The Peter principle is a concept in management developed by Laurence J. Peter which observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to "a level of respective incompetence":
i.e. you get promoted until you aren’t good enough at your job to get promoted anymore.
my dad who has had a lot of the same employees at his business for upwards of 10-15 years.
And we were talking about people who are really good at something but will never be good at the next thing “up”
the concept of promoting people into roles built for them rather than to the predefined next rung on the ladder. Even relatively menial jobs like running materials, site prep whatever.
It struck me as such a better way to do things. Promotions are about responsibility. They should be into positions that will be better for having that specific person in them rather than predefined.
But you know, that would be building a business around the people, not the process. Businesses built around the people aren’t as “scalable” – which means its harder to lay people off.
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Memorable > ownable.
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There are no rules.
Filling in the blanks in any context is a recipe for mediocre work at best.
But knowing the basics and building on them. Filling in blanks as a means to building a thought. That’s what all the models are for. A framework is a tool for thinking. Not a pre-packaged thought.
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I want my next strategy to be “background tigers” ..
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“design(ed) thinking” – information presented through the application of graphic design, typically with the intention of obscuring the lack of actual thought.
This is a good example of the allure of design(ed) thinking:
I’m not saying there is no information here… But there is not very much. Very little new or worthwhile information. But it has icons and is presented like a framework for system components.
Or maybe I’m not intellectual enough, and this is actually super smart. you never know.
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“Awareness” should be renamed “Association”
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An article reflecting on 50 years of planning as a discipline/department.
A quote that speaks to what is apparently becoming the theme of this week’s volume:
“A stat that really jumps out at me is this one: 48% of strategists believe frameworks are a hindrance to strategy; 52% don’t. I’m extrapolating here a fair bit, but I see it as a kind of ripping faultline for the schism between innovative and systematic ideologies currently dominating advertising: half of planners bemoaning the way systematic frameworks get in the way of innovation, the rest extolling the systematic benefits of frameworks in creating structure and grounding us in the known.”
This is really interesting. The truth is, both sides are right. frameworks ARE a method for structure and grounding us in the known. And that –by definition– gets in the way of innovation.
It comes down to being honest about what your role is in any given moment.
The more important point is that we need to remember that two opposing things can be true. They often are.
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This is true tho. Just like how a company advertises should shift depending on the category, it should also shift based on life stage.
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Comms architecture always puts channels at the bottom. But executions shouldn’t be assigned channels. The tactic should be built with the channel in mind. Comms isn’t just a guide to where things are going, it should happen before creative concepting so the team can see the place the ideas will exist within.
WEEKLY MONSTER
This is my desktop from high school, now in my dad’s workshop.
Moral is, don’t let your kids draw on stuff – otherwise they might become a strategist.