Disruptive Conversations

Maarten Ectors is the Chief Innovation Office at Legal and General. He has helped companies like Amazon launch new services and disrupt markets. At the time of the interview, he was focused on disrupting insurance from the inside. In this conversation, we explore some very interesting ideas around disruptive innovation.

There are few ideas that stood out for me in this conversation:

If people are sleeping in the streets for the competitor’s product, you might need to rethink your offering. Maarten made this point in an almost a dismissive fashion. He was describing when he worked at Nokia and people could not understand why people were willing to sleep in the street for an inferior product. People sleeping in the road for the competitors offering should have been a warning sign that iPhone and Android were onto something that Nokia had missed.
Build a future that looks enticing for your children. Maarten made the point that we should always strive to balance our professional and personal life. He then raised the bar by asking a compelling question: Does the future you are building look enticing for your children? When working on innovation, our moral compass must always point towards making a better future for your kids. Building a better future for your kids can be unpacked in many ways, but it is an excellent compass for us to have in mind. It is a subtle point, but it is something that I think both Maarten and I agree should be essential components of innovation.
In a digital age, the rules are entirely different. I loved this observation. I see it very often with incumbents. In my experience, incumbents are usually playing by the rules of an old game. If the rules of the game have changed and you are playing by the old rules you are going to be left behind.
Additionally, if your competitors have a better or cheaper product, you are in trouble. If they have both, you need to think about disrupting yourself. Otherwise, you are likely watching the other companies iPhone moment.
Do digital experiments to find Aha moments. Maarten made the point that the problem with digital disruption is that you need to need to find solutions to the issues that customers do not know they have or have not yet expressed. The challenge is being able to do this in a way that the cost of failure is low. It is easy for us to say this, but changing the engine while your and flying and still having to keep an eye on what your customers don’t yet know they want is no easy task.
Find a way to address the emotion of experiencing failure. It is one thing to say we need to put an incomplete idea in front of the customer. It is another thing to feel comfortable doing it. One way to address the comfort level of company leaders, Maarten suggests, is to do a quick video of the prototype. Do not do a spreadsheet or PowerPoint. Show them the idea in action in as minimal a form as possible. Do not build the complete model. Build the minimum working model you can. Keep in mind the value of doing a demo is etting feedback.
I really enjoyed my conversation with Maarten. There is a lot to learn from this episode. One of the questions Maarten asks, is how would I disrupt your business? It is an interesting question to hold in mind while listening to this episode. For a moment, think about how you would disrupt your own sector? It is what I call a holding question. A holding question is a question you hold in your mind while you do your own work. As you continue to disrupt sectors and systems ask yourself, how you would disrupt my own sector or business? Hope you enjoy this episode.

Alyson Schafer considers herself to be a modern-day parenting expert. Her general message is that a lot of what we think is common, may not necessarily be right. One of the most interesting things about Alyson is that she is the third generation of parenting educators. Although she is the first to do it as a full-time job, she comes from a long tradition of Adlerian psychology and psychologist who have always been doing some form of educational parenting.

The core message I took away from our conversation is that we should focus on teaching children rather than rewarding or punishing them. Children have motivations just as adults have motivations. Children need to feel like they are accepted and that they belong. They need to feel like they are part of a tribe or a community. They need to feel like they are loved by their first tribe.

Another lesson I took away from the conversation is that we all need to have the courage to be imperfect. Having this courage to be imperfect allows us to try things are not good at so we can ride through failures and mistakes.

In our conversation, Alyson took me back to my background in psychology and reminded me of the work Alfred Adler and he focused on teaching humans to cooperate instead of competing for to concur or oppress the other person. Much of Alyson’s framing is informed by the Adlerian tradition. For her, one of her biggest insights is the notion of the usefulness of behaviour. Our behaviour, from the Adlerian tradition, is thought to be goal driven. She uses the example of a child getting out of bed much to a parent’s dismay. In that scenario what is the usefulness of getting out of bed? It might be that it provides the child with attention and stimulation. Our behaviours serve a purpose, so asking the question, what is the usefulness of that behaviour?

