Seriously, Bro?
Seriously, Bro?
I once attended a start-up pitching night where a few fresh-faced twenty-somethings pitched their big dream, their revolutionary idea to change the world: Paying people to put ads on their cars.
“Ads on Wheels,” it was called.
It flopped, eventually, and our collective eyes are the better for it.
What I found most appalling was not the idea itself. People want to get rich. It happens. What I found appalling was the well-meaning, publicly funded start-up ecosystem responding to this idea as if it were a start-up for curing paediatric cancer. The panel of judges threw them softball questions about customer retention and growth trajectories.
I found myself wanting to scream: “THIS IS THE WORST IDEA ANYONE HAS EVER HAD, AND YOU CAN KILL IT DEAD NOW! DO IT!!!”
I’m a playful person. I help people play. What struck me about this moment was the profound lack of seriousness in the room. The panel was supposed to be serious about making the world better, not polluting our public roads with shitty advertising.
I wondered: Are these people serious?
Get Serious
When I talk about seriousness, I don’t mean the kind of grim-faced seriousness that ruins dinner parties by talking about how, like, alcohol is literally poison everyone.
I mean serious in the sense of actually, really caring about some things over others, and being unwilling to compromise in your pursuit of that thing.
I find this lens on seriousness helpful.
In corporate life, people are often accused of being ‘too serious.’ I think this is wrong. We’re not too serious. We’re serious about the wrong things.
Often we’re serious about processes over outcomes. We’re wedded to a particular way of doing things. However, we’re often thoroughly unserious about the impacts of our work. If we were serious about what we are trying to do, we would proably do things really differently.
If the start-up ecosystem were serious about diversifying our economy, they wouldn’t politely applaud people putting shitty ads on poor people’s cars.
Seriously Playful
Seriousness and playfulness are best buddies.
When we’re serious about just a few, small things, it becomes way easier to be playful about just about everything else.
If you’re serious about what you claim to be doing—finding the truth, educating young people, resourcing the future, or making incredible art—it becomes remarkably easy to be playful about how you get there. You become a little less wedded to your own particular processes, structures, and habits. You gain a little flex without losing focus. This applies to individuals and organisations.
Becoming more playful (by which I mean adaptable, responsive, light, and joyful) doesn’t mean being less serious. It means being more serious about the things that matter.
