The career application of Christensen's framework is the part most people skip and it's the most uncomfortable version precisely because it requires the same honest audit you'd run on a struggling company, applied to yourself. If your role exists because someone valued a capability that can now be delivered at a fraction of the cost, doing more of that capability with greater effort isn't a strategy. It's the exact behavior that accelerates displacement.
Adaptive Thinking is the behavior that breaks the pattern, not just adjusting methods when the current approach stops working, but asking honestly and early whether the work itself still earns its premium. The leaders and professionals who navigate this well aren't the ones who saw disruption coming. They're the ones who refused to let being well-rewarded today become a reason to stop asking what comes next.
Kinda crazy… nowadays disruption can happen in like a week. 🤣
What’s changed is how quickly what worked stops working.
You see it all the time with social and distribution.
A channel, format, or growth model works, then six months later it’s old hat and every guru pretends they saw it coming.
You can be doing what worked last quarter and still be behind.
That’s what makes all of this harder now.
The career application of Christensen's framework is the part most people skip and it's the most uncomfortable version precisely because it requires the same honest audit you'd run on a struggling company, applied to yourself. If your role exists because someone valued a capability that can now be delivered at a fraction of the cost, doing more of that capability with greater effort isn't a strategy. It's the exact behavior that accelerates displacement.
Adaptive Thinking is the behavior that breaks the pattern, not just adjusting methods when the current approach stops working, but asking honestly and early whether the work itself still earns its premium. The leaders and professionals who navigate this well aren't the ones who saw disruption coming. They're the ones who refused to let being well-rewarded today become a reason to stop asking what comes next.