CHAPTER 5

DISRUPTION IS A JOKE

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

—MAHATMA GANDHI¹

He’s been called “The Greatest Business Tycoon of India,” “The Man Who Saw Tomorrow,” and “The Father of Indian Industrialization.”

By the numbers, he’s the world’s single greatest philanthropist, having given to others more than the next three contestants—Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and George Soros—combined. He founded one of the world’s grandest lodgings, the Taj Mahal Hotel. His foresight allowed India to become Britain’s main importer of cotton, overtaking America as the world’s leading cotton distributor, when he started an Indian entrepreneurial uprising, right under the nose of the British occupation.

He traveled the world to commandeer the greatest inventors and invite them to his home country, convinced the entire cotton industry to move thousands of miles away from the ports, instituted novel human resources benefits (like retirement and medical plans) for his employees, and was present at the 1885 Indian National Congress.

His name was Jamsetji Tata, and his résumé reads like an Indian version of Henry Ford’s and George Washington’s put together.

The family name “Tata” is the Indian equivalent of the Rockefellers. Tata Industries owns companies in almost every category imaginable, from airlines to automobiles, from chemicals to communications, and from Starbucks partnerships to sports teams.

This all resulted from the Tata patriarch, and our next Bold One, Jamsetji.²

With no deep pedigreed family name to speak of, no trust fund, and no training, Jamsetji rose from working in a small, almost nonexistent family business, to founding one that upset the world’s economy.

If you want to understand Jamsetji, know this: From his poor upbringing through his eventual richest-man-in-the-country status, he remained a man of the world, traveling to as many countries as he could. China, Canada, the United States, Great Britain, Hong Kong, Syria, Morocco, Egypt, Russia, France . . . the list goes on. To understand this innovator, you’ve got to travel with him. So let’s head to Hong Kong, 1859.

His father had a small opium outfit in India, and he sent Jamsetji overseas to better understand their relationship with their Chinese business partners. While there, Jamsetji discovered something far more profitable than opium: cotton. His disruptive hunch told him this would become the economic game changer his home country needed. He returned home with an untested but passionate theory: Indians could revolutionize their own cotton production and distribute it across the globe, thereby loosening the economic stranglehold of the British, who were occupying India.

If British occupation had taught him anything, it was that the West was willing to pay for what it wanted. India had the homegrown population necessary for a vibrant workforce, the ports required for global distribution, and plenty of land (used mostly for opium) to grow cotton. India was set up to be the cotton king of the world. The country just needed to wiggle out from under the British thumb.

Perhaps as the “pilot” to his future endeavors, Jamsetji purchased a bankrupt Indian mill, which he turned around and sold for a profit within two years.

Game on.

By then, Bombay was producing a sizable minority of the known world’s cotton, and due to its location on the west coast of India, had easy access to well-established ports for international distribution. There were already 15 mills running in Bombay. To most, this was the obvious city to headquarter a renegade cotton empire. But Jamsetji saw it differently. He wanted to set up his new business venture thousands of kilometers inland, away from the ports, in Nagpur. His counterparts scoffed—it would take four months just for the arrival of the needed equipment—which would have to come from the West, travel to an Indian port, then be pulled by bullocks (by oxcart) all the way to Nagpur. “What a bad idea,” I can almost imagine them saying to themselves under their breath.

But Jamsetji was relentless, and his inland Empress Mill was born. It became one of the most profitable companies in the country, laying the foundation of the iconic Tata Group, according to Think School,³ which goes on to say one of my favorite lines about Jamsetji: “Even then, Jamsetji didn’t stop.”

He launched a successful iron company and set up a world-class science- and technology-based Indian university, all of which helped India claim financial liberation from the grip of colonial Britain. He also started the Taj Mahal Hotel. Legend has it he was denied entry to a fancy Indian lodging, because he was Indian, not British. So he decided he’d build one of the world’s greatest hotels for his own people. And he did.

Get what was going on? Here was some Indian upstart who had some unrealistic, optimistic belief in his ability to just start his own company, without appeasing the British powers that be. Then he moved his mill away from the ports. Every move this guy made seemed ridiculous.

To the occupying British, I imagine Jamsetji’s ideas probably sounded like one big joke. What they didn’t know? They were the punchline.

Jamsetji’s impact can be summarized by what Lord Curzon, the British viceroy of India, said about him when he passed:

No Indian of the present generation had done more for the commerce and industry of India.

