You're a business without the benefit of having creative consultants working with you through a period of stagnation, a time of challenge or a moment of gloomy forecasts. You're looking at your business to see what you can do, and all you can see is grey. You're right up close to the problem, you can reach out to every part of your business, but despite the fact that you're right up close to almost every aspect of your business and its associated problems or challenges, you still can't see a solution, or even see the problem clearly. All you can see is grey.
Perhaps you feel that the time is right to stir up some original creative thinking, but rather than enlist the help of a creative consultancy you decide to tackle the problem in house. After all, hiring creative consultants will only mean that outsiders will be involved in the creative process, and surely that can't be good? How can they possibly be expected to understand the details of your business? You're right there, in the room. They're on the outside, and can't see the large greyness that seems to dominate every horizon you turn to.
So you gather the best minds within your business, and you all sit round in a conference room, and you all sit staring at the greyness, wondering just which direction you need to move toward. You all accept that things appear difficult, that you can't move forwards, that it seems unclear just which direction you should be moving, and it seems to have become increasingly difficult to even deal with effective communications. You sense that you may be a little out of touch with at least a good proportion of your customers, and are failing to reach new customers, at least in the numbers you need to remain productive and successful.
Someone mentions the word brainstorming. You've heard that creative consultants are keen on brainstorming, and so you grab the pads of paper and the new set of vibrantly coloured pens and eagerly await the surge of ideas which will inevitably spring forth. Yet despite the occasional word entered on the paper, looking lost, forlorn and distinctly lonely, the view seems to remain the same. You look at your business, you look really closely at many parts of your business, you walk all round it, and try to engage with the various aspects which constitute its whole. Yet still, despite your best efforts, all you see is grey.
It's like a mist has descended, shrouding your business, making it almost impossible to see where you should be going, why you're not making the progress you feel your business deserves, and keeping everyone a little on edge, playing it safe, not wanting to veer off in new directions because those new directions represent an even greater level of uncertainty. At least the greyness is big. Big is good.
The problem is that whilst you're all sitting round clutching colourful pens and looking at bright white pads of inviting blankness, the business is not developing. In fact, the longer the best brains of the business sit round attempting to conjure a storm of ideas with their brains, they're not actually taking care of the daily obligations and tasks, so in effect the business dips rather than soars. Ultimately, regardless of how many coloured pens you have, no matter how large the pads of paper, and no matter how long you sit round the table trying to see your business from a new perspective, trying to see the problems for what they are, all you're really doing is working around the same fact. Everything you see is grey.
There's a good reason why businesses in this situation benefit enormously from the input offered by a creative consultancy. Because whilst it may be true that creative consultants are initially outsiders, viewing your business with a fresh eye, from a new perspective, and from a more objective standpoint, it is that distance which makes it easier for them to help you develop new ideas, find new directions and make real progress more quickly and effectively. Because sometimes, it takes that more objective perspective to be able to step away from the problem, and realise that not everything is grey - it's just an elephant in the room.
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