Imagine yourself in any major supermarket. One can get lost in multiple aisles of single-use plastic bottles filled with soap, gel, wash, shampoo, and conditioner for your body, face, hands, privates, and hair. The cosmetic and personal care section occupies another few aisles with attractively packaged soon-to-be landfill waste. More soaps for laundry and dishes border rows of household cleaning products, air and fabric fresheners. Toothpaste and brightly colored plastic toothbrushes have their own aisle. A few years ago one of the FMCG multinationals released a bamboo toothbrush in a flash of self-congratulatory marketing hype. I’ve never seen one in a store and that technology […]
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Fast-Food Thinking
Who writes your menu? The menu you eat from? The menu you consume information from? The menu of daily choices you consider free will. The menu of breakthrough business insights that promise a leadership advantage? Is it clear by now it’s just multiple choice, mostly bad ones? Predetermined options that deliver for someone else — someone you pay with your money, time, physical & mental health, or your privacy? Does it concern you? Surely you’ve heard a version of “the menu is not the choices/the map is not the territory.” Yet the menu and map are increasingly controlled by consolidated gatekeepers that discourage mental or […]
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Storytelling & Collapsing in Business and Society
The Key Words In 2015 and 2016 I was at Adobe conferences in Las Vegas, London and Singapore. Digital Transformation ran point, of course. Storytelling” and its sub-theme “empathy” were counterpoints in every room I entered. Storytelling was officially the thing. As software eats the world, software-enabled storytelling eats the humans at great societal cost. Empathy is just one device in the storyteller’s manipulation toolbox that includes vulnerability, purpose, meaning, and an assortment of intersectional mousetraps — all baited with emotional incentives that appeal equally to guilt mechanisms of the non-intersectional. This proven formula works for marketing, management philosophy, and all manner of public & […]
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Resources: Build A Newsfeed, Not An Anxietyfeed
The news sucks in large part because the ad-based business model profits from outrage and anxiety. There’s little incentive for that to change but there are ways to build a better stream of information that you control, instead of surrendering to algorithms. I’ve been working on a sanity-preserving newsfeed for about 7 years, going hard since 2018. This was recorded near the beginning of C19 hysteria. Some things have changed since then and some haven’t. Here it is as a reference: Recent Changes Bloomberg’s weekday morning shows (about 6-9 AM EST) were market-focused and mostly apolitical. That’s over, at least temporarily. Their web/print is biased […]
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The Pebble Principle (Habits)
I started this brief a long time ago and then 2020 happened. Something reinforced by this year’s events is that aggressive pragmatism holds the line through trends, and through crisis. You hear a lot about “pivoting.” How many leaders are pivoting from one trend to another trend? There are moments that call for bold action but the pebble principle holds steady. Consistent, repeated small actions tend to generate the most returns. Often times the action is avoidance. Here are 3 favorites: Avoid trends — the amount of money and resources swallowed by well-marketed trends is staggering when weighed against value. Don’t be afraid to look […]
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Send In The Clowns: Woke At Work And Other Gaps
This is a look at the foundations of “woke” beyond its emotional appeal; a reference to free-thinking and practical approaches for business leaders. Second are a few observations about U.S.-China relations in the context of current events. Culture is the thread. Trigger warnings all around… Successful buffet design is a PsyOp. Front-load the buffet with cheap pasta, dotted by a few colorful veggies and glaze it with a slick of “Italian” dressing from a 5-gallon bucket. Name it something catchy — Pasta Primavera! It’s neither Italian nor faithful to the original recipe but fear not. Diners overwhelmingly consume what is presented first. A majority consume […]
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Debt: Knowledge, Financial, Technical, Operational, Emotional
In the meantime, I’d suggest the solution is empathy in its authentic form. Leaders need to shoulder responsibility for emotional debt and create mechanisms to pay it down. On the surface it sounds like a bailout. In reality it’s more like giving people a bucket and patch kit.
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Unpacking Transformation 2020, Part 9: Signal/Noise
As a leader it’s important to recognize that everyone is confronted with their own version of overload and are likely getting more noise than signal. The S/N ratio is one of many reasons why I argue that org-wide transformation, as a starting point, is fantasy. More on change and group dynamics here.
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Unpacking Transformation 2020, Part 8: Contradictions
Thought leaders have been selling an academic fantasy of digital transformation for decades. It doesn’t work. Here’s what does: stealthy, small scale initiatives that start with a wide berth. Determined non-conformists on a mission. Cross-pollinating, multidisciplinary teams of fewer that 5 people. Organic opt-in over forced buy-in. Controlled-environment R&D over spray & pray ‘org-wide.’
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Unpacking Transformation 2020, Part 7: A Framework For Discovery, Ignition & Growth
When it comes to change and transformation efforts I’m inclined toward an open-source ethos. In that spirit, I’m sharing my program. Here’s why.
Beginning with our first interaction it sets the stage for a discussion of the future, not the past. It opens up discovery. Not a fishing expedition for canned answers I think might open your checkbook.
Our first goal is to establish a rapport of mutual open-mindedness. Narrow-minded managers are hungry for use cases as a CYA mechanism. Receptive leaders aren’t.
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