Disrupt Yourself

Where’s Waldo?

Last weekend, I made a quick trip to NYC.

We did the usual things: art, shop, mind-blowing restaurant.

And the less-usual: we presented vaccination cards to get into venues and saw a bar menu with a $55 old fashioned.

But the best and I’d argue the most beneficial part of NYC? People watching.

We begin to think of people in a certain way. The tiny bubbles of COVID and tightening cultural aperture of algorithms made this tunnel vision more acute.

After a while, we start to think of “how people are” or “how it is” in a certain fixed, maybe limiting, way.

Consciously stepping into active observer mode is critical.

Yeah, we’ll see that couples, commuters, dog walkers exhibit larger commonalities that open the door to those macro problems that can scale.

But we can also clue into the diversity and particulars where more nuanced marketing, targeting or features are found. The kind where more niches feel seen and heard. The kind that wakes us up from our market sleepwalking.

Google analytics don’t catch it all. Even focus groups and market research can miss because we can’t really report on ourselves accurately.

Step out of your norm to open yourself up to new modes of thinking, feeling and creating.

How to do it:

-   Go places you don’t go

-   Read things you don’t read

-   Get off your phone in public spaces

-   Eavesdrop

-   Strike up conversations with strangers

-   Go to cultural events you are not often drawn to

-   Observe people in transitional moments – during intermissions, before and after events start, in lines, in airports, waiting room, in lobbies, on rental car shuttles

-   Engage service workers in your space. People like nurses, service workers, hair dressers, gym staff, receptionists, support staff, aides and others in conversation about what they are seeing and hearing these days. These “invisible” people know a lot about human behavior and trends in your space.

If you want to surprise or disrupt someone else, occasionally you need to surprise and disrupt yourself.

The internet goes everywhere but it only goes so far.