Changelog: New Images, Search
More making the site better with Claude.
Essays
Longer pieces exploring ideas in depth.
86 essays
The End of Role Clarity
Role clarity is a symptom of relational poverty, and small team with real trust are going to out-deliver our absorptive capacity unless we do...something.
When It Starts Feeling Like a Video Game
The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
Super Performance
TL;DR: We lack a shared, rigorous way to assess an entire organization – most tools either miss key drivers or apply only to specific domains. By meta-analyzing 102 criteria from 14 seminal sources, from Rams’ Design Principles to the Agile Manifesto to Jane Jacobs' Generators of Diversity, this post
High-quality mission: necessary but not sufficient
Here are four ways teams can go astray even if they have a fantastic, visionary mission – and what you can do about it.
Why Nothing Gets Done Around Here
Hundreds of thousands of hours are getting wasted on bad decision-rights. It’s got to stop. (Contains at least two good ways to fix this problem.)
Reimagining the marketing organization in the age of generative AI
I reviewed the academic literature on the potential for AI machine learning to automate certain professional tasks. Then I compared and ranked those functions against an actual marketing org – a mere 7% of which is strongly resistant to automation.
How your org structure is leaving millions on the table
An approach that yields unbelievable levels of productivity, driven by a focus on the work that matters most for growth. In practice, this initially feels like cheating.
Emergent Learning & Development: Guide to How and Why
Included in this guide are a few ways to re-think your approach to development, some prerequisites to this approach, and three ideas for how to sprint toward a new way.
Undercurrent Story Forms
Five ways to structure your deck to be sure you're telling a story, not just writing action headlines and bullets powered by chatGPT.
Why Does DARPA Work?
A few standout practices: Opacity; Outsourcing for stronger internal networks; Deep technical reviews of ongoing programs.
Disruption is on Decline
I think it's because of org structure and approval processes. Implications for marketing organizations abound.
The State of Teaming: Most are bad. Some are really, really good
Researchers examined +200k teams to see how performance is distributed. There's a LOT of poor-performing teams, and a lot more exceptional teams than expected!
Centralization (For Marketers)
Centralization isn't a good thing or a bad thing. It's a pendulum that swings back and forth, and the key is to centralize and decentralize with intention. And to learn from what you've done.
Pace Layers for Organization
Pace Layers help visualize, distinguish, and discuss different kinds of work and teams within an organization. Here, I bring together a bunch of great thinking into a single construct. Enjoy!
Less Strategy, More Structure
Explaining why big, transformative top-down projects never seem to work, and two simple recommendations to fix the glitch: less strategy; more structure.
Rethinking Dynamism
The truth about most organizations, especially the big ones, is that they're structurally quite fast-moving and dynamic.
Onward!
I've left August to join R/GA. Some reasons why, along with a few thoughts on consulting.
Competitive Intensity, Business Models, and Distributed Authority
The correct answer to a question about the level of distributed authority doesn't just respond to the will of the people, or to some theoretical norm – it has to be in conversation with the market dynamics of the industry and the company's position in that market.
Assessing Performance in Responsive Orgs
When we surveyed a bunch of organizations, we found that effectiveness was correlated with leadership helping create networks within the org.
