Why is it important to keep going, even when a stop sign gets in your way?

PUSHING THE LIMITS

What's this?

"Why is it important to carry on even when there's a stop sign along the way?" Well, me, personally... Look, the stop traffic sign,please do respect it, dear children.

When the light is red, it's red.But when it comes to the development of creative ideas,in that case, you're allowed to...

push the limits a little further.In fact, one of our mottos is: "push the boundaries." Without doubt we want to push those limits, whenever we feel...

they are hindering the development of the idea.For me, personally, it always... Because that's the reason, really,that led me to found my agency, our agency.

I founded it in Hamburg with Claudia Fischer-Appelt in 2011,since at the companies I had worked before,I had often run up against stop signs.

In fact, I was told:"You're not part of the creative process.

You can't contribute any ideas to this or that topic.

This is your playing field. That is other people's field.

You've got nothing to do there." And I think I've heard some very nice phrases,which some mentors told me along the way.

One of my favourite phrases my first boss told me was:

And to this day I still smile when I remember it,and I've kept it in mind in many situations,because I believe that sometimes one simply has to act,even if one doesn't formally have the right to do so.

But it's good to take a step further,to think about the next step,to challenge yourself, even to challenge the very task itself,in order to arrive at a better solution.

That's incredibly important in creative processes:breaking everything apart,somehow freeing oneself from the limits.

And as I said, the restrictions in the companies where we worked before founding Karl Anders were too strict,so we... decided that Karl Anders would be an ecosystem, an organisation,free of stop signs, wherever possible.

And basically, it's a space of opportunities in which everyone can develop and grow with freedom and responsibility.

And when there are limits, when there are stop signs,then we talk about it,about how we can push those limits,if we can break them somehow.

There are different methods and techniques to find that out, obviously, also by communicating with the clients we work with.

In that case, stop signs can also...be dangerous.That's why they're red, of course, to warn us of danger,but sometimes the sign itself is the danger,because it makes... the path too narrow,and one feels one has to widen the space.

Even if in the end one returns...to that path, so that the idea reaches its goal,I think it's fundamental for the process,that one can free oneself from time to time.