Productive Friction: Disruption & the Effects on Your Team

If you read many event industry blogs, the impetus is on disruption, but what are the realities of disrupting your events? None of us operate in a vacuum and I don’t know of any organizations where everyone is already drinking the disruption cool-aid. Disruption as a word has a negative connotation even though people are increasingly using it in a positive way.

Why is change so hard?

Even with the invention of many new technologies, we operate meetings and events the same way we have for hundreds of years. Maybe it’s because we’ve been doing it the same way for so long that it’s so hard to change. Maybe it’s largely because we feel confined by the four walls we find our meetings in that we can’t imagine setting the furniture in a different direction. Maybe there’s too much at stake to try something new like crowd-sourcing or collaborative conversation instead of talking heads. Maybe it is human nature.

If it ain't broke, don’t fix it...

Maybe you look at all this disruption talk with a bit of skepticism? For the reasons listed above and many more, you think your meetings and events are just fine, thank you. Maybe you’re dealing with a colleague or partner who is riding that disruption train, and it has become clear that you need to find a way to work together. You may have decades of success planning meetings and events the same way, so how do you balance “been there, done that” with the possibility that trying it again just might work this time?

Disruption realities

Most teams include folks who take pride in past successes and people who are passionate about making changes. For better or worse, people are sensitive about their work or worried about losing a job. When a new initiative isn’t successful or is painful getting to success, it is easy to throw each other under the bus. Meetings and events can be very stressful, even if we use the same processes and programs each time! Adding the variable of change makes it that much more stressful. Document the journey, even though it’s difficult to make time in the process to do so.