The Trouble With Innovation
Several years and one company ago, I found myself in a mid-project meeting with a group of clients from a large hospitality company. We were sat in an innovation room that could have been plucked directly from the d.School – every single furnishing came from their catalog. Sitting at the
Cooperation & Discord
I'm going back and reading through my old Diplomacy & World Affairs texts. They're useful: > Cooperation is contrasted with discord; but is also distinguished from harmony. Cooperation, as compared to harmony, requires active attempts to adjust policies to meet the demands of others. That is,
Small Experiments With Radical Intent
Several months back, Erica and I were doing an introductory session with a Global Operations team inside of one of August's larger clients. We started with a quick retrospective to understand the issues facing the team. Along with the usual teaming stuff, we noticed an issue that, for
Change Activism
“Change Activism” has been a handy if hard-to-use phrase to help me frame how I view change in an organizational context.[1] We invite teams to try simple practices that make it easier for them to change actively, on-purpose, and informed by user data. When these practices work for teams,
Peeling Carrots
As I was peeling carrots for soup last night (snow day!), I realized that I always do it the same way: by doing the big end first. If you peel the carrot the other way, starting with the skinny end, the diameter and the newly wet surface don't
Managing August’s Finances
Consulting is a simple business, with few logistical or financial challenges to master. Even so, we take operations pretttty seriously at August. Probably more seriously than most businesses of our size, but that’s what makes us great. Right? Over the last 18-ish months, we have developed five spreadsheets that
Bonuses At August
Occasionally in the course of running our business, we will create excess profits. Excess? Profits? I thought we were a for-profit business! Turns out you can have too much profit. For example, if you’re not expecting to have a big profit at the end of the year (because a
Ownership & Symmetry
Why do founders behave so poorly? Why do they struggle to distribute authority? Why is it so hard for employees to have their voices heard, for their good data from the edge of the organization to be incorporated into decisions? I believe all of this stems from asymmetrical risk. Almost
August's Starter Governance Kernel
Governance is recorded as either Roles or Policies. All of it is changeable with data on a cycle-by-cycle cadence, at open, facilitated Governance Meetings. Policies apply to teams that create them, and to any sub-teams. Everything else is up to your best judgement.
Type 2 Organizations
Some decisions are consequential and irreversible or nearly irreversible — one-way doors — and these decisions must be made methodically, carefully, slowly, with great deliberation and consultation. If you walk through and don’t like what you see on the other side, you can’t get back to where you were before.
August’s Specific Public Benefit
At the beginning, August had two key goals: making a significant contribution to human productivity growth; being the fuel for meaningful innovation.
The New Model for Scaling a Company
Three old technologies (rule of law, market forces, and transparency) can help us move toward seven universal performance criteria for organizations: purpose; fitness; vitality; fairness; power; connection; safety.
Amazon & Achievement
Using Amazon as a way to understand what works, what doesn’t, and what’s got to change.
The Main Objective: Legitimacy
When it comes to organizing humans, the only thing that matters is legitimacy.
Open Undercurrent
How self-organization helped a small consultancy grow revenue, profitability, and engagement – all at the same time.
The Organization Is Broken
Are organizations degrading the human experience, or are they poised to accelerate our progress toward dignity and achievement in the 21st century? Yes.
Clarity Hurts
Watch out for approaches that prioritize clarity above all else. Clarity can make you a cog in a machine, it can stunt your personal growth, and can pressure organizations to stick to the status quo.
Show Up Whole
I spent the better portion of P1 on employee reviews. At Undercurrent, we do official reviews every four months, with the intent of doing them all in one week while we’re “closed” for renovations. There’s no better gift than being in these reviews, and hearing about everyone’s
Scheduling at Undercurrent
Standardizing timing changes everything. Scheduling and resourcing used to be a complete mess at Undercurrent. Individuals and teams would be double- and triple-booked some weeks, while their colleagues had nothing to do. Building a team required hours of concerted effort: Who works well together? What’s the right team for
Organizing Even Over Org Design
A lot of what we do these days at Undercurrent falls under the “Organizational Design” banner. But that banner falls short by failing to align with one of my most strongly held beliefs: that nobody can design an organization that’s good enough, that fulfills on enough of our success
21 Rules for Lab Development
Innovation Labs need rules. Here are 21 that I documented in 2014 during my work inside and alongside four different such labs. They work!
Flattening
Basic premise: because technology (and other factors), firms were able to flatten, putting more managers under the direct control of a senior leader.
Nine to One
For every dollar spent on hardware, companies need to spend nine dollars in software, training, and business process redesign. (I think that's way low.)
New Governance Models
I very much enjoyed this article from the FT. I am not the first person to worry about the joint-stock company. Adam Smith, founder of modern economics, argued: “Negligence and profusion . . . must always prevail, more or less, in the management of the affairs of such a company.” His concern is
Accountants & Retail Employees: Look Out
Whether or not AI eats your job has to do with three bottlenecks: Perception & Manipulation; Creative Intelligence; Social Intelligence.
Join the Revolution
When every business becomes a consumer, and every consumer becomes a business, we’ll be forced to confront the fact that 50% of our waking hours just don't make sense anymore.
