Plain Journeys 2. Love – Getting Good At Stopping

Posted on January 15, 2012 by John Caswell
Plain

If you read the start of Plain Journeys 1 – ‘Viakal, The Universe & Everything’ – then you will know what’s going on here below. If you didn’t then shame on you. Go and read it.

Whilst reflecting on our genetic legacy Alexander Von Humboldt journeyed through Venezuela in 1799 and remarked so profoundly –  

"In the evening when the sky denotes rain, the air resounds with the monotonous howling of the alouate apes, which resemble the distant sound of wind when it shakes the forest. Yet amid these strange sounds, these wild forms of plants, and these prodigies of a new world, nature everywhere speaks to man in a voice familiar to him."

I got a shiver when I first came across that fragment of text. The shiver was as much because I didn’t understand it the first time I read it and because, when the penny dropped, I realised just how much meaning passes me by every day – without any problem. How awful is that! It is a criminal act that I don’t stop, reflect, cogitate and get the meaning from everything. And then I got another shiver realising that that isn’t going to happen either. No way. Not a chance. Too much stuff!

Areois

"Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one’s will. Virtue, good, evil are nothing but words, unless one takes them apart in order to build something with them; they do not win their true meaning until one knows how to apply them." – Paul Gauguin

So there you have it – and I’m right with Paul the painter. He did everything he could to live life to the full and admittedly made some fairly bonkers choices along the way but at least he showed ambition and presumably did all his deeds with some conscious knowledge and forethought. Well he picked great places to go for his holidays right?

He managed to get some meaning into his life and he certainly used his imagination. What he put that imagination to also resulted in some amazing deliverables. I’m sure he would have said with hindsight that he had a plan. Ambition too – Gaugin would most probably have disagreed violently with Mr Wittgenstein – but then a lot of people did.

"Ambition is the death of thought." – Ludwig Wittgenstein

I’ve long puzzled with that statement. I get the blinded by ambition bit – and the frontal lobotomy that that the brain can inflict on itself when it is driven by blind intention and maybe I’m being semantic but I have ambition and it actually drives my thought and makes me become more imaginative. I get to be disruptive about my own vision and mission just to test that it is the best thing for me to want to be doing – ever.

Wittgenstein

I guess I would say I have designed my life that way – to re-imagine the world around me – to think everything through to help me achieve my ambition. I guess Ludwig would have me believe that I should just think without any ambition attached and see what best thing emerges and go with that. Keep exploring by new thinking. So if that is correct then given my relationship with the AA (Alouate Apes) then I would naturally side with the French Captain when he suggests that – "Imagination rules the world." – Napoleon I – is that Treason?

As it turns out yes. And anyway I now know what Wittgenstein meant. He was spot on!

They say that "Design is about causing a radical change in meaning." Re-building our world needs that more than ever. And this level of disruption is most likely to come from people who you are least familiar with and likely – initially anyway – to disagree with. Like Mr Wittgenstein for example. A gathering of rebels constantly forming themselves into groups of others who are also operating outside of your current comfort zone.

The problem with too much reliance on what we know and how comfortable we are with anything is that it tries to make us at ease – when what we often need is to be uncomfortable, uncertain, in doubt and to act differently. This is harder and harder to do in large societies and of course in large organisations. How do we get comfortable with what we don’t know? Stuff we don’t feel comfortable with?

We have to challenge everything – even that which we preach. Even that which we speak to and obstinately call our ambition. Our own personal goals and objectives. We can’t just accept that they are right or what we need anymore. We just can’t. Wittgenstein has made his point – the smart ass.

You will shiver when you read the following the second time. It will make you realise the meaning that you simply don’t get. Simply.

"I will not talk about the importance of design, every company knows that. I will not talk about user centered innovation, every company knows that you need to look at users to understand how to do innovation. I will not talk about the importance of having ideas, we have seen right now that there are plenty of ideas around. It’s so easy to have ideas. It’s so difficult to have visions.

Designers have been much less the visionaries than they used to be. There’s been a movement against the designer who had a vision – everything was just transformed into processes. If you look at how designers have evolved in the past ten years – if you buy books on design, everything is about the processes. You know, creativity, brainstorming, ethnography, metals – the tools. And actually the effect is that designers are looking much more like businessmen and MBA students today than they used to be, and they risk losing the capability of vision.

Design is not about styling. It’s not about technology. It’s about radical change in meaning. These are the things that people were not asking for, but when they saw them, they fell in love.” – Roberto Verganti

To be continued…

Deranged

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Plain Journeys 1. Viakal, The Universe & Everything

Posted on January 14, 2012 by John Caswell
Tumblr_lxt0lxjn0y1qz6f9yo1_500

 

I apologise in advance if what you are about to read seems familiar.

I realise that I can be quite monotonous about some things. For example I write often about – ‘Systems That Are Utterly Useless’ – (Politics, Banking, Airport Security). ‘An Institutionalised Lack Of Creativity’ (School, Business, Politics) – and ‘My Own Curiosity About Random Things’ (Systems, Creativity, Viakal).

