“If you can’t say something nice, say something mean.”
“Being mean is a talent, not a flaw.”
“Being kind is easy. Being mean is an art.”
Its not easy being mean
==
Business is infamous for normalizing horrible. Business has always had guys (yes, they are mostly men) who have treated people horribly, acted horribly, did things morally and ethically horrible, and, yet, have been given a ‘pass’ because of, well, uhm, results. Business associated their horribleness with their ‘style to generate the results business desires/needs.” Their horribleness is normalized as “what needs to be done to get good shit done.” What is truly horrible about all this is that it destroys any respect for the institution of business and the institutions, principles, that underly good business.
Which leads me to Trump.
Trump is not only consistently horrible; he has normalized being horrible. While being horrible used to be in the purview of the hallways of business, it has now gone mainstream with Trump. With trump we are trapped between our respect for the institution of the presidency and a man who has no respect for the institution. I’ve competed against asshats like him my entire career. He elevates tertiary benefits implying they are more important than a primary benefit. He attempts to make everything liquid so a pebble seems solid as iron. He relentlessly diminishes and destroys everything around him so that even as a mental midget he stands taller than anything else. He thrives on being mentioned in the same breath as you because it somehow legitimizes his illegitimacy. He is so consistently horrible in his rhetoric it has become a feature of who and what he is.
Which leads me to Trump’s consistency.
Everything is horribly consistent about him. He built a career by making small look big, the minority sound like the majority and show a thread but talk a tapestry. He uses scraps to make a dinner. Truth doesn’t exist in his universe just scraps of information to be wielded like chaff to avoid a missile. I could have just written “zero evidence that any thought was given,” but I will just say T\this is the most vapid, hollow, intellectually empty, business person I believe I have ever encountered. He has no motto, ideology, morals or ethics other than zero-sum and winner takes all. He skates, & always has, on the thin ice of superficial irrelevance & ignorance. He is a horrible person who is horribly consistent.
Which leads me to Trump as a president.
I am a business guy & I think this whole Trump presidency thing is batshit crazy. All of it. The way he views America is not the America I know. With all due respect to anyone who voted for Trump, the whole Trump schtick is batshit crazy. His presidency was one batshit crazy week after another filled with batshit crazy day after batshit crazy day. In fact, its not crazy to think he is batshit crazy. That said. With the sheer amount of shit Trump throws up against the wall it becomes difficult to see anything but, well, shit. That said. There ais no lack of people trying to convince us it isn’t really shit. In other words, he is horrible and they are trying to convince us he is not horrible. That’s batshit crazy.
“This is stone cold crazy. After a week of crazy.”
Susan Rice
But. As a business guy I will point out two things to show how batshit crazy this whole situation is:
If he were running a business like this, he would be fired
This is not how businesses are run. No. He is not running the country like a high speed business. He is running it like a transactional manager with poorly thought out plans who just wants to do shit to show he is doing something … and, on top of that, has no clue how to adapt the shit if it goes to shit. Faster paced businesses only run faster because they are willing to plan, go and quickly adapt. Faster paced businesses understand the name of the game is “adapt or die” if they want to go with some speed. But, for the most part, they are not making shit up on the fly and the really big shit has been planned for.
Oh. One other thing about fast paced businesses. Alignment. Unity in vision.
Speed, in business, has a lot to do with gravity and mass. If you want your organization to be successful AND move at a good pace, you remove barnacles and you make sure everyone on the crew knows where you are going and have talked through the intent before you say “let’s go.” And you maybe even show everyone, on some map, where you are trying to get to <this helps everyone adapt because you don’t screw them up stopping them from doing something while adapting if you know they have the same end objective everyone else has>. Trump sees people as barnacles to be scarped off, experts as barnacles to be scraped off, effective policy implementers as barnacles to be scraped off, basically he wants to scrape off everything that ensures value creation. Needless to say, that is a horrible vision.
Anyway. Our larger batshit crazy concern really has nothing to do with the pace.
Cabal decision making
Yeah. He works in a cabal fashion. It feels like it is a couple of people who have a very dark vision of who and what America should be, maybe a couple of flunkies who want to suck up to the Trumpster because they want something and the circus ringleader himself — the Trumpster. Uhm. How would you feel if you were a senior manager in a company and he pulled shit like this? How would you feel if you were one of his chosen cabinet members? His eventual cabinet was a horrible joke. They were mostly people with no experience and actually didn’t support the mission of their particular purview. But it didn’t really matter how horrible they were, they just did whatever the horrible flunkies encouraging horrible Trump decision-making to do.
“why does he need me … he seems to want to do it all on his own.”
It appears a small band of slightly off-kilter individuals are making decisions for all of us. They are not involving even their senior management let alone the congress — who represent, us, the people — and shooting off orders on what should be done <which inevitably, in this universe, is supposed to reflect what we are supposed to think>.
That is a dictator/cabal and not a “business leader.”
Okay. Let’s be generous and say that this is classic ‘top/down’ management. If it is, top/down works if you are leading a cult or you have a one-person company. If you have an organization of any significant size, let’s say … uhm … 330 million or so … you need some buy in at a number of levels and, even better, some of the lower management levels even contribute to the tactics. That said, if it is ‘top/down’ management, it is just horribly incompetent leadership. If it is a cabal, it is not a democracy.
This is batshit crazy for America and we should never normalize this type of horrible.
Which leads me to the so called “Trump economy.”
What a bunch of horseshit is being thrown around with regard to how ‘good’ the Trump years economy was. Horseshit.
I said this back in 2018 during the Trump presidency:
Trump’s tariffs will destroy more manufacturing jobs than it creates;
Kim’s successful nuke tests made him happy to talk and Trump agreeing to a summit is a US concession;
Pace of job growth has slowed since Obama era;
The budget deficit is exploding.
They did.
It was.
And it remained so.
It did.
I bring this up circling back to my opening point. Business normalizes horribleness with “results.” The whole Trump/MAGA narrative revolves around “orange man bad ignores great results.”
The more difficult thing is to create a menu of objectives, balance them all out as important, and set about a plan of action to attain them in which you remained positive on almost all fronts and accept the fact you will sacrifice some ‘higher highs’ on some items on the menu for positives on all fronts.
This business management choice is more difficult because anyone with half a brain could pull out one thing on the menu and point out how it could be done better and be doing better. While this isn’t about administration comparisons, I will say this is one topic which the Obama administration didn’t get enough credit for.
“I believe that it is just a matter of time before our party pays a heavy price for President Trump’s reckless spending and shortsighted financial policies, his erratic, destabilizing foreign policy and his disregard for environmental concerns.”
McKean
Just to wrap this last thought up. Reality suggests the United States economy, driven by the current administration, is not only healthy now, but embedding some healthy aspects for the future. This reality is not reflective of the Trump administration reality (either as judged within the administrative years or as a judgement of how and what they did as an impact on the present). The Trump economy was wobbly, at best, and girded by subsidies and government support. In this one case I would suggest the Trump economy wasn’t horrible, but there were going to eventually be horrible consequences for how they maintained that not-horrible economy.
In the end, we can’t let Trump normalize horrible any more than it had already been normalized. You don’t have to be a shitty, horrible, person in order to get good shit done. You don’t have to be a shitty, horrible, amoral, person to ‘beat the system.’ We deserve a non-horrible person leading a country let alone a business. Ponder.
The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.”
Vladimir Lenin
==
“No one is walking in saying, ‘Great, I’d love to pay full price’.”
==
One of the things that drives me nuts is when people say how much better the economy was during the Trump Administration. It’s not really true, it was good, not quite as good as under Obama administration, certainly not bad, not really comparably as good as current economy, but that’s a post for a different day (and I encourage everyone to research economists like Noah Smith, Tyler Cowen or Justin Wolfers to read their thoughts).
Today I’m addressing the comparison elephant in the room: inflation.
Inflation is not the economy. It seems like the majority of people are judging the economy solely on what they perceive is inflation. Inflation perception may seem like an odd term. Heck. Inflation itself is an oddish thing. Economists define it in a nuanced way, people define it in a simplistic way, news defines it whatever way its own political winds blow way, and reality is somewhere in between. But where people think of inflation the most is with prices they pay (not causes).
So let me speak a little bit about pricing during the Trump administration years. Similar to the Obama administration years, in the Trump years corporate America scanned about their competition and tried to figure out how to be able to charge the highest possible competitive price and generate the highest profits. It’s kind of standard operating pricing procedure weighing “how much can I charge and still create significant demand.” That doesn’t mean that many of these same companies were year in year out doing things like conjoint testing (testing variables that affect the price that could be charged versus the demand increase or decrease, i.e., price sensitivity). Businesses are always trying to figure out how to have higher prices. That said, generally speaking, changing prices sends a shiver down the spine of every business as they worry about the demand effect. So, the natural arc of pricing is to establish your price within a competitive environment, watch your competition pricing, and establish a demand for your product or service based on that price. I would be remiss if I didn’t note that I’ve sat in endless meetings where business people wistfully spoke of charging significantly more than they currently were charging.
Which leads me to the Trump Administration years.
Business institutions had less and less wistful conversations. Not because they actually raised their prices, but because the Trump Administration went out of their way to cut corporate taxes, offer incentivized subsidies to keep cost of goods affordable, and did a variety of things which enabled businesses to increase their profits, not their sales, without ever having to raise their price one penny. Let me reiterate that the Trump Administration also did everything they could possibly do to subsidize everything (things that effected cost of goods) to keep inflationary pricing down. The consequence of this was soaring federal level deficits, but for the most part the everyday schmuck like you and I didn’t really care because prices remained fairly stable and the headlines didn’t look any different than they had always looked in the past – pointing out day after day the soaring corporate profits. We all felt like the system was rigged, the corporations were gouging us, but we didn’t really see it at the shelf or in our pocketbooks. So, we just hated business, but didn’t hate the economy.
