It always feels good when you come up with a creative solution to a pressing issue. MacGyver is a TV show about finding thinking alternatively about solving problems. Awesome.
Today, there are real issues that require MacGyvering. Restaurants and hotels are having trouble finding staff, supplies are constricted for just about any creative business. Finding viable workarounds has become a full time job for so many.
I have absolutely no issue with ingenuity at all. What I have a huge issue with is thinking this ingenuity is what connotes long-term value to any creative business. It does not. Why? The problem is going to resolve itself on its own. The beauty of capitalism is that it is really good at exploiting opportunity. Water flows to the path of least resistance. While flowers may be in short supply now, if prices rise as a result (and they have), more will enter the market and supply will be restored. Maybe not tomorrow but definitely before next season.
So by all means, enjoy the fruits of being a creative problem solver. Clients and colleagues will appreciate it for sure. Just keep doing the work of what really matters — defining value and digging deeper holes. Now that you might be able to present your ideas in person again, how will that experience be different from what you did pre-pandemic? If you are elevating your storytelling as both an artist and a business, what can we count on? Why?
Martyrs are martyrs because they are dead. Do not forget that lesson. As you are busy MacGyvering, others are busy seeing opportunity and resetting their foundation to enjoy a fundamental shift. Yes, harvest fruit as the season ripens, but plant better seeds.
The chaos of the moment will make you forget about the pain of yesterday. This is a truth I have had to learn the hard way.
When I had may dinner delivery business, we were devastated (really destroyed) by 9/11. We limped along as zombies. Then we took part in the first Tribeca Film Festival and sold Lobster Rolls to patrons of the festival. We made $7,500 in one day. We thought all was right in the world and we would do well as we shifted to catering and getting people to buy our food at night. MacGyver, MacGyver, MacGyver without recognizing that there was no there there. We were out of business seven months later.
You are here now. Production challenges abound no matter your creative business. They will get louder before they settle. You will want to get swept up. Please do not. Instead, do what you have to but equally focus on trust and value and hope. Hope of what the future might be like as you seek to define it for your art and your business.
It makes me think of the new all electric Ford F 150. The President drove a prototype yesterday and it is just going to be better. Not better because it is electric and good for the environment, better because it is better. It will be able to do things no other truck can do — like power your house (or campsite) — tow more and carry more. Whether you believe in the moral imperative of climate change or not is irrelevant. Better will drive the market and Ford will have a whole lot more than $42 Billion a year to contribute to own. Tesla, of course, will have something to say about it as will many other car manufacturers.
Better is better and MacGyver will always be just a TV character.
