The Road to Terry - 003 - Showers

Recently, colleagues and I have been working on solutions to systemic inequities. Mainly with a heavy focus on systemic racism. There’s a problem though. We’ve recognized, in order to bring about change, we have to build within the system or create something new to replace it. There are some strong ties to the ideas of Innovation vs. Disruption. The Bullet Train is an example of innovation. Uber is a disruption. Both are making transportation better, but Uber created a way to phase out systemic ills like: cab tokens, discrimination of riders, and the cost of cab fare. Uber also has ills because it was built by humans that still have a train mindset. That disruption also hurt a lot of people in the process, but there’s a greater good. Gary Vee calls it the “Democratization of Content” and commerce. Systems are slowly losing power to everyone else and are grasping on to it.

If we want to Disrupt systems we have to create something from the outside. For example, say you really hate the way the shower is designed. You’re never in the right place for the jets, it has unequal coverage, it’s always too hot or too cold, they don’t look the way you want, and access to one is not available for everyone. That means that you may need to look OUTSIDE of the bathroom for inspiration. You may need to look at nature’s shower…the clouds. Take the best parts and build from outside of the system. We just don’t need to bring an old shower mindset to the new one. Then we will end up bringing harm in a new way.

Innovation means we have to go INTO the bathroom and start making incremental changes to the shower that already exist. We can make it better, but it’s still in the bathroom and it’s still resembles what we recognize as a shower. We also may have to encounter other imperfections in the bathroom along the way. The sink, the toilet, the cabinet, and the vanity. Innovation is a great but it’s slow. Painfully slow.

I don’t think we’re focused on disruption. I think we are focused on innovation. Both are paths to better, we just need to be okay with the path we pick.

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