The Poets, The Nerds, and The Suits

Mar 17, 2014 | Anthony Mills

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In the ancient world, there were three roles of influence that tended to engage one another... the Prophets, the Priests, and the Kings.   These three danced a tenuous dance... at times at great odds with one another, often over accountability matters, and at times in aid of one another.   One might say that it was a love / hate relationship... one that at times ended with the Prophets losing their heads to the Kings (and the Priests keeping their distance).

In our world – the modern world of technology and innovation – we too have three key roles of influence that dance the same tenuous dance.   This dance, however, is about business innovation.   I call these three roles the Poets, the Nerds, and the Suits.¹   The Poets, Nerds, and Suits are the Prophets, Priests, and Kings of the business world.   Let's give each one their due.

The Poets are our designers, artists, musicians, philosophers, and theologians.   They are our prophets... they create the ideas.   Some are also Makers... they make the things that incarnate these ideas.   And some are Professors... they profess the ideas worth sharing.

The Nerds are our engineers, technologists, and coders.   They are our priests... they keep the order of the way things need to be.

The Suits are our business people... investors and executives.   They are our kings... they get to decide which ideas live and which ideas die, and, ultimately, where the money goes.

When the Poets, the Nerds, and the Suits learn to work well together, often great innovation can occur, and often great business results happen... ones that truly make a difference in our world.   Of course, the reality is that sometimes the Poets have to "lose their heads" to the Suits.   This happens when the ideas they are passionate about are deemed incapable of creating the business and market relationships needed to make a good profit.

Interestingly, we find that certain places in our world have cultures that help and encourage these three roles to work well together.   In the U.S., these are places like Austin, Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco... and events like SxSW.   By contrast, in places where the culture favors one over the others and fails to nourish all three, the results are generally suboptimal.   We get ho-hum businesses that miss the mark in one way or another... selling offerings that either do not deserve to exist, wonky products that create frustrating experiences, or offerings that have little or no grounding in market realities.   None of these scenarios are suitable for long term sustainable business success.

Every now and then, we encounter so-called "Renaissance" people – those rare souls who occupy more than one of these roles.   Like the Biblical king-priest figure, Melchizedek, they may be a Poet-Suit (think Steve Jobs), or a Nerd-Suit (think Bill Gates), or a Poet-Nerd-Suit (think Elon Musk).   These multifaceted souls can have both a light side and a dark side.   The darkness can happen when there is little or no external perspective and little or no accountability.   Fortunately, the best of these people are good listeners... unpretentious and able to integrate the voices of many into a rational perspective, and willing to subject themselves to scrutiny for proper accountability.   The light side – the greatness – happens when being a multifaceted soul serendipitously leads to business genius.   When this happens, the human race is very often moved forward in great spurts that otherwise simply would not occur.

But... the reality is that there simply aren't enough of these geniuses to go around.   And so most businesses are best served by figuring out how to create organizations and environments that bring these three together in a productive, if not necessarily smooth, dance of work.   The end result is often still a ton of creative, innovative energy that yields the sorts of products, services, and experiences the world needs to move forward.

Lastly, each one of us should do three things.   First, examine ourselves to figure out – at the point in our lives at which we find ourselves – which of these roles we fill... Prophet, Priest, or King, and then embrace that role.   Second, we should each seek out people who are filling the other roles so that together we can enter into a serendipitous dance and create something worthy of a legacy.   Third, and final, we should each recognize that over time we all change, and we may enter into our professional lives as Poets or Prophets and emerge in the end as Kings, and that along the way we may pass back and forth between these roles any number of times.   The point is to engage in and enjoy the creative dance.   That is the beauty of meaningful business innovation.

¹ Some in the startup world have referred to these roles as the Designer, The Hacker, and the Hustler.

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