Watch the video above. Seriously. It is worth a minute and a half of your time.
Just as “iron sharpens iron,” ideas sharpen ideas. Want better ideas? Want more creativity?
Then…
Scenious > Genious
We see this scenious idea quite a bit in music.
Think of the New York City music scene in the 1970s and CBGB. Patti Smith. The Talking Heads. Television. Blondi. The Ramones. What became East Coast Punk.
Or the NYC DJ scene that created rap and hip hop.
Think of the Manchester, England, music scene and the Sex Pistol’s 1976 show at the Lesser Free Trade Hall. From that legendary – and mythical – concert, we got Joy Division (and then New Order), the Smiths, the Buzzcocks, The Fall, Factory Records, the Hacienda, and eventually the whole Madchester music scene.
Think of Athen, GA, in the 1980s, and how a small college town music scene gave us REM and the B-52s and helped create what would become College Radio and Alternative Rock.
Speaking of alternatives, consider the Seattle music scene in the 1990s and the dominance of Grunge.
None of these bands did it alone. Geniuses or not, it is the scene that made them.
A Moveable Feast
While there are many examples of this throughout history, the best example, in my rarely humble opinion, is in Paris in the 1920s.
Sure, they weren’t musicians, and it wasn’t a music scene, but it was an art scene made up of many, many, many artists.
Stein nurtured this group and held regular Saturday evening salons in her apartment at 27 rue de Fleurus, hosting artists such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, and poets and writers, including Ezra Pound, John Dos Passos, James Joyce, Archibald MacLeish, Sherwood Anderson, and Ernest Hemingway. Scott [F. Scott Fitzgerald] became close friends with Ernest and encouraged and promoted Ernest’s burgeoning literary career, often with more dedication than to his own.
(https://www.scottandzelda.com/the-lost-generation/)
Picasso. Matisse. Joyce. Pound. Fitzgerald. Hemingway. That was an incredible scene!
Yes, they were ALL talented in their own way, in their own art. Their gifts were their gifts, for sure. But what these geniuses became was largely the result of their “scenious” and not solely their genius.
#TeamworkMakesTheDreamWork
The idea of the scenious is wider than artists and musicians. When “purposed” and planned, it can also apply in the office.
#TeamworkMakesTheDreamWork may be a corporate cliche, but it can also be a corporate superpower.
Some of my favorite meetings here at Samsung are what we’ve historically called “hack-a-thons.”
In addition to my Instructional Design team and our video team, we invite Field Sales Managers, District Leaders, and Regional Directors to participate.
Why?
Because we are building a “scene” of different people in different positions with different perspectives.
We want input informed by diversity and framed by expertise and experiences different from ours.
We want ideas to play off of different perspectives, focuses, passions, and desires.
But here’s the rub. As with all superpowers, it has its own Kryptonite: comfort.
Let’s go back to the saying “iron sharpens iron.” Inherent in this saying is discomfort. The process of sharpening a knife is a bit brutal. You are literally removing parts of the knife to make it sharper. This is good for the knife but not so good for the shards left behind.
This is true for similar ideas.
Labor pains. Growings pains. Pain is inherent in both birth and growth. Neither happens without discomfort. Yet both are beautiful and desirable.
Consider the idea of pruning. Pruning is rooted in discomfort in that you literally cut off – prune – parts of the rose bush so that the remaining roses are even more beautiful than before.
Creativity > Comfort
Creativity is greater than comfort. Even if you purpose to build a “scene’ at work, a creative community built on diversity, you must be willing to allow for some discomfort!
(Not so much discomfort that HR needs to get involved… just saying…)
Figure out the right balance of professional AND personal. The right balance of push and pull and give and take.
If you can create a corporate “scene” that fosters true collaboration, your team’s creativity will explode.
And show why #TeamworkMakesTheDreamWork can be more than a trite corporate cliche.