What successful disruptors have in common: frameworks for manufacturing luck

Executive overview

Disruptors like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs aren't simply lucky — they manufacture serendipity through repeatable behaviours. Mike Maddock, innovation consultant and author of Plan D, has spent his career as an "entrepreneurial anthropologist" studying what these people share.

Most disruptors have three or four identifiable superhero powers they lean into consistently. Those powers can be observed, learned, and applied by anyone.

Disruption is not a personality trait — it is a set of learnable frameworks applied under pressure.

The abundant mindset

• Disruptors expect opportunity and actively look for it; others walk past the same room and see nothing.
• A study of "lucky" people found they spotted planted money and met planted strangers — because they were looking. Unlucky people didn't notice.
• Einstein: "The most important decision a man will ever make is whether he lives in a friendly universe."
• Gratitude is the mechanism: it is physically impossible to feel afraid and grateful simultaneously.
• Practical habits: daily gratitude lists, sharing weekly achievement goals with friends, opening team meetings with wins.
• Noticing progress creates gratitude; gratitude sustains an abundant mindset through setbacks.

Ghosts: the hidden competitive driver

• Every highly successful person Maddock has met is either chasing a ghost or being chased by one.
• A ghost is a past rejection, failure, or rival that becomes a lifelong competitive fuel source.
• Michael Jordan was cut from his high school varsity team; he checked into hotels under the name "Leroy Smith" (the player who took his spot) for his entire NBA career. At his Hall of Fame induction, he put Leroy Smith in the front row and said, "I got you."
• LeBron James named Jordan as his own ghost.
• Balanced disruptors are conscious of their ghost and treat it as an unfair competitive advantage.
• Unexamined ghosts produce depression, bullying, and erratic leadership.

The Da Vinci effect: simple frameworks for fast decisions

• Disruptors use lightweight mental frameworks to make decisions far faster than competitors.
• By the time a slow decision-maker reaches decision one, a disruptor has made seven decisions and learned seven things.
• Frameworks are not creativity killers — they are decision accelerators.
• The firing framework (a 2×2 matrix): axes are culture fit (low/high) and performance (low/high).
  • Low culture, low performance: let go immediately.
  • Low culture, high performance: the most common mistake — rationalising retention poisons the culture and drives out high-performing culture fits.
  • High culture, low performance: train.
  • High culture, high performance: cherish.
• Routine enables disruption: bigger, faster-growing companies embrace recurring frameworks; early-stage teams resist repeating them and stall.

Visionaries and operators: finding your yin

• Disruptors are either disruptive operators (Jack Welch, A.G. Lafley) or disruptive visionaries (Elon Musk, Richard Branson) — but all have a balanced executive team.
• Most companies are started by visionaries and finished by operators; they are eventually put out of business when operators exhaust the existing model and no one generates new ideas.
• Visionaries and operators misread each other as obstacles rather than complements.
• Coach operators to make wishes instead of killing ideas: "I wish that wasn't illegal" is humble and opens a problem to solve, rather than shutting down the idea.
• The Colby Index helps leadership teams verify they have fact-finders and follow-throughs to balance quick-starts.
• Innovation vs. invention: innovators start with a pressing need and find a solution; inventors start with an idea and look for someone who needs it.

Thinking differently under pressure

• Critical thinkers draw a straight line from past experience to the easiest solution.
• Lateral thinkers generate many possible solutions — often before confirming there is a problem.
• Disruptors train themselves to switch modes under stress.
• The marshmallow challenge: teams of four, 20 sticks of spaghetti, tape, string, and a marshmallow — build the tallest freestanding tower in 20 minutes.
  • Average result across all groups: 20 inches.
  • Average MBA graduate group: 10 inches (spent time planning, negotiating, structuring).
  • Average kindergartner group: 27 inches (no hierarchy, immediate experimentation).
  • Under pressure, adults revert to critical thinking; performance drops.
• SCAMPER (Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to other use, Eliminate, Rearrange): a forced lateral-thinking exercise applicable to any business model.
• "What would [X] do?": replace X with a specific person (Oprah, Einstein, Sam Zell) to see the problem through a different lens and surface ideas that feel lower-risk because they are attributed to someone else.