So this little ramble finds me sitting on a plane killing old e-mails. I just came across a draft entitled – ‘Things that should inspire me to riff on/off.’ – basically very worthy odds and sods from things – blogs, articles, signs in streets – that I fall over and keep to inspire me. So I am. Let’s see what happens?

"The allure of a great mind is the startling originality of the insights it produces." – Dean Simonton 

Isn’t it wonderful when you find a small fragment – a sentence like that one that just has enough unusual but right words in it to spark another thought or a visual idea in your head? – Allure and mind, originality and insight all crashed together to create a mighty fine phrase that fashions a new axiom. 

Dean was on fine form – in whatever I was reading (and I don’t know who Dean is by the way) – because he went on to espouse very profoundly - 

"With rare exceptions, the lone genius is a myth. Creative genius is almost always embedded in a rich network of distinguished predecessors and contemporaries."

Corr-ect! And to me very interesting that it can happen at all just now. Especially given the permanently intense and increasingly bizarre – impossible to navigate – web of a world we’ve all gone and created. Part train wreck of competing societies – each sitting unhappily beside one another. Part humans trying to understand an ever more chaotic world – newly filled with mind-boggling technologies and gadgets themselves quickly becoming the next commodity. And finally part Frankenstein – demonically interconnected, constructed by hideous designers – wrought in a completely unfathomable way by generations of sinister conditioning – we often call that consumerism. Take it away Steve -

"A great mind has to make the connections – to bring together apparently unrelated bits of information into a coherent whole. It’s an ability to make intellectual leaps between seemingly unconnected subjects." – Steve Jones

Bring ‘em on! I seriously hope we find some new great minds and fast. I am optimistic that they are out there. In fact I would guarantee it. The concern I have is that they won’t step forward in time to save us. More worrying is that they would rightly fear the intense media scrutiny over whether they once smoked a doll, bit some leather thong, or supported the use of the apostrophe in Waterstones – rendering them sub-human and the fair object of derision and water boarding. 

"Ninety-nine percent of all the species that ever lived are now extinct." – E.O.Wilson

To be continued…

Dran

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The Night Train Part 1 – The Language of Familiarity.

Posted on January 3, 2012 by John Caswell
Night_train

Like flying, it’s a very poor nights sleep – but with the night train you never leave the runway. 

As you finally fall out the other end, dishevelled and fatigued you feel like an unpaid extra in Dr Chicago. Awful. They should change the livery from ‘Sleeper’ to something truthful. I had no idea that railway lines were designed to keep you awake and not lull you to sleep with that familiar repetition. 

At some point during the night the train changed direction – as I peered out the scenery seemed to be propelling me south – back to London. It was endless. A nightmare loop of horror. 

Totally confusing.

Am feeling like my eyes are still in London – but I’m very far north. It’s not midday yet but it’s already getting dark. Thankfully the hotelier makes reasonable coffee but the Muzak remains a toxic loop of those bloody awful life threatening seasonal songs that you love to loathe. Early darkness suggests warm and pleasant evenings in front of a fire. Meaningful conversation, good food and safety.

In these parts the locals only passion is being in the bar by 10am! 

A thunderous disco kept me awake all night.

I left this bizarre base camp early the following morning, now 36 hours without sleep and head north by 4 Wheel Drive. Into the unknown. A forbidding and mountainous horizon.

“Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies, for instance.” – John Ruskin

The least populated part of our island, the last great wilderness, the Celtic Fringe. A place where blood once flowed into impossibly bleak moors. Incredible beauty. Driving through incredible storms, clouds below and all around – through the village with more rainfall than the Amazon rain-forest. 

In spite of everything you have ever been told the local people are in fact rather unpleasant. Pissed off most likely with 14 months in every 12 being blasted by an incessant universal un-forgiveness. I felt I had left the last smile a long way behind.

Be careful who you sit next to – ever. Really. 

Storm_talk

"No the wi-fi doesn’t work. Ha Ha. I do miss the typewriter anyway. I love the sound of the keys. They send me back to my night school. We keep cats, lots of them. I commute – do you? Have you seen the Otters? Are you from London?"

Now literally hundreds of miles from anywhere how come I have to sit next to other people – especially those that I don’t want to. And why are they within ear-shot. Within touching distance. It’s wrong. I’m agitated. And increasingly. I paid a lot of money to be on my own. It’s dinner for goodness sake. I’m not being unfair but these are the type of people I would happily sign documents to be kept from. To ensure I never met them. Ever.

"We’ve been here six times before. We get on the night train 45 minutes before it leaves, just so that we can eat. We love it so much. We know the crew. They know us really well. They change."

I ignore them. Outside the bleak house it’s all kicking off. The storm – a truly amazing experience – immense power and noise. Yet inside the bleak house I’m somehow forced to hear the deluded ramblings of plankton. I can’t switch them off. 

No I will not tell you what roads I came up here on. Fuck off! 

