Lee Simpson: Here’s Why Extraordinary Creativity Requires Tension

Tension.

 

For some, tension can feel awkward; uncomfortable even. And in business, something to be avoided at all costs. But there is plenty of evidence in culture to suggest that the tension created when diverse perspectives collide leads to positive momentum.

 

Five years ago, at whiteGREY, a team came together with the challenge of finding positive momentum for an agency that had merged the year prior and needed a clear direction for the future. We internally coined the phrase ‘the 100-yr old start-up’, born out of a collision of creativity and technology (the 100-year history of Grey and the tech credentials of The White Agency). We quickly saw the diversity of thought that the merger had created would be our greatest strength. And the collision of perspectives could give us our best chance of breakthrough thinking. You see it across the world. In politics when a ruling party is challenged by a strong opposition, it moves a nation forward. We’ve seen it in music with Lennon and McCartney, the iconic pairing whose differing points of view led them to become one of the highest-selling collaborations of all time. And in sport, when two forces meet, the spectacular happens (the two billion people expected to watch the Women’s World Cup will see this play out).

Over and over, we see when forces collide with their energy and ideas, it pushes things forward. It creates remarkable outcomes. The extraordinary happens.  

 

And so, “Tension Creates Extraordinary” was born. It is the belief that in life, business and creativity good things come from the right type of tension. But it’s also ‘who we are’ and ‘what we do’. It surfaced a truth about the cognitive diversity in the agency and shaped a strategy that demanded diversity more broadly - as a necessity, not a ‘nice-to-have’.

This is a constant work-in-progress, but our recognition as an inclusive business by Diversity Council Australia is a sign of progress. And Tension Creates Extraordinary is also ‘what we do’. We identify, articulate and resolve tensions in the lives of customers to unlock growth for our clients.

 

In an Australian industry packed with talent and producing exceptional work of all shapes and sizes, we’ve always tried to play our part, striving to find ‘extraordinary’. 

We’ve partnered with Volvo Australia on a strategy to become a sustainable mobility company (including the transformation work to realise that vision) and more visibly created the Living Seawall which was exhibited in the London Design Museum and lives in Sydney Harbour (90 species and counting). Our work with Missing (formally MPAN) over the years has seen us use Facebook’s controversial facial recognition software to find missing people, and more recently create a therapeutic tool to tackle ambiguous loss. 

 

There’s been behaviour-change work in green energy, with an interactive kids’ book that uses a reader’s home energy consumption to alter the story (thanks to smart meter connection); record donations for Sheldrick Wildlife Trust by launching a human-to-elephant translator and even using the power of data to impact their on-the-ground operations through Mammoth; turning P&L plates into currency in drive-thrus to reclaim an Australian rite of passage from US fast food giants (Plate Up for Red Rooster); and launching Australia’s largest ever regeneration project with WWF. In the last 12 months alone, our work has travelled beyond Australia to NZ, Japan, Korea, Singapore, South Africa and Canada.

 

So, what can we learn from the last five years of Tension Creates Extraordinary?

Firstly, the importance of taking the intellect and rigour we commit to a client’s strategy and applying it to our own (avoiding 'Cobbler's Children's Syndrome.') Then there's the power of alignment - ensuring the behaviours, values and culture are aligned to that strategy. And finally, and more specifically, building workplace cultures where people feel comfortable to challenge each other's thinking, favouring extraordinary over agreeability. Only then will we encourage the perspectives to collide, the creative sparks to fly, and get closer to ‘extraordinary.'