Vulnerability, Risk, And Comedy At Work: How One Leader Was Able To STAND UP To Traditional Leadership

When it comes to taking risks, the last hour of an all-day management retreat for your team doesn’t seem like it’d be the time or place – they’re tired, their work for the day is done, they feel the sweet release of freedom at their fingertips – when suddenly, it’s ripped away for an extra hour of training. And not just any training, stand-up comedy training.

“If looks could kill, I would’ve died right there on the spot,” recalls Steve Cody, founder and CEO of NYC-based Peppercomm.

Peppercomm is a marketing communications company that prides itself on challenging conventional wisdom when it comes to marketing, and what challenges conventional wisdom more than combining stand-up comedy and managers? Okay, maybe discipline via trial-by-combat, but comedy in the workplace is up there.

Why take such a risk? According to Cody, after performing stand-up for a few years, he began to notice that the skills he learned onstage were actually benefitting him around the office.

“My senses were sharpened by having to read the room, deal with silence, catcalls, and nerves before making a major presentation, so I said, ‘I think this is applicable to the workplace.’”

He’s right.

Steve Cody performs at Peppercomm’s Annual Comedy Night at West Side Comedy Club (2019)

Comedy, or at the very least, laughter in the workplace, has been proven to generate results for those organizations who place high value in humor. According to a Huet & Associates study, organizations who used humor to engage employees reported shareholder returns 19% higher than their competitors. A study by market research company Ipsos found a correlation between employee retention and the sense of humor of the managers at those organizations – imagine all that time and money you’d save on recruiting and onboarding with lower turnover rates. And a study published in The Journal Of Managerial Psychology discovered a direct correlation between a supervisor’s use of humor and employee performance, engagement, collaboration skills, and satisfaction. Leaders who use humor were also perceived as better performers and more likable.

The effects of humor at work are clear, so even though Cody’s managers were initially resistant to the idea of comedy training, they didn’t take long to come around.

“You could see everybody pulling for one another,” remembers Cody, “so it became part and parcel of our training program.” Now, Peppercomm uses his outside-of-the-box, culture-building, shared experience a few times a year to train new hires or employees moving up in the organization, and they even offer the training to clients. Because of this unique cultural cornerstone, Peppercomm has a competitive edge over more serious marketing firms when it comes to attracting potential clients and hires. More than once, Cody has heard, “You made us laugh,” when closing a deal with a new client, so needless to say, his risk to introduce comedy to his team had more than paid off. Not only has it helped attract new clients, but it has also landed Peppercomm on many “Best Places To Work” lists, including Forbes, Crain’s, and Inc., which makes the firm a destination for the PR world’s creative up-and-comers.

The gamble could’ve easily backfired on Cody, but he doesn’t look at taking risks from such a doomsday, “What if it all goes wrong?” perspective. Another powerful lesson the average non-comedian can learn from stand-up is that it’s okay to fall on your face when you try something new, and this willingness to be vulnerable and honest in pursuit of a goal can serve as a catalyst for growth.

As the old adage goes: it’s about the Journey, not Steve Perry.

Okay, maybe that joke didn’t work, but I had to at least take the risk and include it. If you didn’t laugh, I’m okay with that because instead of wasting energy and speculating on “What would’ve happened if I included the joke?” I now have the answer and can learn from it… and never say that again.

OR find a new way to say it better.

OR include it as part of a longer joke.

In today’s workplace, vulnerability and the willingness to think outside-of-the-box are vital leadership skills for adapting to changing times, and when things don’t go according to plan, your team will look to you for guidance.

“I allow all of my employees to see me fail, and fail miserably,” remarks Cody.

Come again?

“You’ve got to be a little more human and authentic.” But what about the idea that leaders have to be strong and have all of the answers?

In short, this perspective of leadership is outdated. With the development of virtual and AI technology disrupting the status quo of work and new challenges popping up seemingly on the hour, agility is a much more valuable leadership skill than rigidity in the modern workplace, and the first step to being agile is to come to terms with the fact that you may be wrong sometimes… and that’s okay!

