Colouring Outside The Lines: Be a Positive Disruptor

Episode show notes

We’re raised to stick to the safety of the path of least resistance, and while there’s comfort in security, you’re most likely getting in the way of your own progress.

The pursuit of security is an endeavour of complacency and compliance, so this week we’re encouraging you to become a positive disruptor - start colouring outside the lines and you’ll free yourself from the constraints holding you back.

The new year is a perfect opportunity for many of us to re-evaluate where we are, and where we wish to be; Find out how to break away from your conditioning, ignore the ‘real world’, and accelerate your career on episode 18 of The Company Doctor.

Key takeaways from this episode:

Become a positive disruptor

Be self-aware of being conditioned

Action cures fear

Quotes & Highlights

“A lot of us are conditioned from a very young age for either good things or bad things. We're conditioned to be polite and to be respectful, and they're really good things. But we're also conditioned to finish our dinner, speak when spoken to, and that makes us what we are today.” - 3:00 - Gary Gamp

“It can be quite exciting to stand back from what you know and tread new waters. Be a bit of a Madonna, reinvent yourself, and accelerate. The way to do that is to think about what would you do if there were no constraints? Would you do anything differently? That's my starting point.” - 4:25 - Gary Gamp

“The pursuit of security equals complacency. That's why people talk about entrepreneurs taking more risks. I’m not saying we should throw away and take lots of risks, but innovation comes from taking risks. Therefore, if you want to move forward or change what you're doing, you’ve got to change what you're doing.” - 6:30 - Gary Gamp

“I don't want to paint the picture that I'm a maverick and I'm just going to say no and break all the rules. That’s why colouring outside the lines is a great way to describe it, because mainly it's inside the lines, but every now and then it's okay to go outside. If you do it, you do it politely and constructively, and you're trying to bring people with you anyway.” - 9:50 - Gary Gamp

“If you design what the end state of your goals will look like and design what people will be saying about it, write headlines about what would happen if you were successful doing it. What would it be like? Then you've taken yourself on an emotional journey, and then you might connect better to it. ” - 16:10 - Gary Gamp

“I was with a group of managers yesterday, and I asked them a question: Knowing what you know now, if you went back and started your job again what would you do differently in the first 30 days? There were some amazing things coming out, and I said, ‘You know what? You could do that now. You don't have to start a new job to do that. Why don’t you do it now?’” - 22:50 - Gary Gamp

“Agile, disruptive project management harkens back to Will Perkins's episode, talking about the Deliveroo product. They're a similar company where they'll say they’ll do things incrementally. It's better to get something out, then we'll fix it as we go along, rather than just hanging around to wait for this final unicorn of a product.” - 26:30 - George Clode

Episode keywords

TheCompanyDoctor, podcast, podcasting, business, business podcast, CEO, CMO, COO, CFO, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, networking, marketing, disruption, positive disruptor, outside the box, progress, career opportunities, social conditioning, agile project management,

Links & references

Gary Gamp: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garygamp

George Clode: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgeclode