Introducing 'Creative Ascendency'

Or How to Run Your Own Race

This past weekend, I completed a 5K ERG challenge (an ERG is a stationary rowing machine). For me, this experience was both ordinary and extraordinary.

It was ordinary because I’ve been rowing, on average, about three days per week for the last three years. It’s part of my routine—a ritual. I know I’m going to show up, and I do. All I have to do is show up.

But it was also extraordinary because I grew up believing I wasn’t athletic. As a child, I was pretty terrible at team sports like volleyball and basketball. When I played little league softball, I had one decent pitching session during practice. I was so giddy with myself that I laughed uncontrollably when the coaches put me on the pitcher’s mound—so much so that they quickly realized their mistake and took me off. In high school, I was weak at tennis, lacking the arm strength to really send the ball across the net. I don’t think I ever won a match in my four years of playing. And while I did try running once in college, I gave up about a quarter-mile in and realized running wasn’t for me either. All of this was evidence that I wasn’t athletic.

Yet, three years ago, I took a stationary rowing class on the dock of Town Lake and kept going back. Before I knew it, I was completing challenges and entering races. Now, let me clarify: I still don’t ‘win’—I’m not particularly competitive, and I’m often the (near) last to finish. But I keep completing races, one after the other, tracking my progress and continually getting better.

Last year, I finished the 5K in 23 minutes and 40 seconds, at an average pace of 25 strokes per minute, maintaining 122 watts (the power per stroke). I realize this isn’t close to what ‘real’ athletes achieve, but it was my record, and I was proud of it.

This year I did even better: 124 watts with a lower stroke rate of 24 strokes per minute, finishing in 23 minutes and 32 seconds. My goal was to maintain 123 watts, which I did for the entire race, sprinting the last 500 meters to bump up my average.

After the race, one of the coaches came up to me and said she was really proud of how I clearly “ran my own race” the entire time. I kept my pace and focus for every single stroke. I didn’t get too distracted by the other racers, and I stuck to my race plan, doing better than I had before. It made me feel strong and proud, continually surprising myself with what I can do.

Which brings me to the point of this essay.

When we think about (1) why we do things and (2) how we measure success, it’s easy to compare ourselves to what’s happening around us—to external benchmarks. External measurements have their place, but I’ve come to believe they can often be overused, distracting, and demotivating for both individuals and companies.

Indeed, as I mentioned in a prior essay, the academic literature explains that the historical understanding of the purpose of starting a company is to achieve a ‘competitive advantage’. However, in my research, ‘competitive advantage’ was not an emergent concept within my dataset. Instead, I found that the most innovative organizations focused on improving their resources and capabilities — measuring their progress as incremental and innovative improvements against their own performance over time. They were also more likely to view their competitive peers as ‘brand adjacent’ to their own positioning.

To explain this, I introduced the concept of ‘creative ascendency’, in which an individual or company ascends based on their continual development.

They are climbing their own mountain, gaining power over their own progress.

Creative Ascendency offers a more accurate way to measure development and progress over time. In financial terms for a company, it’s about measuring success by revenue and profit year-over-year rather than market share.

For individuals, it’s about measuring progress relative to our own starting point. For example, I performed better in my 5K race this year than last year.

With creative ascendency, we measure progress based on our own unique circumstances, holding constant the many variables that make each of us (or our companies) unique.

Creative Ascendency:
the development of an individual or company relative to their own performance

Creative Ascendency also better recognizes our motivations. I didn’t start rowing to ‘beat the competition.’ I started rowing to challenge my body to do something new. It pushed me to build new skills (and muscle strength). And beyond that, rowing is challenging me rethink how I define myself. It piques my curiosity to wonder, what else do I not know about myself? Where else am I limiting my creative development because of self-limiting beliefs? What else could I try if I only align my resources and capabilities to enable that creative development?

The most powerful and impactful thing we can do is be creative.

To be creative is to generate and regenerate ideas, capabilities, and behaviors that help us transition from where we are to where we want to be. It’s about tracking our progress and striving for forward movement in both personal and professional development.

Creative Ascendency requires self-awareness—knowing where we are. It also requires a clear articulation of what is important to measure: What are we trying to change? How will we track it? Finally, it requires recognizing the behaviors that will enable our desired outcomes, ensuring that we keep showing up, day after day.

Sometimes it’s overwhelming to measure our progress against everything happening around us. There are so many variables outside of our control. But we can control our own actions and behaviors. We can take charge of our own creative ascendency.

Onward.

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Questions for Reflection:

• Now is a great season for self-reflection. What are some ways you can measure where you are right now?

• What’s most important to you? What elements of your personal, professional, or organizational development are motivating and important for your progress?

• Where can you show up? What behaviors, actions, routines, and processes will enable your progress?