Not only is it okay, it’s more than okay in today’s world. With technology speeding up the way we work, we have to hang onto our humanity in the workplace, and the best way to do that is by being open to your own imperfections and being willing to laugh about them.

Source: Crain’s New York Business

“People want the truth and want to be treated as peers, which is difficult if you’re in the CEO spot. But the beauty of comedy is that it level-sets. It personifies and humanizes the CEO in a way that nothing else can.”

By taking a risk and trying something new, so much can go wrong, but if you’re open to laughing about it, not only will you be quicker to adjust, your people are more likely to have your back. According to Cody, employees expect vulnerability, humanity, and open-mindedness in their leaders.

As a comedian, if you’re willing to put yourself on the level of your audience and connect with them as an authentic human being – rather than performing by memory, or lecturing them on the way you see the world – you build trust. Once an audience trusts you, when one of your ideas doesn’t connect, they stay on board and are rooting for you to adjust and succeed with your next joke. Some comedians will badger an audience for not laughing, others will plug on in a rote, rehearsed way, but the ones who can take that bombed joke and build audience trust on a non-laugh by turning the attention to their own failure – those are the greats.

Just like performing stand-up, being a leader is rooted in being a human being first, and being a human means making mistakes.

Leaders: ask yourself, with whom would you rather work side-by-side? The person who works the same way every day, who has tall of the answers and never admits when they’re wrong? Or the person who is willing to try new things, who has questions and admits that they don’t have all of the answers, and is sometimes willing to laugh at themselves?

Be the leader you’d rather work with – that’s who your employees need you to be.

According to Cody, “The companies and leaders that’ll come out of this [pandemic] with the most success are the ones who show that they care. You need to let [your employees] know that it’s okay to not be okay.”

With this leadership mindset, you have permission to present your wild, outside-of-the-box idea to your team, and even if it fails miserably, remember, that’s what makes all of us human.

Watch the full interview HERE.

For more about Steve and Peppercomm, visit peppercomm.com

If you’re a leader and you want to develop to benefit from the results of using humor in the workplace, click here to set up a free consultation with Water Cooler Comedy.

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What’s The Worst That Could Happen? A Fun Way For Your Team To Face Their Fears… Together

What if everything — and I mean everything — that could go wrong did go wrong? When rolling out a new policy, adapting to new rules and regulations, or getting used to a new executive, there is bound to be just a little bit of fear. As we limp into 2021 after a 2020 that nobody — except for maybe a tiny bat in China who dreamed of world domination — saw coming, there’s going to be some battle-weary soldiers in the office, so when you announce another change, resistance will inevitably kick in.

Don’t resist the resistance unless you want more resistance. Instead, embrace it.

In 2014, online retailer Zappos decided to shift their management model to a holacracy, a management model where the traditional functions of managers are eliminated and job titles are replaced by roles that individuals acquire. The traditional pyramid of hierarchy is replaced by, according to Business Insider:

A series of “circles” dedicated to specific functions like marketing and customer relations.

It’s centered around self-management and requires employees to have high levels of engagement, meaning, and organizational buy-in to work. Say what you will about the management model, what I’m more interested in is how the employees and executives at Zappos, as well as outside experts, responded to such a seismic shift.

How did the employees respond?

When former CEO Tony Hsieh sent out a memo asking for full employee commitment to the new system, 18% of the company chose to take their severance packages. Yikes.

How did outside experts respond?

In the never-ending quest to prove that new ideas don’t work, publications like HBR, Inc, and Business Insider were quick to draw attention to the mass exodus from Zappos.

How did Zappos executives respond?

