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Builders once disrupted the tech world, but now they’re the gatekeepers. As their success made them risk-averse, they see any change as a threat.

Today, they’re bullies - ripe for disruption.

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This is nothing new - we’ve watched this same story play out across many industries in our lifetime, as well as by empires rising and falling throughout our history.

These days, the empires may be smaller - e.g. products, teams, startups - but the pattern is still the same. If every move needs a meeting and every idea a committee, you’re not short on talent, you’re just tangled in control.

How can we make this pattern work for us? The cycle is only getting faster, and learning to ride it may be the closest we get to control.

First, let’s understand the cycle.

The Cycle

1. Disruption

A small group introduces a breakthrough technology or business model, often due to their speed advantage and low downside exposure.

2. Consolidation

The same group, meeting success, begins to formalize - e.g. processes, structures, roadmaps, teams. Their focus shifts from experimentation towards execution.

3. Gatekeeping

The success of their product gives them control, which shifts their focus from the market towards their own needs. It becomes difficult to continue to innovate unless it is on their terms.

4. Bullying

With entrenched authority, the group starts to regard novel ideas as threatening, and moves to suppress them. A struggle for influence erupts between them and their stakeholders - whether an internal sales team or end-users themselves - leaving control as their sole objective.

5. Repeat

Those who are still nimble and focused on the market seize the opportunity to meet its needs better, ultimately disrupting yet again, and restarting the cycle.

GOTO 1;

Can we break it?

Markets giveth, markets taketh away

The cycle is caused by varying degrees of control. Early on, innovators have no control, it is gradually given to them by the market in return for producing value. Later on, they realize they are able to influence the directions the market takes, and control begins to emerge.

However, it’s a balance - too much control and you risk not meeting the needs of the market anymore. It’s hard to resist, though, especially when it impacts the bottom line - another thing earlier innovators didn’t have to worry about.

What this results in is a shift in focus - as control and value become realized, they tend to dominate attention. Further, they’re nice to think about - both control and value appeal to our ego, clearly demonstrating to the world that we made it.

You start to drink your own kool-aid. Then, of course, hubris strikes.

It’s a feature, not a bug

This cycle is life’s best solution to meeting shifting requirements. It’s highly unlikely we’ll ever do away with it - even the builders themselves are refreshed every 70 years or so. Applied over time, this leads to better outcomes, as proven out by evolution itself. Thus, it’s better to embrace it than fight it.

We can make it less bumpy, though. Initially disruption meant bitter wars and strife. These days, it is not so life-and-death, usually only causing a shift in mentality, or acquisition of new skills.

Continuing to speed up our pace of innovation and disruption should reduce the magnitude further. With less time to consolidate, changes are smaller and much less bumpy - making it easier to keep up.

So, how can we help to smooth out the road?

Embracing the Cycle

Here are three high-level ideas to get started.

• Cycle Leadership: To avoid entrenched thinking, cycle leadership between projects. This demonstrates both upward mobility as well as the idea that growth is continuous, and nobody is ever done.
• Institutionalize Experimentation: Embrace the “how might we” mentality to continuously experiment and iterate. Form hypotheses and find the lowest cost way to validate them.
• Subordinate to Metrics: Rather than following people, follow metrics - the measures that prove you’re moving in the right direction. This shifts teams from control towards collaboration, based on a set of values shared by both the market and the team.

While we can’t stop the cycle, we can certainly handle it better. As they say, in life the only constant is change. How is your organization tackling it? Are your teams builders, or bullies? I’d love to hear about your challenges and solutions.

Thanks for reading!

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