Stop Selling Design and Innovation as “Fun”
I’ve notice a trend among consultants and organizations promoting design and innovation. They seem to have a need to pitch it as “fun” — possibly to position it as diametrically opposed to the boring routine most employees seem to get stuck in. I see this when I read descriptions of workshops or inspirational talks or sprints. “Break out of business as usual — and have fun!” seems to be a typical message.
Who said design and innovation is fun? Both of them involve changing the status quo and for those of you who have never done that, it is the hardest sometimes most grueling effort around. Doing innovation works means that you are going to butt up against failure, passive aggressive resistance, aggressive resistance, indifference, fear and egos.
But like doing or learning anything worthwhile, the work should feel challenging, engaging, enlightening and enjoyable. If all that happens, and you happen to do it with good people who give it their all like you do, you might even call this fun. I know I do.
Where did this idea that innovation and design should be fun come from? I think a lot of it has to do with our tendency to conflate innovation and design with “creativity.” We like to think of creativity as fun. If you’ve ever visited the Stanford d.school, you can see that their workspaces look like a mash-up of a pre-school with a carpentry or art studio. It looks nothing like our boring offices. And if you’re lucky enough to work with a d.school alum– they are ridiculously creative, energetic and fun! It’s completely irresistible. I also think that that the d.school and the people behind and around it deserve a lot of the credit for bringing design and innovation into the broader mainstream. So I’ll put the “fun” on them too.
And I’ve done that and sold that too. It works.
Yet right now I’m stuck with the thought that we do our clients and partners a disservice with this whole “fun” thing. Doing so means we undervalue the persistence and resilience required for meaningful change. We place great value on creating something new and much less value in pushing the new through a complacent workplace. We train people to expect to receive accolades for their ideas and not for what actually ends up getting delivered. We leave people mostly unprepared for the rude reaction and rejection that most co-workers and managers and leaders will react with when faced with the change. None of that is fun; it sucks.
As a profession, we seem to be scared witless to sell hard and true and messy. Management consultants are world’s best at selling the clinical, emotionless, safe and economical. Designers and innovators should sell (mostly) the opposite. But really, who would want to buy that?
People want to buy creativity. But is it fun?
Jerry Seinfeld once famously said:
“If you’re efficient, you’re doing it the wrong way. The right way is the hard way.”
(BTW, Seinfeld the show is almost just as funny now as it was thirty years ago, IMHO)
If you want to sell “fun” work for Disney, who literally sells fun. Or maybe Ben & Jerry’s who’s founder Jerry Greenfield once encapsulated their brand essence by saying
“If it’s not fun, why do it?”
A recent client of mine that I worked closely together with had done amazing work recently until they ran up against a short-sighted and misguided manager with significant power. This manager had made an ill-advised decision about the division’s direction without consulting anyone else. All of my client’s work would go to naught, even though they could show how needed it was. My client was distraught, they wanted to quit.
It made me also realize that I had spent most of my time focusing on the fun parts of innovation. Somehow we never got to the hard, messy parts. But here we were. There was an opportunity to dig into that in this moment and yet I felt a lot of resistance. It became clear that it wasn’t clear that that was my role. Lesson learned — you can’t wait to prepare people for the resistance, you need to bring that elephant into the room right away.
It doesn’t mean that we need to be mean assholes. But it means we do have a responsibility to lead others through design and innovation by treating people honestly, respectfully and emotionally to engage them to create the amazing solutions people need today.
Maybe we need use physical training metaphors more consistently. I used to run marathon relays when I lived in Burlington Vermont, two-, three- or five-person relays. The five-persons were fun: short, not much training involved but you got to experience the thrill of running past the crowds. The two-person relays, half marathons, were a lot of work and training. The race was also hard. But afterwards, what a high! Afterwards it felt fun-ish. I never wanted to put in all the training time for a full marathon, the halves gave me what I needed.
That’s like design and innovation — there is reward in doing but the biggest reward comes afterward. Sometimes it’s a total pain in the ass (and leg, and knee, and ankle, and foot). But the persistence, resilience and enjoyment of running with a crowd, through a crowd, is amazing.
As innovation and design leaders we need to, as David Foster Wallace said:
“…help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.”
Let’s stop selling “fun” and start selling the hard work we need if we’re going to save this blue planet.
