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The consistent change in technology almost makes it a moot point; Charlene would rather know how your company plans to change, why it seeks that end goal, and what steps you will take as a leader to get there! Regardless of the field in which you lead (or hope to), political movements can be an incredible demonstration of how leaders can inspire others to pursue a common goal, and at the heart of every successful political movement is a manifesto of some kind. Charlene will share her process for writing an effective manifesto and emphasize why it’s so vital to any leader that is serious about making a shared vision come to fruition.
To be competitive, it’s no longer enough to be innovative – you must have a strategy for disruptive growth, a plan to identify and seize an opportunity no one else has the audacity or confidence to reach for. Disruptors don’t just blow things up – they also create and build things that result in huge, positive change. Welcome to The New Rules of Disruption with Charlene Li. For the past two decades, Charlene Li has been helping people see the future and thrive with disruption. She couples the ability to look beyond the horizon with pragmatic advice on what actions work today. She helps executives and boards recognize that companies must be disruptive to compete, not just innovate.
Leaders have never been challenged in their career as much as they are today, with technology empowering the voices of customers, and a workforce with a new sense of agency to exercise their power, many leaders are realizing that we're now in a perpetual state of always-on transformation. Combine these things with the driving force for equity and social justice within our communities, and it's understandable why many leaders are completely lost.
It's time for disruption, a transformation of leadership and a transformation of ourselves. But what rules do we play by when you want to create this change? This podcast is about how we as leaders, must transform ourselves to be able to support the people in our organizations and communities that make it all work. My name is Charlene Li. And these are the new rules of disruption.
In my work with some of the top leaders and organizations from all around the world, I am asked to come in and tell people what the future holds. As a technologist, as somebody who studies business trends, I can see a lot of things happening on the horizon, five, 10, 20 years out. I can lay all that out.
But I often say to those same clients, I think a better use of our time together is let me help you see your future. It's not my future that matters. It's what you see as a potential. Because it doesn't matter what the technology trends are, because it’s, in the end, not about the technology. It is all about the leadership, the culture, and your understanding of where you want to be, where do you see the potential being.
And this requires that you see the future through the lens of your customers, and very specifically, your future customers. Because that's all a strategy is. A strategy says, you're here today. This is where we are, and we want to be someplace out in the future. You cannot craft the strategy unless you know what that future is and where it's going to go.
And the vast, vast majority of companies I work with, have a pretty strong idea of what that future looks like, what the opportunities are. It could be one, two, maybe three potential paths that you take. Yet, they are so focused on the today, the focus on the current customers of today, serving their needs, and not moving out of that certainty into this uncertain future, for one simple reason. They can't guarantee what's going to happen in the future. They cannot control with total precision, with total perfection, what's going to happen. And until they feel completely comfortable. 100% sure of what they will do, they will not step out of the present.
So today, it's all about tomorrow, we're going to be talking about how you develop this skill to be able to see the future and stake your leadership upon that future that you create.
The first part of seeing the future is to see your future customers. And I'm often asked, well, how do I see my future customers? I mean, who are they? How do I find them? And frankly, for so many people, they don't even know who their current customers are. So, thinking about the future seems like a far-fetched idea.
Well, let's start with your current customers. They are lovely, they're very profitable for you. They're easy to serve because there's a really good fit. And yet, there are probably some customers on the fringe that you don't serve as well. Let's call them adjacent customers. Those are your future customers potentially, because they already know something about you, you know a little bit about them. But for whatever reason, you are not hitting their sweet spot. So go and talk to them, really get to know them.
And yeah, they're going to complain a lot. They're going to be some of your worst customers that you could ever think of. They are going to be unprofitable to serve. But go and take a look at them and ask yourself, what would it take for them to become my customers? What would I have to change? What investments would I have to make today so that at some point in the future, I can serve them better. And if you can do that for your adjacent customers, then keep looking further and further and further afield.