Which leads me to the pandemic.
Instead of theoretical, conjoint-like, testing, every business was faced with market reality and a real market test. Supply chains were disrupted, commodities – costs of goods – that were essential to their production and resources needed for services became limited or asymmetrically supplied and more costly, and consequently prices changed – most typically upwards. Oh. And everything was passed along to the buyers. What this meant in practical terms, to a business, was the sellers were able to test the market pricing (elasticity) without being blamed. They could see in real time how demand was affected by disruptions and price changes. Rightfully so everybody pointed their fingers at the pandemic, but businesses didn’t really lose a lot of sleep because they maintained their profits, for the most part adapted to the changing demand, and tried to keep their profit heads above the water. Then the pandemic ended. And businesses sat around conference rooms failing moral gut check after moral gut check. And what was that moral gut check? What to do with my pricing now that my cost of goods has decreased. This isn’t to suggest that some industries and businesses were still affected by some of the ripple effect consequences of the pandemic with regard to the cost of the goods they needed to be able to craft the products they offered to the market. But for the most part the pandemic encouraged businesses to create a more resilient production model to make their cost of the goods more stable. In addition, the corporate tax cuts stayed in place … despite the current administration wanting to increase them (government is government and nothing changed there). Many of the tariffs were removed which should have eased pricing to the buyers, but many of the businesses failed to pass along the cost savings. In addition to that the pandemic market had shown many of the businesses the price elasticity and inelasticity of their products and services. For example. My geographic market prior to the pandemic. It would not be rare to see that you could buy a two-liter bottle of Coke or Pepsi on promotion for $1 (actually 99cents) and the everyday price was always below $2 (maybe $1.99, maybe $1.89.) During the pandemic of course all prices went crazy. Coke and Pepsi’s two-liter bottle prices soared above $2 every day (usually $2.99 everyday). Uhm. Post pandemic the everyday price for a two-liter bottle is now $2.50, or above, and promotions never drop below $1.25 per 2 liter. The demand has remained exactly the same and Coke and Pepsi are getting, at minimum, $0.25 gravy, at maximum, $1.00 gouging, on every single two-liter bottle purchased. Just to complete the math on this. If they sell 1 million 2-liter bottles, they make anywhere from $250,000-$1,000,000 additional profit. Uhm. And they sell billions. Anyway. This isn’t to just pick on Coke and Pepsi, Coke and Pepsi are indicative of business. The problem is most people aren’t thinking about this the way I just finished describing it. All they see is what groceries are costing them every single day, without promotion, a dollar more per 2-liter bottle. And as they wander the supermarkets, they see the same thing. In some industries the prices have certainly decreased and, generally speaking, the majority of the pandemic pricing has decreased aligned with the realities of whatever their cost of goods increased or decreased. But when you go to the supermarket you don’t focus on the prices that lowered closer to prepandemic, you focus in on the prices of the goods that you want that you’re tired of paying pandemic pricing for. And I word it that way because that’s not inflation. That’s pandemic pricing in non-pandemic time.
“The reality is that business and investment spending are the true leading indicators of the economy and the stock market. If you want to know where the stock market is headed, forget about consumer spending and retail sales figures. Look to business spending, price inflation, interest rates, and productivity gains.”
Mark Skousen
And that’s the economic gut check on the moral gut check businesses failed. I am certainly not suggesting that the Trump Administration is to be blamed for the current pricing. They didn’t plan the pandemic and the pandemic certainly affected all businesses in terms of their supply chains and cost of goods. And just as well I can’t blame the Biden administration for not doing anything about what I’m calling pandemic pricing, which is confused with inflation, because governments are not in the business of dictating pricing that people pay. Suffice it to say, no administration would ever change the prices people pay.
“I believe that it is just a matter of time before our party pays a heavy price for President Trump’s reckless spending and shortsighted financial policies, his erratic, destabilizing foreign policy and his disregard for environmental concerns.”
McKean
But, in the end, I opened discussing what drove me nuts (the Trump administration wasn’t as great as many people think it was). Inflation in Trump times was no better than prior administrations and unless you have a crystal ball there is no way to know whether inflation would be the same, lower, or higher if the Trump administration were in place now. That said, I will suggest that the likelihood a new Trump administration would lower inflation is next to nil. Any objective observer would struggle to imagine what policies the Trump administration would have in place that would lower inflation now or even what policies would be in place that would make the economy any better now.
At this time, I tend to believe the biggest culprit is institutional pricing, not real inflation. But that’s me. Ponder.
“But the brain does much more than just recollect it inter-compares, it synthesizes, it analyzes, it generates abstractions. The simplest thought like the concept of the number one has an elaborate logical underpinning. “
Carl Sagan
“We need to free ourselves from the habit of seeing culture as encyclopedia knowledge, and men as mere receptacles to be stuffed full of empirical data and a mass of unconnected raw facts, which have to be filed in the brain as in the columns of a dictionary, enabling their owner to respond to the various stimuli from the outside world. This form of culture really is harmful, particularly for the proletariat. It serves only to create maladjusted people, people who believe they are superior to the rest of humanity because they have memorized a certain number of facts and dates and who rattle them off at every opportunity, so turning them almost into a barrier between themselves and others.”
Antonio Gramsci
Velvet curtain of culture.
Iron curtain of ideology.
Samuel Huntington
==
This is a slightly different discussion about speed and speedy stuff. Farnam Street did a topnotch job outlining speed versus velocity, and I wrote an entire series on velocity, but today I am focused on speedy looking less-than-important stuff and more important slower-speed human nature, in other words, meaningful cultural movement versus superficial culture movements.
Which leads me to most culture is inertia disguised in speedy clothing.
Most culture is misidentified by 24/7 culture scam artists posing as futurists, trend spotters, and social influencers, i.e., people who monetarily benefit from hype and, most specifically, ‘speed hype’
· ** speed hype is typically captured in the ubiquitous phrase “the world is moving faster than ever.” It’s not.
Most businesses, with good intentions, get caught up in the speedy inertia wheel of doom. So, let’s talk culture in two ways:
1. culture of human whims.
2. culture of human nature.
The former is about cultural shifts, or shifting, (some big, some small) and the latter is about foundational movement (the inevitable cadence that always exists). Ultimately, this becomes a battle between whims and nature. Sure. Sometimes a whim is a reflection of some deeper human truth and has some enduring nature, but for the most part whims are whims, fads are fads, and things that look good in the ‘shift phase’ look pretty stupid in a rearview mirror. But within the battle of whims and nature the word ‘culture’ is wielded like a dull axe. To be clear, as Dick Hebdige, author of The Meaning of Style, said “culture is a notoriously ambiguous concept.” Personally, I believe we shouldn’t be landing on one definition but rather, well, “the best thing about definitions, like $100 bills, is to have plenty of them” (Robert Ardrey). That said. Simplistically, culture is the elements of human nature that make up the experiences of a group. Yeah. Culture is the work of whole peoples and their interactions. It moves at the pace of language, experiences, and stories. To be clear. Events, religion, ideologies feed into language, experiences and stories, but those things are not culture, but rather stimulus of culture. Regardless, all this means cultural truths are tied to the rhythms of human nature/biology and connectivity between peoples – the cadence of humanity. I know businesses prefer talking about profitability, objectives, and KPIs, or even what culture they may ‘have,’ but the more a business can tap into the cadence of nature and humanity, its cultural truths, the more enduring the business idea will be. I would suggest that it is through culture that we make sense of our lives so when a business taps into the movement of culture, people’s lives tend to move with it.
Which leads me to inertia or, in other words, irrelevance.
Forever is a long, long time.
And has a way of changing things.
The Fox and the Hound
We accept inertia, irrelevance, far too easily/comfortably. Why do I think irrelevance is accepted? To be fair it’s easy to confuse the irrelevant as being relevant in today’s speedy FOMO world. First. Let me point out that speed can look an awful lot like inertia. So, if you think running in the hamster wheel of hype is doing a lot of ‘important things’, you are wrong, but ‘feels’ like good shit is happening. You are more likely just doing a lot of things and the business is never really moving or gaining value. Second. A misguided understanding of value. This misunderstanding is most often discovered in opportunities missed. If you emphasize the speedy stuff, or just speed alone, as offering the highest value, you will inevitably miss out the slower moving opportunities which offer foundational, and sustainable, value. Mistaking all that speedy stuff for culture is transactional value versus enduring value and, in most cases, I would argue a business is leaving dollars on the table.
Which leads me to how to navigate offering relevant value.
First. Slow down (the world is not moving so fast you will miss anything significant). Second. I would suggest find the relevant cultural movement. To be fair, it is tricky to find the natural, biological, cadence tucked in human nature. The problem is we have a collective shortsightedness grounded in “living in the now,” but in order to maintain a thriving business you need short term results without being shortsighted and you need a long-term view while ‘being’ in the short term. I have found Stewart Brand’s pace layering an invaluable tool for thinking about how brands can ‘navigate the long now.’ In other words, ground a business in culture in terms of human insights, not popular relevant(?) culture.
Let me explain. Remember. Cultural insights are grounded in human nature. These things have a bit of timelessness to them. In pace layering terms they are the slow moving truths that people gather around, or, as James Carse said: “a culture is not anything persons do, but anything they do with each other.”