Alyson is trying to disrupt parenting. The extent to which we, as a society, pathologize children’s behaviour is particularly troubling for her. From her perspective, children are gravely misunderstood. One of the big ideas put forward by Alyson is that children should have a voice on a policy level. Additionally, if we do prenatal classes or breastfeeding classes, why don’t we have parenting classes. Instead of celebrating people for outing fires, why not celebrate people preventing fires.

Books mentioned in this episode:

The books “the Carpenter versus the Gardner”
Tipping point – Malcolm Gladwell
Links mentioned in the episode:

https://alysonschafer.com/
https://twitter.com/alysonschafer

In order to walk, you need two feet. For Kate Sunderland in order to achieve your Big Hairy Audacious Goal, you need both the rational mind and the intuitive mind. Her goal is to make inner work as universal as cooking pots. So much of our world focuses on the rational mind and minimizes the role of intuitive mind. It is in the space that Kate Sutherland spends most of her time. She does the kind of work that many people shy away from. She calls it inner work – working on the intuitive mind.

For some people, words like intention, perception, intuition, and consciousness may seem too soft or fluffy but this the domain where Kate spends her time. This is the kind of work that she gets changemakers to sit with. That uncomfortable stuff that comes from within and eventually bubbles to the surface.

One of the things that stood out for me with my conversation with Kate is something that has become so central to my own work. She makes the point that so many of the times when she is working on a problem a good place to start is by asking the classic systems thinking question: How am I contributing to the problem? How am I part of the problem? She acknowledges that sometimes the problem can be both internal and external, but a good place in all aspects of her life is by acknowledging that she is part of the problem. So many of the people I interview talk about the role this reflective exercise plays in their work. A subset of the people I interview have come to the conclusion that when they started to work on change, they saw the problem as being out there. A problem to be solved that was external to themselves. As they got more experience, they learned that they needed to start by acknowledging that they were part of the problem.

Another powerful insight from Kate was her idea that the root of all our problems is disconnection. Many of us are in some way disconnected from self, nature, or social ills. We see these things as disconnected from us, external to us. When the truth is that it is all connected. She uses the term antibody to describe the approach to change where we are trying to fix the thing that is external to us. When we do that the system treats us like an antibody. It attacks us. Admittedly, Kate does not go as far as saying the system attacks us but that is how I understood her insight. Instead, that language she uses is that we need to work in solidarity with the system. The words we use matter so much and her choice to say we need to work in solidarity with the system is deeply insightful. 

Similarly, when she states that consciousness matters most I understand that to be a frame for the perspective she is coming from. For her, she is trying to disrupt Western cultures devotion to the lone wolf mentality. Most descriptions of leadership and change are filled with this individualism. We celebrate and reinforce the lone wolf or the hero in spaces like Leadership and Entrepreneurship. What Kate is challenging is something that is so taken for granted in our society. She is working to disrupt the dominant approach that accepts individualism and rationality exclusive of other ways of knowing and doing. 

In the end, Kate is true to her word. Her favourite quote is on that is attributed to Albert Einstein

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift".

David Grayson has worked in Corporate Responsibility before there was a term for it. As a former Proctor and Gamble employee, he has taken his skills from that world and applied to the third sector. Today he is an author, educator, and consultant. In this episode, David talks about how Corporate Social responsibility needs to move away from a lens of mitigating risk, to one of opportunity maximization.

In this episode, he referenced a quote from Peter Drucker in which he said, “every global problem and social issue is a business opportunity in disguise”. That David describes as an aha moment for him. For him, he sees the Sustainable Development Goals as a purchase order from the future. The Business and Development Commission has argued that the SDG’s represent a 12 Trillion dollar opportunity.

For him, referencing the work of Don Tapscott, businesses are going to have to get naked and when they do they will need to be buff. We are entering into an era of ultra-transparency. Companies will have to improve the standards of ethical and sustainable impact. For businesses who wish to generate returns for their shareholders, they are going to need to also think about their stakeholders.