IT’S A JOKE (UNTIL IT’S NOT)

Disruption always begins as hilarious, fringe, and, sometimes, almost pathetic. I remember going over to my friend Ryan’s house when I was younger. In those days, only the really blessed kids had four controllers. Most (if they were even lucky enough to have a console) had one controller, or maybe two. Ryan wasn’t one of the super-blessed kids, and he hadn’t exactly learned about sharing yet. So I’d tell my mom, “Hey, Mom. I’m going to Ryan’s house to watch him play video games.” I was trying to be funny, but watching someone play video games was almost depressing. It was better than doing chores, but it still made me want to scream “When is it my turn?!”

If you’d have told young Shawn that one day there would be an entire company dedicated to streaming video games so others could watch, I’d have laughed. If you’d have told me that not only would that company exist, but it would be worth billions, I would have thought you were certifiable. But, Twitch is a platform designed so that people can tune in and watch other people play video games. In 2014, Amazon bought the platform for almost $1 billion,⁴ and it now has 140 million daily active users.⁵

Disruption always starts out as some seemingly silly idea. Most people miss the wave, because it was disguised as laughable. Think about automobiles, SMS messaging, Airbnb, or Creators. Someone, somewhere—maybe even you—resisted:

AUTOMOBILES. “These ‘auto-carriages’ are slower than my horse!”

SMS MESSAGING. “Why would people text when they could call?”

AIRBNB. “Right—so people will just show up at a stranger’s home and live there?”

CREATORS. “You videotape yourself in your bedroom, and post it for strangers to watch?”

All these comments have some logical merit. But who’s laughing now? Disruptors see the future and bring it into the present. Others think, Is this person crazy? But it’s not the disruptor who’s crazy—it’s everyone else who passes on the investment, misses the wave, or doesn’t comprehend what’s happening around them.

Somehow we’ve made it cool to be openly cynical. We think we appear smarter when we’re reflexively dismissive of new, disruptive ideas.

There’s a clip I like to show in many of my speeches; it’s a 1995 scene with David Letterman and Bill Gates. They’re discussing the internet, a novel technology few understood at the time. Letterman—and almost everyone else alive in 1995—didn’t get why it was going to be such a big deal. Letterman said that others had mentioned that the internet would be useful because it could help you broadcast a baseball game. To that, Letterman had an easy comeback:

“Does radio ring a bell?” he said. The audience laughed hysterically.

“But,” Gates noted, “you can listen to the baseball game whenever you want.”

“Do tape recorders ring a bell?” Letterman shot back.

Anytime people dismiss what they see as silly, they’re set up to be the punchline of their own joke.

In the rest of the chapter, we’re going to determine how we can have the last laugh. Here’s what you need to know:

1.   ONLY CONTRARIANS WIN BIG. Even if we’re right, conforming to society or common thought processes drives little (if any) real value, and certainly no true innovation. To drive the most value, you must go against the crowd and, simultaneously, be right in your contrarian ideas.

2.   IT ONLY TAKES ONE HIT. You might be wrong a lot more than you’re right. But the one time you’re right will pay off big. You need to swing at the ball, often and fiercely, in order to get a hit.

3.   YOU’LL HAVE THE LAST LAUGH. Typically, we’re far too worried about what others think about us. So, we fail to keep our eye on the prize that we know is worth fighting for. We must learn how to let the opinions of others roll off our backs.

If we’re going to be disruptive, we’ve got to keep a thick skin, and trust me, it’s so worth a few laughs here and there. Because in the fringes, the silly ideas, the contrarian outlooks, have all the value.

ONLY CONTRARIANS WIN BIG

Peter Weinberg, global head of development at LinkedIn’s B2B Institute, talks about the Contrarian Matrix, a matrix he divides into four quadrants dependent on two variables: (1) You can be either right or wrong about where the world’s going, and (2) regardless of whether you’re correct or not, you can either go with the consensus or be a contrarian.⁶ Figure 5.1 shows how the Contrarian Matrix breaks down.

FIGURE 5.1 The Contrarian Matrix

Notice the checkmark in the box at the bottom right? That’s because Weinberg says that’s the only quadrant that holds any value.

If you’re wrong and you go with the consensus, no one cares, because the whole world was wrong. You’re safe—wrong, but safe.

If you’re right and go with the consensus, you gain a little, but you miss out on huge gains; follow general stock market advice, and you’ll make an 8 percent return on average.

If you’re wrong and contrarian, people will laugh. That’s a real bummer, because not only will people get the first laugh, but you’ll never get the last. (We’ll talk more about how to deal with this later.)

