Nudging the laser pointer toward the corner of the slide, I watched the red dot tremble just slightly, not from nerves, but from the sheer, soul-crushing weight of the silence in the room. There were 11 people sitting around the mahogany table. That’s always the first mistake-an odd number that feels like a jury but acts like a sieve. I had just presented the ‘Cinder’ concept. It was a bold, monochromatic design for our new flagship launch, stripped of every unnecessary flourish. It was provocative. It was sharp. It was meant to make people feel a little bit uncomfortable because that’s what growth feels like.
Then, Gary from the regional logistics office cleared his throat. He didn’t like the gray. ‘Can we make it more… welcoming?’ he asked, as if we were designing a hospice rather than a high-performance brand. Sarah from Legal followed up, worried that the sharp edges of the typography might imply a ‘litigious aggression.’ By the time the 61-minute meeting reached its conclusion, the ‘Cinder’ concept had been rebranded as ‘Cloud-Friendly Blue.’ The typography was rounded until it looked like a toddler’s alphabet block. The soul of the thing had been sucked out through a straw, replaced by a lukewarm slurry of consensus. I walked back to my desk and literally turned my laptop off and on again, hoping that a hard reset of the hardware might somehow reboot the reality I was currently inhabiting. It didn’t work.
We have become a culture that worships at the altar of the ‘Steering Committee,’ a term that is fundamentally a lie because committees don’t steer; they drag anchors. The committee is not a tool for creation. It is a biological defense mechanism designed by the corporate organism to distribute risk so thinly that if the project fails, no single individual can be held accountable. It is the ultimate insurance policy for the mediocre. If 11 people sign off on a disaster, then nobody is the architect of that disaster. We just ‘all agreed at the time.’
The Paradox of Averages: Carter T. and the Perfect Mattress
My friend Carter T. understands this better than most. Carter T. is a mattress firmness tester-a job that sounds like a punchline until you realize the technical precision required to differentiate between ‘supportive’ and ‘rigid.’ He once told me about a project where a major manufacturer tried to design the ‘Perfect Mattress for Everyone.’ They brought in side sleepers, back sleepers, stomach sleepers, and people who sleep in a recliner. They took 41 different data points from 201 different testers.
Data Points vs. Identity (Conceptual Data)
What happened? The committee of engineers and marketers kept adjusting the coil tension to satisfy the average of the feedback. They smoothed out the zones. They neutralized the firmness. The result was a mattress that was technically ‘acceptable’ to everyone but loved by absolutely no one. It felt like sleeping on a pile of damp laundry. Carter T. spent 31 days trying to find a way to save it, but you can’t save something that has had its identity averaged out of existence. He eventually resigned from that specific consultancy because he couldn’t stand the sight of another ‘optimized’ lump of foam. He realized that a product for everyone is, by definition, a product for no one.
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A product for everyone is, by definition, a product for no one.
– Carter T., Mattress Firmness Tester
This is the paradox of the collaborative workspace. We are told that ‘none of us is as smart as all of us,’ but in the creative realm, the opposite is frequently true. A committee is a machine that takes a 10/10 idea and a 2/10 idea and finds the 5/10 middle ground. And in a world saturated with content, 5/10 is invisible. It’s the white noise of the marketplace. I find myself constantly fighting the urge to seek validation from the group, even though I know the group is the enemy of the exceptional. It’s a contradiction I live with every day; I rail against the committee while simultaneously checking my inbox 71 times to see if the stakeholders have ‘approved’ my latest draft. I am part of the problem I am criticizing, and I hate it.
The Power of Singular Vision
When you look at the history of breakthroughs, they rarely come from a consensus. They come from a singular, often obsessive vision that is protected from the interference of the ‘helpful suggestion.’ Think about the original iPhone, or the way a master chef creates a menu, or even the curation of a high-end boutique. They don’t take a vote on the ingredients. They don’t ask 11 people if the salt level is ‘inclusive.’ They make a choice. They take a stand. They risk being wrong so that they have the chance to be spectacularly right.