In his most recent book All In The Future of Business Leadership, he makes the case that business has a growing role to play in sustainable development. They can no longer be halfhearted in their efforts around sustainability. They can no longer be diffident. Business needs to go All In around five critical interlinking attributes:

They need a purpose:
Businesses need to demonstrate how they create value for themselves and for society.

They need a comprehensive plan:
A plan that includes the entirety of their business. For example, their employees, their value chain and all the stakeholders within their ecosystem.

Sustainable culture:
They need to develop a culture that engages its employees, is open to ideas from all parts of the business ecosystem. Their culture needs to forefront innovation.

They need to be able to collaborate with others business and other parts of society.
Businesses in today’s world need to learn how to work with, or collaborate with, people they would not usually collaborate with. They need to cross the aisle and think about innovative partnerships that meet the needs of SDG's.

Speaking out and Speaking up.
Businesses need to speak up for issues that are unfair and unjust. No longer can they remain neutral on these issues.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of disruptive conversations with David Grayson.

You can find David at: https://davidgrayson.net/

John Robinson is a sustainability professor at the University of Toronto and the Copenhagen Business School. In this episode, he and explore his perspectives on sustainability and the wonderful insight has gained after a lifetime of trying to disrupt sectors and systems.

For John, the big challenges in sustainability are not technical or economic. Although they may appear so, his experience has taught him that many of the barriers to sustainability are actually institutionally mixed with some attitudinal. For him, it is about getting deep into the organizations and institutions and changing their internal ways of operating. What I would call their practices.

A point that stood out for me was when John made the case for transformational change. He pointed out that if the world is indeed complex, then there is no way for us to predict the future. Our solutions need to a portfolio of adaptive interventions. They need to take an approach that responds well to emergence. He went to further argue that there is no such thing as incremental change. All future we can imagine are transformational and as a result, we need to identify adaptive solutions.

He went on to use a beautiful metaphor that makes a distinction between the sailboat and the speedboat. The speedboat just powers across the water and creates ripples as it moves along. The sailboat, on the other hand, needs to wait for the right conditions. We are using the energy of the system without degrading it. The approach is to use energies in the system like culture and wind energy to navigate through the world. I found it to be a very powerful metaphor within the context of change and disruption.

In his framing, John sees leadership as enabling people throughout the system to build a bigger brighter future. Most interestingly, John has five metaphors for change:

Needle in the groove.
Many of our systems are path dependent, they are like a needle moving along a groove. If we are to change things, we need a new path. You need to lift the needle and put it on a new path while being fully aware that it can fall back onto its old path. Brenda Zimmerman would call this snapback. So if you are going to move the needle, after you move it, you need to hold it there.

Plate spinning
When John worked at the University of British Columbia, they were trying to build a sustainable building. He noticed that there were nine offices on campus who could stop the project. None of them could make the project happen, but any one of them could stop it from happening. They could not make it happen because that was not their job, but it was their job to stop it from happening so they had to visit each office and keep them onboard. He had to keep the plates spinning.  

Bricklaying
When working with groups you need to show progress is being made. You need to show folks the new bricks that have been laid. At each meeting, you need to demonstrate progress.

Mosaic
When working on these kinds of projects you are often working with people who have never worked together before. You need to be very the glue that brings it all together. Show everyone how they are part of a larger picture. You have to get them to communicate in a way that creates a mosaic.

Wallflower
This metaphor refers to the people who are standing on the wall. Those people who support and like the idea but are standing on the edge, standing against the wall looking in at the dance. You have to get these people onto the dancefloor pull up their sleeves and get to work.

Perhaps the most powerful reminder from John is that it is amazing how much you can get done if you don’t care who gets the credit. Hope you enjoy this episode of the podcast.