These things are easy to overlook because they are the things that hold us all together when it seems like the world is moving too fast for us (while technology is shouting at us to go faster). If a business leans into these cultural truths, human psychological truths, they construct a strong but flexible structure built to absorb shocks and, in most cases, incorporate them. Instead of breaking under stress, like something brittle, the business accommodates what the world throws at us and yet its cultural truths move so slowly, they seem like they are unchanging.
Fast learns, slow remembers.
Fast proposes, slow disposes.
Fast is discontinuous, slow is continuous.
Slow and big controls small and fast by constraint and constancy.
Fast gets all our attention, slow has all the power.
Stewart Brand
Business walks a variety of paths every day. But today rather than looking at as terrain and paths let’s think of these paths in concentric layers. I, personally, believe everyone should think about Stewart Brand’s pace layering and from a larger perspective, societally, I believe we could all use a good lesson in navigating the long now rather than focus solely on the now (and the short term). Societally we certainly have a collective shortsightedness grounded in “living in the now,” which I would argue isn’t particularly good for any of us. But for a business that is the kiss of death. An enduring, thriving, business demands a long view and I believe that long view is found within a cultural insight. Here is the harsh truth. Most businesses skate on the superficial surface of irrelevance because they ignore cultural truths. For the most part brands are ignoring these truths for temporary happiness. Far too many brands view fads, fashion, much of social media as cultural truths and, for the most part, they are not. Cultural truths are grounded in human insights – psychological, behavioral – which power our hopes and dreams and anger and happiness and, most importantly, connection with other humans. Today’s brands see ‘culture’ in the fleeting outside world of fads and fashion and style and useless gadgets-of-the-moment which are just the momentary mindless, the irrelevant, clothed in a veneer of connectivity.
Remember. Culture is not static, its transitory. Culture is a process (that which is acquired) as well as a product (that which has been acquired). Culture is both backward looking as well as future looking (nostalgic or memory grounded as well as utopian or dream looking). Culture is a refraction, not a reflection. Culture is a macro narrative made up of micro-narratives (sub cultures).
Which leads me to infinite movement.
Business is addicted to finite stuff. Projects, initiatives, weekly goals, all rolled up n KPIs. Business loves to isolate things and ‘make them perfect’ while espousing infinite value. Look. Forever, infinite, is about time and it isn’t. What I mean is we associate forever with time and, yet, it is timeless so time is almost irrelevant to ‘infinite.’ What is relevant to forever (or let’s call it ‘the long now’’) is constancy and adaptation. Please note I never said “control.”
“We control nothing, but we influence everything.”
Brian Klass
Ah. Control. Now, being the type of outcome-oriented people we are; we actually try and apply some measurement to infinite progress (yes, measuring that sounds like an oxymoron) and all it does is increase the perception of speed and encourage inertia. We look like we’re filling up time with important things, we feel like we are filling up time with important things, we even sit around conference room tables pointing at numbers that look important, but for the most part none of those things are contributing, in any significant way, to the constancy and adaptation which is the key to navigating the layers of pace every culture and business exists upon. In fact, all of those things are just attempts to take snapshots of all the blurry unimportant things speeding by. Yeah. The numbers are an attempt to convince you that the unimportant is important.
So we measure meaningless stuff and hold on to old things, including thinking, for too long. Businesses get caught in the wretched hollow in between shiny fast moving meaningless shit and the old thinking which only increases burden on a daily basis and the people gravitating to either side of FOMO or stability. Therein lies inertia. Therein lies path dependence.
Here is the crazy thing. The whole idea of infinite far too often tethers us to our past or inertia which is not very productive. Maybe worse is as we grow away from infiniteness, we grow closer to the understanding of finiteness, measurement by measurement, fad by fad, widget by widget. Paradoxically as we focus on all the shit speeding around, all the whims and fads, we reduce nature to silly things we convince ourselves are important.
==============
“Let me tell you a truth … no matter what choice you make, it doesn’t define you.
Not forever. People can make bad choices and change their minds and hearts and do good things later; just as people can make good choices and then turn around and walk a bad path. No choice we make lasts our whole life. If there’s ever a choice you’ve made that you no longer agree with, you can make another choice.”
Jonathan Maberry
============
Which leads me to paced learning.
Rather than discussing fast or slow, let’s discuss pacing – and learning. The reality is that organizations learn. That may sound a little odd because organizations are made up of people and we typically talk about learning in individualistic ways. However, organizations and the systems are implemented by people and in turn influence people’s mindsets, attitudes, and actual behaviors. So, when I say that organizations learn what I mean by that is that they encase their learning in programs and standard operating procedures that the people within the organization routinely execute. That is the system. The problem with this is that all of these programs and procedures typically generate inertia. And this inertia inevitably increases as the organization brings in new people and reward conformity to the system and its ‘learned implementation.’ This is done over and over and over again embedding past learning in the present (and future). As the successes accumulate the organization doubles down on the existing system emphasizing efficiency. The consequences of this are inevitable – the system itself becomes complacent, people learning slows, and inertia sets in. To be clear. Inertia and complacency is a double whammy to a business. It slows culture down and human nature (natural adaptation) down. So how should organizations learn? Well. As William Starbuck said “organizations must unlearn.” Unlearn is an awkward way of saying that systems must be systemically dismantled piece by piece and iteratively rebuilt. And what that means is that the people within the organization need to be self-aware enough in order to be able to influence not only organizational systems, but organizational learning. This is where hierarchy comes in. In most businesses organizations are constructed in a hierarchy. What this means is that the higher up the manager is the more likely they are to dominate organizational learning as well as organizational implementation. This means that most managers invest the majority of their energy in terms of learning the existing system and not unlearning aspects of the system, i.e., trying different things and innovation. It may sound odd, but past learning inhibits new learning. The only way to create space for new learning is to be able to discard some old learning, i.e., unlearn.
Which leads me to human nature (human movement).
Nature is never still. Nothing, in nature, is ever infinite other than possibly adaptability. This truth includes humans and human nature. Adaptability is a complex coherence of faster and slower moving aspects (static and dynamic). Typically, the aspects seek an optimal equilibrium situation through reactions and interactions (connectivity) where all become stable in a coherent sense enabling movement. In fact, maybe that defines infinite and progress. What I mean by that is optimal is only attainable in a temporary state (finite) therefore the pursuit is always infinite. This means true ‘achievement’ is not possible therefore progress is the only reality-based construct. Anyway. I would suggest the most interesting systems are dynamic in that they are non equilibrium systems that form order from actively dissipating entropy. Ah. Entropy (and its relationship to paces and pace layering). I would argue that entropy increases as the total surface of what is exposed to external stimuli is decreased. This decrease surface connectivity creates an overall increase of entropy. To be clear. “Surface” is a complex weave of whims and human nature at speed. Discerning between the two is important because if the ‘external stimuli’ you elect to expose yourself to are ‘whims’ that will only increase entropy (that is the paradox of speed). This doesn’t mean that there can’t be constant re-formation of order; just that there is an increased likelihood of entropy. I believe it was physical chemist Ilya Prigogine who viewed the paradox of evolution as one of an engine running down and the other of a living world unfolding toward increasing order and complexity. In his theory, the second law of thermodynamics – which is the law of ever-increasing entropy or disorder – is still valid, but the relationship between entropy and disorder is different. At bifurcation points states of greater order may emerge spontaneously without contradicting the second law of thermodynamics. The total entropy of the system keeps increasing, but this increase in entropy is not uniform or symmetrical. In the living world order and disorder are always created simultaneously. What this means is that there are always islands of order in all seas of disorder and their role is to maintain and increase their order. And therein lies another thought, one in which that speed, inertia, and cultural movement will always have aspects of order and disorder. Well. That thought will make every business uncomfortable.
“Strategy’s endgame is to spark movement. But as an intermediary measure, feeling moved by the process is an indicator you’re doing it right. Because if you’re doing it right, you do embody new people. New messages. New audiences. A new tone of voice. Strong vicarious vibes. And by doing so, things get raw. Raw precedes real. And real is something that provokes a response.”
Rob Estreinho
Which leads me to cultural movement.
Let’s say this is about experience versus experiencing. I tend to believe most people are misguided when they focus on experiences, and selling experiences, rather than focusing on experiencing (which is more about human nature). Here’s what I mean. Experiences are an outcome of experiencing, and experiencing is a complex culmination of connections:
1. Connection to human nature.
In other words, the biology which creates the comfortable or the purposefully uncomfortable cadence that seems natural to us (note: this is actually embodied in a number of cultural cues)
2. Connection to context and environment.
This Is the environment which expands or reduces potential.
3. Connection to other humans.
In fact, human nature experiencing is autopoiesis. Autopoiesis means self-making. It is the main characteristic of life in that it is self-maintenance due to the natural internal networking of the system itself. It constantly maintains itself within the boundary of its own making. But it also implies that a living system is the totality of all of its mutual interactions, i.e., connections (as listed above). Through connections multiple mini transformations continuously take place and, yet, at its core the system/human/human nature maintains its individuality. Is this apparent contradiction between adaptation and constancy which actually explains a healthy system. I say all of that to suggest all living systems need some constancy and yet still need some change through adaptation. I say that to suggest human nature, culture, is constancy constantly, slowly, adapting.
Which leads me to end with the fact most people discuss culture incorrectly.
