In the early days of my career at Oracle, “disruption” was a buzzword so overused it became almost meaningless. We talked about it like it was the holy grail. If you weren’t disrupting something—your process, your product, your industry—you weren’t leading.
So when my friend and change thought leader Greg Satell published an article called We Need to Break the Disruption Mindset, it stopped me in my tracks—not because it was radical, but because I agreed.
Greg’s work, including his book Cascades, is thoughtful, evidence-based, and deeply grounded in how change actually works. And in this latest piece, he challenges the cult of disruption that has, for too long, masqueraded as innovation.
Uber disrupted the taxi industry. Airbnb disrupted the hotel industry. Apple disrupted the music industry. The disruption mindset—especially in the tech world—got popular, and then it got conflated with leadership itself. Disruption became an excuse to skip over the hard parts of strategic change. It became transformation theater. The big launch, the reorg, the all-hands with the inspirational keynote—but no follow-through. No real shift in behavior. No results unless you got lucky.
Greg’s article also spotlights something I talk about often: change fatigue. A 2014 PwC report revealed that 65% of corporate employees experienced it. Since then, that number has only gone up. A Gartner study showed that our capacity for change halved during the pandemic. We are more exhausted than ever.
And guess what: disruption amplifies that fatigue. It drains morale. It triggers resistance. It punishes people for not being “change agents” while refusing to create space for their valid concerns. You can’t mandate buy-in. You have to earn it.
We joke in my family that we have to do “change management” with our kids when blending households. Why? Because people—even kids—need time to process change. They need clarity, they need purpose, and they need to feel safe.
Disruption skips over that. We chase urgency because urgency makes us feel heroic. But as Greg rightly says, the dumbest thing anyone ever said about change is that you start with a burning platform. If it’s truly urgent, people already know.
What Actually Works
So what’s the alternative?
Greg advocates for pulling people into change rather than pushing them into it. Start small. Build momentum. Find the early adopters—the people who want to lead the charge—and let them help create a movement. Change isn’t about blowing things up. It’s about aligning around common ground and empowering people to move forward with you.
And here’s where I’ll add my own two cents: culture is built in the daily behaviors that reinforce your purpose and deliver real results. Disruption isn’t a strategy. It’s a tactic. And it’s not always the right one.
Leaders, the next time you feel pressure to light a fire under your team, take a beat. Ask yourself: Are we pushing change, or pulling people into it?
Read Greg’s full article here and check out his book Cascades. It’s a must-read for anyone serious about leading real change.
Elsewhere In Culture
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-04-15/starbucks-barista-dress-code-heres-the-look
In today’s world of work, the way we show up—literally—matters. Starbucks’ new dress code policy may seem like a minor uniform update, but it reflects a deeper tension between centralized brand control and the authentic culture employees want to build on the ground. By streamlining barista attire to support a unified customer experience, leadership is doubling down on brand consistency. But culture isn’t built from the top down—it’s built from the experiences of the people living it every day. When baristas say they feel unheard, overworked, and now burdened with an unwanted dress code change, that’s not a uniform issue. That’s a culture issue.
If the goal is to create a welcoming “third place,” that starts with creating a workplace culture where employees feel trusted, respected, and heard. Mandating specific clothing to simplify the customer experience—while ignoring long-standing employee concerns about pay, hours, and autonomy—sends a conflicting message about what’s actually valued. Culture isn’t what you wear—it’s how you lead, how you listen, and how you respond. Starbucks wants to foster connection. Great. That starts behind the counter, not across it.
Victor Lazarte is saying the quiet part out loud. While most leaders still dress up AI in buzzwords like “augmentation” and “productivity gains,” he’s going straight to the core: AI is replacing people—and fast. And he’s right to name lawyers and recruiters as two of the most vulnerable. These are industries built around structured processes, high-volume information parsing, and expensive labor. That’s catnip for AI. But here’s what’s missing from the conversation: replacing tasks is not the same as replacing value. AI can read résumés. It can draft legal briefs. What it can’t do—yet—is build trust, spot character, or interpret human nuance at scale. That’s the new premium skillset.
If you’re leading a team right now, don’t panic. But do get real. Workplace culture has to evolve in parallel with capability. That means building cultures of adaptability, not just efficiency. Because when jobs shrink and companies get smaller, what’s left are people with higher emotional intelligence, stronger collaboration skills, and a culture that drives outcomes, not just output. The rise of AI shouldn’t be a race to cut headcount—it should be a wake-up call to rethink how we define value in the workplace. Culture will be the differentiator between the companies that thrive with AI and the ones that get replaced right alongside their recruiters.