Incredible beauty, wet as hell. The sea and the sky are one – each alive with white spray. They are at one but also seem to hate each other. Impossible to part them – each a persistent and wholly diabolical force. Both so immense and awe inspiring that it took away any sense of anything. Time, selfishness, breath, balance, football results. The noise in incredible. Comparable only to the awful din next to me – ridiculous conversation carried out with incessant glee by horrible people who live, and should have stayed, way south of here. 

Nature is trying to speak to me but there are retards doing their best to break into my head. They are abusing me. They are now debating the best method of dispensing the ashes of their (most recent) cat. I could help there.

And so it goes. 

There’s a really important conversation going on all around me and I’m processing it in my head. Stuff I really want to listen to. Stuff I came here to understand. Me. It’s a mashup – a confusion of new voices. I haven’t been properly introduced to them.  

Black clouds sit on top of blacker clouds. Everything is wet, even the horizontal rain is being poured on by more rain – and that is wetter yet. Incredible. Somehow, and miraculously, stupid sheep cling onto vertical rocks with their jaws. They are in search of bits of grass that are surely dissolving. Battered incessantly by raindrops the size of cricket balls shot out of medieval cannon. 

The security of the City, I convince myself, means I have control over my existence there. I’ve left the City. The soundtrack here is just plain bleak. Bleak Is the word. Insanely, beautifully bleak. Bleak – First Class.

My body and my multiple minds tell me conflicting things. I’m not ready to leave the City. I want wild open spaces, I don’t want wild open spaces. I want the solitude and creativity of the wilderness, I want very high-speed broadband and home delivery. Crap. I’m torn. 

Stormish

The Storm Of The Eye

The storm shouts out very loudly now, demanding the full attention from its audience. Earth, Wind & Fire is on stage and the show is in full flight. The guy on the lighting and effects mixer is sheer genius. The amplifiers are set to 11. Waves bigger than houses pound away at impossibly formed rocks – they are all stars. 

The roof of the shack stays firmly put. 5 days now. 4 days of 60-80 mph storms and I’m still entirely captivated by it. It’s all so beautifully chaotic. At times it’s impossible to separate the sky, the sea, the river or the land. Separated from it all only by plate glass and a shared language. The days are never light – this far north it’s a permanent dusk fading to pitch black. The sounds remain gale force, the visuals are comprehensive both in their range of colours and their unexplainableness. All so intensely beautiful. A feast for the eyes.

As with any live orchestra – no recording can do justice.

The natural force of the storm is quite literally breathtaking. If there were words to describe it then language would be the more powerful for it but we have insufficient tools in words alone. The storm speaks in a voice that I recognise but can’t really engage with – certainly not as I would want. I watch spellbound but would rather be fully integrated into it. Consumed.


It takes a while to translate voices in your head. In my case decades. Intense storms and the power of nature has a way of highlighting the ridiculousness of ones own thought processes. I’ve been privileged to be embedded inside the wrath of nature for days here and yet oddly juxtaposed with the kind of excruciating humanity I would seek to avoid at all costs normally. In the remotest part of the island thrown together with sidelined x-factor contestants. Out of control and in the extremes of natural events. 

I intensely dislike overhearing other peoples conversations. I know some people like it. I hate it. It takes me out of the spell of a reality I only just found.

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2012 – Consulting is Dead. (Jumping off the ‘Snake Oil’ Train)

Posted on January 1, 2012 by John Caswell
Consulting

"No I’m not a bloody consultant!"

I never accept dinner party invitations anyway but I was unavoidably thrust next to people over dinner recently and luckily wasn’t asked what I did. That was probably because I wasn’t dressed in your typical hill-walking, shepherding, hunting, shooting or deep-sea fishing garb – so they daren’t ask. I usually dress like a terrorist.

But I was ready.

"I’m helping to prove or disprove the Higgs-Boson." No?

"Well actually I’ve been asked to trial super fast broadband in the Outer Hebrides so that local people can stop making useless effigies of ‘Hamish the Lighthouse God’ from roadkill and driftwood."

In fact anything but say -

"I am a creative person on a mission to change the consulting industry."

People are interested in the ‘creative’ part but visibly shrink when I get to the word ‘consultant.’ Rather like the Grim Reaper arriving at a baptism or that unfortunate introduction to an Estate Agent/Insurance Broker with the damp handshake – it’s effective.

What’s wrong with consulting?

It doesn’t work. Well that’s extreme but I’ve lost count of the number of clients who have complained to me about consultants in the last year. They usually tell me something like that as they arrive to be shown how we work. They are quick to make remarks like these as they hear the words ‘business issues’, ‘innovation’ and ‘valuable outcomes’ in the same breath. They recoil in horror and shock as if some massive granite ball just blocked their exit from our offices – Raiders Of The Lost Ark style. As if they have been compromised in a way they vowed never to be again.

On a bad day clients will state that consultants are any one or more of the following – too expensive, don’t deliver what they said they would, take too long, get viewed as the enemy by the enterprise (making their strategies hard to follow through to deployment), are far too often self-serving – oh, and they lack innovation or creativity. Other than that!

Skulls

Progress or Die!

