The100: Awkward silences, trendy falsehoods, & Jurassic cats

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The Effect bias

I made that name up to describe my predilection for this wonderful clickable diagram of cognitive effects, biases and fallacies.

A particular rabbit hole for me was the top right quadrant of too-much-information.

Are you average?

Apparently the average professional spends 21.5 hrs per week in meetings? Up from 14.2 pre-pandemic. Crikey. The reason? A 500% increase in 1:1 meetings. 

Interestingly, 42% of 1:1’s are rescheduled and 29% are cancelled altogether. All due to a desire to recreate the spontaneity of the office. Hmmm. 

Semi-skimmed selves only, please

Bruce Daisley says management books are a disaster for well meaning employees, and the ‘bring-your-whole-self-to-work’ particularly so: 

Bring your whole self to relations with people you trust, everyone else needs to earn it. It’s time for us to all stop parroting lines of trendy conventional wisdom that are actually god-awful advice to the rest of us.

The problem with, well, everything…

Problem: big data has gone too far and there isn’t enough discussion around the value of qualitative research. 

People lose sight of the actual people on the other side of those numbers.

…says Todd Kaplan from PepsiCo. 

Problem: we can’t find the truth, so should we embrace fiction to find it. 

“Why” is why we should embrace the power of fiction. Beyond mere words on a page, fiction is where we wander through foreign wonderlands and immerse ourselves into other people’s minds.

Problem: ads are all becoming the same. As Ritson says:

It’s clear as more and more brands jump on the big emotional Christmas train that it’s starting to get very crowded on-board. 

…in his stereotypical takedown of the (UK) Christmas releases this year, it’s: 

…a perfect storm of over-indulgent, faux-sentimental, hyper-emotional brand bullsh*t’. 

Problem: the people who make the adverts all think the same anyway. Or is it that:

…people in the creative industries increasingly think more like each other and less like the consumers we serve. This means that miscommunication is a growing risk.

Problem: we don’t speak in the customer’s language. A snapshot from Dave Trott’s book, Creative Blindness (via Richard Shotton), gives a good example of how/why we should try to. Mr Trott describes how Mr Watt persuaded people to switch from horses to steam engines:

ICYMN(eed)I

• When to say no (in a pitch).
• How to write a creative brief.
• How to look for best practice outside your industry.

The benefits of awkward silences

Staying schtum is one of the most effective tactics you can employ in almost any negotiating situation. Here’s Jessica Hagy on the 10 wins that awkward silence can bring. Say no more.

What’s your political typology?

Those canny folks at Pew have created a quiz to help you understand where you sit on the political spectrum. Obviously there’s a high risk here of saying one thing vs. being another, but it’s useful for anyone who’s wondering what to call themselves (since millennial is now so passé, don’t you know). 

And finally, the fun:

Purassic Park

This is what happens when you replace a T-Rex with Tiddles. It’s done very well and arguably a bit more scary than the original. 

“Impossible to watch without smiling”

Last week a British TV weatherman decided to drum for 24hrs to support a  children’s charity. At one point he was joined by 50 other percussionists. It is strangely powerful and moving. If you only click on one link in this missive, click on that one.

In case I don’t see you, happy thanksgiving, happy christmas, and happy new year – I’m off to latibulize. 

Alistair