Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s demonetisation move is being debated in all kinds of forums — human resource consultants and heads are also discussing this vigorously not only for the impact it is having on their employees’ daily lives, but also for the qualities a leader should have if an organisation wants to go in for disruptive innovation.
The first thing they agree is that it’s difficult to find leaders who have the courage to go in for disruptive innovation. There are only a handful of leaders like Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos who had the guts to say, “Any time you do something big that’s disruptive, there will be critics… We are willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time.”
How many leaders would prefer to live with uncertainty for long periods of time? Not many, as most executives who have become leaders have risen through the ranks of management, where predictability and control are valued and rewarded. Since disruptions involve uncertainty and hostile response from colleagues and the rank and file, most leaders avoid that path and choose the path of conformity. At the end of the day, very few want to come out of their comfort zone and, hence, resist even minor changes. But the scale of the challenges companies are facing and the accelerating speed of innovation demand a new approach to leadership — a new way of opening minds to uncomfortable solutions. That’s what a disruptive leader can provide.
The second attribute of a leader with disruptive innovation capability is that he is decisive. When others are contemplating something, a disruptive leader will take charge and make the decisions that are needed. Those that possess the traits of disruptive leadership are intuitive, and have no difficulty informing the team about what they want, when and why. They believe complacency is the dirtiest word in business today as it will show itself in tired product launches, unmotivated customer service or disengaged employees.
When leaders begin to fear what is required to move the company’s agenda forward, this is cause for concern. For example, many leaders don’t want to wade through the political and employee dynamics that are associated with changing times for fear of being placed in a vulnerable position.
Third, a disruptive leader doesn’t care much about data-driven or research-led decision-making. While it’s foolhardy to believe that such a leader only relies on intuition, the fact is he is a risk-taker and probably doesn’t care much about what others say. Consider what Steve Jobs had said about market research in his official biography by Walter Issacson.
On the day Jobs unveiled the Macintosh, a reporter from Popular Science asked him what type of market research he had done. Jobs responded by scoffing, “Did Alexander Graham Bell do any market research before he invented the phone?” Here is another: Jobs is quoted as saying: “Some people say, ‘Give customers what they want.’ But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, ‘If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, a faster horse!’”
In short, disruptive leaders believe their leadership styles should be bold enough to break the rules, redefine the playing field, and effectively disrupt the status quo on a daily basis.
But HR experts say there is a fine line between disruptive leadership and arrogant leadership. In the case of the latter, employees refuse to tell the emperor when he isn’t wearing any clothes. All of us know Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes, which depicts a monarch so blinded by his arrogance and sense of self importance that while he thought he was displaying his pomp and majesty before others, he was actually making a foolish spectacle of himself. So leaders must carefully pick and choose their battles. Often in their enthusiasm to turn everything upside down, these leaders tend to overreact, committing too many resources too quickly. Sometimes a more deliberate and reasoned response is the order of the day.
HR consultants also say disruptive leadership is fine as long as it is not defined in terms of obsession with power and rigidity in thought. Highly authoritarian individuals rarely change their thinking regardless of evidence that demonstrates that they are wrong. Sounds familiar?
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