Travis Kimmel is the CEO and one of the co-founders of GitPrime. A company that provides data to help software engineering teams measure and improve productivity. Said another way, if a developer is stuck, it is often difficult to tell if they are just busy working on a problem or if they are stuck on a problem and need help. GitPrime helps managers identify when a developer might be stuck. Disrupting a developer to ask them if they are stuck can be very expensive since they are often deep into the problem they working on. When you interrupt the developer, they need to take time to get back into the problem and this can be very expensive especially at scale.

GitPrime's hope to add some objectivity to team conversations so they move out of the realm of opinions. They are very careful to acknowledge that it is the combination of data and soft skills that help teams jump into the zone of high productivity and performance. The primary thing a team needs to do is make good decisions and GitPrime is helping software teams make better decisions.

Travis and his partner, Ben Lilly, noticed that there was an industry-wide problem. They had both experienced the problem. They are now working to be part of the infrastructure for the software industry. They are solving a problem they had. At the time of the interview, Travis felt like he was building a very strong team. He credits that to focusing on people strengths. Let people do what they are really good at.

More recently he and his team have been focusing on doing a better job of onboarding. He describes onboarding like trying to climb on top of the car from a motorbike. In the early days, they would put people in positions and tell them to figure it out. Now that they are more established, they have solved more problems and try to onboard team members much better.

For Travis and his team, they recognize that being explicit is very important for high performing teams and data is a subset of that. Data is one path to being explicit. This approach to being explicit even translates into how Travis and his partner Ben run their company. From the beginning, they have always been very open/explicit with each other. Putting issues on the table in a kind and respectful way and not letting it fester. Travis sees this as a very important to maintain the long-term relationship between him and his co-founder. 

The three takeaways a glean from my conversation with Travis are:

When you start a company with someone, you are signing up to be in the foxhole with that person for about 10 years. As a result, you need to be very open. You need to be very explicit. You need to protect the dynamic that made you go into business together.

You need to understand that an idea is only a small part of it all and it is mostly execution.

If your user doesn’t understand the software is not their fault. It is your design.

Travis Kimmel is the CEO and one of the co-founders of GitPrime. A company that provides data to help software engineering teams measure and improve productivity. Said another way, if a developer is stuck, it is often difficult to tell if they are just busy working on a problem or if they are stuck on a problem and need help. GitPrime helps managers identify when a developer might be stuck. Disrupting a developer to ask them if they are stuck can be very expensive since they are often deep into the problem they working on. When you interrupt the developer, they need to take time to get back into the problem and this can be very expensive especially at scale.

GitPrime's hope to add some objectivity to team conversations so they move out of the realm of opinions. They are very careful to acknowledge that it is the combination of data and soft skills that help teams jump into the zone of high productivity and performance. The primary thing a team needs to do is make good decisions and GitPrime is helping software teams make better decisions.

Travis and his partner, Ben Thompson, noticed that there was an industry-wide problem. They had both experienced the problem. They are now working to be part of the infrastructure for the software industry. They are solving a problem they had. At the time of the interview, Travis felt like he was building a very strong team. He credits that to focusing on people strengths. Let people do what they are really good at.

More recently he and his team have been focusing on doing a better job of onboarding. He describes onboarding like trying to climb on top of the car from a motorbike. In the early days, they would put people in positions and tell them to figure it out. Now that they are more established, they have solved more problems and try to onboard team members much better.

For Travis and his team, they recognize that being explicit is very important for high performing teams and data is a subset of that. Data is one path to being explicit. This approach to being explicit even translates into how Travis and his partner Ben run their company. From the beginning, they have always been very open/explicit with each other. Putting issues on the table in a kind and respectful way and not letting it fester. Travis sees this as a very important to maintain the long-term relationship between him and his co-founder.

The three takeaways a glean from my conversation with Travis are:

When you start a company with someone, you are signing up to be in the foxhole with that person for about 10 years. As a result, you need to be very open. You need to be very explicit. You need to protect the dynamic that made you go into business together.
You need to understand that an idea is only a small part of it all and it is mostly execution.
If your user doesn’t understand the software is not their fault. It is your design.