Human nature is at the core of culture. Whims and fads are simply temporary features of human nature’s more systemic rhythms. The reality of culture is that it is not a particular speedy thing. With that in mind, rather than giving so much attention to speedy stuff, maybe we should invest just a bit more energy focusing on the less speedy stuff. I seriously doubt we will miss out on anything truly meaningful in the process. Ponder.
====
“It is misleading to argue that cultural circulation has been democratized. The means of circulation are algorithmic, and they are not subject to democratic accountability or control. Hyperconnectivity has in fact further concentrated power over the means of circulation in the hands of the giant platforms that design and control the architectures of visibility.”
I wrote this back in 2010 and have resurrected it with the news that Dan Hurley, currently the coach of defending NCAA basketball champions University of Connecticut, is talking with the Los Angeles Lakers about their open head coaching job. Regardless of how you slice this, life decision, career decision, ambition decision, or money decision, the money involved is a life changing salary. Coach Hurley, similar to Coach K as discussed in 2010, earns a salary the majority of us will never attain. Its a good salary. But he is now going to be offered money 99% of us cannot even imagine earning. As I tuck in later in the below piece – “you have to listen.”That said. My real point is that we often talk about how life is more than money, a career is more than money, and, well, money isn’t everything. All true; until is not. Sometimes the money is so ‘more’ that it suffocates all the other possible ‘mores.’ Ponder.
====
According to multiple media sources, the Russian billionaire (and owner of the NBA Nets) Prokhorov wanted to make a big splash by hiring Mike Krzyzewski as coach and GM (he has since turned them down). According to the report, Prokhorov was prepared to offer him $12-15 million (salary without extras) per season. Mike Krzyzewski’s 2009 salary as coach of the Duke Blue Devil’s men’s basketball team is $3.5 million.
When I read about this I started thinking about life changing career decisions. And mostly ones based on money. All I really can say to Coach K is if Mikhail Prokhorov is willing to pay that much, well Coach K, you should probably listen to the Nets’ job offer. Listening doesn’t cost a thing.
Because this is life changing money.
Look. Have I ever been offered 15 million a year? Nope.
But have I ever been offered twice or maybe 3 times as much as I was earning for a new job? Yup.
One sports announcer said “How could you not even at least consider it? Its life changing”.
Now. To us little people it’s hard for us to fathom 3.5 million to 15 million (plus extras on both) as life changing. But 30k to 150k. Or 100k to 350k. Or 150k to 500k. You get it.
Yes. It is life changing. And it makes you evaluate what is important to you. And some people will argue “I will do it so that it frees me up to do something else later on.” And that kind of logic is as good as any I have heard. But. In the end. It is most often a life changing decision. And not just moneywise.
I did it once. I took the money. And it was wrong for me (that’s a personal decision and I am not suggesting everyone should think of it the same way). I ended up quitting to do what I felt was right for me.
Yes. I sacrificed a lot of money.
Yes. I thought about it afterwards.
Yes. I made the right decision (for me).
But that decision helped clarify some later decisions. And made some following similar decisions a little easier. But. Not easy … just easier.
Why just easier (and not making everything clearer down the road)?
Because Life changing money is just that. Life changing. And no matter how good you felt about the last decision you made if and when the next one rolls around a lot of money is a lot of money.
Should Coach k have listened? Sure. Listening never hurts. Should he have taken it? Well. That ain’t for me to say. He is a great college coach. I would envision just like the rest of us he thinks about what’s next when you have existing success. And then all the rest of things get put into the decision blender and you come out with a decision.
I guess my point here is about life changing money decisions. It is easy to say life and career is more than about money. That is until someone offers you double or triple or more what you are currently earning. Then money makes you forget about a lot of other things.
Coach K passed on this one. Does falling back on 3.5 million a year make it easier? Sure. I am sure it does. But 15 million is 15 million.
Making 4 times what you are already earning?
Gosh. Even at the most measly salary level that would make anyone pause and think.
Suffice it to say career choices, and decisions, are life decisions. Do not ever fool yourself into believing anything else. They are so intertwined it is difficult to separate. Especially when money is involved.
“Because we would be forced to truly reckon with the harm our default approach perpetuates. And that would be an existential threat to our business models.”
Dr Jason Fox
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“That’s the thing about pain. It demands to be felt”
John Green
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Suffice it to say, people do not like pain. Especially self-inflicted pain. So we avoid a shitload of things. One of our main avoidance tactics is ‘default.’ Default is simply a term for ‘not noticing.’
Which leads me to say that noticing things can be painful.
We ignore a lot of shit. Why? Because it’s convenient to do so. Because in order to acknowledge something we would have accept something. And acceptance is a small quiet room. And acceptance can be painful. Not physically painful, just mentally so. Now. Small quiet room sounds like it needs to be small. It doesn’t. It’s often just a space you carve out in an immense system – like a society, a community, a business, or even a business model or system of doing things. It’s a space where you can hide from things you may not want to face. It’s a space where you are not demanded to reckon for the larger system.
Which leads me to say that Life, in & of itself, is demanding of accepting pain.
We are certainly pleasure-seeking beings and despite all our dystopian rhetoric we invest a shitload of energy on ‘finding happiness.’ That said. Suffice it to say that whatever we emphasize has a nasty habit of demanding attention. Good and bad. But, more often than not, in our analyzing of ourselves and what is around us we emphasize the ‘less than’, the ‘imperfections,’ and the pain. They all demand to be felt.
Slowly becoming the person I should’ve been a long time ago.
In other words. Many things in life demand to be felt. And maybe it is because of that we numb ourselves to as many things as possible figuring it is the only way to manage our way thru the onslaught of things demanding and demanding and demanding. Pay enough attention, or give them enough emphasis, and the clamor of their cries for attention seems deafening if you listen too closely.
I say all of that to state an essential part of ‘numbing ourselves’ is to deemphasize how the system, or structural things, affect us. This can go several ways. You can deemphasize the effects of the system because you know you are getting screwed and you feel like there is nothing you can do, and will continue to get screwed, so you deemphasize and get on with getting on. On the flip side if you haven’t been screwed by the system and done well you de-emphasize the effects of the system because acknowledging the system and structure de-emphasizes what you may see as your strengths and the attributes you apply to yourself that you believe got you to where you are today. Regardless. As noted earlier, it depends on what one emphasizes.
“What matters isn’t being applauded when you arrive—for that is common—but being missed when you leave.”
Baltasar Gracián
Which leads me to say that society, in and of itself, has a shitload of invisible things that can create pain.
Society is strewn with systemic things. Many of things lurk, invisibly, in the general ‘doings’ of how things work in society. Racism, hierarchy, inequality, inequities, power, all chug along beneath the surface of everyday life. If I were to have to explain why some things we think we should be done and aren’t being done, I would point to these invisible things (rather than some of the visible ‘common sense’ things the loud mouths point at) as the causes. I suggest that because invisibility, and invisible things, is isolation and I am not sure anything can really be built in isolation. Created? Possibly. Built? Yikes. I don’t think so. One person, an individual, can rarely build something without help. Help as in tangible <doing help> or intangible <emotional support>. So if you notice the default things in life, make the invisible systemic things visible in your mind, well, its gonna be panful to see. But its also the path to progress.
====
“We ignored truths for temporary happiness.
six word story
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Which leads me to business.
If there is one place in which we ignore invisible pains, it is business. This is because business asks you to focus on some random shit which only encourages you to embrace default shit as often as you can. Even worse, it gets a bit personal. Yeah. The business world makes us think about being visible and not being ignored to an absurd level. Huh? Things like ‘you have to be your own cheerleader!” or ‘you have to promote your accomplishments’; things like that. The implication is that the only way to not be invisible is to make sure you are not ignored. Theoretically this is okay, but in practice what this mean is a lot of noise from people who are doing things just to be visible and the things they are actually doing should be ignored. But here is the truly egregious thing. This ‘be visible’ ideology cloaks the truly corrosive invisible things which create scenarios in which the invisible people of value are not deemed worthy.
“As human beings, we have a natural compulsion to fill empty spaces.”
Will Shortz
In other words, if all you are doing is holding up the universe you are fucked. Uhm. That’s an existential threat to the universe.
Which leads me to circle back to the opening Jason Fox quote and how noticing is an existential threat to the system.
It was Grace Blakeley who said: “Disobedience to authority is not an indication of selfishness; it’s an assertion of an individual’s autonomy.”Noticing IS disobedience. In fact, I would argue society’s progress has always been driven by this kind of disobedience. Driven by the ones willing to notice the ‘invisible hands’ slapping the shit out of people and saying its ‘abuse of society,’ or, at an individual level, ‘abuse of my autonomy.’ Revolutions always begin with people noticing things and disobeying the defaults within a system if not the system itself.
In the end.
If you think about this, and these issues, well, even if you attempt to ignore it, once thought about, it begins to nudge its way into your thinking. Call it a splinter. A splinter is something you have to notice. And splinters are painful. Ponder.
“You aren’t advertising to a standing army; you are advertising to a moving parade.”
David Ogilvy
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“One can resist the invasion of an army but one cannot resist the invasion of ideas.”
Victor Hugo
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I know businesses are hesitant to wade into social issues. It is fraught with peril. That said. Look at this Google chart Axios offers us with regard to topics. It was an absolutely crazy time in the world as Trump offered the world an onslaught of crazy shit. I would argue it was impossible to not engage, therefore, the question a business had to answer was “how do I engage.” And if that is so, I would argue it would behoove all business people to think of it as “convergence opportunities charting” where if you engaged in a relevant thoughtful way – what would your business look like in the eyes of people as it spoke out?
