Guarding Against Disruption
Through this brief article, we are sharing the 11 main sources of disruption that organizations should monitor. Many organizations fail to see disruption coming before it’s too late, but by monitoring these sources, it is possible to anticipate disruption and ensure the organization is well-placed to respond.
About the 11 Macro Sources of Disruption
Every organization fears disruption. In aiming to anticipate disruption, many managers only focus on known threats, ignoring unfamiliar macro trends that often forebode disruption. To better understand disruption, leaders should monitor these 11 external macro sources:
- Wealth distribution
- Education
- Infrastructure
- Government
- Geopolitics
- Economy
- Public health
- Demographics
- Environment
- Media and telecommunications Technology
Leaders should seek to identify convergences, contradictions, and inflections in each of these areas, and should extrapolate the impact of any events to understand the potential disruptions to their organization. The massive disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which impacted practically every business, is an example of this framework in action. In this case, organizations actively monitoring public health trends were better placed to respond.