I just finished recording my first ever conversation for my podcast. I usually just riff on what I am thinking about for creative business. I decided that, as we approach the end of COVID, I needed to bring in someone far wiser than I when it comes to what tomorrow might be. Enter Michael Beneville — my dear friend and intellectual soul mate about what we both think awaits us in the not-to-distant future. Here is a post I wrote after a serendipitous trip back to California where Michael just happened to be on the plane. Michael and I can go down the rabbit hole gleefully for a very very long time. I very much hope you enjoy our conversation next week on the podcast.
In the meantime, one of the most salient things we talked about and worth a deeper dive here is the idea that old paradigms played out to their logical conclusions have the potential to undermine all of the potential for human connectivity that awaits us.
Let us just get down on the ground. If you have used Zoom for your creative business in the last year, I am so sure that you are beyond sick of it mostly because you have tried to morph what you did in the physical world into the digital. Basically, you took the factory model — show up, do your work, go home and supplanted it onto the computer. For my kids school, it meant having them stay on camera for an entire day. Now that we are (hopefully) nearing the end of COVID, so many are yearning to return to the office and get back at it. Except.
For those that broke the factory model, you have micro-entrepreneurs within an organization serving internal clients in heretofore unheard of ways. Expectations ratchet so that interactions are intense and results oriented. The pyramid structure is broken into atoms in a molecule. The result is stronger process with deeper buy-in from everyone as celebrating micro-ownership intensifies the macro-ownership. If I can see the value of my piece of the puzzle and how it fits, then we all will celebrate the entire puzzle. And yes the pieces will come together better — it might be faster, but will definitely be with more conviction (though never a guarantee).
It happens because these creative businesses started by breaking the factory paradigm. Possible pre-COVID, sure, just harder to own the value. Remarkable post. What would be the point of yearning for the factory in real time when you can rethink it given all that has been achieved now that it has been broken? If someone can change the world with an 18 minute TED talk why should ANY meeting (other than creative brainstorming) take longer? Or better said, be allowed to take longer.
I hope you can see though that if you play out the old paradigm (i.e., factory model) to its logical conclusion you will see that the only way it survives is if you give in to the product idea of art as opposed to the strategy (i.e., story) of creation. You wind up selling products and relying on the ultimate deliverable. This is the road to commodification because that is the essence of what the factory model was built on — interchangeable parts built by interchangeable people with ever-growing intolerance for slack — all at the cheapest price. No doubt, the factory model has produced remarkable changes to our daily lives and will certainly continue to do so. Just not for creative business.
At base, all creative business is about story and the celebration of the journey to the unknown. We have arrived at the time when those who persist in the old paradigms — factory, gatekeeper, percentage of budget — will be challenged simply because they do not honor the storytellers they are trying to embody.
Jules Verne imagined a world that was a century away from manifesting. Sometimes the tools are not there to support the vision you imagine. The world has to catch up and the spoils go to those daring enough to get us there. We are here now though and there is just no room to let anything be included in the price. If we do not know what we are paying for, we will default to our perception of value with the firepower to prove that our worldview is the right one. Yes, if you persist with your old paradigm you will be bringing a knife to a gunfight. However, if enough people bring knives to a gun fight we will be relegated to a role that will never let us put down our weapons in the first place. That idea that what could be is prevented because of being stuck with the limits of yesterday is what keeps me up at night.
There is also no part of me that does not understand the immense challenge in front of all creative businesses. How do you simultaneously embrace the beauty of history and let it go for what is to come? Nothing new about evolution, but when it happens in an explosion we can all feel lost, or worse, left behind. My hope is only to know the opportunity that comes in the embrace of testing a new strategy far in front of a better product. Your work is already incredible. Improvement will be marginal, at best. The journey though? That can be upended by all things yet to come. Opportunity lives there as does imagination.
What Michael and I both agree on is that sacrifices to humanity and human connection need not be made any more in the name of innovation and progress. The days of Office Space can be over if we choose them to be. The beauty of what is to come is the power to simultaneously create global community, micro community, digital AND analog all at once. Anyone who texts with their family when everyone is at home knows exactly what I mean. The real question in front of all of us is whether or not you will own this new paradigm for all that it can bring us or see it as folly in the time of COVID. Pretty sure you know where I stand. Where do you, and, most importantly, your art and your creative business?
