I wrote a column for Business of Home this week responding to a question about whether a designer should lower her rates because all of her work now has to be digital. Of course, I said no. Yes, in person meetings are better than digital today. But only because the digital muscle has not been fully flexed. Different will not mean better or worse, just different.
On-line learning for millions and millions of students is driving educators to rethink the value of memory and compliance. Honor code schmoner code. If you tell kids what is to study (i.e., memorize) for what is on the test, then tell them to keep their books, phones and notes down while they demonstrate their knowledge, why would they comply? What is the true value of memory and compliance these days when you are literally sitting in front of the information superhighway? Will coronavirus finally finally snap everyone to what Sir Ken Robinson and Seth Godin have been talking about for years? Will we finally get down to the value of deep thinking into a subject?
I have been horrified, truly horrified about how long it has taken so many in the United States to understand exponential growth, the power of compounding unabated. It is not a parlor trick to know that a penny doubled every day for a month is worth over $5 million. Every single ten year old needs to know the rule of 72 (and no I am not linking to it). Nor do you have to have a higher degree in math to know that a steep curve and a flatter curve might yield the same number just in different periods. If I hear one more time that blah blah blah kills so many more than CV without reference to time, I think I will lose it.
Growth and the implications of growth are at the heart of any business, creative business very much included. If we are asking you to see and show us a world we cannot, then you MUST do the work of appreciating the implications of the investment you are seeking from your clients, employees and colleagues alike.
Instead of trying to teach our kids how to memorize the formula for the area of a circle, have them write a paper on the history of Pi (using the, say, gazillion articles on-line about the subject), then post it and have a zoom conference about it to discuss how it has deep deep implications for how we live today. What would that do for all of us?
If we demand this as a culture now that digital is our only outlet, what will happen when it is not? Then, when we look to what creative business can do with a brand new form of communication, a deeper level of thought for all, just imagine how far and fast we will be able to chart a new path forward? What will happen to our business models then?
Let me land that plane. The crisis of equipment and PPE for our healthcare workers is an indictment of poor supply chain management by the federal government. No political statement here, it just is. Except, we have, as a global community, exploded the power of supply chain management. Do you really think the failings of the United States to effectively deploy resources is not going to catalyze further advances in supply chain efficiency? Of course it is. So we will likely find that the pressure to deliver better faster will grow exponentially in the coming years after the coronavirus crisis has passed. On the other side, there are many many creative business owners that are savoring the opportunity to work methodically and perhaps even more precisely than they otherwise would because a) they have the time, and b) they are limited in their ability to physically interact. Before coronavirus (and likely after), many of these players relied (and will rely) on commissions of these purchased items for a large portion of their earnings.
There you have it, the conundrum. If you want the ability to do better, more diligent work that just might take longer but you make your money from an exponentially improving supply chain, you are trapped. The coronavirus pandemic has now shown you that you have to choose another way to earn money if you would like to have the ability to extend time. Oh, and if you choose to rely on the exponential growth of the supply chain, might I just say that being a seal in a sea of killer whales might not be the best experience. Coronavirus has just forced you to question everything if you have now ironically found value in slowing down. What exactly are you going to do about it?
Oh, I can and will keep going. If you have a factory that had 100 workers and had to lay off say 90 of them, what happens when the lights go back on? Sure, if the CARES act works perfectly and the pandemic is over in 2.5 months, you might start up right where you left off. By the way, unicorns are real. What if, in the abundance of caution, you keep the money but do not actually hire your workers right back? You are going to make it, but you are going to take a wait and see approach (imagine that?). What are you going to produce first? The products with the lowest or highest margins? The ones you want to build your firm on in the future or the ones that will pay (barely) today’s bills? How long do you think it is going to take for this manufacturer to produce your order if it is not in the bullseye category? Now how much time have you spent figuring this out for your clients? Did not think so. Alignment was kind of sort of important before, it is everything now.
Which brings me to outsourcing. You might be uncomfortable with working digitally with your team, then again you have been at it for just a few weeks. What will it be like after two months? Here is some light reading for you — Roald Coase’s Nature Of The Firm (full disclosure I was an economics major in college so reading this stuff is fun for me, still). Coase’s theory is quite useful here and should ground you in what it might be like to NOT bring back your employees? The idea of outsourcing is going to evolve like never before in the history of the internet age. We will move forward decades in weeks.
A moment for us all. No one knows what tomorrow will look like. However, we are going to look to you, our artists, to shape it for us. To do that you must dig deeply into the notion that we can contemplate a new way that better aligns us all with your mission to show us all how to draw birds. Clouds might have been enough yesterday and you had better know how to do that too. In fact, clouds might still be valuable even today, but tomorrow? Not a chance.