They made a video spoofing the idea of a holacracy. You read that right: Hseih starred in an employee-produced video where he falls asleep on the couch, and wakes up in a dream where the company has fallen into the chaos of anarchy, like the press predicted:

This video was a fun, outside-of-the-box way of communicating to the remaining employees that even if the new management style didn’t work, it could always be worse. Though Zappos has gradually transitioned away from holacracy, the switch didn’t involve panic or a coup like the video portrays, and the company has maintained a positive, creative workplace culture that consistently shows up on best-places-to-work lists.

So what was the point of the video?

It served three purposes:

1. It allowed for employees to work together in a creative setting, side-by-side with the CEO and one another, on a fun project they could look back on, be proud of, and share with family and friends that “My job and my boss are pretty cool.” Be honest: would your boss take part in a video spoofing his own decisions?
2. It gave employees a shot of perspective. When faced head-on with change, humans have a bad habit of gravitating to worst-case scenario situations. One way to ease this stress is to take that worst-case scenario and manifest it in the form of a fun project like this that delivers the subconscious message, “Relax — that worst-case scenario is not only implausible, it’s kind of silly.” Using humor in this way is a great tool for level-setting perspectives, so instead of stress and fear, people begin asking the question, “What can we do next?”
3. It delivered a message to outsiders: this is a fun and engaging place to work. Imagine you’re looking for a job and you’re deciding between the “business-as-usual” company and the “we don’t take ourselves seriously” company. Though the former is consistent and you’ll feel safe and secure, the latter is one of the biggest online retailers in the world because it takes risks, has fun, and is willing to take an occasional L. Would you rather work at a company that takes work seriously, takes its customers seriously, and takes itself seriously, or a company that takes its work and customers seriously, but doesn’t take itself seriously.

If you’re a leader, making a short video to poke fun at your own ideas is one way to help your team want to get on board with new ideas, instead of making them feel like they have to get on board. Added bonus: the video that Zappos made cost zero dollars and was put together exclusively by team members. Sure, the editing, sound, and writing isn’t award-worthy, but it’s okay because the people who made it aren’t professionals. Because of the fundamental shift of workplaces we experienced in 2020, we need to find new ways to generate buy-in from our teams, and making a video where you communicate that “Yeah, this could go wrong, but with you by my side, we can make this thing work… and if it doesn’t, then at least it won’t be as bad as what happens in this video,” is just one way of many to do it.

Note: I wrote this in response to the loss of a visionary risk taker and leader whose legacy will live on in all those he inspired through working for him, reading his book, watching his interviews, and so on. If more leaders modeled their behaviors after Tony Hsieh, we’d fundamentally change the meaning of what it means to “work:”

“I think when people say they dread going into work on Monday morning, it’s because they know they are leaving a piece of themselves at home. Why not see what happens when you challenge your employees to bring all of their talents to their job and reward them not for doing it just like everyone else, but for pushing the envelope, being adventurous, creative, and open-minded, and trying new things?” — Tony Hsieh

The Election Is Over - What Now?

The robots are taking our jobs, which isn’t a bad thing, but we HAVE to be ready for it.

What an election cycle! It had it all: drama, comedy, and more information about every county in every swing state that any one human being can retain. Did CNN’s John King and MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki just have that overwhelming amount of knowledge swimming in their brains? Also, did either of them have time for bathroom breaks? Were they hooked up to catheters? Are they even human?

While these were the questions I had on election night between sips of double IPAs, there is a much bigger question that must be answered, regardless who won the presidency: what now?

If you’re anything like me, you probably want to talk about something — anything else, but I’m sure you’ve probably noticed there is much more work that needs to be done. The message we keep getting from politicians and media alike is that “we’re more divided than ever,” but because of the access to social media, we’re more connected than ever, so this is a bizarre paradox in which we find ourselves. 

Just because we are connected doesn’t mean we have connected, and that — more than anything — must be first on our to-do list. No matter who won the election, I was going to write this particular blog post because, red or blue, the core problems that we’re facing are colorblind.

