Hiring a disruptor

Peripheral leaders who operate at the geographical and cultural margins of an organization, often see disruption coming much earlier than those at the center. The same leaders are also, research shows, most likely to come up with innovative ideas. But to the leaders at the core of the organization, the concerns of those at its periphery often seem premature and exaggerated, and their plans far too risky.

Hiring a disruptor can be a conservative move, an unconscious way to prove the power of traditions and blame someone else’s style for our irrational investment in them. Any aspiring disruptor who does not get a handle on this dynamic is at risk of being set up. Picking an outsider to deliver, or more precisely embody, that message makes it easier to dismiss the message.  

Gianpiero Petriglieri writing in the Harvard Business Review