Everyone wants creativity & innovation; few have the required patience

Photo credit: Duane Mendes via unsplash

I read a sponsored headline on LinkedIn recently that said – The Opposite of Inconvenience Is Innovation.

(Not quite true and it resonates as an AI headline, but I’ll withhold judgment).

Then you had to “unlock” their gated, six-carousel slide deck to understand their point.

To that I’d say: unlocking gated material on LinkedIn is the opposite of convenient.

Fellow creative and copywriter Mike Roe recently shared an article on the death of creativity. I was drawn to a particular claim about the near-uselessness of three-fourths of the brands paraded in front of us, and how we wouldn’t miss them if they disappeared.

Think about that: the vast majority of companies/brands are easily forgotten, including yours.

The premise here is that we’ve killed creativity — meaning we aren’t creating anything memorable — in lieu of being efficient with time and speed at the lowest possible cost.

That, friends, is how we end up with headlines and campaigns promoting products like the one above. And it is also how they falter because they fail to entice, and in turn expect something from us long before earning our trust.

What might’ve enticed me to open this sponsored campaign and discover their offering? Simple:

1.       Don’t lock your content on LinkedIn (be generous, be a thought leader)

2.       Entice us with stories/snippets that will resonate, something like…

Opportunities are created more than they are granted.

Your team keeps looking for opportunities, but when was the last time you granted them time to create something that turned heads? Got people talking? Shook the industry?

Here’s the rub: creating takes time. This can feel wildly inconvenient. It is far from instantaneous. But it is worth it. Just ask the computer maker not named Dell, or Gateway, or Compaq, who put a jukebox in the palm of your hand, and gave you a phone that still functioned like a phone, but became your essential life assistant.

Innovation isn’t doing what you know how to do a little differently. That’s called chasing the market leader. And, whoa, talk about inconvenient.

Remember — you have a choice: to either keep looking for opportunities — or start creating them.

To be fair, maybe this was the same kind of sponsored content the company gated, offering me to dive deeper into their offering, their own unique solution.

But I’ll never know – because I wasn’t compelled to look.

Think of it this way:

How many times has your audience been dismissive or not compelled to look because the creative was rushed, roadblocks to engagement we intentionally set for the sake of data, and meeting the artificial deadline prevailed over doing the best possible work with a better chance of resonating? Have any of us ever been guilty of such a thing?

When we rush creativity (the very thing that leads to innovative ideas) we take away the power of its potential.

We’ve been conditioned to “box it up” and promise what it will do in terms of metrics, sales, and how it measures up on spreadsheet – literally putting it in a box. When we do this, we have succumbed to the antithesis of creativity. Everything begins to look the same. No wonder three-fourths of brands are forgettable.

We neuter creativity before it has a chance do its intended thing – which is to wow people, stop them in their tracks, and get them talking.

And yet that is precisely what every company says it’s pursuing, but typically with poor copy that falls on deaf ears.

Are you "shoehorning" or taking a road less traveled?

For many years my professional life was the equivalent of being a square peg being forced down the round hole. The truth is I did it willingly even when I knew deep down that I was in the wrong lane.

Today I call that shoehorning – doing everything possible to fit the mold or be found occupying the right space, no matter how crowded or uncomfortable that space might prove to be. It’s another way of trying to be all things to too many people. Many of us do this without giving it much thought because somewhere along the way we made the assumption that this is how it is; this is what we’re supposed to do.

This can feel counterintuitive for us as individuals, and it can be detrimental to organizations and brands.

Robert Frost’s famous poem The Road Not Taken is the antithesis of shoehorning. Although we know the closing three lines well, we don’t often heed the advice of poets. Instead, too many of us have bought into the belief that the well-worn path someone else blazed will somehow lead us toward similar success simply by staying the course. As a result, we avoid differentiating ourselves for fear that divergence leads to a dead end.

Taking calculated risks can help move us in a new direction. But what if that isn’t enough? When is it time to rethink and recalibrate your brand, your organization or even what you personally do around the those critical why and how questions? Here are few prompts to help:

What are you willing to own? When so much is already taken or spoken for, when so little looks different from one organization to the next, what are you willing to hang your hat on? What unique or radical aspects of your work are you willing to be defined by? You know the challenges as well as the glaring deficiencies in your industry. Are you willing to put your stake down where others are less comfortable or unwilling to commit? Taking ownership is bold if not a bit scary. Consciously choosing the other path instead of shoehorning into the same queue as everyone else creates needed separation.  

Who are you willing to invite in? Who do you trust to strategically question your motives? Who will have your back when challenges arise? Who will help you push things further than you imagined but also pump the brakes when necessary? It’s critical to assemble teams of people who think differently than you. Their nuanced points of view will challenge you, which is the litmus test you need before customers and clients bring their challenges.

What outcomes are you willing to accept? Nobody says “let me fail first then I’ll get it right.” But often we don’t know what getting it right truly looks like until confronted with things that are not quite right – which is still a distant cousin from wrong. Embrace course correction and iteration as necessity rather than nuisance — it will take the heightened fear of failure down a few pegs.

What are you willing to say? Articulating what makes you different can be hard. We all want to be liked right away, and because of that desire we can be wooed to say yes to circumstances that warrant a no. What we say matters. When you know what you’re willing to own, you need to have the confidence to write it down, share it, and articulate it — over and over. You and your team have to be aligned on what you’re communicating at every touch point. It’s the consistent message (followed by consistent action) that begins to make the difference.  

Few if any customers clamor for more options that resemble existing options. So, much like Frost’s familiar poem, consider leaning into a strategic approach to do things differently and avoid shoehorning yourself into well-worn spaces where everyone looks remarkably the same with comparable features.

This is what makes all the difference.