“Because of the different rates of change of its components, a building is always tearing itself apart.”
Stewart Brand
—————-
“The unapparent connection is more powerful than the apparent one.”
Heraclitus
———————
Is everything moving faster? Is change occurring at a mind-numbing pace? While it may feel this way, and at almost any conference someone will be espousing this, the non-hyperbolic evidence suggests different. Gravity is still gravity, a minute is still 60 seconds and actually meaningful innovation has slowed to a crawl (in innovation terms). But the feeling of faster, and having to move faster, remains.
That said. “Since 2016 the Earth started to accelerate.” Yeah. This is reported from the Lomonosov Moscow State University. So maybe its possible we just feel earth spinning that fraction of a second faster (note: doubt it). Beyond the earth, the acceleration of innovation we have experienced in recent years, although real, has not appeared to have increased productivity growth as much as the hype would suggest. Some people would call this issue ‘speed versus velocity.’ Regardless of what you call it, the business consequence of this is you can constantly feel at any given point we are stuck in the past (or the status quo) while discussing what’s next – all the while feeling like you are constantly missing out on something you are fairly confident everyone else gets and you don’t. There is a natural reason for this; reality is made of layers.
Which leads me to Stewart Brand and Pace Layering.
The idea is that there are multiple levels of pace in the world spanning from nature to fad/commerce speeds.
“The outer layers—fashion and commerce—move fastest while the inner layers of nature and culture move much more slowly. Because they’re all moving at different speeds, the system is better able to react to shocks. Some parts respond quickly to the shock allowing slower parts to ignore the shock and maintain their steady duties of system continuity.”
Stewart Brand
Circling back to the point on rate of innovation, pace layering can even be applied there because many people would argue speed of innovation has increased, yet, the majority of those ‘innovations’ have a short shelf life (source: Professor Bram Timmermans, co-editor of Industry and Innovation). So, innovations can exist on different pace layers too. What this means is when we talk about business, we are constantly trying to parse out what is on the outer fastest pace, the fads, fashion and hyped, and what is on the slowest pace – culture, people, and nature. In other words, discerning what is important and what is not. Generally speaking, business doesn’t handle this discussion well.
To be fair.
It’s quite possible in a complex world with so many dynamics your brain can quickly turn to fluff that we attempt to simplify things into the graspable.
It’s quite possible that’s why business is often discussed in 2-dimensional framing and ‘this or that’ decision-making.
It’s quite possible in doing so we over simplify and end up in some simplistic-summary-world or an oversimplification which appears useful, but is useless.
It’s quite possible we heighten “we must do this” as a technique to overcome an overwhelming sense of uncertainty.
That said. The reality is the world is not changing faster than ever, it just feels that way. Certainly, many things are fundamentally moving faster and its possible that all levels of pacing are moving slightly faster, but to suggest nature (biology) moves at the same speed as culture is nuts. BUT. It creates a sense that everything is not only moving faster, but things are moving too fast to grasp. It creates a sense we are living in a totally liminal space and, frankly, when we feel that way, we will hold on to whatever appears to be stable.
All of this gets compounded because, within all this complexity, people will inherently pick & choose what they want making “the more things change; the more things stay the same” a simplistic trope encouraging everyone to ignore purposeful change as a necessity because stability simply becomes not only a means to remain sane, but also because it is unclear what change is the change to do.
So what do we do?
Vision, tactics, coherence, and possibility plans. The reality is business, and in particular marketing, demands action now. Most actions bridge then and next absorbing aspects that worked then and embed brand value into the needs of the now with an acknowledgement of building future value. The trick is always to not get too caught up in the now, in other words, blinded by the outer layer of fads and cultural whims and short-termerism which sacrifice brand value creation. This demands some vision to navigate the layer noise.
I believe it useful to think of the layers in terms of technology and people. Why? The truth is technology almost always wants to work faster than most people want or can. Maybe worse is that technology engages people on a superficial level, which can create some activation, therefore neither embedding the full product value nor engaging in a substantive way.
Which leads us to “possibility plans.”
In general, a business is better when they have plans, but not all plans are created equal. Plans should be built to work toward something rather than working to do something. “Doing something” creates fragile businesses through ‘objective blindness’. Here is a counterintuitive thought, plans are good because broken plans represent disciplined opportunities, therefore, well made plans are more about possibilities than they are simple execution. Remember. The best laid plans always fall apart. Always. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a plan. And even a plan for when the plan falls apart. And maybe even another thought on another plan. All those things involve change. And then of course there is the plan you hadn’t thought of that actually becomes the plan you actually do. Simplistically, all of those broken plans are about possibilities. Possibilities are change at its best.
