Agility, creativity... and the fear of failure.

Have you ever seen a conversation where everyone is debating a point and stating different views but agreeing with each other?

Have you ever then felt, 'We're not going to get to the outcome'. And then... resignation - 'I'll just do it myself'.

I work in a leadership team within a lovely digital agency in the centre of London. And we are an amazing bunch of people. Full of passion and eager to do something that makes a difference in the world.

We have grand ideas and we respect each other’s opinions. Mostly through healthy debate!

And then... we come across an obstacle. The battle between agility and certainty. Some of us want to know what the outcome is going to be, when we're going to get it and even need to see it being done in a very particular way. Because the unknown is unacceptable.

Can we be blamed? We do have a fear of the unknown. We have a fear of failure.

But can both creativity and certainty in the outcome co-exist?

Creativity comes from exploration of the unknown. Failures spawn creative solutions.

We stumble upon ourselves... in our quest for creativity, we are afraid to be creative.

But if we can't come together in our thinking... and if one of us gives up and decides to 'do it myself'... then we'll go somewhere fast as individuals... but we lose the opportunity to solve large problems creatively. We lose the opportunity to scale.

And so... we have to remind ourselves in that moment to stick with it. To take a deep breath and call out the elephant in the room when we see it. We owe it to ourselves to come to the middle ground.