“Stay hungry” isn’t near as fun as staying curious

This is not your typical post.

What follows is an online-offline exchange with one of the best creative minds in the business right now — Greg Walter of 2Tall Animation.

His sports-related animation studio has become a sought-after partner across global sports leagues and their teams with millions of eyeballs on the content they create. And for someone who I assumed owned the cheat code for timely, buzzworthy creative content, I didn’t see this question coming — at least not from him.

The question he posed online to fellow creatives is below, and what I feel strongly, via my own creative practices, is simply one way to respond to it.

I talked with Greg about this before posting to get his blessing on sharing insights from our exchange (slightly modified). Frankly, I would’ve responded publicly in the app, but found I had more to say than the tiny window afforded. I also think a lot of hard-working, thoughtful and creative people who have been on the scene for a while can glean some helpful takeaways here. At least that’s my hope.

GREG:

To the Gen Xers, the children of the 80s, the greying ass-kickers who are still at it, still risking, still creating… what are your tricks to staying sharp, creative, and hungry?

ME:

Greg, I saw your post and it got me to thinking….

While I lack any tricks or life hacks, I interpret your question as being about “more work” or new work – and, I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling drained by “feeding the beast” and doing “treadmill sprints” more often than I’d like to admit.

So I have to stop looking at this as “work” and, instead, as curiosity. A curiosity that I trust will feed new ideas that become the energizing work we “get to” do — not just have to do.

I know, curiosity = buzzword, so let me explain my take.

My version of curiosity isn’t surface-level and business-relevant hot takes of saying, “dang, look at Agency X killing it over there. Why didn’t we think of that? How can we riff off that?”

No. What I mean is:

Go hang out with younger people.

In particular, I’m looking at people who are 15 to 29 years old (and young 30s). And here’s why:

The age range reveals an interesting learning loop. 15-year-olds are starting to think for themselves, breaking away from parental molds and “discovering” who they are, their likes and dislikes.

A lot of it is peer-induced, but it’s the beginning of noticing trends. Trends that, like all trends, once existed in a different time, different shape or container, and are now recycled for a new generation. This to me is a well of fascination.

They fall in like and then in love with things borne of the 80s or 90s or aughts often without knowing the origin source, because it has a new twist on it just for them. So looking at them and through their lens, I see things of my past differently.

We have a choice — we can be the old farts who say, “I remember when Don Henley sang Boys of Summer back in 1984” and shake an angry fist at a cloud when we hear a cover of it; or we can embrace The Ataris version that is faster, more punk-pop, swapping out a Dead-head sticker on a Cadillac for a Black Flag sticker (which, arguably, I’d prefer). It’s the same dang thing slightly tweaked for a new audience. And I realize I can love them both.

It’s the sharpness and clarity of old becoming new again. That makes me hungry to learn more. To ask “what if” more. Pursue more.

Same is true for college-age people and those post-college young adults entering the workforce and adulting, what they are willing to work for (and not work for), their questioning of purpose, value, commerce – a more cerebral, personal awakening that isn’t solely material, but feeds their choices.

The more time I spend with those younger than me by a good stretch, the more alive they make me feel, the more curious I become, the more I translate that into my work of creating and mashing things up. Because if the cliché of there’s nothing new to discover is only partially true, then it’s in the remix where all the next great inventions exist.

CASE IN POINT:
I would love to know what percentage of your younger audience consuming 2Tall’s basketball results content has a clue that it is a mashup of a Charlie Brown Christmas and NBA personas and outcomes. It’s like an Easter Egg for us Gen Xers, with a wink and a nod to say, I saw what you did there!

But that knowledge isn’t necessary for a younger jet set to love it. That’s feeds their hunger. Not just borrowing from the past, but making it relevant for today’s audiences.  

Funny, when I get together with some of our long-time friends, I’m often more energized in hanging with their college-age kids. Talking and experiencing music, culture, whatever. It’s absolutely life-giving when you have a curiosity mindset.  But if I reduce my exposure to those my age, we digress into easy and comfortable territory, talking about the trials of aging, our latest health issue, stress, problems, because we’re on the same chapter together. While it can be comfortable, it also can be life-draining.

I think the more bold, the more crazy, the more inspiration from the unlikeliest places, the better. That’s where genuinely fun and interesting ideas come from.

Maybe your NBA playoff results look totally different — or don’t exist at all — if you and your team aren’t mining your childhoods, or rewatching a Charlie Brown Christmas with your kids.

So, how many other cultural levers can we find and pull and borrow from to make an old thing totally new?

This is what stirs the creative juices, IMO.

Not another brainstorm in the War Room.

Showing up and being present in the lives of those a generation or two behind us has so much give-and-take value for both side. There’s so much to glean and rethink — if we’re listening and paying attention. Because everything we’re looking for isn’t mysterious and hiding. It’s residing in our past memories and histories, waiting to be rekindled in a new way.

You’re already there. You’re leading the way in many respects.

Keep leaning into that grab-bag of curiosities and what-if mashups.

And for all the geezers who live for the data over the art, you can feel confident knowing your delivering both.

GREG:

Holy Crap, Thad. This is an amazing take. Never thought about it this way before. And it's totally true. I love hanging out with 20 somethings, but I never thought about it this way. This is how we stay relevant, keep moving forward, and keep our edge - it's by being around people who are in that stage of life where they're testing, striving, remixing, rethinking in a way that 50-somethings generally aren't.