But you can't see way out in the future if you can't even see a nearby. The key is that you take one step away from your current customers. Your beautiful, profitable, wonderful customers that you are in love with.
I think of it as putting on disruption, sunglasses, and then you can see the future, you can see those future customers. Because again, you will not be able to see them if all you see are your current customers.
By far, this is the most difficult thing that a leader has to do. You need to tear your company away from those customers. This is not to say you don't serve them – of course you serve them well. But you need to dedicate time and attention and investments on this future.
This is what Adobe had to do when they decided to move away from delivering the software on CD ROM discs and move over to the cloud. They had to look beyond their very happy existing customers, to the future customers that wanted software that was not only more quickly updated, but also available for use on devices, and accessible from anywhere by collaborators.
But this required that they change everything that they did, from the way they developed the product to how they charged for it. And they also knew that they would lose money for two years as they went through this pivot. And yet, they knew they had to do it. I spoke with Mala Sharma, the general manager for Adobe's Creative Cloud, about what it took to make this change.
“First, and most important thing was a deep conviction that this was essential for us to do for our customers and for the growth of the business. We were absolutely convinced about that. Because we knew that the market had shifted, we knew that Adobe was the only company that could address that problem, given the assets and technology we have. And we knew that it was critical for the business, it was absolute conviction, this is the right thing to do.”
That conviction allowed Adobe to unify around a common vision of not only the customer, but also align around a strategy that disrupted their business. And that conviction was absolutely needed. Because what Adobe planned to do require taking a leap of faith. Here’s Mala again, describing that fateful moment, when they made the decision to move forward,
“We all hold our hands here, because ultimately, this is about conviction that this is the right thing to do. Because we can't…there is only so much math that you can do right. And we have to believe that there's a need in the market, we have to believe that our customers will see value in what we have to deliver. And we have to believe that we can execute on it. And this is the right thing to do.”
The end result is that Adobe did indeed make the shift to the cloud, and the profits declined substantially as expected. But what was incredible is that they did such a good job setting expectations around the business model shift that the stock market saw the drop in profits as an indication that the new strategy was working. And the stock price went up even as their profits went down.
I can't emphasize enough how incredibly difficult it is to see the future, especially if it requires that you take a dramatic shift from how you see the business today. As we saw with Adobe, seeing the future requires a leadership team that's so unified in its vision, that nothing can deter them from seeing it come to fruition.
But Adobe isn't alone in being able to do this. When the pandemic hit, some companies realized that the old world was gone. And instead of bemoaning the fact and simply waiting for the new normal to come back, they set off to understand what were these new needs. Who were these new customers?
Because the needs hadn't gone away. They had shifted. And they realized their companies needed to shift as well. They were the ones who went to curbside pickup immediately. They shifted their restaurants from dine in to take out and home deliveries. They were the ones who gave their employees new ways to connect remotely when they couldn't connect in person. And they hunkered down and said, “If this is the way that the world is going to work, we are going to shift with it, rather than resist the fact that the world had changed.”
This is what it takes to be a transformational disruptive leader. You can see the future – and instead of ignoring it because it's going to be hard – you really take a close look at it and say it is going to be a long, hard journey. And I'm going to prepare myself today to go on that journey. I'm going to pack my bags, I'm going to make sure that we have the provisions to be able to sustain ourselves. And I will compare myself and I would prepare my team, my company, my customers to go on this journey together.
The most interesting thing about the pandemic is that we shifted our organizations in five or seven days, what we would have taken five or seven years to do. It should not take another crisis like a pandemic to encourage us to go on this journey.
This is the crux of leadership. How do we take on this journey without being pushed – instead we pull ourselves into these transformational stages. And the one thing that I have seen that disruptive organizations do over and over again, is that they push themselves into this change state, into this transformational state. They embrace it when no one else -- no competitor, no pandemic, no other force is making them do this. And it is the one singular thing that they do – they focus on that future; they focus on the future customer. They're extremely clear about who they are trying to serve and why they are trying to serve them.