This is why I’ve started looking toward smaller, more focused entities that refuse to play the committee game. There is a certain power in the streamlined approach, where the distance between the idea and the execution is as short as possible. Companies like Heroes Store succeed because they understand that value isn’t found in the middle of the road. It’s found in the specific, the curated, and the uncompromising. They provide a service that hasn’t been diluted by 41 layers of middle management trying to justify their own existence by ‘adding value’ to a process that was already complete.
The Great Font War of ’21: Ego Over Brand
I remember one specific meeting-let’s call it the Great Font War of ’21. We were discussing a landing page. I wanted a stark, brutalist aesthetic. The marketing lead wanted ‘pop.’ The HR rep wanted ‘warmth.’ We spent 101 minutes debating the merits of a specific shade of orange. I sat there, watching the clock tick, and I realized that we weren’t talking about the brand anymore. We were talking about ego. Everyone in that room felt that if they didn’t change at least one thing, they hadn’t done their job. The ‘Job’ had become the act of interference.
Brutalist Aesthetic (Original Vision)
Warm Shade (Ego Input)
Softened Output (Result)
The tragedy of the committee is that it attracts well-meaning people. Nobody enters a meeting room with the intention of making something boring. They enter with the intention of being ‘useful.’ But usefulness in a group setting often translates to ‘safety.’ Safety is the enemy of the remarkable. You cannot be remarkable while ensuring that everyone is comfortable. To be remarkable is to exclude. It is to say ‘this is for these people, and specifically not for those people.’ A committee, by its very nature, cannot exclude because it is composed of ‘those people.’
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I once spent $171 on a dinner that was curated by a single chef who was known for being ‘difficult.’ The meal was polarizing. […] If that chef had been managed by a committee, the radishes would have been replaced by mashed potatoes, and the duck would have been cooked until it was a safe, uniform brown.
– The Polarizing Meal
We are losing our appetite for the fermented radishes of life. We are so afraid of the 1 person who might complain that we deny the 91 people who might be transformed. This risk-aversion is a slow-growing mold that eventually covers the entire organization. You see it in the way emails are written (using 151 words to say nothing), in the way products are launched (with 21 features that nobody asked for), and in the way we treat our own creativity. We have internal committees now. We self-censor. We ‘water down’ our own thoughts before they even leave our heads because we’ve been trained that the middle is the only safe place to stand.
The Way Forward: Building Carter’s Mattress
I’m trying to break that habit. It’s hard. It’s uncomfortable to walk into a room and say ‘This is the idea. If you change it, it will no longer work.’ It sounds arrogant. It sounds like you’re not a ‘team player.’ But the ‘team’ is often just a group of people standing in a circle, pointing at each other while the ship slowly sinks into the sea of irrelevance.
Carter T.’s Uncompromising Approach
No Focus Groups
Singular Vision
Not For Everyone
Carter T. recently told me he’s starting his own mattress line. He’s not using any focus groups. He’s not using a steering committee. He’s just building the mattress he wants to sleep on. He knows it won’t be for everyone. He knows that some people will find it too hard, and others will find it too weird. But he also knows that for a specific group of people, it will be the best thing they’ve ever touched. He’s willing to take the 100% risk of failure for the 1% chance of excellence.
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That is the only way forward. We have to stop asking for permission to be great.
– The Necessity of Risk
That is the only way forward. We have to stop asking for permission to be great. We have to stop inviting the ‘helpful’ people into the room where the magic happens. Magic doesn’t happen by consensus. It happens in the dark, in the quiet, and in the stubborn refusal to make the logo just a little bit bigger.
The Edges are Worth Seeing
Stop Seeking Consensus.
The middle of the road is where the roadkill happens. The edges-the sharp, dangerous, ‘unwelcoming’ edges-are where the view is actually worth seeing.