They will also say that they are in a pact with the devil because they don’t have the skill or capability in house. They say they are trapped. I will say politely that I would like to disprove that.

Is it the fault of consultants that they get such bad press? Well yes. They all know it’s getting to be a problem. Of course there are countless great consultants – brilliant ones. Just like there are countless great physicians and art directors and Higgs–Boson scientists. Trouble is when any sector becomes complacent – the whole sector gets blighted and they become easy targets. Dead ducks.

Back in the day the Advertising Industry got a bad reputation for champagne lunches that lasted three days. They also couldn’t measure their impact and they couldn’t compete with the niche ’boutique’ creatives when it came to real talent. Same is now true of the consulting industry, massive overheads, you don’t get the best talent and it’s proving hard to see the ROI.

Consulting has failed to become creative.

Creativity is the name of the game. By any measurement the world has sped up. It’s now not worth writing a business plan that lasts more than a year. The word on the lips of the progressive business leaders these days is the imperative for the entire senior leadership to become leaders in their own right. To become designers of their own destiny and therefore to embrace creativity in all it’s forms. 

Think about this time last year. Did you predict your business would be where it is now? Two years ago had you figured on the ‘apps’ revolution? – the iPad? That platform is barely two years old. Did you guess the idea of social media or the impact of the economic crisis on your business? The Cloud? 

Think different. Embrace creativity.

Cons

Redefinition is the 2012 game.

1. The definition of success?

Every enterprise on Earth needs nimble, real time and distinctive strategies. Your customers want you to excite and surprise them or deliver service as if you mean it. You demand that the whole enterprise gets behind the mission. You need to do more with less and you need to engage with your people, tour markets and your systems like you never had to before. You will insist that every choice has been exhausted until the best answer with the smartest risk profile has been identified.

2. Being creative with consulting.

In defining creativity (and on any given day) I argue that it is in all of us but that it demands constant attention, nurturing, tools and techniques to help it surface. It needs to be sustainable and it requires ingenuity. It demands a culture of courage and leadership to let it flourish. It is about curiosity, persistence and a continuous pursuit of the edge. True creativity insists on being at the front of the edge. The creation of breathtaking ideas and being different. And it demands to be heard because it inspires each and every one of us on to greater things. (NB: This is not typically seen as a strategy consulting service.)

In defining consulting (and on a good day) I suppose most people would suggest something like this – ‘Smart people analysing serious business issues, solving important problems by recognising all the vital dynamics and then deploying smarter answers to solve each one as required – within a clients firm.’ They are most likely armed with expertise and capability (in various fields) or they are the best of the business schools. (NB: This is not typically known as a creative service.)

3. Redefining the Consulting Firm!

So, in what kind of business do these two important functions collide? The consulting firms are trying hard to redefine themselves right now because the problems their clients face got a whole lot harder and the old tools that used to work well enough were designed for a wholly different era. So do the consulting firms get the best people to solve the problem or should the best people actually be inside the firm that needs the solution? And where would this talent prefer to work? Well given that the issues are not going to get any easier what would you suggest?

We need an entirely new type of approach right?

Cons3

The business world now needs consulting to be everyone’s job – two axes.

‘Smart people, being curious about their work and doing smarter stuff daily – inspired to resolve the continuous (and ever more) dynamic context that is part of being alive in the business world of this century.’

‘Creativity applied to consulting means that everyone in the business has the chance to get engaged, pull their weight and contribute because they have been made aware of their own responsibility and their own capability – by being engaged in the strategy and deeply understanding the direction of the company.’

And finally…

Don’t sit around making souvenirs for wandering tourists, get out there and make a difference to the world and your business. Creativity has crashed into every part of business but the jury is out as to whether consulting can stay valid, redefine itself and embrace creativity.
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A Cracker – My First Guest Post!!

Posted on December 19, 2011 by John Caswell
Guest

With great thanks to Eleanor O’Rourke for this guest blog on my favourite subject! 

Why Christmas is for crack addicts

It happened every year. The first signs appeared on his commute to work. Shy reindeer and slightly embarrassed baubles edged their way into the shop windows. "Jesus Christ it’s only the first of November" Joe Turner would rage as he stormed into the office of Fabulous Brands Inc.

Joe’s staff were familiar with his contempt for ‘the whole Christmas malarkey’. Some of them shared his disdain and watched with horror as the nation descended once again into a frenzy of present buying and binge drinking accompanied by the hypnotic mantra of dreadful Christmas music.

Joe’s family teased him for being a Grinch. Then, without a trace of cynicism, he would argue the facts: Christmas was supposed to be a celebration for the Baby Jesus, not a ritual for the Retail Sector – who were only concerned by the announcement of their own year end Profit. It was over-hyped. It made no sense.

During the third week of December he usually cracked. It happened so quickly – a triple whammy of twinkling fairy lights, the smell of mulled wine and the the opening bars of "chestnuts roasting on an open fire." The assault on his senses, tugged on his heartstrings, rendering him senseless.

But what’s really going on?!