Only by being both right and contrarian can you change the game and discover untapped value. If you bet against the market and you’re right, you’ll earn 10 times your investment. If all the others pass on an employee because they don’t recognize their unique gifts, you stand to mine unrealized potential. If all the others get a degree in technology, but you go into art, you’ll be one of a few artists who can corner the market, commanding high prices.

I think there are three ways to be the contrarian.

1. BE THE “TENTH MAN”

This idea of the contrarian is so important, an entire country uses it as a self-defense mechanism.

While watching World War Z with Brad Pitt, audiences around the globe learned about Israel’s supposed “Tenth Man Rule.” Analysts have debated whether this is an official policy of the real State of Israel, but regardless, the lesson remains. Supposedly, after the 1973 Yom Kippur War (where Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel during its holiest day),⁷ Israel realized that it hadn’t taken the warning signs seriously enough. Collectively, the people in the government had missed signals that could have allowed them to prepare better for what eventually materialized. As a result, something akin to a “Tenth Man Rule” supposedly came about. The idea as explained in the movie is that if nine leaders in a row agree on a course of action, the tenth, by default, must disagree. This leader must take a “devil’s advocate” position, just to challenge incumbent thinking. By taking up a contrarian point of view, the tenth man is able to immunize the group against groupthink and open up everyone’s eyes to the broader possibilities.^8,9,10 If everyone else dismisses a possible idea because it’s too outlandish, the tenth man will speak up for this contrarian point of view, forcing the group to consider the “what if” scenarios.

If you were always asking, “What are we missing?” you might hear the new employee’s ideas with a different set of ears. Sure, they’re inexperienced, and they’re talking endlessly about some new technology, but maybe they’re on to something?

With a tenth man attitude, you’ll be more likely to listen in as the marketplace pushes new ideas; the next time someone says that a wave is coming, you may be able to believe them, just for a moment. With a tenth man attitude, you won’t fall prey to consensus in investing in career choices. Almost assuredly, by playing devil’s advocate, if there is any value to be found in the contrarian’s point of view on any topic, you’ll have at least considered it.

Always be willing to ask yourself and your team:

WHAT ARE WE MISSING? Maybe the next product, geography, or marketing campaign seems obvious, but for a second, take the opposing position and push back.

WHAT IF WE’RE WRONG? When your whole team agrees with something, push back. Pit yourself against groupthink for a moment to explore the alternative.

WHAT IF THEY’RE RIGHT? Don’t be quick to laugh today. Be quick to listen and learn. Maybe someone’s idea sounds too far-fetched, but those are the ones that always catch people (and countries) by surprise. As the controversial figure Jordan Peterson says, “Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t.”¹¹

2. START OUT “CREEPY”—IT’S A PREREQUISITE

Innovation typically sneaks up on us. We all live in our safe little castles. We’re fortified with traditional thinking, with an echo chamber that continually reinforces what we hope is true, that we’ve got it all figured out. Our castles of traditionalism are set on hilltops, built out of rock, with guards in the towers. We look out and casually shoot down any new idea that threatens our psychological safety net. But disruption will fly overhead in a jet, or climb up the back end, scaling the impossible cliff, or crawl up from underground and then pop up in the town square. You can’t keep it out.

Disruption will always find a way, because it lurks in the darkness. It creeps up in the mist to ambush the status quo with a surprising knife in the back.

I remember when Facebook introduced the newsfeed. Until then, you could “Facebook-stalk” people, but you did it by clicking on their profile and then scanning their wall of information. But when the newsfeed came out, it amalgamated everything every single one of your friends did, all in one place. Nothing was hidden. In one glance, I knew when friends broke up, got together, or changed their views on religion. I knew what everyone said, did, liked, clicked on, or joined, all at the same time. It brought social media stalking to a whole new level.

That level of transparency was creepy, wild, and new. Now it’s the standard way we consume content on any platform, even in news or at work. Rewind 20 years ago, and one of the main “problems” with Amazon was that no one thought people would feel comfortable allowing a website to store their credit card information. Tracking friends and family with Find My iPhone, disappearing photos on Snapchat, coworking with people from different companies, meeting online in your own home for work, taking public transportation, buying centralized food from a grocery store instead of a farm—it was all weird, at first.

Be on the lookout for those creepy trends, so you can capitalize on them. Do that by:

•   PAYING ATTENTION TO WHAT MAKES PEOPLE UNCOMFORTABLE. Listen to the people around you or online. What makes people the most uncomfortable today will become tomorrow’s disruption. One of my video editors once said that “TikTok was cringy, and I would never be on it,” but now, she posts on TikTok almost every day.