Four Holacracy Misses
Four things to reconsider about Holacracy: confusing word choices, a legalistic constitution; heavy dogma; a closed-source codebase.
Four Holacracy Keepers
Four key things to keep from years practicing Holacracy: Rule of Law; Continuous Participatory Reorganization; Structured Decisions; Defined Output Formats.
Core Protocols
Most employees give themselves over to a set of rules that govern their day-to-day corporate existence. How good are those rules?
Worse Is Better
I was familiar with “Weniger aber besser”. But until I started diving into Linux vs. Unix (as a result of my week in Vegas) I’d never heard of “Worse is Better.” It’s a concept in software engineering that indicates an inverse relationship between quality and functionality (more functionality
The Undercurrent Skills Maturity Matrix
This development tool is designed to give strategists clarity into their path forward, help them define and deepen strengths, and give managers a way to guide their directs.
Complex Good
Build discoverable complexity (otherwise known as interestingness) into your business and brand.
Forty Business Tips
These are all really two tips: focus on service and execution; if it’s not working, get out.
Objection Criteria & Strategy Reviews
Along with a few other folks in the UC “Management” crew, I spent Monday and Tuesday learning about Holacracy. It’s an interesting organizing idea that deserves a much longer set of posts, but the five-second version is that it’s a explicitly structured, distributed-authority, adaptive decision-making system that aims
Communicating Intent
Remember Commander’s Intent? Basically: a nugget of communicable strategy that helps a team make effective decisions in the face of changing conditions. It’s primarily a military thing, but since we use words like “campaign” a lot (whatup, Cannes?) I think we’re allowed to continue our appropriation of
On Resolution & Parameterization
Numerical weather modeling splits up the globe into a series of three-dimensional pixels. It applies a ton of math to the data representing each of those pixels to make predictions about the movement, intensity and impact of weather systems. These predictions are generated by specific models developed by groups of
Aviation: Not Easy
From the chronicles of “Easier Said Than Done, Airline Edition”: five lessons on innovation and the future of organizing.
The Awesome Science of Cheetos
Lots of interesting stuff lately on the internet about food. The first is from the trailing end of a meandering piece on The Awl about a “McWorld” in Times Square. The author is suggesting the eponymous fast-food giant build a Disneyland/Mecca for Big Mac lovers in NYC, with a
Commander's Intent
I give you another military process that can be applied to business strategy and organization design. It’s called "Commander’s Intent" (CI) and it’s designed to create durability through simplicity and openness to interpretation: "Plans are useful, in the sense that they are proof that
The Cook’s Economist: Functional Publishing Models
Examining the ways in which structure changes what gets published, and why
Redefining the Competitive Set
If you’re reading this, you know that digital technology has changed things. You know that in a single year, humans create more information than they have in all of history up to that point. You know that your customers are inundated with more information than their brains can handle.
On Systems & Strategy
High-quality strategies in ecosystems offer four things: loud feedback; flexibility in acceptable outcomes; shared indicators for failure and success; recognized connection points.
Integrating Loyalty
So I’ve been thinking a bit about loyalty over the past few months. More or less, I was thinking that a new, cool perspective on loyalty programs could be made up of three important parts: 1. A part that gets people to do things with and for each other
Building People
Something I wrote but never hit publish on, back in 2011. It’s funny to read this now with the benefit of 10 more years experience and think — yeah, I still mostly believe this stuff!
Write Issue Trees
Sorta classic that in 2011, I was blogging about diagnosing business problems on Valentine's Day.
