The Upside of Disruption: The Path to Leading and Thriving in the Unknown 

Interview with Terence Mauri, HRD’s global advisory board member and the author of the upcoming Thinkers50/Wiley book, The Upside of Disruption: The Path to Leading and Thriving in the Unknown. 

Q: Your book, The Upside of Disruption, is due out on 4th September. Can you explain what you mean by “the upside of disruption” and why it’s essential for CHROs and business leaders today?

A: Change used to happen as a breeze. Now, it feels like a category-five typhoon. Industry convergence, talent scarcity, AI everywhere. When the world evolves, we must adapt, too. Yet, according to Hack Future Lab’s research: 

• 93% of CHROs expect significant AI-driven disruption over the next five years, but only 27% have the right mindsets and capabilities to respond 

• 81% of CHROs agree that they feel overwhelmed by the speed and scale of business disruption   

• 77% of CHROs believe that their organizations suffer from talent-crushing bureaucracy 

• 64% of CHROs agree that their future readiness muscle is an obstacle to boldly seizing the future 

I wrote The Upside of Disruption because the future isn’t just about tech and trends. It’s about mindsets and choices, too. According to Gallup, we are facing a global skills, productivity, and engagement crisis, with $8.8 trillion lost in productivity due to disengaged and ‘quit but stay’ employees.

Leadership is on the ballot. One of the challenges for CHROs and business leaders is that they crave the comfort of certainty; they too often miss the ‘upside’ of disruption – learning, growth, and reimagining the ‘always-done’ ways that have become obsolete.

The Upside of Disruption is rooted in the belief that the best is yet to come and that risk and reward travel together. It creates possibility in the unknown and is a hedge against a risk-averse mindset because we always overestimate the risk of trying something new and underestimate the risk of standing still.  

Q: In a recent interview with the FT, you spoke about how to deal with uncertainty and the power of “future-ready mindsets.” What are these mindsets, and how can leaders cultivate them? 

A: The Upside of Disruption is a radically human approach to eliminating outdated mindsets and assumptions about the basic building blocks of leadership, skills, and talent. The Upside of Disruption answers, “Do we continue to lead with Industrial Age mindsets or adapt to the Intelligence Age?” Stephen Hawking famously observed that ‘intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.’

In the twentieth century, organizations focused on being preservers of the status quo. Success was defined by bobs, career ladders, and return on investment. Today, leaders must become challengers of the status quo. Success is defined by skills, talent marketplaces, and return on intelligence. A helpful starting point for organizations is to evolve from cultures of conformity that reject ideas to cultures of curiosity that embrace ideas and talent that challenge the status quo. Curiosity helps us evolve, while conformity is a shortcut to inertia and stasis. 

Q: In your book, you mention that questions are the answer. Can you elaborate on why asking the right questions is crucial for navigating disruption? 

A: The late Professor Richard Feynman said, “Knowledge is having the right answers. Intelligence is asking the right questions. Wisdom is knowing when to ask the right questions.”  Questions sharpen two vastly underutilized skill sets: courage and humility. To find the upside in disruption, we must be willing to step out from a world of familiarity to a world of possibility where the reward is surprising but helpful insights and new opportunities for breakthrough growth and game-changing ideas. Questions are central to finding the upside in disruption and are the key to shifting from a ‘yes, but’ mindset to a ‘yes, and?’ one.  

What are the boldest questions you will ask this year that won’t just make you feel good but will also challenge your thinking?  Here are two examples. 

• What are our billion-dollar beliefs about the future (e.g., AI, decarbonization, talent, DEI, sustainable work)?  

• Are we protecting and prioritizing our billion-dollar beliefs? If not, why not? 

Q: The concept of “The Nutritional Value of Leadership” is fascinating. Can you explain this and how it applies to today’s leaders? 

A: Not long ago, I attended a talk by English designer Thomas Heatherwick to discuss his new book, ‘Humanise: A Maker’s Guide to Buildings Around Our World.’ Heatherwick’s studio is dedicated ‘to making the physical world around us better for everyone.’ Some of Heatherwick’s most famous designs include the ‘Vessel,’ a futuristic staircase, and the ‘Little Island,’ a place to escape from Manhattan. Next time you’re in New York, they are must-see designs. Hetherwick observed, “Do our buildings give us nutritional value and leave us feeling more alive and empowered?”  

As Heatherwick passionately argued for humanizing our buildings and starting a national conversation about it, it occurred to me that we should also have a national conversation about humanizing our leadership because, despite this age of disruptive AI and algorithms, leaders must still operate at the human scale: connection, belonging, and trust.  

The question for leaders is, ‘Does our leadership deliver nutritional value through how we honor the past, define the present, and champion the future?” Or, “Does our leadership make others feel powerless and scared of leaning into the future?”  Leaders are not being trained in leadership. It’s seen as more of an art and instinct than a repeatable set of mindsets, skills, and practices. That’s a problem because it leaves employees and their managers stuck in fear, doubt, and uncertainty; they’re not trained in courage and human skills (seeing, feeling, being, and listening to learn). They’re only trained in ‘knowing.’   

Q: You discuss the importance of “unlearning” in your book. Can you share an example of how leaders can effectively unlearn outdated practices? 

A: Hack Future Lab’s findings reveal that while most organizations recognize agility as a top strategic priority, only 15% describe themselves as having widespread agile behaviors. The agility paradox highlights the crucial role of unlearning, pushing the business outside its comfort zone, transforming risks into rewards, and driving change at the speed of the customer.

When CHROs and business leaders fail to unlearn, they become overwhelmed with obsolete working and leadership styles that slow decision-making and erode value. For example, according to Hack Future Lab, CHRO’s report, ‘1/3 of meetings are a complete waste of time’, and ‘50% of employees haven’t received 1:1 feedback in the last five weeks’. It’s time to let go of outdated “best practices” that no longer serve their purpose and are now considered ”broken practices.”  

Unlearning is the highest form of learning in a busy, distracted world and the ultimate insurance policy against Zombie Leadership (dead leadership that fails to adapt to changing circumstances) or ‘enshittification’ – a term coined by the writer Cory Doctorow to describe the slow decay in everything we do.  It is at the heart of every future-focused organization, allowing CHROs and business leaders to focus on accelerated growth and rethink outdated mindsets.

At its core, unlearning is a deliberate and collaborative leadership activity that helps us move from reactive to proactive resilience; managers update their assumptions and behaviors to make space for new learning and keep pace with change. 

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Thinkers50, the global ranking authority of leading management thinkers, has described Terence Mauri as ‘an influential and outspoken expert’ on the future of leadership.’ Mauri is an adjunct Professor and world-leading expert on the future of Leadership, AI, and Disruption. As the founder of the Future Trends think tank Hack Future Lab and a highly acclaimed author and keynote speaker, Mauri is leading a movement for leaders to sharpen their future readiness muscle and turn disruption into a tailwind for long-term growth and productivity. Learn more about Terence Mauri at www.terencemauri.com or connect on LinkedIn.