Cisco UKI

Disruption + People = Possibility

Jackie Nixon
July 30, 2015

In June 2015, 26,000 Cisco customers and partners settled into their seats to hear John Chambers address them for the final time as CEO of Cisco. There was the usual pre-speech buzz and then John’s prediction of their future.

“Forty percent of businesses in this room, unfortunately, will not exist in a meaningful way in 10 years”…..70% of companies will “attempt to go digital but only 30% of those would succeed”. He added that if he wasn’t making the audience sweat they should be!

But is it the pace of change, the disruption, or the scale of disruption that should make your palms sweat?

Disruption is talked of everywhere – but it’s not new. From the wheel to the smart phone, society constantly invents, builds and evolves.

Without giving away my age (ahem), I recall when email first entered the workplace. It was 1992 and I was working for The Labour Party in the General Election. One of my tasks was to send an email update to prospective candidates on weekly issues. It was a saga – complicated, slow and unreliable. A few years later, I was working in PR and email had evolved somewhat and was transforming business. My company moved from using faxes and couriers to communicate press releases….to email. The transformation happened within six months and the disruption resulted in a number of courier companies going out of business. (I also do recall that there were frequent conversations about a three day week but strangely that didn’t materialise).

As technology has progressed and become faster and agile the world has become smaller and more connected, and the possibilities to disrupt have multiplied.

But If we’ve been handling disruption for centuries, then maybe it’s not the disruption itself that challenges us and causes sweaty palms, but the pace and scale.

The challenge now is how we manage that pace and scale of disruption within our businesses/organisations and as individuals.

If we challenge ourselves and our teams to be comfortable with small changes then we’ll be prepared for the big stuff.

The ability to trust yourself and those around you and know that your team is capable of adapting and thriving within a changing environment takes the sweaty palms of fear and moves them to the excitement of what’s possible. We must embrace change and be comfortable with our new fast and agile environments. Business structures and technology can help but culture and people are the key.

Cisco recently invested in me and, so far, about 200 other people to take part in a seven-month course called ‘Conscious Leader’. It does what it says on the tin. Provides you with an opportunity to understand how you work, so that you can make conscious choices on how you react, influence and impact the people and organisation around you. The course covers many areas but includes some of the principles of ‘Relationship Systems Intelligence’ – in others words, how groups (from 2 upwards) operate, incorporate mindfulness, and provide one-to-one coaching. (If Carlsberg made courses…).

I learnt many things but what I know now is that I can’t control what’s coming at me. Disruption is all around us and that will never change because there will always be the need for evolution. However, I can manage my response and my impact on my team, the business, and beyond.

Think about your own team for a moment. Are they prepared for disruption?

If all the people in your organisation were conscious and comfortable with disruption, imagine what could be possible…