Now. Crazy lightning rod topics or not, businesses kill for convergence moments in which #’s of people coalesce, if but for a moment or two, to say something to them. That’s why businesses do events. That’s why health clubs look at towel dispensers as communication/experience opportunities (while members may all do different workouts 90% stop at the dispenser). Twitter is like the workouts & the convergence moments are the towel dispensers. Scan someone’s thread & it centers on their interest (cats, climate, bad jokes, community, politics, etc.), but when a convergence topic hits everyone pays attention. Even if you hesitate to weigh in on issues it is difficult to not see these as opportunities to not only elevate your business brand socially, but also to expand your business. Personally, I believe all businesses should make their personal stand on society issues as part of their brand. But that’s me.
Yeah. I believe businesses should take a stand on social issues.
I am in the minority, but I believe business should get involved in society issues. Maybe not all, but they should take a stand. To me silence is not an option. I believe if you have a podium and the opportunity to speak you should accept the burden of responsibility and try and ‘lift society to a higher level.’ And if you don’t give a rat’s ass what I think, Peter Drucker also thought business should be involved in society.
So let me take a moment and comment on business responsibility and their choices with regard to what they say in communications. I do so because in today’s heightened sense of politicism and divisive rhetoric a shitload of people are making noise about “advertising should honor the event and not use it to make a political statement.” That’s is nuts to me.
Uhm.
If not then, then when?
Uhm.
If not me, then who?
Yeah.
There are surely consequences for your actions. But far too often this discussion devolves into a simplistic binary choice – an ‘either/or’ choice. You stand for this therefore you hate that. In other words, you cannot be pro-choice and yet respectful or understanding of pro-life, you cannot desire stronger immigration rules and still be accepting of immigrants, you cannot believe in your religion and still accept that how others worship, or not worship, is meaningful. It’s all wrong because Life, in most cases, is not some simplistic binary choice. You can, and should, believe in something and yet still can, and should, be accepting and respectful of others views. To do this not only would we need to embrace respect, but also assume that most people, let’s say maybe 99% of people, do the best they can and make the best decisions they can <no matter how flawed those decisions may look in our eyes>.
That said. I believe communications, in general, should always seek to highlight the opportunity for us to see the better, or best, version of who and what we are. And that is where I believe business marketing and advertising should not fear speaking out. And I would point out that is not political nor is it divisive, but a general point of view on contributing to a better society.
Look. Companies make statements all the time. Maybe they do more vocally internally, but part of any good organization is a sense of what they believe is right, versus wrong, and how they may define integrity & values. Frankly. We need more companies standing up and vocalizing this publicly. This is not about saying “you are wrong for believing this” or “we do not agree with you,” but rather more about normalizing what is right.
I talk with a shitload of business people, not about advertising or marketing per se,, but rather about simply being successful in the marketplace.
I focus on distinction and not differentiation.
I focus on worrying about “me” and what I want to say rather than finding some elusive, and most likely nonexistent, ‘white space’ in some industry.
I focus on saying the right things and doing it the right way and suggesting that if you tell people the right way to think about things that eventually people will see you as ‘right’ rather than ‘wrong.’
This is not about free speech or any political motivation, but it is about how business, and work life, is an important part of the societal fabric of who and what we are and how and what we think.
In my eyes if you really want to discuss how political correctness has gone awry, it would be in the business world. It wasn’t too long ago that business played a significant role in shaping society. Yeah. I said that. As Peter Drucker pointed out back in the early 1990’s in something he called “salvation by society” businesses understood that work made up a significant portion of people’s lives and therefore they had some responsibility to investing in the fabric of society and communities. As time and views have shifted toward ‘making a dollar’ and profits the work place became less and less an extension of society, but rather simply ‘a place to work and get a paycheck’.
What an empty thought that is.
Our work lives, like it or not, represent a significant portion of our lives not just in terms of sheer hours, but also in terms of thinking we are exposed to, accepted behavior and general attitudes on what is right & what is wrong. For a business to avoid that ‘fabric of society’ responsibility is shameful.
Once again, there are absolutely consequences for your actions. But that is what business positioning is really all about. Distinctness and forcing people to think – think about you, think about what you are offering and thinking about how they feel about you, your message and, uhm, themselves. That is what business positioning and marketing and advertising, at its core, is all about. We dumb it down into some ‘selling shit’ soundbite, but that is dumb.
Yes.
I know.
People will debate with me and, to be fair, this whole discussion wanders along the razor thin line of inclusionary versus exclusionary. If your message is effective, concise and clear, it will absolutely be inclusionary for those who see themselves in what you have to say and offer and potentially exclusionary to others at exactly the same time. However, when done well, a business’s communications captures the brands’ distinctness <which is a campfire to those who want to be included> and offers a better version of people <so that people do not dislike you, they simply think ‘they are not for me’>.
But to do what I am suggesting a business has to set political correctness off to the side, not think about politics at all and simply think about people. The people who they desire to try their products and services and how they would like to showcase those people as the best version of themselves. And then after doing that they have to place the burden of responsibility upon their shoulders, open the door and stride out into the word to share it with people.
Yes.
I am suggesting business, and the people within it, have a responsibility.
Yes.
I am suggesting business is something more than simply selling stuff.
——
“All of us who professionally use the mass media are the shapers of society.
We can vulgarize that society. We can brutalize it. Or we can help lift it onto a higher level.”
Bill Bernbach
——-
“We are so busy measuring public opinion that we forget we can mold it.
We are so busy listening to statistics we forget we can create them.”
Bill Bernbach
——-
I would suggest to any business person reading this that responsibility is responsibility. All responsibility is only as overwhelming or ‘whelming’ a you make it. And if you do not accept your responsibility to tell the truth as excitingly and convincingly as you possibly can, lies will win. If you choose to vulgarize the society or brutalize it or even ignore it <all under the guise of ‘understanding what the consumer wants’>, society will lose.
To be clear.
I honestly do not despair when I look at business in today’s world, but I do get aggravated.
Ok.
No.
I get angry.
I get angry that we are not accepting the responsibility.
I get angry that we are not strong enough to accept the burden.
I get angry that many do not even presume the responsibility is within their purview.
Business, whether you like it or not, shapes society.
What we do matters.
What we say matters.
Selling stuff may matter to our bottom line and the existence of our business, but we cannot ignore that a thriving business actually contributes to a greater good — the existence of a healthy society.
Far too often by simply focusing on ‘selling stuff’ the byproduct of our ignoring the larger responsibility is that we brutalizing society in some form or fashion.
Am I suggesting that selling stuff or being profitable isn’t important? Of course not.
All I am suggesting is that HOW you sell stuff and be profitable matters. And that you have a responsibility in HOW you do what you do. Because HOW you do things impacts society. It shapes society. It can vulgarize or brutalize … or invigorate or instill good.
HOW you do things has a power way beyond simply you or what you do in that moment.
HOW you do things is a pebble dropping into a pond.
Responsibility assumes you are neither impotent nor harmless.
——-
“Advertising is far from impotent or harmless; it is not a mere mirror image. Its power is real, and on the brink of a great increase. Not the power to brainwash overnight, but the power to create subtle and real change.
The power to prevail.”
Eric Clark, The Want Makers: Inside the World of Advertising, 1988
——
Your responsibility in business is sometimes subtle, but always real.
I worry that business people everywhere, but in particular communications, have become so focused on getting shit done and ‘attaining the bottom line’ that they have forgotten the responsibility.
I worry that business people worry so much about politics and ‘political correctness’ they have forgotten that when good people remain silent the only one who wins is bad.
Just think about what thinking I offered today.
This isn’t about causes.
This isn’t about social responsibility <or the welfare of people>.
This is about understanding that what you do impacts people.
This is about whether you, as business people, accept the burden of responsibility to help shape a society which is a reflection of the best versions of who and what we are.
I will say while I’m not trying to ruin the mirage that business is just about business, I’d like everyone to think just a bit harder that with determination and with potentially a little unjustified confidence, you can not only get through the times of uncertainty, but maybe shape a better world. Ponder.
At the same time, it is undeniably true that we frequently apply new technology
stupidly and selfishly. In our haste to milk technology for immediate economic advantage, we
have turned our environment into a physical and social tinderbox.
The speed-up of diffusion, the self-reinforcing character of technological advance, by
which each forward step facilitates not one but many additional further steps, the intimate
link-up between technology and social arrangements—all these create a form of
psychological pollution, a seemingly unstoppable acceleration of the pace of life.”
Alvin Toffler, Future Shock, 1970
=====
I almost called this weak and powerless. This is about how experts have to feel weak and powerless in the onslaught of opinions, misinformation and selective use of facts out of context. Experts face an instantly-gratification-desiring fragmented public in which debatable points (usually facts taken out of context) gain velocity while the experts ruminate on the proper response. This is what Toffler called “sped-up diffusion.”
I’d also note that one of the things about the internet is everyone gets a voice. What that means is the non-expert, including the petty minority seeking to diminish an expert so they look ‘taller’, can gain quite a volume and velocity in their non-expert voice. They take molehills <data out of context, oversimplification, fabricated speculation, etc.> and speak of them as mountainous point of views. Psychologists say that this behavior from people who make mountains out of molehills stems from some unrelated insecurity or unhappiness, but I would suggest in a “diffusion world” people will use any opportunity they can to ‘self-reinforce’ their perceived self image/character.
