Lead In 30 Podcast

Disrupting Your Organization: Why Stability Can Be Your Biggest Enemy

• Russ Hill

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Organizational disruption is a critical yet often overlooked aspect of leadership that can dramatically enhance innovation and growth when applied strategically. Too many companies keep the same people in the same seats for too long, creating stagnation that hurts creativity, motivation, and ultimately, market performance.

• Johnson & Johnson's military-style three-year rotation model promotes innovation and fresh thinking
• Whitney Johnson's book "Disrupt Yourself" details the S-curve of innovation and why personal disruption is essential
• Strategic disruption increases motivation, innovative thinking, and helps break through status quo mentality
• Organizations with the same leadership for extended periods often see flattened growth curves
• Top executives regularly make strategic changes to their leadership teams to maintain momentum
• Not all organizations need disruption—some currently need stability first
• Thoughtful, strategic implementation works better than chaotic reorganization

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Speaker 1:

Some of you don't have a problem with this at all, like stability is your biggest challenge. You just need people to stay in the same seats in the organization for a while, like can we just have some stability around here? But others of you, you have the exact opposite problem, and the word I want to talk to you about today is disruption.

Speaker 2:

This is the Lead in 30 podcast with Russ Hill. You cannot be serious. Strengthen your ability to lead in less than 30 minutes.

Speaker 1:

Years and years ago, harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen gained a ton of fame by writing a book about the innovators dilemma, and in this book he was taught this is really at the advent of thecom, uh explosion and the internet growth and all these sorts of things when traditional companies, if you will, if there is such a thing, um were needing to innovate and companies have always needed to innovate, but the rate of innovation was dramatically changing. And so Carlton wrote this book that made him a household name, at least in executive circles around. How do you innovate inside an organization around? How do you, how do you innovate inside an organization? And then he had a protege, a colleague who worked with him, a gal by the name of Whitney Johnson, who ended up gosh maybe 15 years later. She helped work on the research and and with Carlton at Harvard and she ended up writing a book about personal innovation, which I cannot recommend enough. It's been out for a long time now and Whitney is she's a valuable voice in in the area of personal disruption. So I want to talk to you in this episode about how some of your organizations this this episode is going to play to all of. It's really important for all of us as leaders, to think about how we're doing in this area. But some of you and it's not the vast majority of you, for most of you, your organizations you do have an issue with what I'm going to talk about and, quite frankly, in some of the organizations that we have exposure to or have had exposure to over the years, this drives me nuts. It's crazy, and it's pretty obvious what they need to do in order to gain market share and to start growing again. And that's what we're going to talk about in this episode.

Speaker 1:

Welcome into the Lead in 30 podcast. In less than 30 minutes, we'll give you an idea, a framework, a best practice, an example, a story, something to think about implementing in the way that you lead others. Lead in 30 also has a companion leadership course called Lead in 30. Lead in 30 in less than 30 days. Obviously, it's a course. You can find out more at lonerockio. We also have recently launched three. I don't even know if it's on our website yet at the time this is going out, but it will be soon, and we're doing some webinars in the next several months. Um, and you should pay attention, um, and and I'll talk more about it when we've got the links up, um, we've, we've got one that's coming up and and at the time we're recording this, it's going to be in the month of May. That is, oh my gosh, it's going to be so valuable. You have to register for it or you have to send somebody from your organization. It's free, we're not selling anything, and it's all about leading through change and it's using a model that we've used for years but we've refined it a little bit based on all of the change that's going on and all the organizations that we're interacting with that are dealing with it. So lonerockio is where you can find out all about those four courses now and the webinars and all that fun stuff.

