This research gives me hope for 2022

Author

Charlene Li
December 15, 2021

This time of year requires a bit of a reckoning. 😬 

(And I’ve never heard a single Christmas Carol or winter song acknowledging that fact!)

Truly: you want to be joyful and celebratory, but there’s a lot to do to wrap up the year. It can be challenging to pull yourself away and actually reflect — even when we know that’s what we need to let the year go and prepare for what’s next.

Recently, I sat down and thought through my own reflections. What surprised me most this year?

  • We’re still not done with Covid. The hope that the vaccine brought at the start of the year quickly dissipated and we’re still dealing with the pandemic. It’s become a low-level, omnipresent anxiety.

  • We thought we’d be back at work — but we don’t want to be! An August survey by Bankrate found that 55% of the workforce wanted to change jobs. The Great Resignation caught us by surprise.

  • Outdoor dining in the middle of winter is totally doable! But not terribly comfortable. 😉

  • Personal connections are precious. Now that we’re able to reestablish (some of) our connections, we don’t take them for granted anymore.

But my biggest takeaway? We’ve gotten MUCH better at change. 

This truth surprises and delights me. We did in eighteen months what we thought we’d never do — like transition to work from home and grapple with systemic inequality, to name just two examples.

We’ve become much more resilient. The disruption we’ve faced has given us confidence that we can manage a lot of change — and we’ll be okay.

And we can see it in the data. Since the fall of 2020, I’ve conducted surveys at conferences and company meetings, asking people how disruptive they see themselves on a scale of 1 (not disruptive at all) to 10 (extremely disruptive).

I plotted those results and the trendline is obvious, rising from an average of 6.4 to 7.0 in a little over a year.

Figure 1: How disruptive are you, on a scale of 1 (not disruptive at all) to 10 (extremely disruptive)

This bodes well for 2022. We will need to embrace disruption to solve the big challenges that face humanity today.

I can’t wait to see the bright solutions and innovation in store for us.

But for now, I’d love to hear from you: What major changes have YOU made this year? What gave you the confidence to do that? What was the trigger or catalyst?

My Latest:

Good Things:

  • Good Reads: The Cold Start Problem by Andrew Chen. In this book, Andrew shares how to think about starting and scaling network effects — fascinating! He interviewed leaders of companies like Slack, Zoom, Twitch, Dropbox, and many more. The learnings apply to anything that you want to grow, from product launches to the spread of ideas. Add his techniques to your disruption toolbox!

  • Referrals: Are you an entrepreneur or running a business? Then you know how lonely it can be at the top. Be sure to join a network like Business Network Int’l, Young Entrepreneur Council, Entrepreneurs’ Organization, or Young Presidents Organization. I’ve been a member of YPO for 10 years and it has completely changed my life and career for the better.

  • Resource: Need feedback right away? PickFu is my favorite tool for that. You can submit an idea, title, or design and get immediate feedback from people for as little as $1 per response. It’s like magic! I used it extensively to test my book title and cover design.

Thank you to Workplace from Meta for supporting the Disruption Dispatch.