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There is a crack, a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in
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A while back I included a visual of โDaleโs Coneโ (above).
I received an email that took the principle of Daleโs Cone and connected it to a core tenet of my approach (to strategy, life) โ Intellectual Mischief.
The sentence that will haunt me was;
โHow can I expect myself to arrive at something interesting through passive consumption, when I donโt remember most of what I read, hear, or see?:
Which connects all of this to the best possible description of much of strategy as a practice:
Fuck around and find out.
But donโt expect to find anything if all youโve done is read things second hand.
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I donโt usually work on Social specific stuff, but sis recently, which was actually a nice challenge to narrow the aperture. As such, it prompted some more general notes about the nature of it all..
Some notes:
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And a note that is applicable more broadlyโฆ
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We view people/things/trends like they are items on display at a museum... Out of their full cultural/historical context...
As people we need to understand that other people are not just a body but a part of/ a product of a culture and a history.
(This doesn't excuse shitty-ness btw)
As advertisers we need to understand that consumers aren't a person on a shelf either. Context means more than demographics. ย
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Warm-lines are telephone/chat hotlines for people who arenโt in crisis but just need to vent or talk to someone.
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A fact that tells you more than it saysโฆ
Employees whose boss has an MBA make 6% less than employees whose boss never went to business school. (โAre MBAs to Blame for Wage Stagnation?โ)
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A screenshot from a forgotten source:
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i.e.
Replace productivity with contribution.
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Hereโs a great way of thinking about ideas (and problems, and environments/cultures) that I recently stumbled across:
By Dimitri Glazkov, and full of good stuff.
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Something I wish more clients understood:
The two most important things to understand about startup investing, as a business, are (1) effectively all the returns are concentrated in a few big winners and (2) the best ideas look initially like bad ideas
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a totally different but not unrelated piece of advice I read somewhere:
Expect the seat in front of you to recline. Prepare accordingly.
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I think this was from an article on parentingโฆ But relevant far beyond that
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THIS IS FASCINATING TO ME;;
Itโs like manufactured nostalgia. Nostalgic Futures. Manufactured Reminiscence.
There is something really powerful about setting reminders for years ahead of time. I had a reminder to text a buddy something in a year bc he told me I wouldnt remember. He ended up passing away before the year was up and I keep that reminder on my phone as a weird little digital roadside memorial.
Think about how much has changed in the past 3 yearโฆ
I donโt know what exactly it is, but there is a lot in this idea to unpack.
On setting reminders.
We developed and run a newsletter publication for the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center called the Bellagio Bulletin. For one of the formats, we ask residents and convening attendees to write a postcard to themselves and hand it in when they leave. We then post it to them six months later as a reminder of all the incredible conversations they had, the follow-up conversations they promised to have, and the partnerships or collaborations they hoped to develop.