6 D's of disruption and how employees can conquer them

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The six D’s of disruption are: digitised, deceptive, disruptive, dematerialised, demonetised, democratised. Anything that becomes digitised enters the same exponential growth we see in computing. It is easy to access, share and distribute at speed. When something is digitised, its initial period of growth is deceptive, because exponential trends don't seem to grow very fast at first. The existing market for a product or service is disrupted by the new market the exponential tech creates, because digital often outperforms in effectiveness and cost. Separate physical products are removed and integrated into one.

Think about how your smartphone is now your camera, map, radio, video player. Money is increasingly removed from the equation as technology becomes cheaper, often to the point of being free. Once something is digitised, more people have access, regardless of Socio-economic status.

We are no longer looking to the future, dreaming of the DeLorean time machine, but rather, living in the now, with robo lawyers powered by AI, quantum computing powering teleportation of data, automation creating new ways of farming and blockchain technology designing new financial services models.

We must to face our changing world head on, and this means transforming the way we think by changing the way we learn.

Learning needs to be lifelong and continuous, where we constantly learn new skills and upgrade existing skills. It can no longer be event driven, taking place at a point in time and expected to sustain you throughout your working career.

Continuous learning enables us to see multiple answers to one problem and presents a mind shift from convergent to divergent thinking. Learning cannot just be about knowledge, but also the development and application of skills. It must be diverse, and be about multiple skills and centres of knowledge.

One should examine what their skillsets are, what skills they have and what skills they could have.

There is a plethora of tools out there to help you learn, there is a need to shift one’s perspective from being “house bound” to “Explorer” – this is the only way to thrive in a disruptive world.

We learn a variety of skills over the entirety of our careers, and everyone from the CEO to the receptionist should be learning new skills every day, every week, every month, every quarter and every decade. We need a new world of learning, where we learn from every source, where it is continuous and where we learn from and with others. Build, measure and communicate your skills so that you shift from just knowing, to doing.

Open up your mind to the many different resources at your fingertips.