Strands of Genius: The Next 6 Months, Tension in Ad Agencies, Easy Bake Bread, Whole 30 Recipes That Don't Suck
plus: the excuse you needed to slow down, our thoughts on moral accounting, the locus of control, & inaction as a form of action
WRITING FROM | Beersheba Springs, TN
WORKING ON | adjusting to isolation & grounded life for the foreseeable future
LOOKING AHEAD
March 23-April 17: Beersheba Springs, TNApril 15th: WARC Webinar (Registration link to come)
April 17th: The Fearless (Remote) Conference (Register For Information Here)
Session: Uncertainty is the Problem, Fearless Strategy is the Solution
:: WHAT’S NEW & WEEKLY GRATITUDE ::
Strange days. Week 1/ 2/ 3 of what will be many, isolating as much as possible. The discourse on social media is so COVID-y it’s hard to read for any duration. People seem to be dealing with this the way they deal with stress in their ‘normal’ lives, whether it be by throwing themselves into work, into fictional worlds (TV/books), or the bottle. Anything to focus the attention away from the uncertainty, which cares nothing for your cares.
We are isolating in the mountains of Tennessee, more comfortable than we ought to be, despite another tornado warning and power cuts for hours. Trying to establish a new rhythm, constrain our thinking about the future to the manageable medium, work out how to focus and what is worth doing — for the having done it consequences and for the doing of it experiences. Grazing media without appetite, much knowledge work seems less consequential, just as concerns about income increase apace in industries that are fragile and precarious as best.
This week, we’re especially thankful for:
Wholemeal and finally figuring out how to get mail here (we’re so remote that Amazon and even the USPS do not deliver to the house), homemade bread, Whole30 recipes, one day last week that was sunny & 80 degrees outside, ZOOM calls and Skype dates with people who don’t care that we haven’t showered in days and look like sh*t, FaceTime with our nephews and niece (who is over the moon about the pink card we made), media to graze: Tiger King, LEGO Masters, Westworld, NailedIt, Queer Eye Japan, The Likely Resolutions of Oliver Clark, and The Devil in the White City (which has come highly recommended from so many people, but is a real struggle so far. Rosie is 100 pages in and wondering if/when she is gonna like it?! Ha!)
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:: THE LINKS ::
THE NEXT SIX MONTHS IN ADLAND
Shann and Rachel invited Rosie to be on their lovely 20 minute podcast called Overthinkers, where she tries not to overshare thoughts on adjusting to the new now, and what is coming for the advertising industry in the next six months. Resilience, remote working, power outages, serenity and knowing what you can and can’t control. (iTunes)
WHY TENSION IS THE AT THE HEART OF AN AD AGENCY
Faris’ column this month looks at the unique characteristics of traditional advertising agencies, protecting creative ideas from early evaluative pressure by segmenting different types of thinkers in different departments. Functionally, planners and account people are part of the account servicing team, and how much interaction between creatives and client is optimal is a point of contention. (WARC)
THE EASIEST POSSIBLE BREAD RECIPE TO BAKE; WHOLE 30 RECIPES TO TRY
Flour and yeast are sold out all over as many people are apparently using the lockdown to lock down some baking recipes. Bread is hard, but it doesn’t need to be that hard. This no-need super simple recipe also only takes about 5 hours. (NY Times)
Oh, and if you’re on that cooking train, Rosie finally got around to writing up thoughts on our Whole30 experience, and included almost all the recipes we made. If you’re looking for some healthy recipes to try while you’re sequestered, here ya go! (Medium)
:: WHAT WE’RE THINKING ABOUT: THE LOCUS OF CONTROL ::
In general, humans tend towards polarities. That’s the essential insight behind the Big Five personality trait model, that we tend to be either/or across five primary vectors. Here is a robust online version of the test, in case you wanted to do some self discovery.
There are other ways to categorize proclivities, such as considering where your locus of control mainly resides.
Broadly speaking, if you had a childhood where you felt very safe, supported, encouraged, and perceived regular and predictable interactions between cause and effect, you tend to have a strong internal locus of control, which is to say you believe you largely have control over the events in your life.