We have inside us a blueprint for the next stage of evolution. Our future selves are calling us towards higher ground (remember time is just something we made up so this is not as wacky as it sounds). Some artists, mystics and visionaries have glimpses of this through a crack in the fabric of our current dimension. They can gain access to genius levels of consciousness – if only for brief moments.

Leonard Cohen famously wrote "There’s a crack, a crack in everything, that’s where the light gets in". Our senses lead us to this place – a fact that the Catholics used, to much effect. The smell of incense, the visual feast of stunning architecture, the haunting beauty of Gregorian chants. Guaranteed to produce a hyperlink to the edge… But instead of using these senses to scaffold to higher ground, many got seduced by the senses, becoming indulgent, manipulative and power crazy. (Have you seen the Vatican?)

Like many people of his generation, Joe Turner rejected religion in the sixties. He found other means to travel to the edge of consciousness – LSD, peyote, magic mushrooms. But when the music died, he ditched the patchouli oil, cut his hair and became a copywriter. That was all behind him now. Or was it just another indicator of his longing to glimpse through the veil?

Guest_2

Like curious children, we are drawn to the crack in the curtain – particularly at Christmas. But we get hijacked by our senses. The sight of gifts piled high, the taste of rich food, the smell of fir trees, the poignancy of carols, the anticipation of hugs on the exchange of presents (I’m so touched!). We become enchanted.

Then we wake in January with monumental hangovers, having maxed out our credit cards. Just like Joe we rail "it was that damned spell… it got me again!"  

We can’t really blame the Magic of Christmas. Something inside us longs for a transcendental experience, we just forgot how to get there. Our senses were supposed to signal the way. But in our crazy wisdom, we made an altar out of the signpost, pitched tents and stayed put, making sacrifices to the Gods of Consumerism who bring us such lovely things that delight our senses.

We gather, transfixed around the crack of light, because we lack the discipline to go beyond our five sensory world.  

We need to come to our senses – all of them, including the sixth and possibly a seventh, eighth and ninth! This requires our spiritual expansion (not the literal expansion of our waistlines!). It requires the mental clarity that we are the saviour we’ve been waiting for.  And it requires the stretching of our childish heart, to gain access to the mystical heart – one that isn’t indulgent, sentimental or manipulative.  In short, the heart that can love for no reason. 

Because we are now going beyond the Age of Reason.

It’s a tough gig, and it will require our courage.

But anything less is just crack addiction.

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Predictive Sex – Loft In Transition

Posted on December 7, 2011 by John Caswell
Predictive_sex

And that m’lord was when it all kicked off. 

The Plot -

Only as the myriad microbiotic dust settled on the dystopian tea bag of time did we get to properly stir the sea of knowledge – and in so doing sleep deservedly on the bare floor of the outlawed saloon of majesty. 

Not that I would write such a thing as a text message (or at all) but imagine the fun you could have tapping that into your smart slab of iMystery – just to see how it comes out! How many people would it confuse? Well almost everybody – apparently.

Losing The Plot - 

Sorry people but something inside me loved it when Jeremy Clarkson pumped obvious and much needed humour into the otherwise ludicrous Public Workers strike. These folk voting to strike to retain their gilt-edged pensions while we pay them and the fucking bankers? It utterly appalled me. 

JC (great initials by the way) said so profoundly – "The Public Workers should be taken out and shot in front of their families." - Irate media frenzy guaranteed. People! It was a joke. He didn’t mean it literally!

(Here comes the serious bit) 

Gross and cynically deliberate misinterpretation is becoming the biggest barrier to civilised humanity. It seems that people are becoming extremists – either totally literal – they only give a damn because it suits the facts they want to hear (and the fact that they don’t get out much) – or – completely illiterate – because they don’t give a shit anyway (and also don’t get out much).

Anyway! It all reminded me of this - 

There Is No Plot -

Mark Twain once wrote that Jane Austen’s books – “madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”

And no my loft isn’t having any work done on it at the moment.

I love the fact that predictive text brightens up the day with the wrong words. I wonder how the great writers of the world would have fared with misinterpretation and fat fingers if they had had the smart/dumb phone. I will pause now and let the great writers vent about their interpretation of others.

———————————————————————————–

Truman Capote on Jack Kerouac:

“That’s not writing, that’s typing.”

Oscar Wilde on Charles Dickens:

“One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.”

Joseph Conrad on Herman Melville:

“He knows nothing of the sea. Fantastic — ridiculous.”

Henry James on Edgar Allan Poe:

“An enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection.”

H.G. Wells on George Bernard Shaw:

“An idiot child screaming in a hospital.”

Gustave Flaubert on George Sand:

“A great cow full of ink.”

Just off to plant a few vegetables down at The Plot - 

Jmb

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Premature Projection – The 21st Century Plague That Kills.

Posted on December 7, 2011 by John Caswell
Premature_projection_2

I’m going to fall. Run!

Vertigo is one of the most powerful projections of the mind. Well it bloody well works. I am so bad that I get vertigo just by spelling the word – especially if the font is large. Projection can mean serious failure – vertigo proves it, but from great heights. 

