Disruption revisited

Disruption revisited

Disruption has always been part of organisational life. For quite some time it was something that companies (usually based in Silicon Valley) did to other companies. But today it also includes the wider macroenvironmental forces (both natural and manmade) bearing down on the organisation, as well as the internal disruption that these forces generate in respect of worker behaviour.

Many of these forces are compounding, some exponentially. But they are also conflating to make the future unknowable. So the clean, deterministic linearity of Taylorism, plan-execute, input-process-output approach, has given way to what is a very messy, complex/chaotic barroom brawl. And this disharmony is growing in both size and frequency.

However disruption is still spoken about as something to be managed through. A period of instability before things return to normal. A spike. A phase. An exception.

The associated discussions tend to coalesce around themes such as:

• Cost management

• Digital transformation

• Workforce resilience.

This language suggest that leaders have not quite grasped the profound implications associated with increasing disruption in respect of organisational design. 

Disruption: The default state

Disruption today cannot be anticipated. As you scan intently for the lion, you are bitten by a snake.

Again events (geopolitical, technological, meteorological and so on) are entwining. Second-order effects emerge before first-order ones have been resolved. By the time organisations respond to one shift, another has already altered the context.

Transformation is impossible if point B won’t sit still.

There is no clear return to baseline. No obvious settling point. The environment continues to move even as organisations attempt to stabilise.

This is not volatility in the traditional sense. It is a different operating condition, and this requires a fundamentally different approach.

Assumption, revisited

Much of modern organisational design rests on a quiet assumption: that the future can be predicted well enough to plan for.

For a long time, this assumption held. Change was slower. Cause and effect were clearer. Plans aged at a manageable rate.

This assumption no longer holds.

Today, investor forecasts and strategic plans are obsolete before the authors hit the save button.

Organisations predicated on predictability and optimised for efficiency will increasingly struggle in an increasingly unpredictable world. New products or services will not save them. The problem is much more fundamental.

Brace, brace, brace

When disruption is treated as episodic, organisations respond by:

• Doubling down on planning

• Tightening control

• Sweating the staff

• Embracing radical efficiency.

Forecasting becomes more frequent. Targets are tightened. Execution is scrutinised. Leaders are expected to absorb increasing levels of uncertainty on behalf of the system. Workers are expected to operate at ‘ramming speed’ day in day out.

Given these are potions for a bygone era, they have the exact opposite effect and simply amplify organisational stress and so eventually catalyse an organisational tailspin.

Using the old language, the ensuing stress might well be attributed to process failure, leadership overload or a skills shortage. These are symptoms. The issue is the widening gap between organisational behaviour and reality. The organisation continues to operate as if the world will settle back into a steady state, even though there is nothing to suggest this will happen.

Stress becomes a signal not of individual failure, but of an organisational design mismatch.

Organisational introspection

Seen this way, disruption is no longer something organisations occasionally respond to; it is a permanent environmental and market condition. Embracing disruption, rather than attempting to control it, is now table stakes for organisational viability.

This shifts the question from how disruption is managed to what kind of organisational design makes sense when disruption is continuous.

That reframing alters how planning, decision-making, coordination, and leadership are understood. It changes what is optimised for, what is tolerated, and what is expected of people inside the organisation.

But it begins with a simpler recognition: the environment has changed in kind, not just in degree.

A new world requires a new approach

Treating disruption as temporary leads organisations to optimise for a world that no longer exists.

Recognising disruption as an operating condition does not immediately provide answers. But it does change the questions that matter, and the assumptions those questions rest upon.

Until that recognition is made, many organisations will continue to experience strain. Not because they are poorly led or poorly run, but because they remain organised for a reality that has quietly disappeared.

This article also appeared in the Intelligent Organisation newsletter on LinkedIn.