How to Impact Your World as a Creative
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Late last year, Creative Mornings (Atlanta) asked me to present some thoughts on this subject to 400 creatives. They were kind enough to capture and edit the video, which I think might be worth watching. If I may, consider watching this with some of your staff--it's about 25 mins long.
In essence, I posit that you start with competence, then move to cross over to something else, and that's when you then create. How do you change your world? It's not through your work, likely. The safest prediction is that you'll impact the people around you…by just being competent. By doing your job, raising their game, and explaining humanity through your actions. To do this, you tame the genetic A.D.D, relax a moment, and realize that it's not death to simply do your job for a few years.
After you've done that, you must leave things behind—strengths, even—to form the next level of competence. Your ongoing impact comes from abandoning those strengths. In the process, life isn't about finding yourself. It's about creating yourself. And the process of creating yourself often means leaving part of yourself behind, rather than finding yourself, like the process of new growth in the world around you. It's using an opportunity from a position of strength.
Where are you in the process of creating yourself? How much do you really know? What is it that you contribute? Do you wonder about the worthiness of the entire marketing industry? How do you place yourself in an industry where most of what you do is bullshit?
I think it's an interesting presentation, and there were some good questions at the end.
You can download a PDF of the presentation and watch the video.
