4 August 2021
I feel like I am finding my stride with my dissertation notebook. At the beginning of my Saybrook journey, Noah (our amazing librarian) and others encouraged me to keep a notebook and jot down ideas for my dissertation. I never quite clicked with that process that first year in school. It wasn’t until my fifth semester, when I took my qualitative research course with Dr. Applebaum, that I started using a journal. It’s a small one, designed for Cornell notetaking, and I collaged the front and back covers. It’s small enough to keep with me but big enough to hold ideas and flesh them out.
I started with an exploration of what my research question was, using the research triad Walker Ladd, Laura Brewer, and Karen Vander Linden shared with us during the Fall 2020 Residential Conference. That triangle – or funnel, really – has been so helpful for thinking through:
- my research topic
- my research problem
- my research question
- my research purpose
- my research objective
Couple all that with a question asked during the 2021 MSR Research Colloquium: What’s the meaning of ME in this project?
Couple all that with a question Walker Ladd challenged us to explore:
What does my research need from me?
Gives this student a lot to think about!
At first, my dissertation notebook was page after page of me playing with different approaches to my topic and the triad. Was I talking about creativity? Organizational transformation? Something else? However, something interesting began to happen this summer. I was attending lots of conferences – speaking at them, too. And my dissertation notebook found its way into my conference notetaking. When a presenter shared an idea or a resource that seemed relevant or raised a question for me, I added it to my dissertation journal. Now, five months later, I’m close to needing to start a second journal! That’s exciting to me because it means that I’m generating lots of ideas. At some point, I will need to sit down with them and see what still speaks to me. Perhaps that would be a good activity to seed my second notebook – cull the most salient insights from the first one to start the next.
Interestingly, my obsession with the Creative Eye of Contemplation is lessening. My research is more about internal change agents, transformation agents, organizational transformationists. Whatever the term needs to be. The TUAI Bridges model wants a deeper exploration and explanation. But there’s also a manifesto wanting to be had about the C-word and organizational transformation. The C-word is “change”. I truly believe that change is the thief of organizational transformation. Change doesn’t take things deep enough, yet it allows companies to think they did what they needed to so they stop the work once the change is posted. At least, that’s my theory. We’ll have to see how the evidence shakes out.
So, yeah. I study the creative catalysts of organizational transformation, specifically those agents who work from inside their companies. This allows me to play within the nexus of creativity, consciousness, psychology, and transformation. With courage. It allows me to prioritize psychological safety and the psychological journey of not those who are being asked to transform, but those leading/facilitating the internal effort.
I am so grateful that I am able to more clearly state what my research interests are. That’s part of what the whole Ph.D. journey is about, I suppose. These initial years help one hone in on more than general aspirations to things with impact, meaning, purpose, things one may be truly passionate about and obsessed over.