Unfortunately there are far worse projections of the mind than vertigo. 

The world is dying because of it. Everywhere I go, every issue I hear on the news, I feel plagued by seemingly bright people suffering from premature projection. So embedded in their judgement, their inbuilt prejudice – they are incapable of actually listening. Projection has become so powerful that it has rendered its victim incapable of reason. 

Global wars and disasters involving us all. Immense wastelands of energy, time, resource and space – all brought about through incalculable stupidity borne out of unhelpful projection of their perspective onto everything they survey. These walking sick are lurking everywhere, just waiting for a moment to argue on behalf of their bloody projection – their corner until death. 

Premature_red_weed

In my small corner of the world I try and avoid it because it is the kiss of death for creativity. I fail (all too often) to free myself completely from its grip but it has spread like the red weed in the War Of The Worlds. Creativity requires unconstrained freedom of thought. A place without fixed intention and demanding unconscious luck. I set out to deal with bastard child of creativity every day. I find myself flailing under the weight of concrete projections falling from great heights. 

It is a mischievous thing projection. You can’t stop it. It messes with the head all dressed up as an alien transvestite from another galaxy (c’mon you know what that looks like) and calls itself ‘informed opinion’. 

Premature Projection (PP) is officially an illness – ill formed, ill informed and ill judged – oh and it makes me ill. 

It jumps around in front of the mind’s eye to avoid detection – the infected will defend their projection until put to the sword. Any attack on PP whistles past it – it is ungraspable and therefore incurable because the mind inflicted with it doesn’t realise it is infected. It spreads into all the cells and rattles around inside the body – you can smell it on the diseased skin. 

It is always waiting to jump to new flesh. Thankfully you can avoid it if you can spot the symptoms. This is because you can see projection written in peoples faces – there’s the tell-tale signs. A look of sprung steel  - of indignant self–righteous judgement set deep into the eyes. Once alarmed into action the mouth and lips form into a translucent ghastly trap door already half closed to opportunity – set to strike before the free thought or fresh idea is out of your mouth.  

Take a fucking day off!

I know it well because like vertigo I suffer from it myself. And like vertigo I don’t know how to cure it. As with projection your idiot brain is convinced that something is certain (and most likely wrong) and you also know (from experiences – time after time) that it is likely to be busted by facts.

C’mon bacteria, get stuck into this one!!! Save us all from ourselves!

Premature_projection_11

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Breakfast With Einstein.

Posted on October 2, 2011 by John Caswell
Einstein_2

I asked him what the is the equation for avoiding stupidity in business. He grabbed a chalk and walked to the wall. "Ah the theory of everything! Damn it!" He seemed animated. "Vell we need to use logic and quantum physics. It is zimply complex. You von’t understand eet. Even I don’t quite get it yet."

He scribbled madly as I tried to decipher the mans obsession with calculus and his disdain for meusli. He didn’t stop for 35 minutes. I had 6 coffees – he was a blur with all that chalk and mumbling. He said – "The trouble eez we cannot accurately factor for all zis change at present."

And then suddenly there was this ‘think’ of beauty on the wall. The great man was done. He left muttering something about a black whole. I was trying to photograph the man grappling with the elevator in my apartment.

Improving your chances in business probably means change right? Everyone is searching for the right answer. Getting this right is tough. Right? And everyone around has their view and those are all different so it makes your head hurt! What are you going to do? 

Who are you going to trust? Three words of advice - 

Einstein1

Neutrality. Co-Creation. Rigor.

Now I would expect people to say WTF! What does that mean? Bullshit and jargon? I have never been able to find the right words for this so if it is bullshit then ‘whatever’. If you care about how that all adds up to a tin of beans then read on.

Neutrality. In my head ‘neutrality’ is all about having no dog in the fight. How can we discuss anything about anything complex like transformation or strategy with a fixed opinion or a preset agenda! Being rigorously impartial is a great place to be! 

Co-Creation. And co-creation means working through stuff together. Emerging with fresh thoughts as a team. Surfacing insights as a collective. Sharing and then owning the outcomes. This is true alignment. And that adds up to Goal Congruency. 

Rigor. Rigor means putting the work in. Risk is not a bad thing – in fact it’s an essential ingredient. But being lazy about the smart choices open to you by just not thinking it all through is unacceptable. Getting to a rigorous decision is imperative – we call this Decision Quality. Doh!

Thanks Albert – I hope you enjoyed breakfast.

Avoiding Stupidity. The Equation Principles:

1. Rigorous Impartiality. Having no vested interest in the outcome is a powerful place from which to ask the right questions. It means being interested in the correct solution to the puzzle. + 

2. Goal Congruency. Alignment on the vision, mission and strategy is essential. Shared and coherent definitions on everything is essential for a high performance strategy. Over.

3. Decision Quality. Making quality decisions means to reduce risk in the right outcome by knowing that all the data is as good as it can be and the correct choices are being made. =

4. The Right Answer. Every enterprise wants success. Whether its an overall strategy or vision, business plan or transformed business – having the correct, least risk strategy and plan is the challenge.

