Ask HR for advice on how to deal with a disruptive employee / team member and you will get a very different response to that from Organisation Development (OD).That’s because a Professionally Disruptor is not a person whose inappropriate behave prevents others from getting on with their work but a radical/innovator who wants to change the way the organisation does things and the things the organisation does. This is a business process know as Disruptive Innovation. And Disruptive Innovation is being championed as away of meeting the post COVID 19 challenges.

This is more than simply using technology to be more efficient or reduce costs. It’s more than changing working practices, streamlining processes, flattening management structures, increasing spans of responsibility or introducing a matrix management model. The purists will tell you it’s about small startup organisations using the latest technology in an innovative way to creat a new market rather than compete with big well established player in the existing market. An example frequently given is Netflix.

Originally Netflix offered videos through the post to movie buffs this was not a threat to the giant Blockbuster organisation who offered the latest releases to costumers who walked in off the street. Then Netflix used the internet to put their films on line and everything changed. They disrupted the market.

However since then the the term disruptive has become more loosely defined to mean radically changing the way an organisation does things and the things it does. People in HR and Organisational Development (OD) who help organisations do this are Professional Disruptors.