There are three things we must do as a nation in order to come together and come up with solutions that will help us thrive in the 21st century:

1. Connect

As a comedian, one of the first things I do once onstage is to make a connection with the audience. If I don’t connect and can’t get them to see from my P.O.V., my material isn’t going to land quite as hard. Connecting is about finding common ground, a common goal, or a common interest. Scan through any political “discussion” on social media — it’s two people trying to get their point of view across without anyone learning anything. When we go into a conversation with the goal of talking, there is no room for communication, as the key to communicating effectively is listening. This is a fundamental problem that transcends party lines, and it has ingrained itself to the point where too many people can’t even fathom why other people have differing perspectives. I’m guilty of it too. The course of action is to find common ground and/or agree on a common goal. What do all people, no matter their race, socioeconomic status, or ideology want? According to positive psychologist Martin Seligman, there are 5 pieces of the human well-being puzzle: positive emotion, engagement, meaning, accomplishment, and positive social relationships. 

We all want these things, but we disagree on what it takes to ensure that each one of these needs are met, so instead of insisting on your rightness, ask open-ended questions. Find out their passions, stresses, pains, desires, and needs are. If we aren’t starting from common ground, it’ll be difficult — if not impossible — to reach a common goal.

2. Collaborate

At the very least, we all want to live in a better world, but we each have a different vision of how exactly we get there. The way our political system is set up creates a diametric opposition, so that those who think differently are wrong. Throughout the entirety of the election, Joe Biden’s message has been a consistent theme of unity, however, there are plenty of Democrats who refuse to even consider working to connect with Trump supporters. 

This refusal to connect or work together is why we’re in this situation to begin with! 

Watch the presidential debates — they’re about who “wins” — but imagine if they were centered around who works together the best… it would change our political dynamic. The basic level of human collaboration is “yes, and.” That is, taking a problem, and presenting ideas in a way where the next idea adds to the previous idea, rather than proving why it won’t work, taking credit for the idea, or one-upping it. Working together like this will not only bridge the gap between ideologies, it has the power to bridge the gap between problems and solutions, and it focuses the conversation on ideas instead of problems. Think about how powerful it would be if, instead of dismantling the Affordable Care Act, we improved upon it. Do you work for a leader who, from your perspective, has awful ideas? What if, instead of resisting those ideas, you got to work to improve upon them? Whether the goal is to make the world or your workplace better, undercutting the other person or idea is energy that can be spent actually doing the third thing…

3. Create

What set America apart from the rest of the world during the Industrial Revolution was the fact that we innovated and created so many new inventions and systems. Over the past 60 years, America went from being the world’s greatest creator to the world’s biggest consumer. Most Americans agree: if everyone who could work in the United States had a job, that’d be great. However, it’s 2020, and many of the jobs that brought the United States to the world stage in terms of innovation are now being done by robots and A.I. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but many of those computers and robots do those formerly human jobs way better and way faster than people. That’s why it’s vital that people of all ideologies connect and collaborate on creating new jobs for this new world, otherwise more and more jobs will disappear and we’ll be left with a bunch of angry, hungry, unemployed people feeling betrayed by the system. Demanding more jobs in manufacturing and fossil fuels would’ve been like demanding more blacksmiths and carriage manufacturers after guns and cars became commonplace. It’s urgent that we put our heads together and see what kinds of new jobs we can create in new, burgeoning industries — like creating a robot to break down the minute-by-minute, county-by-county election results so John King and Steve Kornacki can use the restroom in November of 2024.

Our common goal is to create a marketplace that works for everyone. Though I may joke about what separates us, I do it to point out how distracted we are by it. Our differences are a positive tool we can use to our advantage. Once we connect and see how much we really have in common, we can collaborate on creating a world worth living in. Reach out to someone who believes differently than you and tell them you’re grateful you have them in your life, then start asking questions to learn about them. All it takes is an open mind and a conversation, but if we wait for others to have the open mind first, we may be waiting forever.