I’d also note one of the things in a ubiquity web world is that while things have always changed, it’s increasingly difficult to compare them against the past. What I mean by that is on the worldwide web the past is always being ‘scrubbed’ and parsed. Incremental, contextual, fragmentary pieces are elevated into mountains … despite truly being molehills. At exactly the same time someone is, sometimes quite convincingly <or connivingly>, attempting to show that a real mountain is simply a molehill. Basically, everything on the internet is inherently fluid and nothing seems immutable.
I say all this to suggest ‘cancel culture’ is a slightly absurd concept – particularly within the context of experts. Everyone has a frickin’ voice and everyone is using it. In fact, it’s almost the opposite of ‘cancel’ in that it’s more a maelstrom of bullshit views going viral in an environment in which there are no constraints. The expert stands no chance. Shit. No one would stand a chance. They get deconstructed into nothingness and, yet, they are somethingness we should all be caring about.
In the good ole days an expert maintained their expert status by defending their expertise. Someone would challenge them, offer objections or criticism, and then the true expert would hunker down and address them all. After a bit we just accepted, having successfully defended their expertise, they were experts and listened.
Today is a bit different. Ok. Today is a lot different. It is a de-massified and de-synchronized world which means an expert needs to defend within an asymmetrical attack zone. This asymmetry gets tricky because in some contexts what non-experts say can be close enough to the truth to have some usefulness but in most situations, they offer serious distortions of systemic truths and significantly harm normative, and formative, attitudes and behaviors – and truth. They appropriate experts’ terms and flip them back in a false equivalence situation – a big lie (a real one) is countered with “you are saying a big lie!” which, well, isn’t. Its like a grade school argument where “it’s not me, it’s you.” This asymmetrical deconstruction occurs mostly by deconstructing the patterns of expert logic. I specifically note ‘expert logic pattern’because in an internet-based world all of us are constantly under attack from a variety of signals and they usually arrive in routine, repetitive patterns. Psychologists have noted that “when something changes within the range of our senses, the pattern of signals pouring through our sensory channels into our nervous system is modified.” What that means is we defend against modification that challenges the routine, repetitive patterns and, yet, feel a desire to respond. We are of our environment and yet distinct from it. Simplistically this means any progress is herky-jerky and asymmetrical.
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“I do think today’s skepticism toward progress is because the late-19th-century view of progress was somewhat naive. People were oblivious to the real risks and problems of progress.”
Jason Crawford
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I say all that because (a) experts tend to thrive in symmetrical arguments and environments and (b) progress demands some adaptive reaction.
Which leads me to overstimulation.
If you buy into everything I have said, then one has to take a fairly close look at the effect the internet/social media/24-hour news has on us. We have to because any expert ‘construction’ takes place within that context. First. The onslaught of internet creates a sped-up diffusions which demands us, humans, to have an adaptive reaction. Second. We may not always actually adapt, but we will have a reaction which makes us feel like we have to consider adapting – that reaction to adapt is nonstop. The truth of this is if you never get a break and pressure is sustained and we are forced to constantly choose between adapt or not adapt <as well as assess what to adapt or not> our pituitary gland spits out some substances. One of these, ACTH, goes to the adrenals. This causes them, in turn, to manufacture certain chemicals termed corticosteroids. When these are released, they speed up body metabolism. They raise blood pressure.
Well.
I got to the physiological point to get back to how experts get deconstructed into nothingness. If the environment raises our metabolism and blood pressure all an expert does is, well, amplify both within that ‘sped-up diffusion world‘. Why do I say that? Well. Let me circle back to symmetry and asymmetry. Experts, being experts, thrive on symmetry while non-experts, under stress, survive within asymmetry. What that means is while experts give their symmetrical, logical, best only to be deconstructed into nothingness in the asymmetry of, well, everything.
This is a really bad time for civilization because it is a really bad time for experts. As I have noted in the past, today’s world encourages the guy at the corner of the bar to think he is as smart or has better common sense then the experts. That is not only not true but a dangerous belief. The internet has created a form of psychological pollution, a seemingly unstoppable acceleration of the pace of life, in which experts are getting run over and squished into nothingness.
Let me end by saying having experts weak & powerless is not good for us. Deconstructing experts into nothingness does nothing good for us – people.
“Besides, it doesn’t matter if it’s real. It never does with dreams.”
Tim Tharp
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“The past doesn’t need you anymore. Your future does.”
some Tumblr advice
==
“Science fiction has a long and valuable history of providing us with visions of a better world. …[But] Science fiction since the Sixties has signally failed in that regard; we have been fed, by and large, a diet of Chicken Little soup in a pot of message, ladled out over leg of Frankenstein.”
So, let’s talk about science fiction and scanning future scenarios.
This is where I believe science fiction can play an invaluable role, but:
Science is not a theory of reality, but a method of inquiry.
Science fiction is not a theory of reality, but a method of inquiry.
Science is a process of learning and discovery, and sometimes we learn that what we thought was right is wrong. Science and science fiction and fantasy do not predict the future yet, on occasion, they can offer plausible narratives for what could be as well as offer some reflection on what is. On my side in this discussion, Michio Kaku encourages all of us to think about science fiction and fantasy and future possibilities through the eyes of physics. He often says the laws of physics, as far as we can tell, do not rule things out, just makes suggestions on what could be possible. But possible does not always mean feasible. And maybe that’s the interesting thing about quantum physics. It suggests possible paths of existence all circling back onto itself never really going backwards in time and yet affecting the time continuum. It suggests the universe is made-up of multiple stories. In fact, in relativity, now only exists in a frame of reference not as an absolute. Yeah. Time and space may appear as an unchanging multi-dimensional block within which we call the present, it is interesting to maybe think about time and space as contextual, never stagnant, and constantly changing second by second. All that said. The future should always be viewed as a world of possibilities where the good things we desire can be imagined. Far too often science fiction, and futurism, dwells on
(a) the negative possible outcomes, or
(b) an extension of the present amplified.
Weird, huh? If you believe science fiction is a way to imagine how the world will be different and to help make sense of the future, well, why wouldn’t we seek to envision the hopeful possibilities?
Which leads me to how “extension of the present” amplifies less-than-useful possibilities.
I would argue seeing, let alone understanding, the significance of most events in the present is dubious at best because there are too many spiraling indirect consequences within the myriad of conflicting competing interests. This includes both threats and opportunities. That said. Being passive is not an option while being active guarantees nothing. So what I suggest is that rather than seek to extend the present you should seek out the ‘power’ you have, i.e., the power applicable in a wide range of contexts, and seek to maintain this power/control at the lowest cost possible. I would even argue that protecting the power you have is almost survival 101 (albeit it’s not directly translatable to thrivable 101). The tricky part of that is if you tether things too tightly to the present (which is simply a different way of embracing the past), you are doomed. Doomed because connectedness will prevail over any one thing you have deemed ‘important.’ What I mean by that is any one thing, in today’s world, is never discrete, it is always connected in wildly complex intricate ways with other things. What I mean is the bad things are so embedded within the weave of things you can’t simply shed them by extending the present. Heck. I could even quote Goldratt’s ‘the race’ and point out that simply eliminating one thing creates another equal, if not worse, issue. The truthy is extending the present simply means you get the bad with the good and the bad, more often than not, is gravity. Gravity that drags the future down every time the future seeks to fly. Look. There exists in all of us a tendency to think of the present as the appearance of how things will be in the future. We pride ourselves on our decisions in the present. We believe we’ve considered all the available options and think that the current decisions we’ve made seem rational, right, and proper — but that’s a trap. We all find it difficult to think of reasons why we might change the ways in which we do things today, how our habits will develop or how our attitudes and preferences might evolve, but change inevitably happens, and it’s undoubtedly coming. Or, as Toffler said, ’the future always comes too fast and in the wrong order.”
“If we are called on to not fear the future, it might be better to persuade us that we have a place in it, that it is ours to make. Show us a future we want to believe in.”
Michael Harris
Businesswoman changing reality of drought to spring season
Look. Any future thinking typically demands a reference point as kind of an anchor for thinking. What this means is we need to rummage around history to be able to look ahead more effectively. In doing so it helps us understand the trajectory and choices made in the past which got us where we are. In other words, how did we create the present we are in? There is no way to escape the present if you don’t know how you got trapped in it. As a corollary, it also helps to rummage around science fiction and fantasy for future anchor possibilities. What I am discussing is foresight versus forecasting. Foresight has a long view and is speculative; forecasting uses data to extrapolate what may likely come next. One is possibilities the other is probabilities. Pick your poison carefully, but, simplistically, you cannot go wrong if you seek to improve the quality of the present so that it can exist in the future; not predict the future because it is always out of reach. Why? Prediction is as much a way of thinking and how we craft facts to build from moreso than any high falutin technique. And that matters because it all shapes our perceptions of what is ‘inevitable,’ and, as a consequence, what kinds of futures are considered ‘plausible’. That said. Whether you’re looking at the past, present, or future, you’re always seeking the dimensions of change the space and time within which things occur. In 2020 Gaya Herrington said amidst global slowdown and risks of depressed future growth potential from climate change, social unrest, and geopolitical instability, to name a few, responsible leaders faced the possibility that growth will be limited in the future. And only a fool keeps chasing an impossibility. I would argue that you aren’t chasing impossibilities, you are changing possibilities over a range of probabilities some of which were increasingly unlikely and others increasingly likely.
“Technological optimism means to practice the ability to recognize bad surprises early enough to do something about them.’
Edward Tenner
Which leads me to technology can be both gravity and wings for the future.