Right now, I'd like you to take a moment and clean the slate. What I mean by that is, remove all the things about, well, I can't do this, our constraints are this, or we don't have enough assets or people or budget. Clean that slate and have in front of you a clear mind. Shut the doors if you need to. Turn off this podcast. And think about what are the problems you want to solve? What is the impact that you think you could potentially have? How will you serve the world? How will you serve your communities, serve your organization, serve your customers. This is the time to think about all the possibilities. Because they are there. They are open to you. If only you could imagine them and see.
Charlene here. Of you're listening to this and thinking “I'm ready for more!” Then I want to let you know about all the resources available on my website, CharleneLi.com. There you will find my latest books, articles, videos, courses, and more. All built to help leaders in organizations see the future and thrive with disruption. I've worked with top companies ranging from Adobe to Southwest Airlines. I've also spoken at conferences like the World Economic Forum, World Business Forum, and South by Southwest. And on my website, you will find many of the things I have shared with them. So go now to charleneli.com, to transform your leadership today.
Part two of seeing the future is creating a movement. This is something that most leaders are never taught to do. We’re taught to lead, to put plans together, to execute against an objective. But creating a movement is essential, especially if you're trying to create transformational change. Movements are something that you create and they take on a life of their own. So, I'd like to give a couple examples of movements that we've experienced. And I'm just going to get right into a topic that most people try to avoid – politics.
So, let's take a look at one of the biggest movements we've seen in our recent history. And that is the movement that President Trump created and articulated for his run for the presidency back in 2016. He was able to articulate the pains and the woes of the disenfranchised middle class. And he brought them together into a movement that catapulted him into the White House.
And that movement was based on his ability to have empathy, to give voice to those people. And together, they created this huge earthquake in the political space, that somebody with no political experience, could inspire so many people to come out, elect him, and create that movement into the presidential office.
At the same time, we also see different types of movements not led by a singular person at the very front of it. We also are seeing movements created, for example, like the Black Lives Matter movement. One of the most interesting things about Black Lives Matter is that there is no clear leader. It was actually designed to be leaderless, in that the small groups within organizations would abide by a single charter that was jointly written, and no single person would be at the head of it. Because this movement wanted to sustain itself beyond any singular leader, and really enfranchise and give power to the people who are members of that movement.
I find it's so interesting that movements are so powerful in creating transformations. But there are so many different ways to be able to create that movement and the types of leaders that you want to have at the head of those. The one where you have President Trump, a very clear leader who continues to exert power over that movement and guide the direction of that. The Black Lives Matter movement – it is this amorphous mass of people with incredible power to turn out millions of people into the street.
Let's get practical, though. Not everyone's going to be able to create a movement that results in them becoming the President of the United States. And yet, every single person has the potential to create change, to create a movement to support and make that change become a reality.
15:00 You are a leader because you create change. If you're not creating change, then you're not a leader, you're a manager. And that's okay, that's great. We need managers in this world. But we desperately need leaders right now. We have so many problems, so many issues that we need to address. We are not going to get there by incrementally making them just a little bit better. We need to create transformational, disruptive change. And we need leaders who are not just comfortable, but confident in creating a movement to make that change happen.
Movements are essential to transformational change. Because it's no longer just you leading the change. You are creating all these other people who see themselves as being part of that change. And very importantly, they become leaders themselves. Movements take on a life of their own. And you know, it's a movement when you are no longer at the head of it. It becomes so powerful because other people are taking on that mantle.
You look at Trump, it's not just him. It's all these other people who are advocating and becoming part of his movement, and they are amplifying him. Black Lives Matter becomes a movement because of all the people who take it upon themselves to organize their family members and their friends to come out to the streets and protest. Movements are powerful because they become an unstoppable force. They become a groundswell that will never stop. They will always keep going until that change is realized.