Speaker 1:

I make my living coaching, consulting senior executive teams, and I've done that for a long time. My colleagues at our firm do that as well. We've got a consulting side of our business that works with executive teams, primarily large organizations and like fortune 500 companies. And then, um, I had I don't know I shouldn't say this in the podcast, but I had I had one consulting client say to me recently within the last few days he said, wow, you guys so expensive and he's in a multi-year, his company's in a multi-year agreement and he's saying we're bringing tons of value. But he was just reminding us again that we do charge a hefty amount for our consulting clients. We don't apologize for that, just like Apple doesn't apologize for the price of the iPhone. You are getting a superior product. If you want that in your pocket, you need to pony up for it. The same thing is true for living in that neighborhood or that city or driving that car or having access to that appliance. Just quality costs more, and so if you're more focused on the deal and getting it, if you're more of like a Walmart and I say with all due respect, if you're more of a discount shopper hey, I'm going to find the cheapest deal on everything then you're probably not even listening to this podcast because you're more concerned about discounts than on growth. I'm going to pay for access to the brightest minds I can find and the innovative thinkers and people who are pushing me, because that's what growth takes. It's the path less traveled, quite honestly. Anyway, okay, so we've got the consulting side of our business. We've got the leadership development side of our business. So one's for senior executive teams, the other is for mid-level managers, and we make our living working in the leadership lab. We love it.

Speaker 1:

So the word disruption is on my mind today. I'm just going to get to the punchline immediately, and that is that too many of your organizations and you know who I'm talking about when I say this you're gonna be like, yep, that's me, yep, that's us. Some of you this won't apply to, but you're like the. You're like 10, 20%, the 80% of you. You got people sitting in the same seat way too long. You need to disrupt your organization, you need to move people around, you need to change things up, you need to innovate and you need to do it internally. I'm going to give you some examples to make my case here in the next few minutes, while I've got you tuned in. But I want you thinking about if this applies to you. I want you to think about the impact it's having on your organization. So let's use a few examples Johnson, johnson, an organization we've consulted. They've put through hundreds of leaders, through Lead in 30. So they're a client of ours on the consulting side as well, and have been for a long, long time as well as on the leadership training side. So we're super familiar with Johnson and Johnson One of the interesting aspects of their culture for a lot of years is they treated almost like the military.

Speaker 1:

I grew up an army brat, and so my dad, who was serving in the US Army, he moved. He got a different assignment every three years. So our family we'd we live in alabama, my dad would work at a hospital on base. He was a hospital administrator, and so he'd work on that. You know and and um, and implement change and policies and work with that team, and then, boom, he was gone. Now we're going to ok, oklahoma, now we're living in Oklahoma, he's working in a hospital on that base, and now we're going to San Antonio, which had five military bases at the time and a ton of some of the world's best hospitals, and so my dad would get assigned down there and then three years later he'd move on. Right, that's just the way that I grew up. So every three years we moved, and so the military believed in that model.

Speaker 1:

For lots of different reasons, johnson and Johnson employs the same model, and so why did they do that? So you might be the leader of a factory and you're producing all kinds of great results and all of a sudden J&J is like okay, well, the three years has been up. It's time for you to, and you would apply right, so you'd be looking at different positions and they had internal systems to make sure this works. You guys, I'm still battling the stupid cold, so forgive me that my throat's bothering me a little bit. I feel great. Um, it's just a few little hangover stuff on this cold. That's just like, ah, can you just let me go? Um, but as far as um, my head space, it is operating. The CPU is spinning just as fast as it ever is. That's debatable, but but no it, I'm feeling great. Okay, so why did they do that? Why does? Why does JJ have these internal systems? To be able to move people around?

Speaker 1:

Because of the impact it has on innovation. The impact that it has on motivation, the impact it has on new ideas. The impact it has on disrupting status quo. The impact it has on motivation, the impact it has on new ideas, the impact it has on disrupting status quo. The impact it has on creativity. The impact it has on building agility. The impact it has, if you've been with J&J for 15 years, how many different factories or offices or locations have you been at? Numerous sites, right, so you become much more well-rounded in the organization, because you've seen different things, you've you've had different perspectives, and so we're increasing your value to the organization. Not only are we doing all these other things in the moment that are serving our immediate needs as an organization and the customer's needs we're getting different perspectives and different outlooks and all this sort of stuff but we're also investing in the development of our leaders, and so there's a ton of value in that.

