We’re Creating Camels Not Horses

One of my favourite idioms is:

A camel is a horse designed by committee.

It’s the idea that too many layers of bureaucracy or too many opinions will inevitably distort a great vision, producing something that’s just not all it could have been.

Having spent the best part of a year working on the world’s biggest (biggest by value, complexity, etc.) branding projects, I’ve realised that my hunch was true: creativity is curbed because there are too many gatekeepers before an idea reaches a decision maker, and those gatekeepers play a defensive game because they fear losing their jobs.

Death by Over-Rationalisation

As a strategist, I should love rational thinking — and I do. However, when you’re trying to be creative and produce something of the highest quality, something that ‘pushes the envelope’, it’s difficult to do so when your ideas have to be steamrollered through arbitrary checkpoints.

At each checkpoint, you’ll find individuals whose priority is to safeguard their paycheck. They think their biggest threat is losing their job as a result of allowing something risky or unconventional to get past their toll. This increases scrutiny and creates a top-down obsession of rationalisation. Everything must be examined microscopically, surgically.

The Stakes Are High

I get it though, there’s a huge amount at stake; the value of the projects, the preservation of your lifestyle (which is tied to your salary), and so it makes sense that people want to play a defensive game. It’s like those massive cup finals in sport; so much build-up, so much is on the line, and this means those games are often drab, defensive games in which nobody wants to be responsible for an error.

I get it, but as a spectator of sport and active participant in the world of branding, I just say that it’s a shame. It’s a shame because creative studios full of talent are fast becoming graveyards for great ideas that never see the light of day.