Rebel, Reject, Create

What happens when leaders respond to uncertainty by tightening their grip—and leave their teams too scared or exhausted to create?
Creative leadership development expert and poet Elaine Rumboll joins David Chislett on Rebel Reject Create to explore how organisations get stuck and what helps them move again.

Elaine works with large organisations to help them create what they need next. In this conversation, she explains why curiosity, playfulness, agility and energy matter, and questions whether the drive for AI efficiency and compliance is crowding out innovation.

We explore “art thinking”: how to move forward when you don’t yet know what question to ask. We also get into the messy middle of creative work, where “this is shit” can become “I am shit”, and why leadership needs to make room for uncertainty.

Elaine shares the thinking behind her book-in-progress, The Holy Innkeepers, drawing on spiritual traditions to explore nourishment and support during the creative process.
Her closing challenge: don’t lose hope—and release the need to be right.

Find Elaine online:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/elainerumboll
https://www.elainerumboll.com/
https://creativeleadershipconsultancy.com/

Find David Chislett online:
https://davidchislett.com

What if making your creative process faster makes the work worse?Tiffany Markman is a South African copywriter, speaker and writing trainer who started her business in 2005.Her first paid copywriting assignment came while she was still at school: fixing campaign copy for South African Airways.In this episode of Rebel Reject Create, Tiffany joins David Chislett to explore how she produces creative work on demand—and why her process still begins with a pencil.They discuss the constraints she welcomes, the management she refuses, why clients struggle to unsee mediocre work, and how different surroundings help her think. Tiffany also shares her approach to creative blocks, her obsession with lists, and why unfamiliar experiences and uninterrupted boredom both belong in a creative life.A frank, funny conversation for anyone whose livelihood depends on turning ideas into usable work.Find Tiffany online here:LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiffany-markman/Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/TiffanyMarkmanYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tiffany_markman X / Twitter - https://twitter.com/tiffanymarkmanMedium (my column) - https://tiffanymarkman.medium.comTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tiffanymarkman Threads: https://www.threads.com/@tiffanymarkman Substack: https://substack.com/@tiffanymarkman

What happens when creativity stops being fun?Holly Blondin joins David Chislett on Rebel, Reject, Create to explore the frustration, effort and vulnerability behind creative work—and why struggling doesn’t mean you lack creativity.Holly is a creativity and innovation educator and author whose work spans science, design, entrepreneurship and the arts. In this conversation, she draws on her experience working with PhD students and teaching research students in fashion management at Parsons School of Design.We discuss why brainstorming is only part of the process, the emotional challenge of becoming a beginner again, and how existing experience can support a new creative direction without removing the need to learn.The conversation also explores disconnection, the appeal of making things with our hands, and what creativity means in a world increasingly shaped by AI.Holly’s parting advice: stay curious—and give your curiosity room to influence what you do next.Find Holly Online:https://hollyblondin.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/hollyblondin/ https://www.instagram.com/hollyblondin/ Find David online:https://davidchislett.com

Bradley Charbonneau has built a creative life around a deceptively simple principle: make something every single day. In this conversation, he explains how leaving advertising gave him the freedom to create on his own terms, while also revealing how much structure from that world still supports his work. Bradley has published forty books, uploaded more than seven thousand videos and grown a YouTube audience beyond one hundred thousand subscribers, yet he is honest about the difference between financial success and personal fulfilment. He describes creativity as a cycle of input and output, with mornings reserved for making and afternoons for learning, consuming and refilling the tank. The discussion explores habit stacking, creative energy, audience expectations and the value of publishing work that is simply “good enough.” At the heart of the episode is Bradley’s idea of becoming a “mathemagician”: someone who balances routine, measurement and practical effort with intuition, play and openness to unexpected possibilities. He also challenges the idea that inspiration will arrive without preparation. His advice is practical: stop waiting for a dramatic breakthrough, choose a small daily practice and commit to it for thirty days. The magic may come, but only after you have done the math.Find Bradley online:https://repossible.comFind David Online:https://davidchislett.com

Roland Williams is a creative leader, author and innovation specialist whose career has taken him from Coca-Cola’s global headquarters in Atlanta to corporate communications, startups, scale-ups and innovation projects in Sweden.

In this episode, Roland joins David Chislett to explore what leaders must do if they genuinely want creativity and innovation from their people. They discuss the importance of trust, belonging and being seen; why overloaded teams cannot simply be ordered to innovate; and how small changes to meetings can create meaningful space for people to reconnect and think differently.

Roland also introduces the tension between two very different organisational worlds: the changing cultural system in which people experiment and develop new possibilities, and the stable cultural system responsible for budgets, optimisation and implementation. The challenge is not choosing between them, but enabling ideas to travel from one to the other.

Drawing on examples including Gmail, Amazon Prime and his own leadership experience, Roland makes the case that creativity should be treated as a long-term investment in adaptability rather than a short-term initiative expected to produce an immediate, measurable return.

Find Roland Online:linkedin.com/in/williamsroland

David's Home page:https://davidchislett.com