Speaker 1:

I will tell you also that, um, I'll give you a couple of um, real time examples too. We've got a senior leader at a pharma company, pharmaceutical company, a global pharma company, pharmaceutical company, a global pharma company who, um, how do I say this in a way that doesn't give too much weight? She, she leads a large group. We'll just put it at that. She's a senior executive, seasoned, experienced, exceptional, and so she's. She's constantly. Now, when I I shouldn't say constantly she is regularly, that's a better, that's a better adjective. She is regularly and I'd even probably use the word consistently making adjustments To her senior team, the people that report into her. Why? Because, for all the reasons I've just listed creativity, disrupt status quo, innovative thinking, uh, well-rounded, uh, executives getting different perspectives, mixing it up, innovating.

Speaker 1:

If the if you had the same model of iphone let's say the battery didn't change, like it still was as effective today as it was five years ago and and would you be satisfied that, okay, this hasn't gotten any better? Some of you are like, yeah, I'd be good, keeping it for 10 years Saves me money. We're not talking about you, okay, because you're probably the individual no discredit, no, no harm meant in it, but you're not really growth minded. Well, you know what I mean in that area. Like you don't want the latest, doesn't really matter to you, but in, or an organization can't be that way. Like we can't be the company. That's just kind of, yeah, we're like, we're super stable, things are going well. Yeah, but how about growth? Well, what about new features? What about new products for the customers, or innovative approaches or different? Don't talk to us about that. Like, okay, you can be at that company, but let's just deal with a couple of realities. Number one your customers are going to be ticked. Your market share is going to decline because, tell me the customer that wants the same level.

Speaker 1:

Do you want to go to the cancer treatment center that has the same solutions for cancer this year as they had 25 years ago. Not a chance, not a chance. You want to go to the place that's full of innovation, research, development of new ideas, not that's trying out every little thing and not sure what they're doing. You don't want that. But you want the place that's looking for new solutions, right, and so we, as customers? Well, that's just our mindset we want. We want take what's good and make it better constantly, and that's what a shareholder, an investor, an owner of an organization wants. We want that in the company. We demand growth.

Speaker 1:

Well, how do I fuel that as an executive? Well, the thing you don't do is leave bob in that position for 12 freaking years. And so you know who you are. Look at your team. You don't want people. You I don't know how to say it more clearly you need to act on this Some of you, this is an issue in your organization. You've got to solve it. You've got the same people in the same role and and and you look at your team, or the senior team, or the lead, the, the leadership team of this business unit, and you're like well, no, lisa left last year. Okay, well, that's awesome. 12%, 8%, 4% of the team leadership team changed I'm talking three years. I don't want you in your role generally Not, there are exceptions for more than three years or I want you to mix it up. I want you to change it up. I need you to disrupt.

Speaker 1:

It goes back to what I was talking about. Whitney Johnson yeah, she talks about. She wrote this book about disrupt yourself. I highly recommend it. So, and it talks about the S curve of innovation growth. You hear me talk about this all the time in this episode, in these episodes about. I'm addicted to growth and so when the, when the growth, when the growth curve or the line of growth flattens or plateaus, I need to mix it up.

Speaker 1:

One of the reasons we launched a leadership training company was disrupting ourselves. We were doing awesome on the consulting side. We've been having to add people recently to the executive consulting side of our business, which we swore we weren't going to do because we didn't want to grow that side of our business, but we keep getting more and more clients over there. We keep having demand, which is an awesome problem to have. Right, I say that with all humility. We work our butts off. I spent three hours on calls today internally on innovation with our consulting clients new ideas, new thought processes, new things that we can bring to them in the coming months, that are in reaction, in response to current things. They're dealing with themes that we are seeing. We spend a ton of effort disrupting ourselves, innovating, thinking through, pushing on ourselves.

Speaker 1:

Nobody is a bigger critic of us than we are. We've got the highest standards. And so I, I, I, I look at that and I say, okay, we, those of you that are leading organizations, this is just something I want you to look at and think about. Now, again, I'm going to acknowledge that some of you don't have this problem. You're in the minority.

