I would cut off my pinkie toe if we could just skip 2020 and go on to whatever comes next. Just the idea of having lunch with my wife at our favorite restaurant without worrying about a mask or the virus or the fires or the injustice or the thousand other worries 2020 has wrought is fantastic and fantastical all at once. I know we will get there one day but I also know just how far away that day is.
In the meantime, we have to live here and work to contemplate what will simultaneously get us to the other side and make today better than yesterday. We are past the point of triage for all of the shocks we have felt this year. Maybe a little PTSD and lingering trauma, but we have absorbed so much for so long that we are all just in it. And I have loathed the term ‘new normal’ for as long as it has been out there. Let’s just say that today’s reality is far more understood than it was back in April.
The question then is what comes next. What can possibly make all of this pain, angst, agony and disruption worth it? To take a page from the Blue Angels, how about a debrief:
Grateful to be here.
First, opportunity. Technology has been exposed as simultaneously limiting and wonderful. Just think about what your world would have been like if the pandemic had come in 2005? No smartphones, meaningful video technology, social media, e-commerce, etc. that would give us a chance to even try to shelter-in-place. The very idea that, given the breadth of access to the internet and its connectivity, that we can, in fact, connect with each other is miraculous. And yet.
We are still at a moment in time when we are taking digital as a virtual version of analog. Like newspapers simply reproducing its printed copy on-line as they did for far too long, while powerful blogs and Craigslist came along to undo them. The pandemic has shown us just how far we have yet to go to make digital its own experience, neither better or worse than physical, just different.
A screaming example, education and its challenges. Asking kids to stare at a screen for six hours a day so that school boards can measure effort is relying on the idea that time invested is a measure of success. For the physical realm, sure. Knowing how to be in a room together and manage our way through a shared experience is a powerful way to build our society. But to learn what is on offer? No way. We can do better to challenge independent thought, inspire deep thinking and offer powerful conversation far more with technology than we are even attempting. Time to toss the metric of time in favor of real problem solving. How about we come up with projects on a topic and solve them? Let teachers lead meaningful discussion on the topics they care about and assume (challenge?) students to gather the foundation on their own. It is long past due to pay attention to what people like Seth Godin and Sir Ken Robinson have been talking about for years.
As for your creative business, it is forever changed. Nobody can know for sure, but we can be confident that thirty to fifty percent of restaurants, in the U. S. for sure, maybe even globally are gone. Yes, the pandemic is a monster cause. However, the model of a largely single revenue stream based on people in a single environment for a limited time was breaking far before a pandemic. Margins in the restaurant business have not changed forever and were/are only getting worse. Meal replacement, better delivery services, expedited food service catered to particular palates and budgets, brand extension was a tsunami already forming pre-pandemic. Here now. Same goes for any event driven single revenue stream business — social events, interior design, even architecture. Value is at a premium and if yours is not compelling, there simply is no justification.
Equally though, I am loathe to the idea of a pivot. We are past that — doing what you have to do to survive only to go back when you can. Instead, I am about embracing a paradigm shift and living in that reality. The idea of a sharing economy was a non-starter fifteen years ago. Today, we have come to rely on the gig/sharing part of our economy more and more. Whether we can build a sustainable new paradigm remains to be seen but I am fairly certain we can agree that the gig/sharing economy is not going anywhere anytime soon. Then, the notion of getting someone fantastic to execute your vision becomes ever more possible and expected. This too predated the pandemic. What does it mean? The divergence of creation and execution grows as does the tools for each. The single use idea of outsourcing is also burgeoning. Most of us do not need an in-house lawyer. What else can be outsourced and even more what else can be developed to nourish creation?
Speaking of creation. There are two components that are crazy important to simultaneously distinguish and integrate. First, the essence of creation. What can it be for what is on offer? It can never be open-ended as that is simply fantasy. No, it needs a container — budget, location, time, etc. Like improvisation, the better the container, the better the creativity. Within that container though, how far and deep can we go? What sort of expectations can we create for clients and the meaning of the rewards of revelation? An expansive toolbox in a defined room brings untold results. We have barely scratched the surface of that one.
To go even further, the model of owning the idea so that you can then get paid for its use singularly is myopic. If I can sign up to receive lectures from the greatest minds on the planet for one affordable monthly price, why can’t I have access to a library of singularly great creative ideas of any sort that I can incorporate into my work? Shutterstock at the Bentley level? Now that everyone’s portfolio is dated and, in so many cases, irrelevant, how about we use those elements that matter in a way that shares with all of us? Nothing new here — license fees, royalties, etc. have been part of our world for most of the modern industrial era. We crowdsource everything these days, why not ideas for your creative business?
And specifically NO, I am not talking about lazy or derivative design, I am talking about standing on each other’s shoulders to be better and better than we ever could alone. Do not even get me started on the role of artificial intelligence in this endeavor. Imagine if the sum total of every design that might impact yours was at your fingertips to create your baseline. Where would you go then? My point is that today we start on say the tenth floor and hope to get to the twentieth for our clients. What happens when you are expected to start on the nineteenth? How high will you go then? Still think value and its specific delivery are not ripe for upending?
What is even more impressive is our ability to functionally link creation and execution in a more profound way. When we know how it was done once instantly as we contemplate manifesting our own idea, we can import that knowledge into the fabric of creativity. Your idea might not have ever been done before in the particular way you imagine, but the problem has been solved in so many tangential ways that solving it for the idea at hand becomes fluid. When dream to build shortens, confidence explodes, perceived risk abates and we all go further. Or go ahead with your Pinterest boards and Powerpoint presentations. A design library at the highest level, monetizable for all is right in front of us. I pray we leap.
2020 has shown us that sometimes a dysfunctional model can continue but it will fall away quickly when stressed. It has also shown us that functioning models depend on a much narrower environment than previously understood. Not so functional then. It yields opportunity to break the model once and for all to set the stage for different. New metrics of success, new definitions of value, new expectations and new life.
The challenge: change one thing without regard to where you are. Do it because you believe in its promise to you, your art and your creative business. Charge monthly. Create a library of ideas. Bridge the gap. We get to tomorrow sooner if we are willing to release the promises yesterday can no longer keep.
