Building capacity for resonance and resilience

Background

For the past five decades I have been practicing or informing design. My clients have primarily been Companies that valued growth through design. They take pride in being recognized by the market for being innovative. 22 years ago I remember asking participants of a global ethnographic study what an innovative company meant to them. A common response was, “a company that continuously produces delightful products.” The name that came up consistently at that time was Nokia.

A recent article in Fast company ranks world’s most innovative companies in a broad range of sectors (source: https://www.fastcompany.com/most-innovative-are you companies/list). The top five in this list are, “Open AI (For multiplying how AI will change everything), McDonalds (For cooking up cultural moments as addictive as its fries), Airbnb (For redesigning its platform for the new era of travel), Holdfast Collective (For enlisting capitalism to help solve the climate crisis) and Nubank (For boxing up a new way for people to save.).” Over the past twenty years since Nokia made it to the top, the definition of innovation has shifted from product to user experience and social/ ecological impact.

Building capacity

In this blog I will provide a new lens for understanding future focused innovative organizations. Instead of measuring them for the outputs or impact they generate, I will focus on the capacities they build.

My focus on capacity building has emerged from a series of dialogues of the past several months with my clients about the impact SonicRim has had on them over the last 24+ years. I have been told by clients who have worked with us for ten plus years that we have helped them- 1. prepare for change 2. clarify and evangelize mindsets, methods and tools for co-creation, and 3. facilitate learning experiences for the client team members. More than the project outputs our contribution is valued and remembered for the inputs that helped build capacity for thriving amidst change.

I have recognized two important defining capacities of such organizations: resonance and resilience.

Resonance and Resilience

Resonance in physics is defined as “the state of a system in which an abnormally large vibration is produced in response to an external stimulus, occurring when the frequency of the stimulus is the same, or nearly the same, as the natural vibration frequency of the system.” (Source: dictionary.com) in the context of this article I define resonance as an organization’s ability to embrace, enrich and amplify at a deep level the energy from the environment in which it lives.

According to the American Psychological Association “Resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands.

A number of factors contribute to how well people adapt to adversities, predominant among them:

• the ways in which individuals view and engage with the world
• the availability and quality of social resources
• specific coping strategies” (source: the website of the American psychological association)

To understand how Resonant your organization is you can ask people if they feel

1. a sense of social commitment at work?
2. encouraged in pursuing your curiosity for the forces of change in both internal and external environment?
3. comfortable asking “why” when decisions are being made or guidance being provided?
4. safe expressing a fresh perspective that challenges a prevailing belief?
5. the joy of making a social impact?

To understand how Resilient your organization is you can ask people if they feel

1. a sense of belonging to a community of people driven to support each other?
2. freedom from fear of failure?
3. a learning environment that nurtures intellectual growth on an ongoing basis?
4. a caring culture that provides emotional nourishment
5. a space for healing from trauma?

Emergence of a new practice

For the past eight months I have put my business on hold, and have taken a sabbatical so I can reflect over the experience of the past 40 plus years to shape my third act. During this time I am engaging in conversations with professionals in for profit and not for profit organizations, students, teachers, artists and even ordinary people in the street and cafes to understand the future of the life we want to live and the relationships and practices we want to build. Through these conversations I am arriving at a a tentative definition of how I might harness the wisdom gained from living on the edge for almost half a century as a student and practitioner of design.

When we discussed the core practice of SonicRim 25 years ago, one word that came to represent our vision was resonance. In fact, the name SonicRim means resonant edge- the fringe at the intersection of life realities and imagination where the signs of future manifest themselves. For the past 24 plus years we have been giving our clients a view of the future from the resonant edge. I realize that this essence of SonicRim remains relevant even today- just our practice needs to evolve. Over the next few months of my sabbatical I hope to bring clarity to the purpose and practice. In this article I am sharing my current state of clarity about the purpose while continuing my dialogue with my peers in the industry about the nature of the practice that will help develop capacity for resonance and resilience in individuals, teams, communities, institutions and in the society.