•   JUMPING ON FAST TRENDS. Develop your innovation muscle by experimenting and trying the newest products and technologies. From Product Hunt, to Reddit, to Twitter, you can find people that are making big leaps in various industries.

3. RECONSIDER WHAT’S “OBVIOUSLY” WRONG

The leaders of the legendary Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm—who have invested in such wins as Skype, Coinbase, Roblox, and Slack—have a simple trick they use to find genius ideas. After a day of pitches, they stop and ask, “OK, what was the obviously bad idea that was actually a good idea?”

Genghis Khan, one of the most feared and ruthless conquerors in history, offers a masterclass in bad ideas that were actually good ideas. Khan’s armies were known for their unbelievable skill and prowess when it came to both riding horses and shooting arrows. He made it mandatory for all male children to have exceptional archery and horsemanship skills. One of the most unorthodox and difficult moves was being able to shoot targets while riding backward. At first glance, this looks like a suicide job: You can’t even see where you’re going! However, this tactic was particularly effective, as it would give the perception that the Mongols would be fleeing away; yet they would still be shooting down their enemies. His obviously bad ideas helped him conquer more land than any other leader did in world history.

It’s easy to dismiss things that are clearly unconventional, and society’s made a game out of looking smart by being cynical. But often what we’re so quick to dismiss becomes central to our lives. At first it was clearly a bad idea. Later we’re wondering how we missed it.

When you’re willing to step into the obviously wrong mindset, no matter how laughable it immediately seems, you may find a gold mine of hidden insights. I’m not sure there’s a true “hack” to innovation, but if there were, it would be to constantly ask yourself, “What’s the obviously bad idea that’s a hidden good idea?”

IT ONLY TAKES ONE HIT

The inherent issue with the Contrarian Matrix is that you must always start out as a contrarian. You must first risk going against the consensus. Ominously, you may still be incorrect, in which case the joke was always on you. Clearly, the consensus isn’t always wrong, right?

Just because an idea is trumpeted by the masses doesn’t mean it’s wrong. But the important thing to remember is that you can only drive value when you’re a contrarian and you’re right. If you’re a betting person, you should bet against the crowd as much as possible, without totally alienating yourself.

Jeff Bezos is famous for disrupting the way Americans shop for everything. What he’s less famous for are his flops. Here’s a snapshot of his absolute failures:

•   Crucible (a $60 million video game platform flop)

•   LivingSocial (after Amazon invested $175 million and faced multiple lawsuits, it quite literally gave the company to Groupon)

•   Pets.com ($50 million failed investment)

•   Kozmo.com ($60 million failed investment)

•   Amazon Destinations, Amazon Auctions, zShops, Amazon Local register, Amazon Test Drive, Amazon WebPay, . . .

To summarize, as Bezos told the folks at the Business Insider Ignition conference: “I’ve made billions of dollars of failures at Amazon.com.” Bezos has fallen on his face—hard. But countering, he’s also said, “A single big winning bet can more than cover the cost of many losers.”¹² In other words, one grand slam outweighs dozens of strikeouts.

Being a contrarian is a prerequisite to disruption. You must be willing to be the joke once, twice, or even 10 times before you ever get a hit. And then if you want to keep getting hits, you must keep striking out. Not everyone has the stomach for such a failure rate. But, as Bezos pointed out, the alternative is that we can all get caught off guard one day, surprised by a disruption in our lives, careers, or business, and then be forced into a one-shot Hail Mary to save everything.

Maybe you’re a quantitative analyst and you’re sensing that the world will soon shift to a higher dependence on qualitative analysis. What could you do to be on the front lines of that change, instead of being swept away by it? You could experiment with a marriage of quantitative and qualitative analysis, or perhaps you could discover a way to pool qualitative opinions and turn them into data. Your first idea may not work, but if you disrupt your own role before the market does, you’ll stand to gain, and you won’t be forced to learn a new bag of tricks all at once. In fact, you might just be the one creating that bag of new tricks.

TRY TO GET YOURSELF FIRED

Here’s a contrarian habit I created when I worked at Deloitte: I would walk into work every single day and ask this question:

What can I do to get myself fired today?

I didn’t do anything violent or illegal, but I wanted to make a dangerous move in a positive direction that would create massive action. I wanted to build my innovation muscle so I had enough swings to get a hit. Here’s what I found—I never got fired. You won’t either.

