Harnessing Your Creativity
There’s a period in modern pop music known to music historians as The Perfect Run.
It refers to a 5 year period between 1972 and 1976 in which RnB/ soul/ pop icon Stevie Wonder released 5 consecutive albums that are all widely considered to all be masterpieces, with 8 top ten singles between them, and 12 Grammys won.
In 1971, when Wonder was only 21, he had already proven himself as a musical prodigy and a certified star. So when his contract with Motown Records was up for renegotiation following his 1971 album, Where I’m Coming From, he leveraged his success to twist Motown’s arm into granting him complete creative control over his music, which was practically unheard of at the time.
The result of that unprecedented freedom gave the world The Perfect Run; Music Of My Mind (1972), Talking Book (1972), Innervisions (1973), Fulfillingness’ First Finale (1974), and most famously, Songs In The Key Of Life (1976). Five damn near perfect consecutive albums that pushed the conceptual boundaries of every element of contemporary soul music: musicality, storytelling, vocal range, language, poetic expression, cultural influence, social impact, emotion, success, and critical consensus.
The Perfect Run is the peak accomplishment – the axis - of an already outstanding career, though it owes its mystique and acclaim to an undefinable blend of circumstances and factors that all overlapped in Wonder’s favour at the very point at which he was both young enough and experienced enough to take full advantage of it.
Ultimately, any expression of creativity, when reverse-engineered, comes down to just that. The optimism to try, colliding with the knowledge to recognise an opportunity when it presents itself - and everything sustainable, whether it be art, music, business, architecture, culture, or even love begins at that intersection.
At the Beekman Group, we try to think of even the most basic processes and systems we implement, whether at our Head Office in Port Shepstone or at our resorts, as support structures to the creativity of our people. Granted, we can’t all be Stevie Wonder, but can we be Motown Records? Can we remain organised and strategically disciplined while simultaneously facilitating the creativity and expression of our most valuable commodity - our staff?
The Beekman Group has been on somewhat of a Perfect Run ourselves in the last few years. We’ve managed to combine a sturdy heritage and positioning within the industry with just enough calculated recklessness to excel in a period that was inversely destructive to the rest of our industry, and we owe it, in no small part, to the creativity of our people, and the culture that’s been instilled to support it.
As we move toward the new year, may we all, as employers, businesses and corporations, dedicate ourselves as equally to the youthful optimism as we do to the strategic knowledge that drive exploration, evolution, expression, and Wonder.