Diversification needs to become the new business-as-usual.

Ad agencies have been undergoing disruption for a number of years; innovation and diversification is a normal and required part of our business...as it is with all service based businesses.

This has created its own level of disruption in how we go about our business, and how we service our clients. Sometimes it also results in new revenues and opportunities, many of which have taught us important lessons along the way.

The most important is that diversification is a vital part of growing any business. But it’s also important that this diversification is not isolated; for instance innovation without changing the way the business thinks and acts is merely continuous improvement. This process will not create real disruptive thinking.

Diversification (or disruption) needs more than the small, incremental changes in efficiency and quality that comes with continuous improvement.

 What is needed is a dedicated focus on creating alternative models and revenues – where possible, the creation of dedicated, funded and separated thinking and teams can prove highly successful.

Disruptive thinking can be obvious in retrospect.

Disruption is obvious in retrospect but is difficult to repeat and formalise – which is what most business structures require.

Most businesses face a challenge when it comes to disruptive innovation, particularly repeating it consistently and effectively.

It is the norm that managers are promoted through the various layers of the company, where business-as-usual and control are prized, praised and rewarded. Unlike this operationally lead management, disruptive innovation – if it is being created or responded to – involves the uncertainty that is not part of existing management.

Unexpected results, inevitable issues, and a fundamental lack of control are part-and-parcel to the process…and are also the most difficult to cope with in terms of processes. But few managers are accustomed to being able to deal with the realities of leading and responding to disruption.

Disruptive innovation requires Disrupting Leadership

Arguably the most challenging characteristic of disruptive innovation is the uncertainty that it creates for managers, revenues, the business itself and in some cases the sector they are in.

Due to both local and global shifts we have seen companies being forced to experiment and introduce new technologies and business models, not just to compete, but to survive.

 One thing I’ve notice is that while most businesses are aware of the importance (and in some cases the necessity) of disruptive innovation and the require change, there is a chasm when it comes to understanding the management qualities needed to drive them.

 The role of intuition in the process

 And then there’s the hard to define piece of the decision making process – which means it is difficult to bring along the rest of the business; where decision making is made without research and compelling data for decision-making.

 The paradox is that during times of disruption, waiting for hard data to make decisions can result in failure.

 Managers need to be comfortable with whatever information they can get their hands on, using data points from potentially alternative and diverse sources, and then using intuition and experience to get to a decision.

Leaders must be OK with ambiguity, live with lack of clarity for periods of time, and be able to confront and convert those critical both internally and externally.

 Most importantly - and this cannot be under-estimated - the team needs the full support of management senior enough to intervene and remove barriers when required…for this there absolutely must be a clear process.

Finding the right people

 An area of personnel management that is challenging to get right every time is that disruptive innovators know that uncertainty comes with as much opportunity as it does risk.

 But to make this mindset practical, it is essential to push individual, group, and company comfort zones.

 Disruptive management means putting a flexible stake in the ground around ideas, and then following a set of steps that purposely challenge assumptions and rapidly pivot as many times as required.