Revolution is Exhausting
On the uphill battle to effect real change
Anyone who really knows me will know that I love Grand Designs, the Channel 4 TV series.
If you’re unfamiliar, it’s an incredibly simple format. The host, Kevin McCloud, follows people building a new home as they go through the ups and downs of that process.
This isn’t a particularly novel format idea for a TV series. In my mind, however, Grand Designs sits above the rest because Kevin McCloud and the production team do an incredible job finding people with genuinely interesting projects that push the envelope of what a house is and how it’s constructed.1 You may completely disagree with the people building the house — there’s an episode where someone wants to live in an actual cave; not really my cup of tea — but you can’t deny the projects are intriguing. It’s been fascinating the watch the series over the last 20 years since I got hooked, and see how once-radical ideas, like adding rooftop solar panels or using structural steel in residential buildings for open floor plans, become obvious, commonplace choices.
Perhaps my favorite McCloud-ism was a comment the host made at some point that “revolution is exhausting.”
Because, if you watch the show, it quickly becomes clear that pushing the envelope is exhausting. People like getting stuck in their habits and taking the easy way out. It takes real drive to push the world forward.
Which has so many parallels to the company building journey. While there’s definitely wisdom in innovating only where it makes sense, if you’re not pushing the envelope somewhere, I think that’s both bad for business and a wasted opportunity on the moral plane.
On my own more modest home renovation project, I’ve accepted that my general contractor may find me annoying because I demand high-quality execution. Yet I still slightly worry that I’m being unreasonable when I ask them to fix something — something that’s clearly not done according to the plan — and people complain that they’ve already done a lot of work. It’s really exhausting to push and push. It would be so much easier to give up and accept subpar work.
In the company building world, it can be equally challenging to push the envelope, both from an internal and external perspective.
Trying in my modest way to drive institutional change, I’ve developed a tremendous amount of respect for other people who’ve succeeded, or whose main portfolio is pushing organizations to make structural changes in the name of fairness and inclusion.
You’re fighting against so much, from entrenched power structures to (more often) the inertia that we’ve trained armies of people to operate the way we’ve always done.
This was certainly my experience trying to make our technical recruiting processes fairer and more equitable. Certain high-caliber candidates bristled at, in effect, having their privileges stripped away. Internally, people didn’t love the extra work required to execute these changes, and it was definitely a lot harder to hire experts who could hit the ground running when you also needed them to learn new skills and change the way they approached the world.
Yet taking the leap and pushing is the only way to get change. And when an organization is protean, not bound by the inertia that comes with time and size, it’s so much easier to chart that course. To channel the inimitable Taylor Swift, the haters are going to hate.
On the flip side, though, I think Grand Designs and my various company building adventures have made it clear that there are people out there willing to partner on these grand adventures to push the envelope.
From another perspective, the people building houses on the series are the ne plus ultra early adopters. These are the kinds of people you want as your first customers.
They’re willing to pay more, wait longer, and tolerate all the hiccups because they want something new and exciting, and see the potential in something that offers true advancement. They may grumble and complain, but deep down they don’t mind that the special highly-insulated windows from Sweden take three extra months to get to site. Because they know the house will be cozier, cheaper to run, and look nicer.
We can be so desperate for success and approval, it’s so much easier to say yes and try to please everyone. But it can be equally dangerous if we subsume who we are and our needs, or take the low-energy path and abdicate doing something innovative.
I don’t know that any of this is particularly novel. What a revelation: pushing for change is difficult. But I take some solace in realizing that there are other people out there going through the same struggle. And that it’s not easy on a deep, fundamental level. More likely than not, you’re not doing something wrong if effecting that change feels like swimming through molasses.
Which, whether an episode of Grand Designs, a political movement, or indeed a cool and innovative company, makes success that much sweeter.
Enjoy this? Have an idea for something you’d like a perspective on? Drop me a line: I’d love to hear from you.
And as evidence I think they do an exceptional job, there are many spinoff series in other countries like Australia and New Zealand. The projects don’t have that je ne sais quoi of interestingness that they do on the UK original.