How is one supposed to gather the space, energy, and motivation to create and inspire?
In candid conversations with friends and business contemporaries, there is a shared awareness that things are changing rapidly, often becoming increasingly challenging in both business and personal lives. This usually means more and more time and energy expended, fewer dollars earned, and more instability. Whether due to income inequality, personal crisis, climate concerns, or changing value systems, how we move forward is shifting. The old roadmap is no longer sufficient.
On top of everything else, life occasionally sees fit to dump a load of bricks on our heads. Sometimes we find ourselves facing a long line of dump trucks full of bricks waiting behind the first load, ready for their turn to contribute to the brick fest. Illness. Divorce. Financial strife. The death of a loved one. Sudden job insecurity.
And yet, we’re somehow expected to unbury ourselves, shake it off, happy up, and find the clarity and strength to not just survive, but thrive as though we’ve just spent a few months at a magical vacation getaway – complete with situational amnesia and a pause button for bills and obligations.
But for most of us, there is no break from the unrelenting need to feed ourselves and loved ones, not just physically but also emotionally and spiritually. Finding and creating purpose and meaning is a greater necessity for most than it was just a generation ago.
How is one supposed to gather the space, energy, and motivation to create and inspire?
Where in this can a spark of greatness find oxygen to burn purely and brightly, when we barely have the air to support our own existence?
I suppose some of you are dreading the moment when I wrap up my brick analogy with an obvious metaphor of taking the bricks and using them to build a solid foundation of strength and resolve, grasping one’s bootstraps firmly, and manifesting one’s ascent to the apex of human greatness. That’s not going to happen.
Life doesn’t stack neatly like bricks, no matter how much we try. Being told to suck it up and push on through is the opposite of helpful advice, and hardly motivational. Especially when those dispensing the advice are often doing so from a place of comfort, security, and stability.
Instead, in moments when I most want to retreat inward and hide from the world, I find that reaching out and engaging with other people to creatively come up with solutions, build things with the potential for greatness and positive change in the world is the most comforting tonic.
That’s one of the main reasons we created Corvus & Coil. After decades of working on company fundamentals, metrics, market stats, and performance, it has become clear that something is missing from the math. Tyranny of the spreadsheet leaves no room for the subjective aspects of companies; there are no line items for culture, shared loyalty, personal growth, satisfaction, happiness, and team inclusion. Yet these are the hallmarks of great organizations that enjoy genuine admiration from their customers, partners, and employees.
We set out to create a holistic process that looks at the numbers as well as the stories around the numbers, identifies strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities, and results in a project roadmap that captures and communicates excitement, potential, and vision in an easily accessible way.
And so far, it’s working very well.
Having been involved in generating over a billion dollars of liquidity for our public company clients, we excel at inspiring confidence in companies, helping you rise above the noise and command the attention you deserve.
We’ve developed world-class brands (and rebrands), materials, stories, and programs that engage and create an urgent need for action, helping companies develop or change the way they authentically connect with their target audience, whether that is B2B, B2C or directly to investors.
We’ve advised our clients in all manners of company culture, systems creation or change, market nuance, and investor sentiment.
We’ve even helped build unity in teams and helped founders work together more efficiently, solve systemic issues, overcome insecurities, and feel excited to go to work in the morning.
If your clients, prospects, customers, or investors don’t feel the excitement or see the vision that you do – or if that excitement is lacking in the first place – we’re here to help reignite that spark of greatness and creativity.
It is in challenging times such as these that those of us who are willing to adapt, grow, change, work creatively together and learn how to connect with people in more effective ways, will create a new path forward to rise above the struggle and hopefully help bring a few others up along with us.
Reach out to us today to discuss your big picture vision, need for growth and funding, connective story to tell or culture issues that need a fresh set of eyes.
We can’t wait to get our team together with yours to build something that exceeds your wildest dreams in 2020 and beyond.
No bricks required.