Speaker 1:

Your issue right now is a total lack of stability. You're like oh my gosh, we, what we need is not disruption, we need stability. And and, yeah, you got to fix that. You, you've got to solve that. We don't want the spinning wheel, we don't want the, the what do they call that? In the front of the hotel, the, uh, the door that goes, the revolving door. We don't want the revolving door of leadership. Like man, we can't keep anybody in any role for like more than six months. That's a problem you need to solve that. Typically, that means the, that there's either something wrong with the culture, there's not an aggressive growth strategy that is sound, that people believe in. Or, like I said, there's a toxic part of the culture that people don't want to stay. So they come in, they see reality, like, oh yeah, thank you, I'll take my bag and I'm out, or it's something else. I'm not going to dig into that in this moment. But so those of you that need stability this doesn't apply to you in the moment, but it will. It will at a certain time when you've got that figured out. And then now you're like, oh, we've got people in their roles for a while. Mix it up.

Speaker 1:

The church that I go to, the church that I go to, has lay leadership right. Nobody's paid, and so I've spent time. I've talked about this. I wrote about it in my first book, decide to Lead. I wrote about my experience leading a congregation in our church and it was a fascinating experience. A congregation of more than 700 people, when our congregations are generally divided up geographically to no more than 300 or 400 to make them smaller. So you take 17 million people or whatever it is the current number that are part of our religion and you divide that up as small as you can into kind of these micro units so that people get to know each other and everybody gets an opportunity to serve. So when I was called to serve as the leader, they call it a bishop.

Speaker 1:

So when I was called to serve as a bishop, a leader of the congregation, that that that had a time limit on it wasn't like ah, and there are lots of reasons for that. I personally am a believer that the time limit that they put on that right now is way too long, happens to years. I think that's insane. Not insane, that's a bad word to use describing religious whatever, but it's. It's not the best, it's not ideal. In my mind, if I was king for a day, if I was prophet or president of the church for a day, I'd switch that to three years max and and I'd put people in there and move them out because, uh, lots of different reasons People burn out.

Speaker 1:

The growth curve flattens, it, plateaus, it's taxing on individuals. They want to change. So I see it in the religion, I see it in the military, I see it in J&J, I see it in this pharmacology, I see it all these different places. I see how much people, when we're working with an executive on the consulting side of our business, they move to a new organization or they move into a new part of the organ, a new part of the organization they take over. Whatever they thrive, and the business unit usually thrives too.

Speaker 1:

You see additional growth, you see new ideas. They, they're they're no sacred cows to them. Or the person that's sitting in there for 10 years, or been in that same spot for 8 or 12. They're like, well, we can't really touch tina because she's been in that same spot for eight or 12,. They're like, well, we can't really touch Tina because she's been in that role. We don't, we don't want to. She, she knows the client list or so-and-so, is the office manager and we wouldn't want to. Oh, I'm sorry, somebody else can figure it out. You know what I mean. So, um, I'm being dramatic, uh, for effect, but the.

Speaker 1:

What I want you thinking about in this episode is disruption and the why behind it, the impact of it. So if your organization right now doesn't seem that inspired, doesn't seem that motivated, doesn't seem that innovative, doesn't have that much creativity, might not be growing from a key, you know, a key performance indicator, a key result standpoint, as fast as other organizations could be growing or are growing in your industry. You need disruption. You need disruption Now. That doesn't mean we just go in and like all right off with everybody's head and we're just going to move people around like just throw, like spin the chairs around, everybody's on the news. No, you do it strategically, you do it smart.

Speaker 1:

The senior executive I was talking about at a pharma company. She doesn't move everybody around. She moves this person and then maybe three months, four months, six months later she makes this strategic move over here and moves that person over there. So within a given year there are probably three or four changes on the executive team, maybe more and different people in the room. There's a different feel, there's different energy, there's different perspectives. People are coming in like ah, I never knew that this was part of our business over here and I mean it's so valuable disruption, so many organizations need it. That's what's on my mind in this episode Of the Lead in 30 podcast. Lead in 30.

Speaker 2:

Share this episode with a colleague, your team or a friend. Tap on the share button and text the link. Thanks for listening to the Lead in 30 podcast With Russ Hill. You're listening to Lead in 30.