cross-posted on CAST Writers publication
There’s a novelty of surprise that comes when we’re reminded of something we already knew. We have an experience, a conversation, a culmination of a project, and suddenly we’re reminded of something quite simple that we seemed to have forgotten. Here are three things I was reminded of this week.
Creativity for the sake of creativity
Often we fall into a rhythm with work, one in which we accidentally eliminate some of the novelty that used to come along with learning our trade. We work towards a particular set of goals or milestones and don’t allow ourselves to build, explore and ultimately fail because we have things to deliver, and we know how to do it.
Recently, I needed to translate a complex idea into something that was visual and easy to understand. I struggled with the task, and in the end created something that was visual, but not in the way I had expected. The original idea took time and effort. I worked it out, attempted an illustration and the idea (as well as the illustration) was ultimately thrown away. But there was a moment when I shared my failed attempt, and the result was that our collaborators had more appreciation for the attempt that I had deemed successful enough to share.
In our co-op meeting recently, Doug suggested that, for fun, we all buy a domain and build something on it without telling the others what we were building. The only design constraint was that the domain start with “wao”. We had a couple weeks to come up with an idea and build it. It was just some fun and the project provided a creative release that I wasn’t aware I needed.
Sometimes creativity for the sake of creativity results in a better, more innovative and useful idea. Sometimes, it is a needed emotional release.
Practise your own adaptability
When we’re used to routines and processes it can be hard to deal with the feeling that you’ve lost control. Something happens that doesn’t follow your preferred way of working. In an attempt to practice my own adaptability, I allowed myself to feel a bit frustrated this week. A few things were added to and deleted from my calendar because of my own and other people’s mistakes. They resulted in more context switching than I prefer, and I felt stressed. Especially because I hadn’t slept well. In the end, despite feeling stressed, I adapted to the context switching and we launched two new projects at WAO.
We kicked off one of these projects, a collaboration between CAST and Sport England, with Joe Roberson with whom we ran An Introduction to Open Working and Writing workshop. Joe introduced us to some writing exercises that are quite different from how I normally write. Exploring a new process allowed me to explore adaptation of my writing style, and, perhaps, will make me a better writer. You can be the judge, this post was penned during the workshop!
Empathy is more important than “work”
Our other kickoff was with Aaron Hirtenstein and our work with LocalGov Drupal. I know that Aaron is a stellar collaborator, but this is our first “big” project together. In our collaboration this week, I realised that Doug and I were making assumptions about Aaron’s way of working. Because we know and trust Aaron, we just started working. In a flash of insight, I realised that we threw him into our tools, processes and routines, without his consent.
We should have asked permission to utilise our embedded tools and processes. We should have given Aaron permission and encouragement to tell us how he wanted things to work. We should have remembered that people have their own styles and processes! We, obviously, apologised and Aaron wasn’t bothered, actually, but ensuring that your collaborators and community members are comfortable and engaged is so much more important than whatever “work” needs to happen.
We remembered this while running the kickoff call with Will and Tim from LocalGov Drupal, and we took extra time to just…chat. It’s always worth a few extra minutes to offer time and space to connect and show empathy for your fellow humans.
Honing our skills is lifelong work
This week, after years of honing these skills by working openly, I was reminded that these things — creativity, adaptability, empathy — are skills you can never be an expert at.
We all make mistakes, especially when we move more quickly than we were expecting to. It’s when we correct our mistakes and reflect on them that we remind ourselves of the qualities that we want to embody.