Out of our element, into the future
Progress needs opposites
Clad in khakis in a room full of suits, I stood on stage in the Grand Banking Hall of the old Dominion Bank headquarters in downtown Toronto, about to give a talk on people-centered design.
I’m a West Coast creative; I work in digital.
This was a Toronto crowd, working in finance.
“I’m not creative,” said the faces looking at me.
“I know,” I wanted to say back. “I’m not financive…financial? Finance-ish. Finance-minded. That’s why we’re talking.”
If you know me, you know I’m not exactly a natural with finance. We talk, occasionally: hi-how-are-you’s in the hypothetical hallway, pleasantries by the proverbial photocopier. Some light up when they see spreadsheets; I hide behind a coffee mug.
Tyler (our VP of Finance) knows this: we see the world through different coloured glasses. It’s the same floor we’re standing on, but different ideas filter down through the dust motes. Just a couple weeks back, my colleague Veronica and I gave a presentation on the pathway forward for Domain7’s marketing. As various team members jumped in to offer their takes on the big-picture ideas, Tyler’s thoughtful silence began to stand out. It took a dust-clearing walk around the block to dig deeply into the differences, and through that, Tyler helped me see an important distinction I had missed.
Back at my notebook I scribbled out this little comparison of me and finance:
Looking at the list something was clear: first, we don’t naturally speak each other’s languages. Second, that’s obviously the point. It’s going to take both columns, awkward or not, to get where we want to go as a company. The growth we seek lies right in the blank space between the two.
Turns out, that day in Toronto, I had some backup from the finance side.
From 1916 to 2000, that grandiose hall we were in was a live banking branch, where customers queued up to cash cheques. Now, it’s a conference hall, and not just because of changing real estate preferences. Our banking needs have become transformed by digital, so much so that this ornate offline infrastructure is no longer needed. The hands of technology picked up those marble columns and shook them, emptying the grandness out and scattering customers to find refuge in mobile apps and ATMs. And at the conference, we got to hear from some speakers whose leadership helped finance sprint ahead of that change.
Fellow speaker Grant Mackenzie described the pathway of bringing the now-legendary ING Direct concept to Canada in the early nineties, before digital made sense to the masses. “Our concept challenged the industry’s expectations of what ‘normal banking’ could be,” he told us. “All of the major banks had been following the exact same pattern for generations, so nobody saw us coming.”
It took an outsider to shake it up. It turns out, people who all think the same way, will keep thinking the same way.
We heard finance vet Doug Steiner describe the automated wealth management startup he’s building. “Today, I’m the only finance guy on the team, and that’s on purpose,” he told the audience. “The rest are from marketing, design and tech.”
“If I only hire people from finance, we’ll all get stuck in the same patterns of thinking.”
We heard from Payments Canada, running hard now to help Canada keep up with the changes in mobile and digital payment realities, saying, “The strategy we build today has to be based on listening to Canadians and studying the globe’s technology trends.
“If we try to go it alone, we’ll miss the future.”
And when I finally took my turn to say my piece, I started by bringing it back to a recent experience with the “I’m not creative” resistance.
It was in May of this year, during a Design Thinking Day workshop that involved a cross-section of participants from finance, education, government and hospitality, gathering to explore briefs on product design for social change. As the teams diverged and post-its and sketch-pads were filled up, a quiet mutiny blossomed in the corner.
I received an email about it afterwards: “In our breakout group, we ran into several instances where members said that they weren’t good at brainstorming, and it brought our session to a halt a few times,” said the writer. “They were struggling as they said they usually rely on their team to come up with the ideas and then they provide feedback.”
In my response back, I provided some resources, and as much as I wish I could say I offered the secret encouragement guaranteed to inspire wholehearted involvement, I had to admit: maybe this person won’t change. Not today, not yet. Sometimes we’re not at the place where we’re ready to take the risk.
Because it’s hard. If we’re doing “collaboration” right, it always will be a little uncomfortable, a little risky, a little awkward. We’re trying to stretch ourselves to see alternate points of view. To challenge our existing biases and patterns and habits. To add brain to brain, and see what unlikely connections end up sparking brilliance. That’s not brain surgery, but it is neurologically challenging.
Yet what is the alternative; solving problems solo? Is that any easier? Are any of us as individuals gifted as masters of both science and art, technology and design, order and entrepreneurship, management and creation? Who among us has a single brain wide enough to excel both laterally and linearly, logically and emotionally, historically and imaginatively?
There are some out there, no doubt. But it’s almost as if the universe says,
“Our apologies: due to the overwhelming scarcity of polymaths, Renaissance Men, and so-called saviours who aren’t pathological narcissists, you are hereby invited to work together.”
When we acknowledge our own “lack” — whether that’s creativity or finance-ness — we are standing at the edge of our limitations. And this uncomfortable borderline is also the gateway to the future.
After my talk, a member of the audience came up to talk with me. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” she said, “From the write-up, I thought your talk was going to be really boring.” I glanced at her card; it had the words “technical” and “development” and maybe “compliance” on it. Different ways of seeing the world, check. Awkwardness, check.
But then she said, “I found it really interesting. It helped me see how connecting with people who see things differently can really transform things.”
And with that, someone called to her, and she was gone, moving out of the marble foyer, out through the huge wooden doors, out to bring her minor Wednesday epiphany into the rainy streets of Toronto’s financial district.