Try to get yourself fired, find out that it won’t happen, and you’ll be set up for the next big thing. Because, here’s the deal: hits are your job. In the end, it’s all of our jobs to create a smash hit.

WHAT WILL PEOPLE SAY?

As a South Asian and second-generation immigrant, I heard the following saying countless times growing up (if you’re a second-generation immigrant in North America, you’ve heard it too):

What will people say?

I’ve never seen four words crush an entire generation of young people more than those have.

I have seen that questions destroy the potential careers of athletes, creatives, and artists, block potential marriages, and keep people in relationships they wanted to leave. The immigrant community often celebrates the slow and steady. So, they encourage each other to choose law over acting, break up with someone for being in a different social status, or choose medicine as a career over athletics.

Regardless of your heritage, you’ve probably heard that saying as well, or at least felt its impact in your own life. What others will think of us holds us back. As an added punch, this question often arises just before a soon-to-be Bold One is about to take their first step into disruption, out of the status quo; they don’t have any clout, conviction, credibility, or confidence yet, so their defenses are down.

I have a few ideas on how to fortify yourself against this dream-killing question:

•   PRACTICE ACCEPTING TROLLS AND THEIR COMMENTS. People will laugh at you, but remember, everyone’s a comedian, until it’s time to be funny. Lighten up. Laugh at your own failures too. Embrace the trolls, and turn their negativity into something funny. Compliment them even; because remember, you’ll get the last laugh.

•   KEEP GOING. Others will doubt you. The best way to prove the doubters wrong is to increase your momentum. The very moment someone doubts you, or you fail, or you hear the dreaded “What will people say?” question, take immediate and decisive action. Don’t let their skepticism seep into your conscious.

Back in Edmonton, my Canadian school had what most schools have: a valedictorian, a salutatorian, and a class president. I wasn’t any of those, but I was selected to be one of the three class historians. To me, it was prestigious work.

Into my final year, I put my heart and soul into my historian role. With my three colleagues, Rahul, Jameel, and Michael, we created an elaborate video performance for graduation. The work consumed me. My mother kept asking, “Why are you spending so much time working on that computer?”

I tried to explain to her how important this project was to me, my cohistorians, and the school, but she just didn’t get it. Until graduation.

When the big day came, the Jubilee Theater, which seats about 2,400 people, was packed with students, family members, and loved ones. It was the perfect setting for parents (particularly immigrant parents) to show off how intelligent their children are. The valedictorian gave her speech, the class president probably read a quote, and the principal tried to inspire. But you know what the talk of the day was?

Our historian video performance.

My team murdered it.

I couldn’t have been prouder with our product, or the response. Over 2,000 people were teary-eyed, everyone laughed, and the compliments rolled in all night.

Oh, and my parents finally understood. They were ecstatic. The praise and the attention from the evening became a defining moment for my adult life. My team’s success was so infectious and penetrating, that today I essentially do the same thing with my speeches—offer life-size media-rich presentations that I (and my family) can be immensely proud of.

If you want to inspire, it doesn’t hurt to show some wins. You’ll be a joke at first. In fact, if you aren’t, you might not be thinking big enough. You’ll need some boldness to step into the unknown. But somewhere along the way, you’ll need to convince others. And you do that by showing them. Fight against the “What will people say?” mentality, and move forward with your conviction.

JAMSETJI’S LAST LAUGH

Jamsetji Tata died in 1904. When he did, he left behind the beginning of an empire. Later, in 1930, Mahatma Gandhi would help inspire the peaceful end of British occupation. Famously, the last British occupying troops left from India’s Gateway to India, a monument right across the plaza from Jamsetji’s Taj Mahal Hotel—the same one he built out of spite. Now, every day, guests of the world-famous Taj Mahal Palace (the hotel changed its name in 2003) can stare at the monument dedicated to the end of imperialism and the beginning of a self-ruled, modern nation.

But the irony gets better. Tata’s great-grandson, Ratan Tata, who rose through the ranks of the Tata companies, eventually became chairman of his family’s empire in 1991. Under his leadership, Tata purchased three British companies: Tetley, Jaguar Land Rover, and Anglo-Dutch Corus Group.

The man who used innovation to upend imperialism begat a descendant who, through a global free market, placed British enterprises under Indian ownership. Who got the last laugh? Remember:

Disruption is a joke. Until the joke’s on them.

SECRETS OF THE BOLD ONES