What have you broken today?

"If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it."

I remember first hearing this in earnest on a trip to Washington D.C. in the mid-90s. It was by no means new, but what struck me was that this was out of the mouth of a public servant in the U.S. Government talking to me about the way he has approached his work.

On face value, it's a pretty good sentiment.

One that (based on a quick Google) became popularised in the US during the Carter administration in 1977; there’s more of a deep dive behind it if that’s something that takes your fancy. And it's fair to say, what is defined as broken, or ain't, is subjective.

Either way… that pretty good sentiment is just that.. Nice.

But begs the questions whether any kind of achievement or success could be achieved off the back of “nice”.

In my lifetime, I’ve made quite a few nice cups of tea.

I’ve met some nice little old ladies.

I’ve read a nice book, and I’d go so far as to say that I’ve even been nice to a few strangers in my life.

All nice does is give you the warm and fuzzies.

Great. That’s good. Do that often anyway.

Consider yourself warm and fuzzy.

Good (or nice) is the enemy of great.

When it comes to making an impact in work, in communications, advertising, behaviour change, exploration of new territories – what changes when you leave things as is?

Plenty O’ Nuthin.

Which, other than a great Ridiculously-Low-Cal breakfast cereal brand, is not useful.

Throw “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” out the window – and while you’re at it – break the window.

Adequate, nice, good enough, middle of the road, that’ll-do-pig, and just about every other average sentiment is what leads us down the path of complacency.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?

Break it and make it better. 

Look at the things you’ve done – and rip them up. Change the world. Start by knowing you can. From the tiniest step, and smallest job, you will have a monumental impact when you start by aiming to.

Because you know what? You can do better. What we did yesterday, is about as useful as yesterday’s newspaper.

Good enough for the birdcage, or getting streaks off the windows, but more than that…

...meh.

Be bold enough to break stuff.

Let go of the conventions you’re clawing on to, the things you hold to be true, and the ideas you had this morning that you felt were just absolute genius. Question everything. Especially yourself and your own biases. Don't fear fear.

Fear is a barrier to innovation and change. Look at the world through the lens of courage in the face of fear. See the world for the fear of not changing. What's the risk of staying like we are? What is changing around us while we stay idle? Blockbuster video left in the dust as streaming services took over. The industries who faced disruption as both needs and technologies surfaced to cater to a growing desire for more control and choice. While the obvious example is Airbnb, Uber and the like - this is not a new thing. Horses are extremely grateful for the disruption to the transportation industry which wasn't broken (unless you asked a horse) until it was.

Nothing exists. Everything is made up.

The barriers to innovation and change are just things we will into existence through collective agreement. We impose them on ourselves, and we create them to give ourselves reasons to limit change, (read: potential failure). Want to know how to do it? Ask a child. They do it instinctively. They change the rules, they see the world for what's possible, challenge norms, test and try things.

One of the things creativeXpeople at Synergy Group work at quite passionately is finding ways of bringing, needs, wants, hopes and dreams to life in new, exciting, creative ways. Looking deeply into the problem, holding it in a long passionate embrace and saying, “let’s do something incredible and make a difference”. Let's eschew the made up limitations we put on ourselves for a second, embrace some quantum reality and ask ourselves - why not, instead of why.

The reality check of all of this fluffy stuff, of course, comes now. Anyone who’s spent even a few minutes in consulting or creative industries, or merely has clients will start to roll their eyes and bemoan the experience as, more often than not, the death of the bold new idea in favour of the safe, risk-mitigated tepid option.

And sure, that’s true, sometimes.

Occasionally, we do swallow our pride and perceived godlike genius status in favour of a client’s best friend’s cousin’s son’s thoughts after having watched the first few minutes of a Mad Men episode on Netflix. And that’s ok. But the moment you stop trying is the moment it’s all over.

Never stop trying to break stuff – because you’ll eventually look back and realise how much you’ve broken along the way and how possible it was all along.

So, suck it up, do your damnedest to get the best possible result as imaginatively as possible in a way that serves the client's problem or the world, not your ego – and then push the next one even further, and even further after the next one.

It's already happened

Remember how often working flexibly and remote work was the hopes and dreams of a few wild-eyed Norwegians? All while the rest of the world sweated away in the whitewashed world of corporate offices, long commutes, weak coffees and the doldrums of “we’ve always done it this way because it works”.

How has that gone? 2020 saw the greatest large-scale disruption to habitual behaviour the world has ever seen. On average, 8 in 10 consumers changed the way they did things because of the pandemic.

That’s a global hard reset. 

Our habits have fundamentally changed.

And now the question lands with everyone, whether we move forward, learn and change – or whether we force ourselves back into some status quo. In some areas, people will do just that, and return in some way to old habits, but they’ll be approaching them from a new perspective.

Data already shows that one in three people plan to use mobile payments and video calling services more frequently (GlobalWebIndex, 2020). And new habits have formed to replace old ones as people have started taking more lunchtime walks around a local park as a new habit.

Spoiler Alert: It’s never going back to normal. It broke. It wasn’t particularly working that great before anyway.

But we don’t need to wait for something to hold down the world’s power button for 5 seconds; we can take steps every day, in even microscopic ways to change, improve, amend, adapt and be better.

Make breaking stuff a new habit.

Relook at the everything you’ve done, and marvel at where you’ve come from, and where you’re going – all the ideas you’ve had: the strokes of genius, the idiotic, comic, silly, camp, boring, bold, clever, and cold.

Then tear them up and push it further. Start from the impossible and pair it back until it's just possible, then do that.

If it ain’t broke, break it and make it better. 

About the author

Jason is an award-winning creative who leads the creative direction in Synergy's creativeXpeople practice; a journey of exploration to pursue opportunities to shift, influence and motivate behaviours in ways that make lasting, impactful and meaningful change in new and exciting ways. Built from the ground up with Dr David Schmidtchen, and Sally Dorsett, they are thinking beyond the textbook manifestations of behaviour change and into new and uncharted territory to influence, motivate and engage across your work and life. From creative campaigns and advertising to organisational design, workforce strategy - the problem as at the core of their focus, and people lie at the heart of the solution.

creativeXpeople aims to venture into domains that are reserved for explorers, adventurers and artists.