This version of thinking is foundational to the American Dream construct, where success is a function of effort.
Conversely, if you didn’t feel very secure growing up, because of trauma or erratic parents or disrupted situations, you tend to veer towards an external locus of control, where you believe that external factors are determinant, because they so clearly were when you were growing up.
Usefully, this worldview incorporates the massive impact of randomness on all our lives. It positions the individual within the system, and appreciates the obvious and infinite differential in size between the tiny individual and that massive system. Unhelpfully, that tends to make one realize the impact of individual action is limited, which renders it heavily discounted when considering action. “If nothing matters, why do anything at all” - is an expression of completely learned helplessness we often call depression.
Obviously, the truth isn’t binary, it’s both, and the interaction of the two. Your behavior interacts with the system, and vice versa, endlessly, and then there are consequences. Nothing you do individually will make much difference to this crisis. However, because collectively how we all act does make a difference, thinking purely as an individual and your own benefit will overall make everything much worse.
You may not believe you have control over your own life, or this situation (you don’t), but you can control how many people die because of you. For example. This is where the trolley problem comes in. It seems apposite at the moment because as a philosophical problem it highlights several very relevant issues to the pandemic. The Trolley Problem, if you haven’t seen the Good Place, is a classic thought experiment in which you see a train car careering towards five people, but you stand by the train switch and can divert it on to another track, killing only one person.
It highlights the difference between two kinds of moral accounting, utilitarian and deontological. The greatest good for the greatest number underpins the logic of utilitarianism; save five + kill one = good moral action.
This is inherently consequentialist, which makes the applicability to the real world complex since we can never know the ultimate consequences of our actions. Since we can’t, Kant argued, we should focus on restricting behaviors to a code irrespective consequence. In which case, the moral maths is act and kill someone = you a murderer, don’t act and let five die = you aren’t. It’s tricky isn’t it.
One enlightening part of this binary is that it forces you to consider how inaction is a form of action.
However, it’s in that binary that it seems naive.
There are never just two outcomes to an intervention, there are three. Things remain the same or can get better, but things can also get worse, there are alway unintended consequences to any action.
Inaction is action, but action is always a coin toss. That’s why we have foresight and strategy, to harness what we know to make the best informed decisions in situations of uncertainty. The greater the uncertainty, the greater the external locus of control, the more we need rigor in our decision making, to act and not make things worse.
:: AND NOW… THE EXCUSE YOU NEEDED TO SLOW DOWN ::
“I think that the message that this is the time for self-improvement, for hustle, might be the ultimate distraction from what this time is really for... which is cocoon and self-returning... don’t hustle and miss it.”
- Glennon Doyle
Saturday Night Social Distancing | a ZOOM Dance Party
We usually end this email letting you know that we’re here to be of help to you whenever possible, even outside of a formal engagement. We love getting to meet like-minded folks all over the world, in-person and virtually. But we’re taking a little bit of a break and using this time turning inward. We’re talking to our friends and family, slowing down, and trying to reset ourselves. We’re still here, on the other end of this email, but forgive us if it takes a little longer than usual for us to respond. We appreciate you, and we are sending you big hugs from the Cumberland Mountains.
rockON,
faris & rosie & ashley | your friends over at geniussteals.co
@faris is always tweeting
@rosieyakob & @ashley hang out on instagram
Know someone who could use some inspiration in their inbox? Send ‘em our way!
It's called Genius Steals because we believe ideas are new combinations and that nothing can come from nothing. But copying is lazy. We believe the best way to innovate is to look at the best of that which came before and combine those elements into new solutions.
Co-Founders Faris & Rosie are award-winning strategists and creative directors, writers, consultants and public speakers who have been living on the road/runway since March 2013, working with companies all over the world. Our Director of Operations is nomadic like us, our accounting team is based out of Washington, our company is registered in Tennessee, and our collaborators are all over the world. Being nomadic allows us to go wherever clients need us to be, and to be inspired by the world in between.
Hit reply and let’s talk about how we might be able to work together :)
SPEAKING
We're currently booking speaking gigs for the year.
Check out full descriptions and key learnings from our talks on here:
http://bit.ly/TalkDescriptions2020