I’ve talked about patience before, but I don’t think I put enough emphasis on it. Everywhere I turn, it seems that the landscape is filled with people, overeager to see instant results without any major effort or understanding of the situation.
I get emails like this all of the time:
Hi Tara,
I was wondering if I could spare 30 minutes of your time, buy you a cup of coffee and tell you a little bit about our website. Maybe you could also help us with some quick solutions to building out a community.
Right. Somehow in that 30 minutes, I will magically be able to deliver you the answers that will unlock that community potential. Heh. I was contacted by a firm that could ‘market’ my firm and hook me up with 30-60 minute phone consultations for some extra money because there is “such a demand for quick advice”. I watch people expecting innovative companies to launch after 6 months as 100% perfect and complete. I’ve seen people change entire business plans overnight based on a quickie answer from an ‘expert’ who has spent zero time with their product.
Why are we so impatient? How did we get to this place in the world where we think there are people with the magic potion? The secret key to everything?
I will admit that experience and knowledge of an area informs and speeds up the process of getting to an answer, but even the most experienced and knowledgeable require time to contemplate and understand new angles. In my experience, every situation is different and requires new knowledge and new experiences to inform answers. Anyone who says there is an easy formula to everything is not only naive, but will probably lead you very far astray.
It reminds me of Scott Berkun’s FOO Camp presentation on the Myths of Innovation when he talked about the myth of the Eureka! moment. It’s a common misconception that innovation happens in a single moment (i.e. Newton’s apple and Archimedes’ bath), when, in fact, it always takes years of experience, the involvement of many others, dozens and dozens of smaller innovations along the way, long periods of concentrating, studying and thinking about a problem, and, often, after all of this is in place, taking oneself out of the environment and thinking about something completely different (like taking a bath, for instance).
Yet, people continue to believe that creative types are able to perform like seals when called upon.
Let me tell you that this is the type of pressure that makes me feel very non-creative, and I’m certain that goes for everyone else in similar roles. I find, the best ideas come along when I’m in total flow, usually thinking about something else altogether or just experiencing something partially related. Sometimes it takes a couple of weeks, sometimes several months. It depends on the problem, how patient a client is, how close the product is to tipping into solution, how well I understand the users and how well I understand the surrounding environment.
One of the things I love about working with Ma.gnolia and why we use them as a shining example so often is because Larry is an extremely patient guy. He has never asked for Eureka moments. In fact, he’d rather just chip away and experiment here and there, tweaking and pruning and understanding what works more and more. He doesn’t care if we are wrong from time to time. He doesn’t judge our entire performance on mistakes. In fact, he understands that mistakes get us closer to success. Larry also doesn’t need status reports and reviews and updates…he knows that everytime we sit down and talk, all of the things we’ve done, from a BarCamp over here to using another app over there has informed us in regards to a suggestion we come up with a couple of weeks down the line that will improve Ma.gnolia that much more.
Not too long ago, I had a great conversation with a gentleman at France Telecom’s Orange division. He told me that there was no such thing as Research and Development in companies any longer. Gone were the days of hiring researchers and creative types to just learn and observe and innovate gradually. R&D departments today were being squeezed and pressured for quicker results and bigger returns on investment. Researchers are spending more time filling out weekly reports and logs and sitting through performance reviews than they are spending on academic readings and data collection. This leads to not-so-hot results. Lukewarm results lead to slashed budgets. Now, many companies are scrambling to try and understand why it is that they’ve lost their creative mojo and why they are losing marketshare.
And yet, while one half of the world seems to be growing more and more impatient, I’m amongst an amazing group of people who are leading the return to ’slow’ movement. I’ll betcha the tortoise wins this one again.
Of all of the creativity killers out there, I think that impatience may be the worst of them. Impatience leads to all sorts of other creativity killers like mistrust, micromanagement, short-sightedness, control and fear. These things lead us down the same path of mediocrity, rewarding those who perform like seals and punishing those who really care to take the time to really delve into solutions. Certainly, we need action and forward movement, but we must recognize the smaller steps are just as important to getting there as the big Eurekas. Without the small steps, there are no Eurekas.
I don’t think this is the last you will hear of this as it is an issue that we face with our creative business daily and, from what I’ve observed, is an issue that many others face as well. Part of it comes down to education and holding steady to these principles, sometimes at the cost of losing business (which we have). Part of it comes down to learning how to communicate this non-process process in a way that doesn’t compromise the creative flow. The biggest part of it is having our own patience to seeing the tides shift back towards the return to true R&D, creativity and true innovation.
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13 Comments
Well, as somebody who emailed you and Chris about getting together for coffee, my plan was more to just chat about BarCamp and share some ideas. Besides, everybody knows it takes at least 42 minutes to magically unlock communities.
I can’t agree with this post more. Many of the clients I work with seem to think that magic design and system architecture faries are hiding in my desk waiting to spring forth and share their ideas. One of my previous bosses was convinced that pressure makes people more creative and would consistently give us irrationally short deadlines.
One of the best companies I’ve ever worked at was ASAP media. Every project was written out on paper multiple times and usually prototyped at least twice. Our clients often showed some inital concern, but the results were always better than they expected.
Ah, yes. Sitting down and chatting about stuff is great and should happen more often!