Seyi Fabode is one of LinkedIn’s TopVoice in Technology. In this episode of Disruptive Conversations, we talk about many of his perspectives on disrupting sectors and systems.

In my conversation with Seyi, he attributes a major part of his success to bringing his whole self into all that he does. In his experience, he found that by being honest with himself and in showing up completely and fully, he has greatly transformed his personal and professional life. He loves writing and has been able to use writing to transform his life and career.

Seyi cut his teeth at the intersection of utilities, technology, and consumers. At one point he had a great interest in the automotive industry, but his first job out of school was within the power industry. This experience was surprisingly meaningful since he grew up in a country where it was not uncommon to lose power. So many of us take power for granted. Seyi has spent a considerable amount of thinking about how to ensure everyone in a city always has power.

One of the things that stood out for me in our conversation was his approach to understanding the power sector. In my own experience, I have found that questions can greatly improve the quality of our interactions and perspectives. One of the questions that have helped to make Seyi one of LinkedIn’s ToVoices is: Are we really satisfying the folk on the other end of the switch? Although there are many fields that take a similar approach to understanding the end user. Seyi’s habit of putting the needs of the end consumer first changes his gaze. For example, a question that emerged from our conversation was, how is this product meeting a fundamental need of the end consumer? In the episode, he uses a personal example to illustrate his point. He has a fundamental need or desire for power but he wants that power to have as little impact on the planet as possible. Most of us have similar needs or desires and Elon Musk has used Tesla to make a beautiful package that plays toward this fundamental need or desire. In many ways, Elon Musk is not doing anything all the unique. Many other people in the industry have been doing this before Elon Musk, but Musk does better than most. His packaging appeals to our fundamental needs and desires. In doing so, Musk appeals to our emotions and is able to build a brand that so many covet.

When I asked Seyi what sector or system he was trying to disrupt, he said consulting. Seyi argued that from his perspective, and I happen to agree, too many companies hire consultants to tell them what they want to hear. Additionally, many of these companies charge exorbitant rates for work that does can be done at a much lower cost. For him, the game in the consulting world is not about asking new beautiful questions or adding value, it is about keeping a client on billable hours for as long as possible.

Seyi finds that he is good at hearing, listening, and responding to what is emerging. One of his frustrations is that many people take too long to act on the insights they receive. For example, when proposes new trends to a client, it is not uncommon for the client to return a few years later saying that he had warned them of these changes. For him, companies do not need validation for their existing beliefs, they need insight into future trends so they can align their business model to meet the demands of an emerging future.

When something is working, it takes a huge leap of foolishness to change what we are doing.

Seyi offers five very important pieces of advice for people who trying to disrupt sector and systems.

Be open to being wrong.
Discover the answer to the question, what are the drivers of the industry you are in?
Context is king, but focus is best.
Your innovation should be additive and not subtractive.
Understand the drivers of your sector or industry.
This last piece of advice is very informative. For many of us who work to disrupt a sector or system, our impatience or frustration leads us to skip the step of understanding why things are the way they are. When I ask the question, what is your least favourite word or phrase? The most common answer is “that’s just the way it is.” Seyi reminds us that it is important to ask why are things the way they are? His advice is to make sure you understand the drivers of your industry. It is a good reminder that sometimes we need to return to the basics. He reminds us that sometimes, things are the way they are because the core premises that the system was built upon greatly influence the dynamics of the system. If we try to change some of those things that were the foundations on which the system was built, we can actually erode the integrity of the system. There are some fundamental principles that if we violate, it compromises the entire system. At times, innovation should be additive and not subtractive.

Marc Winn is on a mission to make Guernsey, a small island in the English Channel between France and the United Kingdom, the best place to live by 2020. His goal is audacious, but his lessons and approach are powerful. 

