The Ways to New

Chapter 3Disruption in Practice

Disruption Methodology is a living organism that has been evolving ever since it was born. One day, in 2001, our Johannesburg agency took a radical step. It devised something called Disruption Days®. Within a few months, our entire network had followed suit. Disruption Days respect a precise schedule, with three or four exercises relating to each of the Convention, Vision, and Disruption steps. And each exercise has its matching What If questions. These run like a thread throughout every Disruption Day.

Disruption Days

Internally, we use Disruption as a strategic planning tool. And we use it with our clients in the context of Disruption Days. We spend weeks, sometimes months, preparing for these Disruption Days. And, on the actual day, people from every department (marketing, sales, public relations, research, finance and human resources) at the client's company and of every rank meet our people, also from each of our departments and from every level of our agency. Usually, about forty people in all. We disrupt hierarchical structures. We avoid top-down habits.

So reckoning on three meetings a year (an absolute minimum) in each of our two hundred offices around the world, it becomes apparent that we have arranged more than five thousand Disruption Days. Perhaps as many as ten thousand. We do not keep track. And if you consider that some twenty people from each client company attend, then at least one hundred thousand people from our client firms ...