Posts

The network of you

You are media.

Everyone is media, because everyone is a storyteller.

The photo you shared, the joke you told, the meme you sent on its merry way – all stories from the network of you.

 

We are all telling stories, every day, and if you come at your brand understanding that, it can help you tell its story.

The Dawn Wall

You’ve almost certainly seen the amazing free-climbing ascent of El Capitan’s Dawn Wall completed this week by Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson. (If not, here’s a nice write-up.)  To put it into perspective, “sending” a 5.12 and above pitch means you’re a GREAT rock climber. The Dawn Wall is an unbroken stretch of 32 pitches from 5.12 to 5.16 (which is basically unmeasurable).

Caldwell and Jorgeson lived on the wall for 19 days. The ascent could be a business book in itself, but here are some things I personally took away from this in terms of tackling massive challenges:

Prepare like crazy. Jorgeson and Caldwell spent five years working on various pitches and trying the wall in all seasons.

– Don’t be tripped up by what you perceive as handicaps (I’m too young, too old, too shy, don’t have the degree – whatever). Tommy Caldwell has nine fingers.

– There will always be a really, really, insanely tough part and you will need to push through it. It took Jorgeson a week to complete pitch 15.

– Share your struggle. The climbers tweeted, Facebooked, and Instagrammed their way up the wall, were visible to everyone, and were honest about the tough parts. The world loved them for this and cheered them on. 

– The impossible is only impossible until it’s done.

 

Photo by Mitchell Cipriano. Creative Commons 2.0.

 

Get uncomfortable with your tools

This seems so obvious but it’s one of those things, like healthy habits, that we forget to do in the rush of daily responsibility.

We spend a lot of time getting systems and tools together that work seamlessly for us. Now, get uncomfortable. Get splinters.

Spend a day, preferably more, dependent on a platform/product that’s not your daily go-to.

Hide your laptop and only use your phone. For everything. Like most of your audience.

If that phone’s an iPhone, get an Android device. Like most of the world.

Go on a trip with only one device.

Use only Internet Explorer for a few days (I know, I know, ow, I said uncomfortable).

“I can’t use IE, I only have a Mac and the simulators don’t work.” USE A PC FOR A WHILE. USE WINDOWS. Apple is fifth or sixth globally in desktop market share this month, depending on whom you listen to.  (I am 1000% guilty as charged on this one.)

Do all your designs/approvals on a triple Thunderbolt display? (I’m guilty of this, too.) Don’t look at them in a big, glossy, pricey format for a few days.

What’s important is to do this not only in product testing (“does it work on IE?”) but in daily life, to understand the real experiences of your real consumers.

 

Respond and care

Two underrated actions/abilities that will take you very far in business, just as in life: responsiveness and caring.
Did you let someone know you heard them?
And does it matter to you that there’s a problem to be solved?
Say yes to both.

Creativity is a product of the desire to be helpful

“Creativity is a product of the desire to be helpful: help make it better, help make it faster, help make it more beautiful, help make it simpler.” – Cary Paik, architect

This is one of the most beautiful, and to me accurate, definitions of creativity I’ve ever come across.

Full video on creativity and business from the incredible C2MTL conference:

Cover photo courtesy of Sid Lee.

You can’t create if you’re focused on survival

One of the principles of microfinance is that, by extending credit, microlenders allow people to get out of a bare-survival relationship with moneylenders: a situation where subsistence is all that’s achievable. This blocks entrepreneurship. Extending credit allows the “breathing room” for a human being to actually start a business and grow it. This is why organizations like Kiva are so powerful in effecting change.

Too often people in business box themselves into a survival situation. In a highly political and challenged corporate environment, many times the only way to survive is not to stick your head above the waves. Do what’s expected; please the right people; and when the next round of cuts comes you will be ‘safe”. (This, by the way, being one of the worst definitions of “safe” I have ever heard.)

In a survival situation there is no room for creation. Career survivalists don’t make great things. Disruption could get them in trouble. They huddle in the bunker waiting for the loud noises to stop.

Don’t be a survivalist when you have the precious privilege and freedom to create change.

Be an artist, not a marketer

When you create art, it rings with truth and authenticity. When you create “marketing”, it often rings hollow.

If we lose sight of art in the rush of business, we suffer for it as marketers, even if our business seems an “ordinary” one.