Mistakes can make magic

Lately, many people are asking about mistakes.

It’s funny how this happens. As the world becomes obsessed with data and certainty, we all start to crave madness and surprises. Contradiction makes the world go round. The only thing we love more than patterns is breaking them. Critics understand patterns. Creatives understand how to break them. With apologies to Kierkegaard, critics see life backwards, creatives have to live life forwards.

Take rugby. The ball goes down the back line. A bad pass happens. The ball misses the player, hits the ground and goes to the next player. This mistake freezes the defence and disrupts their pattern. The player goes through to score. A critic will say it was a bad pass. A player will say it was an opportunity. The critic works with the pattern. A great player works with the new. The great ones understand that nothing makes you focus on the present like a mistake.

You will see this over and over in art, science, music – in fact, anywhere you have to get your hands dirty and take a risk. This is where you find the space for random events and combinations to create something new. The problem is that it’s a messy business and sometimes it doesn’t work. This is why a critic is so dangerous. He works with what he thinks should be there. He cuts off the oxygen and kills potential. So, what you get is an acceptable answer but not a new one.

Inside an agency, this is very dangerous. I have seen people have entire careers built on being averagely right rather than imaginatively interesting. It is a strong defendable position that can kill the creative space because it creates fear. And fear and true creativity don’t mix.

To use the rugby analogy again, if you are terrified of what the other players will say or what the coach says if you make a mistake, you won’t throw that pass. You will not do what is inside you. You will do what is outside of you. This is the end.

Right now, many believe the answers are out there, somewhere. They are not. The great answers are still inside us. And they often begin with great mistakes. Go make one.