Firstly, Marc is bringing his mission to life one coffee meeting at a time. He calls it making change at coffee scale. An approach that resonates with my own approach that assumes that changes happens by changing the conversation. Coffee is one of the hallmark spaces for great conversations. 

During this episode, Marc makes the observations that as a society we are getting wealthier and wealthier. Yet with increasing wealth, we see increases in poverty and mental health challenges. For him, something is wrong with a world where a few people are getting more and more wealthy, while others struggle to find a place to thrive. For him, setting the western model as the north star, the destination to be followed, is problematic. He is trying to reimagine the way we think about development. 

When I asked him what sector or system he is trying to disrupt, he reminded me that he does not use the word disrupt because it scares people off. Marc is not trying to disrupt, instead he is trying to reimagine his community. His thesis is that because he is on an island, it will only take a few people doing brave new things to bring forth a new future. Additionally, he sees many of the problems on islands as being cross-sector. If you compare that to how problems are solved in larger communities, there is a tendency to silo problems. For Marc, one of the major advantages of being on island is that the problems are cross siloed. Islands, from his perspective, have the potential to set an example for how we problem can solve problems.  

Take educations for example. For March, within education, there is an implicit assumption that better grades are likely to increase your chances of making more money. For Marc, both the destination and the journey are problematic. Instead, he asks, what if you designed the school system so that people are healthy and happy instead of designing a system that focuses on getting good grades. How might we reimagine education? 

One of the biggest lessons Marc has had is that people take very rational approaches to change and get irrational responses. We need to learn to serve people when they are ready to be served. Change is not about being in control, it is about learning to follow what is emerging. He compares his approach to building the future by contrasting Boxing and Martial Arts. One is a more confrontational sport, he argues, while the other he describes as subtle, where you use the other person's energy against them.  For him, when we think about building the future, when we think about making massive change, we need to keep in mind that when the desert is barren, it is hard to believe that when the rain comes the flowers will bloom.

In this episode, you meet Chris Hooper. Early in his life, Chris began to see accounting as the language of business and despite having had success as an accountant, he realized that his business could not scale beyond him. The company he is building is called Accodex. Accodex is disrupting what some describe as the most boring profession in the world, Accounting. He is building a company to avoid what he calls the Accounting Apocalypse.

Chris noticed that just as the innovation of the double entry accounting had revolutionized Accounting, there were new trends that were also about to disrupt the field of accounting. His company Accodex, his striving to be a platform to support the future accounting. Although it is often described as Uber for accounting, the analogy does not fit well. If Uber gave you the same driver each time, and spent time ensuring that you trusted the driver, then that would be Accodex.

The company Chris is building is based on the insights he gained while studying the history of Accounting during his MBA. He noticed four trends that were changing the future of Accounting:

Changing labour force dynamics and expectations
Technological change
Globalizations
Changing expectations of owners and entrepreneurs
Driven by the entrepreneurial bug, he set himself on a journey to build a company that met his needs as an accountant. He built a company to satisfy his own needs.

One of my favourite insights from Chris was his use of the analogy of sailing a ship. You can build a ship but if the winds are not blowing, or the weather is not right, it is hard to get the ship moving. What I love about this analogy is that it acknowledges the uncertainty involved in building a business. It acknowledges that we all have limited control as we try to build the future.



Chris is ambitious and wants to build a company that last well beyond his lifetime. Very few companies make it past forty years. What I admire about him, is that once he noticed that there was incongruence between what he was doing and what he wanted to be doing, he took the time to fundamentally shift his course. This is a common theme among people I interview on Disruptive Conversations.

Being an entrepreneur is hard work, and Chris suggests that entrepreneurs need to believe that the fight is worth fighting for. They need to be so committed to it that they're almost willing to die for it. If you believe that fight is worth fighting for, then fight relentlessly. Chris believes in hard work. His favourite quote is, “the elevator to success is out of order, but the stairs are always available”.

To learn more about what Chris means by the accounting Apocalypse you can check out his video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO2Iy0yvdEY

Learn more about Accodex here:

https://www.accodex.com/