As new technology and practices emerge because of the Coronavirus pandemic, we are challenged to contemplate how to use those technologies in a meaningfully different way. Enter the Fosbury Flop. I will not retell the story of Dick Fosbury and his miraculous victory in the high jump at the 1968 Olympics. You can read about him here here and here. The point is when the world shifts underneath your feet, it is time to leap over the bar backwards. Look up to the sky, close your eyes and have faith that you will survive the landing. Fail until you do not.
Let us also have a look at Sir Ken Robinson’s famous TED talk and Seth Godin’s Stop Stealing Dreams manifesto. Both talk about how education in its form of teaching memory and compliance to receive mythical third party validation is useless when it comes to real learning. I will never forget Elizabeth Warren teaching me Bankruptcy Law in law school when some smart ass asked why she did not know the U.S. code definition of the automatic stay. She broke out her well-annotated copy of the Bankruptcy Code (it was 1990) and replied why would she when she could just look it up (and then proceeded to eviscerate said smart-ass on the actual meaning of the automatic stay — story for another time). Fast forward to today. When the sum of human intelligence lives in your palm 24/7, what exactly is the point of memorization?
Think this does not apply to your creative business? How many of you still have office hours where you expect your employees to show up to do their work and then go home? Like a factory? How many of you are now uncomfortable because you just cannot monitor the work of your employees, your colleagues, your production partners via Zoom? Sure, some things require physical presence (cooking in a kitchen, making floral arrangements, etc.), but so many do not. The question is when the Coronavirus nightmare passes are you going to go back to the old model or are you going to go deeper? I am of the firm belief that most creative business owners truly hope to get to say 15 and have their employees either get there on their own or walk in with work that is a solid 13. Never happens though and instead employees/colleagues/production partners show up at 5 or 6 and work to 13 and you are so exhausted that you may never get past 13, let alone 15. Yes, there are outliers but the norm is the lowest bar, let’s not kid ourselves.
If you can reset expectations given a new world order, can you wholeheartedly upend how you do things? Can you demand that those who you choose to physically interact with show up with their very best work and demand to take it higher? If there is a new premium to physical interaction, will you actually treat it with the new respect it deserves? Will you see your physical interaction like the Blue Angels or a Dilbert meeting? We need not try to impose the old world order on the new new. We can, in fact, choose to go deeper and raise the level of excellence that is expected.
Perfect is the enemy of done. However, intensity and willingness to push further is what is in front of all of us. What exactly happens when we find the desire to see different as different and embrace the value of the difference as a stand-alone question instead of a derivative one. The entire point is that the digital experience will become its own separate and apart from the physical and the two will relate to each other instead of being a poor man’s substitute.
We are already being gaslit into the epic comeback in front of us. “We are all in this together.” “We will overcome.” And on and on. No doubt, I want the future to be bright. Who doesn’t? It is just that those who want to comeback are actually looking backwards. We simply cannot. Eat the damn red pill, kill hope and get down to the work of redefining tomorrow.
Appreciate though that the resistance is powerful. Many many are invested in saying, not so fast, we are not there yet. Maybe. Except it has been exactly six weeks and there is so much we will never forsake again. Diligence and forthright thought is how we can redefine culture.
Take a moment to watch Andrew Cuomo with Trevor Noah the other night. Consider his answer as to why he has been so candid, so human, so vulnerable during the time his state (New York) has endured the very worst of the pandemic in the U.S. to date. How else could he persuade 19 million people to stay home? Yes, other governors were able to do the same, but New York, especially New York, is a particularly fierce environment. If you can make it there….And yet he convinced these people to stay home and sacrifice everything, for months. Talk about the power of persuasion on a human level.
So why not you? Can you truly see vulnerability as strength? Can you find your own Dick Fosbury as to redefine value? Or will you wait to be derivative? Culture changes because we refuse inertia. Refuse complacency. Refuse acquiescence. It also changes when we all can find stillness, joy in what is in front of us. A willingness to move through the obstacles a moment at a time. Let different be different and leave it at that. If you do, you might find your way to 15 every day, just never the way you did it yesterday.