Ironic: ASAP media LOL
bravo! spot-on.
The funny thing is that many clients thought ASAP Media meant we worked quickly.
In reality it was an acronym for Associated Student and Professors Media Group; it was a division of UMaine that helped provide real-world experience for students.
Tara, spot on !!!
I just have exited from an initative, that required a turnaround on major works within 6 months !! I told them (interested party) -that it was impossible.. they said oh yeah, we can pump in more $$$ !! But it just can not work like that !!
the cycle of innovation is to connect dots in the dark.. zigzaggin thru a maze it takes time. In fact, there are no Eureka moments !!
so bloody spot on tara!
While reading this, I kept getting an image of those new suburbs that promise if you buy a house there, you will feel like a part of a well-established community. Maybe I’m stuck on your boutique-era posts, but a suburb built in 6 months with a mega-opolis-buy-everything-in-one-place (the real world version of more features as opposed to user experience) on the corner misses the mark in my eyes. As do hurried “communities”.
If the community builders can’t hang out there and live it, then how will they ever know what will make others hang out there and live it?
I continue to think your blog and ideas are champion, thanks for another great post!
spot on Tara - I have a draft on “attention” on my blog that you just helped me finish *s* -
but you are oh so right - even getting the community thinking going takes a while for “normal” companies…
You could always tell them to put “marketing strategy software” into Google and save themselves the cost of the cup of coffee.
I have also lost business because of insisting a client that I was working with try to slow down and take their time.
I’m glad that I lost that business. It wasn’t worth it (they were also people who haggled over costs. Not good since I charge towards the lower end of the scale, because I usually work with people who don’t have tons of money, because of the area that I am in).
It’s funny that you mention R&D dpt squeezing, too, because I was just talking about this with friend who works for a laser technology company, who’ve squeezed their R&D dept down to just him!
Now, Richard Florida had to write “The Flight of The creative Class”, to cover his ass after writing all of those books about the “Rise Of The Creative Class”. Because, apparently the “Creative Class” are moving their creative asses to places where their more appreciated.
And, I wonder if this has something to do with the unrealistic attitudes that you talk about above?
I’ve started to see this as a clash of worldviews. The people who’ve mastered, or want to master the Industrial/Corporate money-focused worldview way of doing business that’s been around for the past 100+ years, can’t or won’t get what it takes to work in the emerging mediums. They’re impatient because this attitude is how they have always motivated people to “perform”, and people who act like trained seals are rewarded because the focus is money, money, money, money, and money. If you were just focused on money, it would actually be easy to give quick 30-60 minute advice, because all you’d really be doing is advising on “how can we make this thing make us as lots of money!?!” I bet a lot of people just assume that you have this same focus. Otherwise, “why would you be in business”, right? They may not always come right out and say it. But, I’ll bet if you dug in with them, this would be the core focus for a lot of people.
“Quick Community”=”Quick Money” How?
“Viral Marketing”, imagined surges of crowd participation. They want this, because after all of the hoops are jumped through in the hoped-for ways, there’s a pot ‘o gold at the end of the rainbow!
They are not trying to build communities at all. They are actually trying to build audiences that look like a community.
They are trying to figure out how to make a “community mind mold” that they can shove people into, and change the form of their minds to their benefit. They can’t figure out how to pour the people into the “mold” with out spilling it all over the place, so they are calling asking you.
But it tuns out that actual communities aren’t made by pouring molten people-minds into molds at all. Instead, they self-assemble based around actual interests. And they grow with time and real care.
Same goes for me. I find I’m usually at my best in a reactionary capacity. By that I mean there’s something there that I can build off of or revise. It helps me keep my flow or rhythm going.
With regards to the impatient world we live within, definitely check out “In The Bubble” by John Thackara, if you haven’t read it already. He helps explain why the more we try to save time, the more we actually lose it. He also talks a lot about innovation, design, and ecosystem concepts similar to permaculture (without calling it permaculture).
PS. I have a “dream” client who is very patient as well with my creativity (since it’s really the only way I can work). It’s great when you can find people like that.
I was watching a great film called Mondovino last week, about the effect of globalization on viticulture. In it, one of the highest flying wine-making consultants kept giving the advice (in 30 minutes phone calls, of course) to aspirational wineries to just ‘micro aerate’ their wine. This, of course, has the effect of oxygenating the wine to develop its flavor earlier. I thought it was funny that we can’t even wait for our wine to age any more. Talk about impatience!
Thanks Tara. I’m currently spending two months in the Big Slow myself right now in an arts colony part of town where everyone knows each other, block parties are the norm, and everything is the uber-leisurely pace of molasses and gumbo. (Oh, yeah, it’s actually known as Big Easy, Nola, New Orleans.)
Overnight instant community is an oxymoron endemic to frenzied Americans. I learnt this sheepishly from the Italians myself (where Slow Food movement was birthed, btw). They put me in my place (graciously) when I pitched them my USA-inspired social networking ideas in 2003. I like to recommend observing closely actual communities and neighborhoods with strong social ties/social capital in the real-world for hints to apply online.
It’s always a grassroots rippling from bottom up and out evolution; although I have a sense the growth can be quite accelerated like the organic Fibonacci sequence, yet never contrived or forced.
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