So, armed with a clear, agreed and compelling ‘exam question’ teams can ‘work’ this equation until the answers emerge logically through the right frameworks. http://www.grouppartnerswiki.net/index.php?title=4D
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The Hand Obsessed.

Posted on October 1, 2011 by John Caswell
Hands_2

I can’t read your writing – I must kill you.

Remarkable to think that the quality of one’s handwriting has so much to do with strategic progress and business performance. And then again quite understandable. If someone stood in front of you for 3 days and took down your thoughts on a wall like your doctor wrote his prescriptions, or a mad professor who would assault your brain in a chalkboard scrawl – what would you think? Could you think? Would it aid your development of ideas – your ability to process and be more creative?

Would it speed your recovery if you couldn’t refer back to the work done a couple of hours earlier? Well maybe. Less than ideal though.  Indeed I have noticed that if the letters and spaces are not ideal – the idea is not as believable. Not honored. If I am slightly out with the spaces around the words and the boxes I put around them, again the point has less gravity, not so much meaning or purpose. I can feel the lack of power conveyed.

I’ve observed a strong correlation between quality thinking and precise handwriting.

I’ve known this for a while but it’s really become a bit of a major study for me. I’m gonna do courses on it!
Hand

So here’s an illustration of why good handwriting and clear thinking matters and are directly related.

Picture the scene -
 15 or 20 executives trying to solve a complex problem in a collaborative way. At least starting that incredible journey – to land on a single page with a vision, a strategy and a plan to go execute. Oh and attempt to do that in the 2 or 3 days together.

I’m working with a team – ‘writing’ the ideas we are discussing into the framework as we go. I have countless options. Write verbatim – a sentence that comes close, shorten the idea more smartly into a similar yet crisp idea. Capture the rough essence of it with the intention of cleaning it up later. 

None of the above comes close to what really needs to happen to avoid lazy generalisms, semantic bingo and certain death. (To me or the strategy).

In each day’s creative thinking (for 15/20 executives) there are typically between 400 to 500 ‘expressions of note’ - That is to say the number of correct answers distilled from the thousands of parts of the key conversations. Each valid one makes it to the framework. In each day there are 4/5 deep delves into aspects of the problem being worked. That adds up to 1500 ‘expressions of note’ over 3 days. Each one deeply meaningful and needing clear definition.

So over the course of a program of work – leaving any doubt or disagreement of the word/phrase – then disaster is likely to strike. A desperate unravelling can occur. Answers need crafting within the context of the problem being solved.  

I have to translate the idea perfectly into the correct and agreed phrase and write the words in a sharp, legible and highly engineered handwritten form if i’m to survive . The writing must be legible from 30 feet and be as enjoyable to read and as perfectly formed as is humanly possible. And then some.

Anyway food for thought – drawing conclusions!

Jc

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The End Of Advertising As We Know It!

Posted on September 3, 2011 by John Caswell
Advertsing

A story is a thing that can get passed around. Everyone talks about story-telling as being what works and what’s needed. The writer, the construction of a great story. That is what drives us to engage. We know when a great campaign gets to us. It morphs, it becomes a part of our lives. That is what a brand is. It remains with us even when the product isn’t there. So why is it that the advertising industry is so slow at getting at it. Sure there are some remarkable exceptions and I am from the industry and I was once very proud of that. Once.

Lamentable was the word – the overriding opinion in the room. I was listening intently to a group (of various ages) talk about brands and advertising – what works (what doesn’t) – but very interestingly talking about how stupid the marketers must think we are. Marketers still justify that their sales are directly because of their ads. Even in the face of strong arguments against that fact. A stupidly large proportion of the mush that I see passing off as marketing and communication has zero story, zero content, zero interest and zero value. Not bad huh?

The word lamentable struck me because it contains an acronym I’ve used a lot over the years – LMT - Lazy Media Thinking. That got me going and I scribbled away – Lazy And Mediocre Effort Nevertheless Translates As Bullshit Literally Everywhere. Sorry!

A bad idea is a bad idea. We’ve all experienced the derision. The rapid clicking past a pop-up – another dis-believable piece of marketing nonsense. It is still a bad idea. It succeeds in creating a groundswell of anti-attraction and eventually hate mail, even to the less sophisticated. Why are these blunt instruments getting bought by clients and who are the villains still peddling this crap! 

Actually I don’t care really. I believe the advertising industry will either die or change beyond all recognition and that that will be the best thing. More opportunity as a result.

It will mean a return to smaller teams in their own niche or boutique businesses doing quality work. Much more creative work done with care and precision. Much good stuff is being done already. The fact is to get traction and work well in the current media world is to be far more smart. More creativity. The art of it all now needs to get matched by the science and physics of it all and sadly the advertising industry is at best 5% creative and 95% administrative and financial and accounting. The second part of that equation is most definitely and rapidly redefining the word overhead.

Clients now know this too.

“We’re very good at organising and collecting data now – one thing we’re not good at yet is re-presenting and humanising data, turning it into narratives and stories” - Tom Uglow, Creative Director – Google and YouTube – Europe.

