle Coach, and the founder of Entrusted Foundation. Serving to make people and communities stronger is his great passion. Chuck is the proud husband to Anita, dad to four, and granddaddy to eight.