Why This Election Doesn’t Matter… Yet

It might be just a rock, but it’s OUR rock (Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

This election doesn’t matter. There, I said it. Not only does this election not matter, this pandemic doesn’t matter, this blog post doesn’t matter, your ideas don’t matter, your opinions don’t matter, and you don’t matter either. But neither do I.

You are matter, but that doesn’t even matter.

“But David, you’re supposed to be a motivational speaker. You always talk about uplifting other people, and this isn’t uplifting.”

Well stick around, idiot, because you’re about to get uplifted.

When everything feels so important and it feels like the bad thing that’s happening is the worst possible thing that could ever happen in the history of the universe, remember: you’re on a rock hurtling through that universe, and that universe is expanding infinitely… but no one’s talking about that this election.

Where’s that question in the debates? Neither Biden nor Trump acknowledged the inevitable supernova of our Earth’s sun, black holes, or the fact that a particularly violent solar storm could wipe out electricity across the planet, the only planet (that we know of) that supports life. When the sun goes supernova, Earth will be vaporized like it never existed in the first place, in the meantime, sure, let’s argue about healthcare.

Everyone should have access.

Controversial? It shouldn’t be, but when money, a manmade construct, comes into play, the argument becomes not about doing what’s right, it turns into “Who’s going to pay for it?”

Making cities and technology green so that everyone can enjoy the fresh air and water that was a package deal with this planet? “We can’t afford it.”

Overhaul education so that human beings are engaged by learning, creating, and sharing new ideas to innovate new technologies that allow us to stop doing demotivating jobs and start engaging our brains with new occupations? “But we’ve never done it that way before.”

We’re on a rock hurtling through space.

Mathematically, the fact that we even exist is an anomaly, so the fact that we’re arguing about how certain things aren’t possible is laughable. Our schools educate the concepts of infinite possibility out of us at a young age, confining our imaginations to a system filled with manmade limits that is centuries old… in the middle of a universe that’s expanding infinitely. Yet, nobody has even brought up the education overhaul we so desperately need. I would argue that it’s the most pressing issue because it could literally solve all of our problems. For example:

Income inequality: teach students the concepts of creating wealth through altruism

Inequities (gender, racial, religious, socioeconomic, and cognitive): teach students the concepts of empathy, acceptance, and communication

Climate change: teach students the concepts of relevant ecology, innovation, and collaboration

That’s just the tip of the melting iceberg.

You know what doesn’t care about money? The sun. The only time we talk about the sun is when the president looks directly into it, but the worst day in the history of our planet pales in comparison to the day the sun explodes.

I know this particular blog post is pretty meta, and I’m bringing up some pretty out-there concepts, but somebody’s got to. I mean, for God’s sake, we’re arguing about wearing masks in the middle of a pandemic. Really? That’s the hill you want to die on? Because it’s a hill that’s hurtling through space in an infinitely expanding universe.

Infinity isn’t a concept that our simple, human brains can understand, I mean, our symbol for infinity is an eight that fell over. Think of it from the perspective of an ant. If you try to explain the human world to a single ant, it would probably just carry a grain of sand somewhere else because that’s what it knows. Compared to the complexities of the universe, your brain ain’t shit, but compared to that of an ant, it’s a Milky Way of molecules. Unlike ants, humans can look at where we are, learn from where we came, and plan for what’s to come. Looking back, humans have been arguing about things that don’t matter — politics, profits, and power, to name a few — instead of innovating to create things that do. If Earth were to be destroyed by a celestial body tomorrow, religion, economies, and political ideologies would be destroyed along with it, and the universe would remain unmoved by the devices of human imagination. Arguments over these imagined orders have driven some innovation, sure, but they’ve also created a stasis that challenges those who challenge said stasis instead of considering the validity of their ideas.

In the scheme of the universe, the entire planet of Earth is a single electron on a single atom on a single grain of sand on a single nude beach. However, our individual problems, concerns, and ideas feel like the most important thing in our lives. The point of this particular blog post is to remind you that even though the election looms large, in the scheme of the universe, the ripple it causes is like a single ripple of water in the ocean — it’s meaningless… unless the conversation shifts to how we can come together to strive for infinite growth by reaching for our infinite potential.

