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Disruption & Stability

The more things change…

Many of us are experiencing this strange confluence of sameness and transformation around us — whether it’s our lives, our industries, or our communities — much is the same and much is changing, everywhere.

This issue we explore the relationship and tension between disruption and stability and what it means for us as creatives, thinkers, and change-makers.

We’re looking at tips for working at home alone (and meeting and gathering with others), brainstorming, mindsets, and futures-thinking tools that might help you feel a little more stable while also anticipating the disruptions to come. That and more as we settle in for another coffee break.

Make sure to add us to your contact list so you always receive the updates and thank you for reading, sharing, and learning with us.

May the best disruptions be yours, by design. - Cameron

Disruptive Ideas

Ideas can disrupt everything, especially when brought to life. But how do we get new ideas? This classic essay from Isaac Asimov on creativity is as timely in 2021 as it was in 1959, which is a way to say that the more we change the more creative fundamentals stay the same.

Brainstorming is one of the classic ways to generate new ideas. It’s easy to do…which means its also easy to do poorly, especially online. Digital collaboration software leaders Miro have pulled together 20 techniques for digital brainstorming that might help get more from your next idea-generation session.

Global consultancy PWC has a podcast series that explores how the basics of business - leadership, strategy, compliance, change-making, and more — are being disrupted and what we can do about it. These short stories help picture the whole operation of business through the lens of disruption.

Disruptive Work Conditions

Are you working at home? Do you work alone? If so, you might share many experiences with Jocelyn K. Glei and, like her, might have found a transition to working alone, at home, requires some disruption on its own. Her ‘sanity saving’ tips might be what you need when everything feels the same.

Meetings can be a source of the worst kind of disruption and stability. Why? They are usually poorly thought through and executed. This list from the readers of Sifted offer creative ways to make the most of your next meeting so that you get the best from yourself and your colleagues.

Whether its online or face-to-face, humans gather all the time for all kinds of reasons. Priya Parker has made understanding and sharing the art and science of gathering her focus and has prepared a guide and newsletter to help you do it better. Like meetings, great gatherings happen by design.

Sometimes we need to disrupt our ways of working intentionally. This comes best through having a mindset focused on growth and learning and that can be developed within organization. Atlassian’s always great blog has pulled together tips on how to instill a growth mindset in your team to disrupt, by design.

Stabilizing Ourselves

How can leaders help their teams navigate through a transitional period to instill a sense of stability amid the change? Victoria Grady from George Mason University has three tools that draw on the psychology of transitional objects to provide choice, connection to a purpose or mission, and bridges to get there.

Guilt — we all feel it. Change-makers often feel there’s always more to do or things we could do or have done differently. Unmanaged guilt can prevent us from doing our best work and has terrible effects on our mental health. This helpful guide from Psyche can save you an unnecessary guilt trip.

To understand stability we need to better appreciate volatility and that’s what Enrique Martinez has done brilliantly with this piece over at his 750-max blog.

Disrupting and Stable Futures

Rachelle Bugeaud from Avenear has prepared a podcast ‘hit-list’ for those interest in learning more about futures and foresight that’s worth your ear-time.

Our future will always be (partly) designed. Will it be designed well, though? That’s the focus of the Future of Design Education, which recently re-launched its website and resources aimed at shaping how we better design the education of those designing our future(s).

If we want a future that is based on stable, reliable products we might want to learn some lessons from the past. This fascinating look through the history of science and innovation over at Veritasium shows us that many of our solutions to problems have already been invented, they’ve just not been shared.

For more on innovation, ideas, and new thinking about change visit us anytime over at Censemaking and please consider sharing, subscribing and connecting with us. We’d love to hear from you.

Creative and healthy wishes until our next coffee time, Cameron