-
Life’s too Short…
to be a copycat of someone else. If machines have personalities, it’s our doing. ChatGPT sure has been in the news lately. I’m not surprised to see it all over social media feeds, given how monolithic those feeds tend to be. “ChatGPT this, ChatGPT that” say the marketers like proud parents of a new toddler to…
-
Details are the hallmark of a story you can relate to
But they work only when you nail the larger narrative. Before he could start enjoying his job, Jack Warr had to find his place in the world. The interaction between a quest to reconnect with his identity and the mounting urgency of the crisis in a new case depend on each other to make the…
-
How Disinformation Became Part of the Current Narrative
Genuine two-way communication is not just dissemination. Information doesn't equal indoctrination. There's a line between getting attention and agitprop. Providing proof or evidence is not the same as the truth. Truth is a conclusion the other person gets to make. These were some of the principles I discussed in a conversation at Web 2.0…
-
What’s the Value of Cultural Range?
Some cultures are (up)tight, and some are l o o s e. Ten years ago, in a quest to explain human behavior's variance, psychologist Michele Gelfand studied 33 nations. As she explains in the abstract: Tightness-looseness is part of a complex, loosely integrated multilevel system that comprises distal ecological and historical threats (e.g., high…
-
How to Have an Impossible Conversation
Ethos, pathos, and logos. They're the three pillars of persuasive speech. Ethos is a person's character: Are you trustworthy? Pathos is the motivating factor: Are you connecting emotionally? Logos is reason: Are you providing the evidence? But ethos, pathos, and logos are not just mere rhetorical devices. Logos is your expertise and competence, made of…
-
My Origin Story
Last year I wrote a longer form description of my background and work and never shared it here. Is it important to share our story? When I work with companies, I often explain how your story allows people to connect with you. Your story also creates culture. Businesses talk about their origin story…
-
Striving for Conciseness and Clarity
Along with sincerity, clarity is one of our most valuable traits. When we can convey our thinking and answer questions with brevity and simply, we make it easier for others to understand us. An additional benefit is that we have a chance to stand out in a sea of words and create signal. The need…
-
Creativity Must be Made Accessible for Consumption
“Creativity has many definitions. For me, creativity is solving problems in new ways and conceiving new ways of looking at the world. Creativity can be expressed in many forms, like art, science, and thought. But creativity is all too often undiscoverable and incomprehensible. Art, without distribution and discovery, moves nobody. Did it ever exist? Science,…
-
Fixing Broken Links
“It is much harder to fix a culture that to create a culture.” Jeff Veen, Adobe/Typekit#. @veen [via] This past weekend I took a few hours to fix broken links from my earlier posts at Fast Company#, those I wrote before they moved onto a new platform and redirected the rest. It was my custom,…
-
Square One
When people ask me what I write about, I usually give them a version of business and the modern trade. Which they roughly interpret as marketing and communications. Of course, those are not wrong ways to describe some of the human technologies employed by businesses to trade. However, given how charged those terms are by…