We need to give people the tools they need to explore new ways of reaching the infinite possibilities the universe has in store, but if what you’re doing isn’t learning, growing, or expanding infinitely every day, make the shift by asking the questions:

How did I get better today? What did I learn?

How did I help others get better today? What did I learn?

How can I apply these things tomorrow?

These are just small ways to make infinity relevant to you.

Sometimes we all just need a reminder that WE’RE ON A ROCK HURTLING THROUGH SPACE! AND SPACE IS EXPANDING INFINITELY!

We gotta figure out ourselves, then we gotta figure out this rock, and then we gotta figure out space, because in front of us is infinite possibility, but like explaining capitalism to an ant, we can’t quite comprehend it… yet.

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

— Carl Sagan

Question The System, Solve The Symptoms

The world is desperate for a coronavirus cure — we want life to get back to normal, but I can’t help but feel like we haven’t exhausted all options.

Has no one tried leeches?

If you think that sounds absurd, you’re right: leeches would only alleviate the symptoms of COVID, and not address the cause.

Many of the solutions to problems that our government, medical professionals, and workplace leadership propose involve treating symptoms of problems, rather than addressing the causes. This is just as effective as using leeches to cure, well, anything.

Addressing symptoms creates short-term results, and it can serve as a stopgap to solving the actual cause of the problem, but it won’t actually solve the problem.

When I was in college, I smashed the transmission of my Saturn driving over a curb on a night of bad decisions, causing a massive fluid leak. Instead of paying for a whole new transmission, I decided to pay a mechanic to weld it back together, which stopped the leak, but a few months later, the transmission completely blew and I had to get a new car altogether. Because I wasted my resources on a short-term fix, I ended up paying more in the long run.

Now, I don’t know what “getting to the core” of our world’s health crisis is, but I do know the long-term solution to most societal problems is to overhaul our education system. Did that solution come out of left field? Maybe in terms of this post, but our current education system as it stands is hampering our human potential. We can ban guns, offer universal basic income, and elect different representatives all we want, but these are addressing the symptoms of an even greater problem.

Why?

Our education system is designed to meet the needs of the Industrial Revolution, a time when humans took on the role of robots in factories to complete specialized tasks, so schools taught students how to be compliant and fit into those roles. Now, we’re entering the automation revolution, where actual robots are taking those jobs and creating a more efficient production process. In the short-term, this may seem like a bad thing: “THEY’RE TAKING OUR JOBS!” But in the long-term, this can be an amazing development in human history because it frees up millions of people from doing repetitive, simple tasks that numbs their brains, allowing them the chance to engage the natural human inclination to do creative work. But if schools keep producing compliant humans, the only solution humans will see is, “WE NEED TO GET OUR JOBS BACK!” This outcome is nothing more than addressing a symptom created by the obsoleteness of our education system.

Humans aren’t meant to work in factories. We operate at our best when we’re working together to find novel ways to solve problems, but today’s education is a one-size-fits-all system that emphasizes output over creativity, and the importance of the individual over the group.

If you work in a factory, and an employee has a creative idea to make work more fun, the manager is bound to shoot that idea down because it means a shift in roles, and perhaps short-term losses. In fact, that employee may be viewed as a troublemaker. Our society questions the innovative individual, rather than the system that stifles their potential.

We’ve confined ourselves to a system that works against us in a 21st century economy.

We’ve confined ourselves to a system that demeans anyone who dare question that system.

We’ve confined ourselves to a system that steers people away from doing jobs that are mentally and spiritually engaging to jobs that are mentally and spiritually draining.

And this isn’t even an issue in this year’s presidential election.

Me when I came to the above realization

Billions of people around the world don’t think they’re talented, intelligent, or creative, not because they aren’t, but because they’ve been shoved into a system that tells them they’re not.