Madmen

I have written a bunch on this recently but when I find someone who has written what I feel better than me then why not give the guy the credit. I like what Tom says. He observes what’s going down a lot like I do. I don’t know him. He doesn’t know me. Therefore what follows is at least a micro-zeitgeist.

Tom is the European Creative director not just of Google but also You Tube. I find it very hard to watch You Tube actually. I’m not an avid or habitual watcher of video on-line. Photographs definitely. Video’s have to come highly recommended or I can skip easily. I think it’s a speed of processing thing and perception of quality thing. Tom sums it neatly  -  

"Online is such a fragmented way of watching anything – infinitely more distracted – and more flighty – actively consuming but entirely fickle, not attentive to arcs, or detail or narrative. On Demand – where I carve out time and stop and actively watch. I’m looking for story, script and immersion, but not production quality. I actively want to watch a programme and I am committed to it."

100%! It certainly isn’t true for everyone – but increasingly it’s becoming true for many more people every day. I think as I get older I’m becoming less set in more things. I rarely watch TV but want the times I do to be very high quality and more of a special thing. A big movie, a match, a seriously high-production documentary. Mainstream entertainment on TV leaves me nauseous.

And my new mentor Tom’s viewpoint? - 

"On TV – where I (rarely anymore) sit and let the TV wash over me. It’s passive. Time passes really fast. I’m not engaged nor am I proactively changing the channel. I could comfortably consume QI til I die. On DVD – I am attentive to the narrative, atmosphere and nuance. But in my slippers and a hoodie. On the big screen – I am completely committed, I have physically visited a theatre and am attentive to intimate detail, I will follow complex story-lines, loops and twists and I will analyse and contrast."

Because he is a ‘someone’ from Google, Tom is all about the little ads that are like granular and seemingly disconnected parts. But they are so not disconnected. Again I agree with him that this is now the way all marketers should think. But many may be too lazy to put in the energy or creativity required to pull off what this means. This is why they will need to change or die.

This used to be hyped up (dressed up) as one-to-one marketing, back in the day. A perfect idea spoiled by hijackers and the usual and predictable bandwagon. Whatever. Nowadays we have a million channels and creative tools, platforms or ways to surround the ‘one’ and communicate with ‘one’. Treat them like an idiot at your peril. Although that’s how it will feel in the main and in the short-term. This new media is all about attention to detail.

Tom again - 

"I don’t come from an advertising background, and the other day a prospective copywriter was patiently, (and somewhat patronisingly) explaining to me how a creative team is made of two, not three, and certainly not one, and how a copywriter and a creative should go off into a room and come up with a range of ideas backed up by visuals and copy, and then the artwork would be created from these concepts across a range of media.

Once I came round I suggested that an advertisement is like a phone call. It’s an interaction where you receive some information. A phone call is just little packets of data. So why can’t an advertising campaign be broken into little packets of data.

In fact better yet why can’t the information be broken down into little bits (like the internet) and then shared around by, well, the internet. Like an idea. And then the next part of that is that the bits should really be the information, not an association, or implication, or a complete abstraction (e.g. Coke = Happiness. Really? wtf? it’s a brown fizzy drink.)"

Making an idea into something that is (and evokes) the brand when the product isn’t there is the holy crucible! But think about that. This is not straightforward. It requires society, and all your peers, trusting and knowing the thing – your product – like we know what milk does.

Tom - 

"To me a good advertising campaign is one that *is* the product, and the message. The famous Word-of-Mouth does this, but rarely does it involve your colleague standing on the table and insisting (every 15 minutes) just how much you have to go see True Grit, starring thingy, by those guys, the ones who did Fargo. It’s fucking awesome. Advertising should involve small, reasonable, undemanding, unthreatening and often very brief moments in which a small amount of directly relevant information is shared, preferably in a way that is useful, timely, personal, fun and contextually relevant."

I left the Advertising Industry 15 years ago because I felt that all those around, in the sales-cycle and in our creative process – at the agency and at the client just didn’t get this or if they did, they lacked the power of orchestration to be able to execute it. With some notable exceptions many still don’t. It involves real energy, detail, planning and courage and that all done within earshot of the majority of people who won’t agree with the approach in the first place.

Did I say tough? This stuff requires thinking. It requires skill and it requires creativity by the real definition of the word. Final word goes to Tom!

"I suggested that all campaigns should start by breaking what they want down to those pieces of information, understanding them, and then working out what they would look like in a map, or a wiki, or in a game, or sponsored links, or a fortune cookie. or on twitter. And in a bigger way how the information would behave if you got to make a video, or a banner campaign, or a poster, or had to explain it to your mum, or to the woman next door, the one with the dogs. 

And then finally how would you let that information go, how would you open-source it so that the world could take the idea and make it their own and your campaign would live for the next five years despite no media spend or new creative because people actually used that idea to break up and share their own information, maybe about something completely different.

And I suggested that when you think like that digital feels innate and obvious and easy. And that’s what I think copywriters should do. It’s about ways of seeing, not physics.
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