Be Disruptive

For most of our lives, we are taught to be compliant. 

We learn it early. Sit in your seat. Follow the instructions. Colour inside the lines. Wait your turn. Do what is expected. As we get older, the language changes, but the message often doesn’t. Fit in. Be professional. Don’t rock the boat. This is how things are done here. 

Compliance has a purpose. We need rules, shared expectations and social norms. But I also think we have become so comfortable with compliance that we sometimes mistake disruption for a problem. 

And I happen to be a big fan of disruption. 

Being disruptive does not mean being destructive, disrespectful or difficult for the sake of it. Disruption, at its best, is the willingness to question something we have accepted simply because it is familiar. It is asking why? when everyone else has stopped asking. It is looking at the status quo and wondering whether there might be another way. 

That mindset has shaped much of my own life and career. 

I have conversations that are not always comfortable. I work with organizations on leadership, communication and culture, often stepping directly into the divides people would rather avoid. Generational differences. Communication breakdowns. Conflicting expectations. Different identities, experiences and ways of working. 

There is a reason I call myself The Divide Guide. 

It is not about eliminating those differences or convincing everyone to think the same way. My vision is about harnessing difference – helping people recognize that the very things creating friction can also contain information, perspective and opportunity. 

That requires disruption. 

It means questioning whether “professional” has only one definition. It means challenging assumptions about what a good leader looks or sounds like. It means asking whether a process exists because it still works or because nobody has questioned it lately. 

Being willing to disrupt those assumptions has created opportunities in my own life that compliance probably never would have. It has pushed me onto stages, into industries and into conversations I might not have imagined for myself. More importantly, it has made me curious. I have become much more interested in what I don’t know than in proving what I already do. 

You don’t need to overhaul your entire life to become more disruptive, either. Start small. 

Disrupt your routine. Take a different route home. Stop at the shop you normally drive past. Try a new restaurant or cuisine. Visit art alley instead of looking at it on social media. Small disruptions remind us of what it feels like to move outside the familiar – and that unfamiliar does not automatically mean bad. 

Then disrupt where you get your information. Read something written from a perspective different from your own. Talk to someone whose experiences do not mirror yours. Listen to an argument you disagree with long enough to understand how someone arrived there. Exposure does not require agreement. We can understand a perspective without adopting it. 

Finally, bring some disruption to work. 

The next time you hear, “That’s how we’ve always done it,” get curious. Why do we do it this way? What problem was this process originally designed to solve? Does that problem still exist? Who does this system work well for? Who struggles with it? What might happen if we tried something different? 

Those questions are not insubordination. They are where innovation starts. 

And disruption matters beyond our individual lives. Communities need people willing to imagine something different. Workplaces need employees who notice opportunities others have normalized away. Families and friendships benefit when we become curious about perspectives other than our own. Progress has rarely come from everyone agreeing that the existing way is perfectly fine. 

That is why I am excited to be part of DisruptHR Windsor on September 23rd, presented by The Job Shoppe.