Rewire Live Conversations 2: Creative Friction
Creative Friction: What are we losing when work becomes frictionless?
Summary: A live, interactive hour with Dr Neil Wilkie and Dr Gwen Stirling Wilkie, authors of Rewire: How AI Is Rewiring Relationships At Work.
Description:
When a team stops arguing, it rarely means it has found the answer. More often, something has gone quiet.
Difference is being smoothed out. Challenge is being avoided. People are aligning too quickly. Or AI is helping everyone arrive at polished answers before the conversation has really begun.
In the second of our Rewire Live Conversations, we’ll explore creative friction: the productive tension that helps teams think better, challenge assumptions and arrive at stronger decisions.
Because friction is not the same as conflict.
The right kind of friction creates energy, curiosity and movement. The wrong kind damages trust. And no friction at all can leave teams looking aligned while important questions remain unasked.
We’ll look at questions such as:
What happens when AI makes it easier for teams to converge too quickly?
How do we distinguish productive challenge from destructive conflict?
What gets lost when difference, dissent and awkward questions disappear from meetings?
How can leaders create enough trust for people to disagree well?
Where should AI reduce friction — and where should we deliberately preserve it?
We’ll introduce some of the ideas from our new book Rewire: How AI is Rewiring Relationships at Work, then open up the conversation.
You’ll leave with:
A clearer way to recognise when your team has too much, too little or the wrong kind of friction
A practical way to think about challenge, dissent and productive disagreement
One thing to try in your next meeting to create better thinking, not just faster agreement
Who it’s for: leaders, managers, HR and L&D professionals, team facilitators, and anyone interested in how AI is changing teamwork, meetings and decision-making.
This is the second of three sessions. The others are Hollow Competence (18 November) and The Relational Barometer (9 December). Each stands alone.
Come ready to think, contribute and compare what you’re noticing in your own teams.
Rewire Live Conversations:
Three conversations about what AI is changing between us at work.