Creating movements reminds me of this quote by Daniel Burnham, “Make no little plans, they have no magic to stir the blood.” This is why the future is so important. The future stirs our blood. It causes us to rise up, to believe in something bigger than ourselves. And this is your opportunity to create a movement around the future that you see and envision that other people can make it around to.
One of the best ways to kick off your movement is to write a manifesto. Manifestos are one of the most powerful tools that you can use. What they do is they lay out what you believe the future should look like, what you think is wrong with the world, and the role that you will play in terms of making that wrong, right. And it is a statement of your beliefs, and what you're going to do to make that world happen. Think about what's wrong with the world. Think about those problems that you want to solve the impact you want to have.
First of all, start with a rant. Write down all the things that you think are wrong, how you think things are unfair. Write those rants down, and then look at those things. The second step is to flip those rants into a belief. If this is the way the world works, it should work in a totally different way. Take every one of those rants and turn them into a belief about how the world should be. This is the future that you envision, the rightness of the world, of things could just happen in a different way. And the third step is to take each of those beliefs and write down the actions that you and your organization can take to make those things come true. If you believe this, then this is what we're going to do to make that belief a reality.
Now take those statements, those belief and action statements and put them into paragraphs, into a document, hopefully not longer than a page. And that becomes the foundations of your manifesto. To really look at this manifesto, then, it will be this wonderful statement. This manifesto is a statement of how you believe the world should be and the action steps and the commitments you are making to make that world reality.
The leaders I've worked with sometimes I've written a manifesto for themselves. Sometimes they've written for just their entire teams. They've written them for the organizations, they sometimes have written for their society and the communities that they want to impact.
This manifesto is extremely personal. It needs to resonate with you and tap into the beliefs of how you think the world should be. That manifesto becomes the embodiment of how you see the future. You may not have all the details worked out. Don't worry about it! In fact, I encourage you to turn off this podcast and just start writing. Don't overthink this, don't wordsmith it.
And you will find that if you start with that rant, flip that ran into a belief, and then think about the actions that you can take and make that belief come true, you will find yourself pouring yourself into that page and your manifesto will come into being.
After you've written the manifesto, you may choose to keep it private to yourself, use it as a guideposts to help you along the way. But I think a powerful use of a manifesto is to share it or to even develop a manifesto together as a team. So that together, you have written this document about your shared vision of what the future could look like.
Because when you have a manifesto that everybody believes in, and saw themselves as taking a big part of creating that manifesto, that becomes the foundation for your movement, and something that you can refer to over and over again. Because guaranteed that movement is going to run into rough patches. You're going to run into obstacles and roadblocks. And when you have those bad days – and they will come – having a manifesto in front of you, to remind you, to inspire you to go on that road again, to get back onto that road, that long, hard road, and to continue the journey, continue the movement – is what you will need.
So, in light of that call for transparency, I'm going to share with you some of the items in my manifesto. This is something again that I wrote at the beginning of my journey of creating this disruption movement. And here we go.
“We believe that in a time of unprecedented change and turmoil, we need leaders who thrive of disruption and strive to make things better. We need leaders who don't just wave their arms in the air and talk about change but are also capable of making it happen. And not just any kind of change but disruptive, exponential transformative change, because we won't get to where we need to be if we play it safe. Disruptive leaders step out of their comfort zone every day because they know that the opportunity requires leadership. They put on the mantle of being a disruptive leader, confidently and fearlessly leading their organizations and followers toward that future.
Rule number two – start with the future in mind.
Hey there, thanks for listening to The New Rules of Disruption. We created this podcast with the hope that you would be inspired to become a disruptor. Disruptors don't just blow things up. They also create and build things that result in huge positive change. This is a change that the world needs now more than ever, and we want to hear about what change you are creating in this world. You can send us your disruptive story by visiting charleneli.com/podcasts.
If you are enjoying this podcast, I have one major ask – please share this podcast with a coworker, manager, or a friend. Let's build communities of disruption together.