Kanye West: interruption vs. disruption

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The do's and don'ts of civil discourse used to include don't shout "You lie" at the President if you're a sitting U.S. congressman and don't jump up on stage, grab her mic away, and then tell the world that some other performer deserved Taylor Swift's MTV Video Music Award. Thankfully, the past few days and hours have shown via social networks that these interruptions are still social taboo.

Sometimes an outburst or a stunt works because it's disruptive. By disruptive, I mean that the event is one that disrupts your focus but attracts your attention. For instance, Lady Gaga's wardrobe changes and Pink's trapeze act at the VMAs were disruptive.

An interruption is entirely different; it takes away your choice and it's in your face whether you want it to be there or not. Television advertising is an interruption (unless it's extremely well done and then it becomes a disruption.) Panhandling is an interruption whereas street performing is a disruption.


Kanye was once an exciting, disruptive artist but now is in danger of just becoming an another interruption in a world where attention is among the highest prized commodities.

Our dinnertime ritual interrupted by a telemarketer, our social media conversations interrupted by an automated self-promotional message, or an email selling us something we don't want for a body part we don't have--like Taylor Swift, we've got a lot of our own Kanyes in our faces ruining our moments, large and small.

During his hasty apology on the Jay Leno Show premier Monday night, West was asked by the host "What would your mother have thought?" (She passed away a year ago.) But West doesn't need his mother to tell him what's right and wrong. He and all brands today have to answer to the wisdom of the crowd--if they'll just shut up long enough to listen.

The beauty of disruption is that it's unexpected but not unwelcome, distracting yet attractive, has shock value but also some value for the targets and not just the celebrity's ego or brand's self-interest. If that sounds like an art, it is one. And it's why stunts run such a high risk of backfiring and, thanks to social media, backlash

OK, enough about Kanye...

9/16/09 - UPDATE: I know I said enough about Kanye but I could resist this YouTube mashup and, while I've got other things to do, clever people have taken Kanye's interruption and turned it into many fine, fun examples of disruptive communication. Examples follow:

For more examples, check out Mashable.com's Top 10 Kanye Parodies list.

Taskus Interruptus: the new mode of work

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You probably already suspected this about yourself, but if you're anything like the IT workers studied by Gloria Mark, Professor of Informatics at UC Irvine; you shift your focus to a different task on average of every 3 minutes and 5 seconds!

Half of those switches are caused by interruptions. And, what's worse, most of them are you interrupting yourself! i.e. Checking email while you're doing something else.

This seems like a good counterpoint to our last post about Twittering, which is taking off in popularity exactly because it's just the type of thing you can read or post in 3 minutes and 5 seconds!

Other findings reported in the Fast Company interview with researchers:

"We found about 82percent of all interrupted work is resumed on the same day. But here's the bad news -- it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to the task."

"I argue that when people are switching contexts every 10 and half minutes they can't possibly be thinking deeply. There's no way people can achieve flow. When I write a research article, it takes me a couple of hours before I can even begin to think creatively. If I was switching every 10 and half minutes, there's just no way I'd be able to think deeply about what I'm doing. This is really bad for innovation. When you're on the treadmill like this, it's just not possible to achieve flow."

That's why, from time to time at (W)right On Communications, we shut down our email and close our doors to make the needed time for creativity and strategic thinking.

However, there's an upside to interruptions and multitasking too. Often solutions can come to you when you're thinking about something else. And task shifting gives you the chance to leave a tough problem and incubate it until the right answer or idea pops into your head.