The world is changing so rapidly that, if there isn’t a fundamental revolution in how we educate ourselves over the next decade, problems like climate change, equality, and pandemics will make today’s problems seem like child’s play. This isn’t meant to be foreboding and apocalyptic, it’s meant to be a call to action.

Education reform begins with learning how human beings think and behave, then leaning into our natural inclinations and creativity to address the problem with an actual solution: teach students how to think, howto work together, and how to engage their creativity. Once we do that, there’s no limit to our potential.

Until then, we’re stuck in a system that emphasized job titles, individualism, and output as metrics for success, while we argue over which symptoms to solve by throwing stupid amounts of money at them… we might as well be using leeches.

You’re Being Conditioned Out Of Being Human

Sir Ken Robinson: We don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out of it.

What’s the world going to look like in 50 years? Will the entire world, from continent to continent, be connected to free, unlimited wifi? Will formerly barren landscapes burst with lush, sustainably farmed crops, reducing world hunger to zero? Will there be fully green cities, running on renewable energy with carbon emissions at zero? Will there be access to healthcare for anyone who needs it, regardless of socioeconomic status, to lower mortality rates, and nearly eradicate infectious disease? Will a 94-year old Tom Brady break his own record for oldest player to win a Super Bowl MVP?

Many of you are probably thinking, “Those things are impossible,” but before you click out of this article, let me remind you that we’re in the 21st century at the dawn of the Automation Revolution, while the system in which we work and are educated is a 19th century system from the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. So, yes, in our current system, those things are impossible, but that isn’t inevitable. Our system is costing us the contribution of millions of people who spend their days driving trucks, making sales, and micromanaging their subordinates, instead of exploring their creativity to discover their true potential.

Rather than lament what isn’t, it’s vital to begin from what is, which is where the work of thinkers such as Sir Ken Robinson come into play. Though Sir Ken unfortunately passed away last week, that doesn’t mean his calls for an education revolution have to pass away with him.

His work is painfully relevant today, because many of the worlds problems stem, not from inequality, systemic racism, or capitalism (though those don’t help), but from receiving an education that doesn’t allow children to explore, play, or embrace their differences. In an industrial world, people are conditioned to be compliant, to memorize facts, and to meet quotas, but human beings are at our best when allowed to explore our creativity. Because we’re taught to not question the way things have always been done, it costs us the opportunity to find ways to make things better.

Remember the embarrassment of answering a question incorrectly in front of the class? Or when you thought you had a great idea, and you were laughed at? Think about how it felt to receive a bad grade on a test or project. In the current system, failure, being wrong, and making mistakes are the worst things a person can do. This conditions the creativity out of children, and we become a world where only 15% of people are engaged at work (Gallup) — a world where over 3 million teens have experienced a depressive episode in the last year (SAMHSA). A world where only 14% of American adults say they’re very happy (University of Chicago).

By conditioning the creativity out of people, people are becoming like the robots that will be taking human jobs, and ironically, to prepare for the incoming wave of automation, people need to be creative. As Sir Ken said in his prophetic first TED Talk from 2007,

“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original. By the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They’ve become frightened of being wrong, and we run our companies like this — we stigmatize mistakes — and we’re now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make. The result is that we’re educating people out of their creative capacities.

We don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out of it.”

Sir Ken Robinson

Most of you reading this aren’t kids (if you are, go outside and play, you psychopath), but that doesn’t mean you can’t take something away from this: it’s okay to be wrong. It’s okay to think outside of the box and get your ideas shot down. It’s okay to be laughed at because you think or do things differently. If we want to leave future generations a world we can be proud of, we’re going make a lot of mistakes, but with each mistake, we’ll be one step closer to a world where children are taught that it’s okay to be themselves, take risks, and make mistakes. If we don’t start taking action now, the world in 50 years won’t feel much different than the world today, and that’s not something we can be proud of.