The truth is the best business people don’t waste time stopping or slowing down to try and glue a plan back together again. They keep moving and make the best of what pieces are still within grasp. Maybe create some new pieces of the plan to replace some that broke off. They keep an eye on the vision or the goal and let some pieces catch up later if they can. Yeah. Success in navigating multiple levels of pace is you don’t stop to fret over broken plans, you simply seek out new possibilities (in fact often finding innovative fresh thinking on the move) and leave behind anything not key to achieving the goal (and that can be people and materials) always plucking out the possibilities that may exist on a different plane and different pace (but are pluckable at that time & place).
-
** quick note on the feeling of not keeping up. Far too often in a world shouting at you that speed is the only thing that matters, people will grab onto things that are only going fast. This is a mistake. In fact, broken plans may actually reflect dispensing of pieces & parts that are going too fast. Your plans should reject ‘too speedy things’ – fads would be included in this – as being too asynchronistic for what the greater objective narrative is. I am not suggesting this is always the case – you can eject too slow, too burdensome components also – but simply maintaining something because it is ‘fast’ is absurd.
Possibility plans are not exactly linear, but evolving. This is true because of pace layering. The best plans interconnect the different paces cognitively, tactically and within the vision, i.e., coherence. The plan fits into the flow of business activity.
Navigating the pace of now and next, well done, captures possibilities.
Navigating the layers of a business’s pace, well done, captures present & future, now and next.
Navigating the pace of the organizational strategies, well done, captures what if’s, what nexts, what (and where) could be’s.
In the end navigating the pace of now and next effectively means your business is not tearing itself apart, but rather building it up. Ponder.
For a variety of reasons, a lot of what people deemed as part of 
thanks to the people around you, but thanks for some plans not going to shit and some going to shit and you created some things to go well and maybe, just maybe, you had more favorite days then you think you did.
The future is always dependent upon the development of talent. I don’t care if this is business, philanthropy, education, science, humanities or simply society in total, if you want to be better tomorrow than you are today as a civilization, you need to cultivate talent. When society loses its ability to cultivate talent the implications filter across society and all its trappings. First and foremost, the worst consequence is missed potential. Researchers called this “the lost Einsteins” or the talented overlooked (typically found in minorities and poverty/less fortunate) and it costs countries multiplicative-level potential innovation and thinking.
I would argue if someone cannot recognize their own talent is not that special, they will inevitably suck at cultivating talent. Why? Because you will only seek out the ones who have figured out how to run the ‘talent race’ well up to that point and attempt to capture them – no cultivate, just capture. Cultivating talent is not, and never has been, about just the best of the best. It has always been about maximizing each person’s potential (because everyone has some talent). Cultivating is not comparing the blooming flowers, but rather simply attempt to have all seeds bloom the best they can bloom and planting seeds of talent. Stewarding the transition from generation-to-generation transition is all about cultivating rather than capturing. We have a responsibility to the future to cultivate talent. Ponder.
I could argue this meaning issue is a consequence of a variety of things: increased globalization, cynicism of organized religion, consumerism, Taylorism, 24/7 internet and several things that have slowly stripped away some of the vestiges of meaning. The issue has become exacerbated by the fact we are now actively encouraging people to “find your Why.” In other words, we are asking people to stare into the void. By actively asking people there seem to be one of three outcomes; they discover no ‘Why,” they create some ‘Why”, or they actually do have some semblance of a “Why’. 2 out of 3 outcomes are horrible and the third outcome, I am guessing, is a fairly small percentage of people. So, while we have a real societal issue, we are actively encouraging people to pursue things that are most likely fool’s errands. The void will still exist and, well, its human to fill a void (by whatever means may be at hand). It almost becomes a battle between “I & the void.” And therein lies a bit of the issue at hand.
Simplistically, the consequences of a productivity-focused business world was increased consumption. This translated into actually BEING a customer or consumer was seen as the new success. We made consumption a measure of achievement and, as a consequence, created a society of envy and comparisons in which to be poor means having less than the average; even if the average is quite high and, ultimately, being seen as less than average. Yeah. Consumption has an ugly underbelly – the people who consume less. When society begins to split people by how much they consume, the ‘consumers’ see those who access safety nets as ‘exploiters’ who are simply not industrious enough to be able to consume. To be clear. This is not reality but rather perception and, in this case, this perception becomes a mental reality grounded in a general ignorance of reality. But that ignorance creates a void and, well, we know what happens with voids – they get filled. This warped version of meaning crafted a caste system of, uhm, meaning. A huge swath of business leaders misinterpreted Adam Smith to mean that if we each looked after our own interests some invisible hand would mysteriously arrange things out so that it all worked out for the best for all. We have propagated the rights of the individual and freedom of choice for all, but without restraints, without thought for our neighbors, and it has become license to do whatever you want to win at all costs and mere selfishness. We have forgotten that Smith wrote in a Theory of Moral Sentiments that a stable society was actually based on sympathy and a moral duty to have regard for your fellow human beings. The market is a mechanism for sorting the efficient from the inefficient, but it is not a substitute for responsibility or meaning.
