Bring On The Hive

Remember that story of someone getting rich by selling a domain name? That friend of a friend who bought Coke.com and sold it for a million bucks? I guess I sort of fell victim to that, albeit for different reasons, and long after the initial frenzy wore out. In 2012, I bought TheCollectiveWorldwide.com. Now, before you rack your brain trying to think about which brand I was going to hit up, I’ll stop you right there.

I wasn’t hoarding it waiting for a hefty payout. Nor did I have plans to secretly steal agency clients and open my own shop, or (and this is a hard no) start a blog.

I just liked the idea of it. The notion of a bunch of creative minds coming together like a hive of bees pollinating flowers and making sweet honey of ideas. Sticky, gooey, delicious ideas. Some that maybe even snagged some hardware. Hey, a girl can dream.

Throughout my years in the business, I saw time and time again how competition between creative teams resulted in a breakdown of communication and collaboration. I saw how micro-managing from leadership resulted in one point of view and one way to approach creative. I counted the lack of diversity in creative departments that led to work that wasn’t connecting with people.  

It wasn’t all bad. I had the opportunity to work with some outstanding creatives and creative leaders in my time. But that was then. Now, things could be even better.

Like more female creatives. More ethnic diversity. More global talent. This kept me coming back to my domain in waiting; thecollectiveworldwide.com

Hmm, like a hive.

But wait a minute, you say, we’re not bees. We have independent thought. Still, I was curious. So I looked into it. And it seems we have more in common with bees than you think. Our minds are essentially wired the same way. In 'You Have a Hive Mind', the Scientific American details that: Every decision you make is essentially a committee act. Members chime in, options are weighed, and eventually a single proposal for action is approved by consensus. The committee, of course, is the densely knit society of neurons in your head. And 'approved by consensus' is really just a delicate way of saying that the opposition was silenced.

Biologist Thomas Seeley, author of 'Honeybee Democracy', writes that each bee is not just a mindless drone, but an alert member acting on his own looking for ways to best serve the community. More research shows that swarming can even amplify “the intelligence of the species, resulting in 'super-organisms' that can solve problems and make decisions that are beyond the capacity of the individual members.” 

Researchers in Germany and England report that groups make better decisions when their members have differing preferences and opinions. Which got me thinking, could we create a sort of creative hive?

What if, (you may want to sit down for this bit) we did away with traditional AD/writer creative teams? Like if we just kept things a bit more open. Kind of loose.

Instead, what if we formed a creative swarm? A group of diverse people working together with one goal in mind: a super idea. All done in a space where each person doesn’t try to fit in, but retains their individuality and uses their diversity to contribute something new. No ego. No alphas. Just pure team work. 

During a pitch last year at R/GA, that’s exactly what we did. A small group of us worked through strategy, creative and collaborated from start to end with one goal in mind; #winning. And it worked. We won the pitch.

A creative collective. Is it possible? Seems lofty. But leave it to that crafty biologist Seeley to detail five habits for decision-making:

- Create groups with mutual respect and shared interest

- Minimise the leader's influence on the group thinking

- Seek diverse solutions

- Aggregate the group's knowledge through debate

- Use quorum responses for speed, cohesion, and accuracy

Okay. I can work with that. And so can you. Agency structure needs a shake-up; for the benefit of our industry and our talent. You don’t have to start big. At R/GA, we’ve done away with siloed seating. ECDs sit next to account supervisors and strategists. It makes for open flow of information, discussion and informal team building. So, what if I never get a million dollars for my domain name? That’s okay by me. The notion that we can create a collective of creatives is worth much more. So I keep it safe. And click 'renew' every year.