Choosing Change: How Leaders and Organizations Drive Results One Person at a Time

CHAPTER SIX

Disruption

Balancing Challenge and Opportunity

We are continually faced by great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.

—Lee Iacocca

IN CHAPTER 1, we defined disruption at the individual level as “a problem or action that interrupts something and prevents it from continuing.” We noted that although disruptions are difficult, they can provide you with a real opportunity for personal growth—if you choose to embrace them. Simply said, leading real change in yourself requires both a disruption in your thinking and a conscious choice to use the disruption to bring about change.

Our definition of disruption also works at the organizational level, although the ways in which organizations experience disruptions are both ...