This blog will start with a confession. I am a curious disruptor. One of my favourite questions is why? One of my preferred ways of fixing something is to get disruptive.
Why are curious disruptors important?
They are the people who bring about a change in attitude, culture, and bravery. They are the people that empower. Mainly through their actions and people seeing what they are doing and achieving. But also they bring hope, they allow others to see that the status quo, the “that’s how things are done here” can be challenged and changes can be made.
They are a glimmer of light that confirms to colleagues there can be a different way. They are the people who get talked about and that their successes become the foundations for others to build upon.
Without them we continue on the path of same old same old.
But their greatest importance is their resilience. They will have many failures for the few successes that you see. None of those failures will have had any effect on their curiosity, if anything they will have fuelled it more, made them curious as to why they failed.
So what do I mean?
What is a curious disruptor (my definition anyway)?
Someone who sees an issue, digs around, asks questions (mostly the Why? based questions) and then tries to find a solution. They will make suggestions, gather information, discuss with colleagues, and investigate. They gather information and make recommendations.
They will gather likeminded people around them, in many cases not intentionally, but they will form groups. These may be close colleagues who join their quest, or they may be colleagues from elsewhere in the organisation who want to emulate their good work.
As well as disrupting they will be spreading the word and this will be heard. People who are wanting to know that improvement is what we do here will hear their examples, reach out to find out how they did it. Their curiosity will drive them to deliver their own improvements.
Quite often they will find themselves as accidental role models. I say accidental because in the way of compassionate leaders they are fairly altruistic and chasing the greater good. Wanting to deliver improvement, not necessarily to be recognised as the bringer of change, just wanting to improve situations.
Ok, so you can see the curious element of it, but why the disruptor?
Disruptor because they are tenacious, they will keep raising and discussing the issue and trying to find a route to resolution. As part of this they may identify other issues earlier in the process and pause their original quest to address these issues and deliver more improvement.
They are tenacious and when they find blockers they look for other routes, they add to their scope and they push on. They disrupt all around them, colleagues, systems, processes, established thinking. All of it from that curiosity and mostly from those Why? Questions.
A note of caution
So if all of that has got you excited and questioning if you know any curious disruptors or even if you are a dormant curious disruptor waiting to be awakened I wanted to add a note of caution.
It is a fine line between being a chaotic disrupter and just being chaotic. Don’t lose sight of why you started, that the goals are and that the main focus is on improvement, making things better for those around you be
Pete Greensmith 