An absence of meaning, of any degree or dimension, creates a void. And I would argue a really personal void. The type of void that either keeps you up at night or just nudges away at you fairly persistently. This persistence almost demands you do something about it. and, sure, you can watch Tedtalks, read books, whatever, but at some point, you want something tangible to show some progress against this brain worm chewing away at you. And with businesses constantly saying “buy me to solve X”, well, you jump on the consumption train. After awhile you point out to people how well you have done jumping on the consumption train often enough that the little voice in your head nudging you about ‘meaning & mattering’ gets shouted down just often enough that while you know you have a ‘meaning crisis’, it is no longer a “crisis crisis” to you personally. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that a crisis is a crisis and all crisis demand a response at some point. And maybe that is my point. Maybe we should all, collectively, answer the crisis rather than constantly suggesting each person ‘find their why’ to only have them staring into some abyss. Maybe we should all see if we can address the void together. Ponder.
Yeah.
In the past week I told two people “change isn’t that hard” and, twice, received a fairly skeptical look. This is possibly one of the most consistent views I have that varies from the mainstream view. To be fair, maybe 12 years ago I was clearly in the change-is-hard camp. Since then, I have inched my way into the “(most) change really isn’t that hard” camp. Let me explain. Not all change is created equal (yet we far too often lump it all together), and, in fact, I would argue the majority of change is incredibly easy. Shit. I’d argue most of our change just happens and we ignore it (maybe because we don’t want to admit change is kind of naturally occurring). The difficulty is that we MAKE things hard so that it can seem like it is hard. The truth is, left to its own devices, change naturally occurs – individual, community, business, society. Change is almost like gravity. If that is true it would appear if change doesn’t happen, its because something, or someone, is fighting gravity – yeah, like people, us, humans. We are the change constraint.
some cases in order to reshape an organization to maximize its potential you have to deconstruct (all the way over to ‘purposefully destroy’ on the spectrum) informal networks. Institutional informal networks are social, economic, functional, but no sane business desires an ongoing battle within an organization of conflicting informal networks so i posit that in some cases purposefully deconstructing some of the informal networks as the way to open the way for new and better informal networks. To end this thought. I sometimes believe we do not talk enough about ‘natural resistance’, or institutional gravity, when talking about change as an accelerated effort to fly.
But people, we, you and me, are different.
Change isn’t hard. We do it all the time. Business does it all the time. And you know what? Everyone actually wants to change. I do not know one person who does not want to be a bit better tomorrow than they were today. And maybe that is what I miss most about being in advertising. On a really good day I was part of something that helped people be better. It was always some grand things, more often it was a little thing – offered reliability, offered some comfort, offered added value in a miserable day. But. It was something. And it was something that encouraged change in a positive direction.
This is part of my series of things I learned working the security company job I had in college.
someone on the list or just say no (all while he has one eye on caterers wandering in, random special guests and keeping riff raff out of the way). Here is where he shared an even bigger lesson to me (the kid). “Nope. He can’t come in” (“oh shit” bubble over my head), but he then says “hold on. Let me come with you and we can tell him together”.
==
I walked over to Nick Nolte, who was sporting a wonderful Oakland Raiders warm up jacket, and asked him if he had a field pass. He wasn’t a jerk, he kind of looked a bit sheepish, and said “no, could you make an exception?” (kind of doing the guy thing making a side eye to the woman hanging on his arm like ‘could you help a guy out’). I said. “Give me a minute.”
You can be a jerk or you can find a solution. Anyone can follow rules, but not everyone tries to do the right thing. The NFL, and the Coliseum, clearly had rules that should have been followed. Someone didn’t, probably because he was a celebrity and some young security guard was too intimidated to do the right thing, and someone needed to solve it – without being a jackass. Yeah. I dealt with some celebrities who were real dicks, but for the most part most celebrities were respectful if you were respectful to them. They all have jobs and they know other people have jobs to do. I would also note that I learned titles, professions, status, are irrelevant if you make them irrelevant. I can honestly say after this job I was never intimidated by who was in a room nor have I ever been star-struck by anyone. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out all of what I just said is just the business of being in the business. Ponder.