Disruption Is Personal

You have to be alert to the moment when you are confronted with the choice to embrace or resist change. It can sneak up on you. You may not even be aware that you are making the choice.

My first real job after school was writing obituaries at a daily newspaper. We worked on manual typewriters and passed around scissors and glue pots to cut and paste our copy. The newsroom was painted the drabbest possible green-grey, made even duller by the stains from years of cigarette smoke. The reporters sat at unassigned metal desks arranged classroom style; the editor’s desk was in front, facing the reporters. The obit desk was off to the side, with a view of all the give-and-take in the room. I was 22.

It wasn’t long before I left the obit desk and joined the reporters, first covering cops and fire, then the courts, and eventually general assignment and features. Although I was at the paper for only five years, finding stories, trying to tell them honestly and well, listening, looking, and learning all set a framework that I still carry with me. In many ways, those years prepared me for the unpredictable professional journey that followed as the media business was disrupted by technology, a changing relationship with readers, and short-term strategic thinking.

My early training taught me to be open to the unexpected, to try to look around corners. It taught me not to be too taken with any of my stories, sentences, or even word choices, as they are all vulnerable to editing–both for better and worse. It taught me that even my best articles would live, at best, 24 hours before being abandoned on a vacant bus seat. And it taught me that no matter what how big or small of a story I had today, I’d have another go at it tomorrow.

Those tomorrows can come at you fast. At 22 I had no idea what lay ahead, but I could plainly see that whatever it was, some would embrace it and some would be left aside. Disruption was not a term of art back then, but our ancient newsroom could not keep the modern world out. Near the end of my tenure at the paper, our manual typewriters were replaced with a network of publishing terminals. To get us ready, we each wrote a practice article and then edited one other’s stories. I wrote a brief piece, and soon a story appeared in my queue for editing. It was written by a chain-smoking night editor whose complexion matched the color of our walls. I took a look and sent it back to him unedited. He had written his own obituary.

I told you that story once before as a warning that you have to be alert to the moment when you are confronted with the choice to embrace or resist change. It can sneak up on you. You may not even be aware that you are making the choice. There is now another lesson here, too: It is not just business models or companies that get disrupted. Disruption is personal.

I’m no longer 22, and disruption is the norm. I’ve been on the right side of the change more often than not, thanks to a combination of luck, opportunity, and what some might call a misguided sense of confidence. And I’ve been hurt by disruption, too, usually because I’ve forgotten some of those formative lessons from that drab newsroom. Win or lose, one thing does not change: Tomorrow is a new day. There is a new story to write. Always.

A related note: I’m leaving The Economist this month as part of a larger set of cuts. More on that here.