A very important lesson that I have learned in life is this:

Adjust or be adjusted.

As creative people, we need to be intentional with our ability to adjust. We should daily be ready to adjust to markets, timelines, circumstances, personalities, opportunities, risks, or even successes. As creative teams, we develop solutions. When we stay in a posture of flexibility, we allow ourselves the option of adjusting. Often we risk getting rigid. We figure out what we believe is the right way and then we hold tight to that method. The irony is, often times we are right…for a moment.

We are right because we see solutions different than someone who looks more practically at the same situation. But then, we buy the hype that we are right and ego enters the equation. Ego is like kryptonite to creativity. Creativity and ideas are fragile and delicate. They need to be protected and preserved, not boasted and flaunted. We must allow them to grow until they are ready to be shared.

When we refuse to be willing to adjust, we get adjusted. It’s not an opinion, it’s a reality. Think of the industries – not just companies – INDUSTRIES who refused to adjust and are no longer relevant to culture. Textile companies no longer exist. Home phones are more rare than ever before. Newspaper/print media is disappearing right before our eyes. The importance of staying flexible and adjusting is a tension in which we all must live. How can we stay in a posture prepared to adjust? Here are some ideas:

• Stay nimble – Keep your organization or team lean enough that it can call audibles and be flexible.
• Fall in love with results, not systems – Our mission does not change, but our methods should always be changing, morphing, and developing.
• Fight ego and stay coachable – Know-it-alls don’t know it all. Always be reading, learning, and watching what is happening around us. If we are not aware of our current location in our culture, we won’t know how to react.
• Find out “the next” – Be on the look out for what is happening, what is trending. How will it effect or enhance what we do day in and day out?
• The sound of our core – What is our core audience saying? People who are passionate about what we do – are they fired up or are they losing interest?
• The sound of the hater – If we don’t have some haters, we probably aren’t doing anything worth noticing…which means we’ve already started to adjust from relevant to indifferent.
• Avoid the copy cat – Copying and not creating keeps us from being able to know who we are. It prevents us from being able to adjust. When we have lost our identity, we won’t know where to turn.
• Be responsible – Be responsible with our finances, our resources, our momentum, our creativity, our team members. When we’re responsible with what we have, we are able to adjust more readily.

Being able to adjust is like going to the chiropractor. When things get out of line, we have to get reset. It may cause pain and hurt for a moment, but in the long term it corrects and straightens out our posture. Staying ready to adjust is core to being able to succeed.

Is your organization able to adjust?
Have you ever been adjusted?