The present is burdened by existing myths, narratives, and institutional system structures. People (culture & society) are caught in the wretched hollow in between the reality that science and technology do not provide a philosophy, or human framework, by which to live or the belief structure of society. Sure. It is impossible to not embrace all that science and technology has to offer and, yet, they are bereft of any moral construct within which to build a better future. In that, culture, and society, get squeezed in this conflict.
“The very basic core of a human’s living spirit is its passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”
Christopher McCandless
Circling back to the topic at hand, the future of technology and science, the foundation of all science fiction and futuristic fantasy, is profoundly dependent upon humans and their understanding of the future. This understanding needs to be grounded in shared values, shared what is valued,’ shared sense of how to create value, and shared sensemaking of what is valued (note: Zak Stein discusses “what we value” really well). This will span political, economic, societal, community and legal structures. And while the future certainly will be reliant upon technology in some form or fashion, it would be a mistake to shape future thinking solely based on simplistic techno-optimistic people captivated by fantastical thinking because, inevitably, most of this thinking doesn’t think about the fabric of society within which those things will be woven. We need futures crafted through science and technology ‘by and for humans’ with an eye toward humanity’s progress and prosperity. And maybe that is where I end this section. Because both science fiction and fantasy may not design a future state, they certainly have optimistic scenarios to lead us to inquire “how we can we craft a future like that.” And isn’t that half the battle?
“They used to say if man could fly, he’d have wings. But he did fly. He discovered he had to. Do you wish that the first Apollo mission hadn’t reached the moon, or that we hadn’t gone on to Mars and then to the nearest star? That’s like saying you wish that you still operated with scalpels and sewed your patients up with catgut like your great-great-great-great-grandfather used to. I’m in command. I could order this. But I’m not because Doctor McCoy is right in pointing out the enormous danger potential in any contact with life and intelligence as fantastically advanced as this. But I must point out that the possibilities, the potential for knowledge and advancement is equally great. Risk. Risk is our business. That’s what the starship is all about. That’s why we’re aboard her.”
Which leads me to no specific future is a given (or inevitable).
First. So how do we get, pragmatically, to the future? Oddly I will not highlight innovations or ‘original thinking,’ but rather, uhm, half invented ideas. Half-invented ideas is a Nassim Taleb thought. The reality is science fiction is simply a narrative of half invented ideas. They are mostly ideas which can be partially attained; therefore, the future is more about taking the time to explore how to attain the half-invented idea. It is through that process in which objectives are attained. I argue for half-invented ideas because progress is always making (and even moreso today) knowledge, energy and resources more and more inexpensive, accessible and abundant. I would even argue that a half-invented idea addresses civilization’s most challenging obstacle – short term thinking. A half-invented idea gives you a running start toward the future. It is much easier to stay ‘on mission’ if you are editing rather than creating from scratch. Ponder.
Second. So how do we envision a future? Science fiction is, well, science fiction. It’s a narrative that expands the imagination of what could be.
“It is now in our capacity to destroy civilization as we know it, or to build a world of unprecedented opportunity for all people.”
Barbara Marx Hubbard
Science fiction stories also play an important role in challenging the basic truth that most people tend to extrapolate from the status quo to envision some predetermined future, i.e., a bounded vision. It is bounded by the constraints and suppositions of dominant perceptions of reality of which science fiction pushes against. The truth is there is no single “future” let alone one single trajectory, but rather an array of possibilities and paths. This happens because the future is continuously shaped by our actions as well as our inactions. That’s why I think the sharpest people speak of ‘futures’ and not just ‘the future.’ There is a spectrum of future possibilities — the probable, possible, plausible, the desirable. Science fiction and fantasy expand our understanding of the possibility spaces of tomorrow’s choices and, therefore, choices of what future we shape. But. Nothing is inevitable; even narratives. Once again, science fiction offers possibilities. This is an important thought because the best futurist thinking embraces the unresolved and the things that have yet to be well defined. They offer vague shapes of what could be and propositions seeking clarity, i.e., structures yet to be designed. Circling back to the beginning, as I read Theo Priestly’s piece about futurists and Futurism, I was reminded that he was reprising a concern that Alvin Toffler, probably the original contemporary futurist, had. Toffler lamented that his idea of futurists was being diverted by a focus on the present in likely futures. He was concerned that the objectives were limiting the possibilities of Futurism. Ultimately, he believed that futurism shouldn’t focus too much on identifying likely futures, but rather should be exploring ‘the less likely but the impactful’ possible futures. In my words looking to the future should be about designing a future scenario within which people can see themselves within and therefore start redesigning their own lives to be able to not only fit into it but to build it person by person. That is easier said than done because the thing about the future is past narratives trap our future thoughts. We seem to forget is that some of the biggest transformations occur when problems and crises arise because they tend to create a perfect space in which to explore valuable futures. And with that let me quote Heather Vessent: “who gets to decide what is positive and what is dystopia?” The future always resides in “human needs solutions” not technological capabilities. Simplistically, this means we ground things in human needs – significance, connection, love, progress, contribution, meaning, and not from ‘optimal functionalities’ of a technological widget (which means we can do things only in the way that the widget suggests). This means that the technocrats view of considering solutions from a technological capability perspective with human needs as secondary is fraught with peril. The peril resides in that all of these solutions best fit the present rather than redesigning or potentially redesigning a future. And while the technocrats may claim that technology is the engine for progress what I actually described is almost like putting a governor on progress. We may see some short-term productivity increases, but long term all it does is continue to bound existing behavior and attitudes rather than looking towards the horizon for new attitudes and behaviors.
Which leads me to “eyes up” thinking and doing.
We all know that walking looking down at your feet means it is only a matter of time before you run into something. The trick is always seeing ahead while not losing sight of where your feet actually get placed.
“Ideas, unless outward circumstances conspire with them, have in general no very rapid or immediate efficacy in human affairs; and the most favourable outwards circumstances may pass by, or remain inoperative, for want of ideas suitable to the conjuncture. But when the right circumstances and the right ideas meet, the effect is seldom slow in manifesting itself.”
John Stuart Mill
Oh. That said. “Seeing” or “scanning” is a daily task – and a daily task better done by a team than any one individual. “Seeing” seeks out reference points and signals of change in the present offering cues to ideas for the future. Yeah. And this is where rather than discussing innovation I bring up ‘half-invented ideas’ again. These signals should be bucketed into ‘opportunistic positive’ signals and ‘dangerous dystopian’ signals. In other words, investigate and interrogate the things that seem to put boundaries on future progress or even future death – for the greater world AND the half-invented ideas themselves. But what this means is we need to consider what the futures could be and more importantly what the world could be like in which a half-invented idea would prosper or wither away. Thinking of it all this way is important because we cannot imagine the future trajectories of every organization, of every idea, of every community, of every economy, of every country, let alone of every person, or even of any half-invented idea, but we can certainly craft a world all of those things could exist within. In other words, create a fictional future within which all of those things can thrive and prosper and you’ve identified something to be able to fully-invent half-invented ideas toward.
Which leads me to identifying stories.
Stories always play a role in the looking toward the future. Science fiction stories thrive in this scenario, but not all stories are created equal and there are science fiction stories of the past, stories of the present, and stories of the future. Stories of the future are speculative fiction, but valuable nonetheless. But all of the stories are important because they activate our brain, and then we share the story, it actually synchronizes an aspect of a collective sensemaking brain. can become even more powerful when shared. For when we come together to listen to a story our brains start to synchronize with those of the person telling us the story. From there we are off to the deeper motives, desires, imagination, perspectives races. And that mental race is the fundamental underpinning of building a better future.
“If you want truly to understand something, try to change it.”
Kurt Lewin
People must be able to envision a better future in order to make the choices to craft it. That takes some work as well as some imagination. And here is where I end, with a thought from Theodore Roosevelt: “reformers will be assailed on the one side by the reactionary, and on the other by that type of bubble reformer who is only anxious to go to extremes, and who always gets angry when he is asked what practical results he can show. The true reformer must study hard and work patiently.” Toffler took that thought a step farther in Future Shock suggesting we needed to train people to think as futurists – all people. Society needs imagination doors to walk through and science fiction and fantasy tend to be the builders of those doors – for all people. Ponder.
“For nothing will remain unchanged. The future is fluid, not frozen. It is constructed by our shifting and changing daily decisions, and each event influences all others. In education, we need to begin paying attention to matters routinely ignored.”
“I have no ideas, only obsessions.Anybody can have ideas.
Ideas have never caused anybody’s downfall.”
Emil Cioran
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Ideas have consequences.
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Crazy ideas with consequences.
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Ideas are tricky things. They get especially in today’s world where we talk ad nausea about how anyone can have a ‘good idea.’
Truth?
While all ideas have consequences, and crazy ideas can have some crazy consequences, not all ideas are created equal.
Truth?
Not all people can come up with good ideas.
Another truth?
Obsession, or the injection of obsession, actually may be what makes an idea more than just, well, an idea.
Why is this important?
Because so often we sit in meetings and brainstorm and flippantly toss out ideas. And they are, well, just ideas.
Hollow? Maybe not completely.
Flat? Possibly.
Deep? Rarely (many are mostly created from some individualistic opinion or belief).
Obsession? Extremely rare. And that is what differentiates ideas. The depth. What I mean by that is there is an obsessive aspect to a great meaningful idea.
To be clear. People can obsess over an idea and that idea can be crappy. But there is a link between obsession and obsessive. What I mean by that is obsession in an idea can (not always, but, can) generate an obsession among people.