I love hanging out with my 50-year-old friends because it's comfortable.

But I love hanging out with 20-somethings because it's electrical.

Maybe that's why I'm one of the few who really likes having teenage kids. It's invigorating as heck.

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 sharer)

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.

Bigger. Better. Faster. More. Focus on the one that matters.

Every growth-minded organization’s aspirational and unsustainable spreadsheet dream.

Most people can sniff out the BBFM thread of language for what it really is:

• False or misleading marketing claims.

• Running to the beat of the corporate drum (which is typically the opposite of disruption and, in turn, true innovation).

• Unchecked hubris born of previous success.

• An undisciplined and insatiable desire for more.  

 (Those last two are part of the five stages of decline that Jim Collins outlined in his lesser-quoted book HOW THE MIGHTY FAIL)

Yet it doesn’t prevent businesses from believing in the false promises of this mantra. In time, and always sooner than desired, this will happen:

• Bigger becomes bloated.

• Faster needs to increase its speed.

• Yesterday’s version of more is not enough.

• Better is subjective and becomes a point of contention.

If we can sniff this out as consumers, then why is it that we, as businesspeople and leaders, apply this same misguided thinking and bake it into our systems and processes?

We know that bigger isn’t intuitively or explicitly better.

Faster doesn’t guarantee greater efficiency or effectiveness.

And more gets you more of everything – the bad along with any good.

Better is the only meaningful pursuit on this list.

Better, when articulated what it entails and how you’ll achieve it, will present nuanced versions of more that you, as a leader, get to decide if the pursuit is worthy of the effort.

And while better might remain subjective to the end customer, you get to define the terms of what better means to your organization.

It will be discovered in the metrics, the anecdotal, the company culture, as well as the hard to quantify.

It will be in the ability to recruit and the ability to retain your best people.

It will be proven over the long term. Not last quarter or next quarter.

It will reveal itself in a loyal base of customers, suppliers, and partners.

Better has a purpose. It has a definitive feel.

The pursuit of better is ongoing, just like business itself.

It will be written (literally) in your company’s DNA.

And you will know when you are going astray.

Because all of us want – and are looking for – better.

We’ll all take the upticks of bigger and more as they come (and inevitably go).

Which is why our aspiration should be to laser-focused on better.

Better is achievable, measurable, sustainable, and profitable…

as long as we aren’t derailed by short-term, fleeting promises of bigger, faster, and more.

Silence as a Strategic Advantage

I recently spent an entire week in complete silence.

No talking. No verbal communication whatsoever. Doctor’s orders.

Not exactly ideal for a communicator.

Sadly, this isn’t unusual for me. It marked the fifth time in 10 years this has been necessary: a surgery to address abnormalities with my vocal cords.

Previously I tried to work through my recovery – using hand gestures, mouthing the words, using a white board to convey thoughts in the moment, and staying fully connected as best I could.  

But this time was different.

This time I left town for a remote place assured of silence and a focus on healing.

I limited all screened time. I walked a lot.

I did tactile things – mostly painting. I read for pleasure.  

And this is where my brain did something unexpected.

Instead of shutting off or winding down, my brain accessed a gear that is rarely found amid the speed of daily life.

A week of recovery turned into a week of renewed ingenuity brimming with ideas, surprising connections, and new possibilities. Things that would not have happened had I been running on the proverbial treadmill of work.

To be clear, this was different from vacation, from necessary downtime.

It was a mandated stop of verbal communication and a self-imposed limit on digital communication.

That, I learned, was the key to unlocking the floodgate of possibilities.  

When you are not actively communicating you become an observer, a listener – a discerning captive to that still small voice from within that provides a way forward.

IMAGINE THIS:

You have a big project hanging in the balance or a must-win pitch on the horizon.

You could engage as you always do – brainstorm meetings, ideation sessions, check-ins, status updates, work reviews, more meetings – and then “sprint” to the finish line.

Or you could give your team some silence and space. A mandate to think rather than perform. Consider it the opposite of the groupthink brainstorm.

This doesn’t require extreme measures or a full week’s worth of quiet and processing.

But what if you provided the freedom, untouchable increments of time and some space to breathe, think, and ideate in silence away from scrutiny of performance, away from the tyranny of the urgent?

What fruit might that yield?

What might a collaborative session look like when unfettered thinking is brought back to the table, rather than expecting brilliance to strike during a planned 60-minute brainstorm?

You and your team likely won’t find that hidden gear under those circumstances.

It is not how the flood of creative problem-solving is unleashed. 

Every organization wants the breakthrough idea that accelerates the business. Few are willing to give it the time, space, and necessary silence to bubble up from the quiet depths to the surface.

NOW IMAGINE THIS:

Your competitive advantage isn’t about doing more, or grinding, or hustling, failing even faster, or cracking the whip on your team.

In fact, it might look a lot like doing nothing – or appear to be ignoring the elephant in the room.

But you know looks can be deceiving.

Because what you are doing is making space and clearing a path for the best thinking to emerge. To allow for strategic listening to occur and see how ideas begin morphing into solutions.

That’s not only good business, but it also reenergizes teams to think – and then perform – differently.

And it’s also what organizations seek for the good of their business and their people.