Strands of Genius: Kyle Studstill + Executive Predictions 2024
featuring: an interview with our guest editor and a research report
Welcome to the Bonus edition of Strands of Genius! On Fridays, we’ll be publishing interviews from our guest editors, and sharing a research report. Thanks for being along for the ride. Oh and by the way, you look great today :)
:: STEAL THIS THINKING | RESEARCH REPORT ::
Here’s a bold claim: AI will have as big of an impact on business as the internet. But according to CEO Gary Steele, it will take time to get there. One day, AI-driven insights, automation and productivity tools will make organizations more efficient, so employees can be free to create and innovate. And while AI seems to improve by orders of magnitude every day, most is not enterprise-ready — yet.
:: DIVE IN | THE INTERVIEW ::
KYLE STUDSTILL, MARKETING DIRECTOR, POETRY SOCIETY OF NEW YORK
>> Kyle Studstill guest curated Strands on July 4th. Read it here.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and what keeps you busy. How did you end up doing what you’re doing today?
Marketing strategy has always been my career background, but over the years I’ve found myself doing a lot of entrepreneurial creative projects across many disparate worlds including photography, journalism and fashion. I was proud of all the various things I had done over the years—but it was also hard to locate myself as having a particular creative focus. Over time that grew into an existential problem of trying to figure out what I am good at as an artist or creative person.
Poetry was the thing that finally solved the problem for me; in looking back at the disparate body of work I realized so much of what I was doing was poetry-like, and that I had just never thought to call myself a poet. Realizing this helped give myself permission to think of myself as a poet, at which point poetry completely thrust itself into my life. I started devouring anything I could about poetry which is how ran into things like the NY Poetry Festival and the Poetry Society of New York. The poetry and performance events that are part of those worlds have now become a true creative home for me, and I can now happily say poetry is what keeps me busy.
What excites you most about what you do?
I’ve focused on being on stage as a performance poet (as opposed to a track focused on written published poetry), which lets me be in the spotlight in a way I truly love. And actually I used to think the thing I was looking for most was “the love of strangers,” because like many others I’ve sometimes found myself chasing that kind of fame and attention through being on stage. But eventually I realized what is what excites me most is not “the love of strangers” but instead the “the appreciation of acquaintances,” which is the feeling I get when performing within an ongoing community and get to have moments of acknowledgement and recognition when I walk off the stage from people I’ve been building connection with over time.
What beliefs define your approach to work? How would you define your leadership style?
I was really shaped by the book Wintering, which helped me recognize my own creative cycles of creative wintering / rest and creative flourishing. I used to fight those cycles in an attempt to feel “consistent” in my creative work. Now I try to embrace these natural rhythms and not kick myself when I’m feeling like I’m not being “productive.”
Leadership style: Servant leadership (“This style involves the leader interacting with others to achieve authority rather than power, and it embodies a decentralized organizational structure.”)
What has been the most rewarding project you’ve worked on and why?
Several years ago I produced an interactive documentary called Makeway focused on what we called “artisanal innovation”; this was essentially about how creative small & medium independent businesses were pioneering new models of customer loyalty at a time when platforms like crowdfunding were coming of age. We creative a story that intentionally started with the typical “technology is changing the business landscape” angle but eventually showed how the real change came by way of mindsets of artistry and vulnerability. It was just a couple of side hustle colleagues and I producing it independently so I’m proud say that our work got attention in places like Monocle magazine, Fast Company, PSFK, and even got tweeted by Ai Wei Wei.
We are big believers in diversity -- Not only because we believe in equality, but because we also think it’s better for business. How do you frame these kinds of conversations, both internally and with clients? Is there an emphasis on action, or are the conversations really more about communication?
I think there’s overlooked power in just subtly normalizing diverse behaviors, policies, and practices, and by that I mean intentionally *not* publicizing or romanticizing them. This is an approach that is nowhere near as conspicuous as publicizing high-profile corporate initiatives and so lacks the feeling of “taking action” that comes with efforts that are very visible; normalization is boring because it’s slow and invisible. But that boringness is precisely what gives normalization its power—if I’ve learned anything studying futurism and cultural change its that important ideas change the world not when they are in the attention hype cycle, but only when they become boring enough for everyone to not notice the change is happening. What’s nice is that we can all easily do our individual part in subtly normalizing diverse behaviors, policies, and practices, making them boring and normal enough that the change becomes real.
Switching gears a bit, how do you find time to balance personal interests with your career? Do you believe work/life balance is possible? Anything you’ve implemented that you recommend that others try?
I think it’s healthy to have a sense of where one’s “creative energy” goes vs where one’s “work energy” goes. Those two things can go to separate things or to the same thing in whatever proportion works for any given person at any given time—the only thing that’s important that you’re conscious and intentional about it. For me my creative energy and work energy go to mostly separate places—there are important overlaps, but overall it’s this basic idea of knowing where my creative vs work energy goes that helps me feel comfortable enforcing the boundaries that define my work/life balance.
What’s your media diet? Where do you find inspiration?
I cut my marketing world teeth at PSFK back in the early 2010s, where we “trends consultants” were consuming a voracious amount of media from all kinds of places, had the meticulously crafted, multi-layered RSS / newsletter / social feeds to prove it, and along with that all the media consumption habits that come with trying to know all the most important things happening in all the most interesting places at all times. Many people still strive for this kind of consumption to some degree or another, but at some point I became less and less convinced that the information we instinctively digest as important actually matters in any meaningful sense. Part of this outlook was shaped by The Long Now Foundation, which at one point aimed to only publish news that would tangibly matter 50 years from now; they had a good way of showing how national news and media headlines printed in major publications across decades almost never hold up to the standard of mattering more that even a few years or usually less, no matter how sensational or important or geopolitically impactful they seemed at the time of publishing.
So these days I pay attention to almost zero news media. Probably to the extent that some might consider it negligent but the truth is I’m quite fine with this. I do spend a fair amount of time poking around mid-to-extreme groups and feeds of all parts of the political spectrum in various social media corners, mostly to satisfy the fun curiosity of seeing what ridiculous things people have to say about any given current event.
The answer to where I find inspiration is simple and time-tested: I go to museums, art gallery openings and live performances. These things never fail to inspire that “I want to do THAT” feeling in me.
What’s the best piece of advice/knowledge you’ve stolen, and who/where’d you steal it from?
“Enjoy obscurity while it lasts.” I ran into cartoonist-marketer Hugh McCleod’s book Ignore Everybody when it came out in 2009 and this line was the basis of one of the book’s first chapters. The idea is that as creative people we can easily get caught up chasing fame and attention for our work, but generally what we value more is the freedom to do the work we want—and you have the greatest creative freedom in obscurity. As noted above I’ve done my fair share of chasing fame and attention—but “enjoy obscurity while it lasts” has always grounded me. Whenever I find myself feeling like I’d have a bigger brand/audience if only I didn’t chase all the various creative passions I spread myself across, “enjoy obscurity while it lasts” reminds me that it’s precisely the freedom to chase creative variety that I enjoy most.
Where can we see you perform?
I'm a cast member of the Poetry Brothel which has performances several times a year! It's a cabaret-style, immersive theatre show with vaudevillian themes where audiences members have the opportunity to be pulled away to secret back rooms for 1-on-1 "private readings" with their favorite poetry whores.
You can keep in touch with Kyle on LinkedIn.
If we can ever be of help to you, even outside of a formal engagement, please don’t hesitate to let us know.
rockON,
faris & rosie | your friends over at geniussteals.co
(still want more? @faris is still “tweeting” while @rosieyakob prefers instagram stories)