Krakatoa and Institutional Anxiety
I got back to reading Krakatoa this week – I’ve been about halfway through the book for a couple years now – and I’ve stumbled across a rather interesting passage. Bold emphases are mine, but you prolly knew that already; can’t think of the last time I saw bold
The Social Web and B2B Marketing
So... the following is a draft for a little page-or-so thing I'm writing in re: a position on the social web and its implications for B2B marketing. Warning! There are a few buzzwordy things in the below, and the voice is a lot more professional than I usually
On Super-Users and Self-Selecting Networks
Digital Media isn't Mass Media for Cheap Desire Paths: Branding for Digital Lives Two decks that you probably ought to read. The first is from Bud Caddell. It's about a better perspective for businesses to take in their approach to goal-setting for the web. Key takeaway:
Narrative Suspense and Your Boring Site
Yesterday I was reading a profile in the New Yorker about Ian McEwan. He's the author of Atonement, among other works, and one of the key features of the profile was his discussion of narrative suspense and how to create it. Narrative suspense is the thing that makes
Enough Brand-Jabber Already
Yesterday I was in a new-business meeting. We were at the offices of a local company looking to make a push in the 4th quarter; their brand has been around for a long time, but recently had some tough times...they're rebounding from their difficulties and doing a
Knowing the Tools
This one's for the AEs out there. Last night I was watching "Modern Marvels" on The History Channel. This particular episode was about copper, and the portion that caught my attention was a visit to a bell foundry, where bells had been sand-cast from copper and
Living Your Life Online
About a week ago, I sent a coworker a link to a photo on my Flickr account. Yesterday she reported back that she'd looked through all 2,228 photos that I've put online. She asked if I was weirded out. I said, "Of course not.
On Interfaces
It's popular today to think that content is king. People will pay for it if it's good enough, and people will keep coming back to you if you provide "good" on a consistent basis. They'll try your product - whatever it is
On doing digital
It starts with a question. Last Friday, Scamp asked a question [emphasis is mine]: do you actually want to My guess is that you can probably ask the same question to entire agencies. And the answer: "No, now that you mention it, not really." Agencies are built around
On Stickiness
As ad-folk, we're always trying to come up with ways to make things sticky. We want viral videos to gain traction. We want people to stick around on our site and read our content. And we want to come up with radical ideas that become public sensations. With
Finding and distributing meaning
Was thinking last night... When done right, advertising is really about the discovery and innovative distribution of meaning that already exists. Products, services, things and activities in the world have meaning attached to them. And it's up to us, as marketing people, to find that meaning (especially if
The Success of the Nike Brand, a History
Reader beware: I've been a fan of Nike for my entire life. Dang you, brand loyalty, and the fog that you put me in. Below are some photos of my most recent loves, my Air Force Ones. I'll get to these later. This is an enormous
UNIQLO
When I was in New York a couple weeks back, I made a point to visit UNIQLO. It's an amazing store, and if you have an opportunity, you must visit one of their stores. I hope they're all as done-up as the flagship at 546 Broadway
Identity, Brands and the Next Generation
[Author's note: I'm not really sure about this. I would really love some comments on what I've written here. Tear it down if you like.] If identity is everything, what is identity? How does it fit in with marketing? Is "identity" a
Collaboration & Engagement
I love the new trend toward open-source idea refinement. It's worked for Russell Davies, who has made two (as far as I can tell) presentations using ideas that his readers helped generate. And he does a great job with attribution. In many ways, it's the perfect
Creating power
Power is the most fundamental part of human relationships. Platonic, romantic, sexual, political, cultural, economic, social and familial (did I miss any?) relationships are based in a simple exchange of power. One side has some, the other has less. This isn't necessarily a recognized or intentional exchange, though
Initially, on identity
I'm currently reading The Ethics of Identity by Kwame Anthony Appiah. I was first introduced to Appiah, I think, by Prof. Movindry Reddy of Occidental College. The book was published in 2005. Appiah is professor at Princeton and is a leading thinker in the identity arena. One of
This is not an ad
So I was thinking about my previous post, and of the connotations of power in advertising. I started going through what I've learned about power, and I remembered that Michel Foucault did quite a bit of thinking on the subject. Most of my worthwhile education has revolved around
Seduction, Power, and "Cool"
In the last few weeks I've been thinking quite a bit about what defines "cool"... I've discussed the topic with colleagues, friends and random people. While some say that cool is fleeting, I disagree. Hype is fleeting. Cool is permanent, generally not recognized by
Seduction, Power, and "Cool"
In the last few weeks I've been thinking quite a bit about what defines "cool"... I've discussed the topic with colleagues, friends and random people. While some say that cool is fleeting, I disagree. Hype is fleeting. Cool is permanent, generally not recognized by
First Post
exitcreative is now a part of the blogosphere. I hope people read it but I certainly understand if they don't. I'm a young account executive working at a small agency in Chicago. That being said, none of the opinions contained here are those of my employer.