So, while an obsessive idea may never become obsessive to people, an idea obsessive to people will always be generated by someone who has been obsessive in the idea and its thinking.
And I imagine that is my point.
There are ideas. And then there are ideas that change people <which means we have an opportunity to change the world>. Uhm. Unfortunately, these types of ideas come with a responsibility — a burden as a matter of fact . And not all people are capable of accepting this burden and not all people WANT to assume the responsibility of these types of ideas.
“Sureness will always elude you.
The detective will always circle around what he wants, never seeing it whole. We do not go on despite this.
We go on because of it.”
Claire DeWitt
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“All extremes of feeling are allied with madness.”
Virginia Woolf
Ok. So, if obsession is the glue to successful ideas one begins to wonder where does that glue come from. Well. First. Far too often we seem to judge obsession in absolutes — as in absolutely unhealthy, bad or creepy. But what if the obsessive ideas are actually generated from an obsession with learning — some specific topic like science, math or woodworking or any ‘increased knowledge-based’ aspect of Life — which creates the underpinnings of something someone can become obsessive about.
That kind of seems like a good worthwhile obsession.
But let’s take a moment on obsession with learning.
Life, and learning, and even curiosity in general, means most of us are trapped in an endless chase.
The real scam people try and sell you is that some milestone or some objective represents some end point. I imagine another part of the scam is something I tried to debunk back in 2010, the whole concept of “well rounded” learning and people.
What we are taught about learning — how to learn, what to learn & what learning is important – is very different than what most of us feel & perceive when we encounter learning. And the rules look even more out of whack if you are one of the ones who is obsessive about learning something.
Those of us who have encountered, and embraced, obsession recognize that the learning game is rigged and has rules opposed to what we view as maximizing learning. We know there is no ‘well rounded’. We know there is actually no end. We know that our obsession is a means to an end and more often a favorite piece of clothing we will inevitably store away on the closet to be replaced by some other piece of clothing we will wear endlessly until we become obsessed with another.
What this means is that anyone with a relatively healthy obsession will endlessly circle around whatever they want more of and do so willingly because it was what he/she wants.
We visit the extremes seeking the extreme edge of something that is infinite and, yet, we find solace in the extremeness and not an unhealthy pursuit of something that will never actually be sated.
What this means is that a good obsession may actually mean you have the high unrealistic expectations and yet are able to mix and match them with the curiosity exploration of the day.
What this means is that obsession is what creates ideas with depths & dimensions that people can become obsessive about.
I tend to believe good obsessive learning is effective for a variety of reasons.
It is self imposed.
It is defined by a chosen environment & topic rather than a dictated one.
Measurement is self-imposed and the measurement objective is an unquantifiable “enough when it is enough” <we dictate the ‘satedness’>.
At its root level obsession is all about “wanting more.” And with regard to learning the ‘more’ is not some well-rounded evenly shaped smooth journey. And therein lies obsession biggest challenge in life. Unevenness makes people feel uncomfortable. They seek ‘well rounded’ and ‘planned exploration’ in terms of what is right. Therefore, if you are obsessive on one topic or one task you are not, well, doing it right.
And that kind of seems silly to me.
I am sure that someone will point out that there truly is a ‘righter way’ to learn but in my pea like brain learning driven from the inside of someone is significantly more powerful than learning dictated by someone outside of me. I also believe in my pea like brain that an idea created from an obsession, maybe with some uneven edges, is more likely to create obsession because it has some uneven edges.
Anyway.
I tend to believe part of youth is learning about obsessions and constantly being obsessed with something and some things. Unfortunately, adults confuse exploration with youth obsession. Sure. Sometimes the exploration can verge on some unhealthiness, but more often than not it is a pursuit of ‘more’ within something liked or desired. The pursuit itself becomes a means to a different end in that exploration means one encounters new things which can encourage a diverting/diverging path and a new obsession.
That is partially what youth is. It was in my day and it remains so today <although reading things online suggests many adults seem to think the young are more obsessive than ever – note: no research proving that>.
For some this obsession learning path provides a focus for adulthood.
For some this obsession becomes an unhealthy adult pattern.
For some this obsession becomes a healthy relentless pursuit of something ‘more’ in adulthood.
I would never suggest that an obsession with learning is easy mostly because, well, anything extreme runs the risk of edging a little toward madness <or at least maddening to the people around>. But I will suggest that an obsession with learning is one of those youth obsessions which translates fairly well into adulthood but also seems to get beat out of people as they grow older as ‘obsessive is bad.’
Me? I could suggest that an obsession with learning, as long as you don’t get too full of yourself, means you maintain a certain youthfulness toward Life.
To be honest, I haven’t completely figured out how to resolve obsession I simply manage it and think I am always working on it. What I do know is that those of us who are obsessed with learning will always be dissatisfied with what we do not know and, yet, sometimes find satisfaction in the ideas our obsessiveness creates.
The ‘ideas’ portion is important I have learned that the pursuit of your obsession has to have meaning in order for it to be a healthy obsession. And meaning can take form in a variety of ways, but it cannot be a simple milestone or objective but rather an embodiment of some growth or ‘moreness’ <not actual attainment of something>.
To finish up … I will end where I began. Ideas have consequences. Crazy ideas have consequences. Great ideas have consequences.
Commitment and patience and adaptation. I am fairly sure not a lot of business gurus put these three words together, however, the truth is the combination of these three ingredients is a powerful one.
Oddly it seems like not many of us learn this particular recipe.
First. How we engage. We tend to ‘commit’ one of two ways:
tepidly. Oh. we claim 100% commitment but the majority of people are already investing in safety resources, redundancy protection and “what if” scenario making. In their words, their ‘commitment’ includes ‘committing to saving my ass’. We all do some aspects of this but we all need to recognize each ounce of energy on this is one less ounce of energy to whatever ‘commitment’ we have claimed to make.
blinder commitment. Yeah. some people call this ‘focused commitment’, but that’s a nice way of saying ‘with blinders on’.
Second. We then tend to be less than patient. In fact I could suggest we are very often impatient in our engagement <but still committed to some plan>. I would suggest we often underestimate the value of doing nothing <and observing>. For some reason we attach ‘speed’ to engaging. That is a mistake. They are two distinctly different things.
Third. Adapting? Yikes. Paradoxically, if we do adapt, we would <in our eyes> bastardize the integrity of the structure of the commitment. Yes. For some reason many people see commitment in conflict with adapting. What this means is in most situations we are willing to stay the course with a plan … until the bitter end — “committed” in other words.
In business .many of us commit to a plan of action and believe staying the course creates the highest likelihood to succeed. And in our impatience we plow through opportunities to adapt. In other words, we don’t really ‘see’ … we just commit to a plan.
Now. To be clear. Napoleon also said “When you set out to take Vienna, take Vienna.”
I share that because the commitment wasn’t to the plan, but rather to the objective. And there is a massive difference. I sometimes believe in business <and Life too I imagine> we confuse this.
We commit and don’t see.
We commit and implement.
We commit to the means <the plan> and not the end <the objective>.
That said. Why?
Now <part 1>.
This may also be a reflection of a ‘cover your ass’ world we live in. What? If I do what I committed to do <the plan> and it doesn’t achieve the objective, well, “Ain’t my fault. I did what I was told to do” <or “I stuck to the plan everyone agreed was the best plan of action”>.
Conversely (the risk). As soon as you “see” <things just don’t seem to be going the way we planned> after you have made the initial commitment and adapt the plan, well … oops, you have assumed some responsibility. You are now accountable for not following the plan.
Now <part 2>.
You can always mitigate that responsibility by going back to the “all those who agreed it was the best plan” people and saying “here is what I see now that we have actually committed … and I think we should adapt in this way <to increase the likelihood we will achieve our objective commitment>”. The problem with this is timeliness. You miss the opportunity to make the change when it should be made. I will note that Napoleon was a master of adapting the original commitment within the proper window of ‘adapting opportunity.’
Gaining consensus on adapting <or a change to a plan> is a frickin’ bear. Let’s call it almost impossible. For sure we can call it ‘less than timely.’ Bottom line. Shirking responsibility <covering you ass> takes time.
Regardless. Risk analysis is simply part of business. Always has been and always will be. And it should be. Running a business without doing so is simply chaos; not running a business.
However.
Eliminating risk is impossible. Only mitigating risk is possible. And I could argue that not adapting after committing actually increases risk. That said. This is about attitude & not risk mitigation so I will say I wish in today’s business world we would spend less time building ‘the perfect plan’ and instead build ‘the best plan we can’ and commit … and see.
Look.
I opened with a Napoleon quote because Napoleon won a shitload of battles. He wasn’t perfect and his planning and plans were significantly less than perfect.
But the dude knew how to commit.
He knew how to engage when the window of opportunity existed.
He knew how to ‘see’ <adapt>.
He knew how to keep his eye on the bigger commitment <the objective … see Vienna … take Vienna>.
He didn’t confuse committing to a plan and committing to an objective. Frankly, I believe we get confused on this far too often in business <even at some senior levels>. In my mind more business leaders should be saying ‘let’s commit … and see.’ And not just saying the words, but walking the walk so the implementers do not feel as if the plan is something etched in stone.
Adapting is part art <seeing information, data, research and feedback as it is absorbed and ‘feeling’ its momentum & conclusions – remember: statistics can lie as well as people can> and part science <making sure you actually see the most relevant information & feedback>.
I will say that effective commitment, thoughtful patience and opportunistic adapting is not for the faint of heart. You may not need be a Napoleon, but you do need some of his attitude.