Remote lessons May 2, 2019
Posted by nicholas gill in account planning, advertising, agency, agency life, barcelona.add a comment
This is me sitting outside the One Co Work offices in Barcelona’s marina some weeks ago. We spent two days inside here workshopping and scheming. And quite a few hours after the meetings in the cafe opposite the hotel, and in the hotel, working remotely and collaborating to do the day job outside of the workshopping and planning the future.
A heady mix of Slack, Zoom video calls, Whatsapp and yes, even email. With clients in 3 countries and a team back at base. We had to deal with a few unexpected issues but it was pretty easy in truth to keep things moving forward.
On the way back home I was sat at an airport and caught up on email. Mostly filing them. I managed to get a client approval on some outdoor advertising, kept the spirits of a team member up via WhatsApp when they were flagging and needed some support, we managed an influencer photo and film shoot remotely via WhatsApp with remote viewers from client and agency team in three different countries and collaborated on a proposal outline next to changing content plans and created new content for a different client in Slack.
But also with a connected world comes more complexity. The firehose is present in all forms of communication. It’s down to the broadcaster of the message to make it a signal rather than part of the noise. Enable the recipients to know what they’re meant to do.
And then I missed my flight.
Not because I was doing all this. I was at the right gate. I heard the announcement it was delayed. I heard all the other flights being called, delayed, last boarding; Amsterdam, Cardiff, London City. Nothing about my destination. Only getting annoyed that I’d heard nothing did I venture out and see on a different screen that the gate had been changed. And the flight had gone.
The ground staff said they’d called. And name checked me and 4 other people. Calmly advising them no such announcement was heard and the screens in the original gate area were not updated. I ended up having to trek through departures back to the arrival hall to explain the entire situation again to the ticket people. Along with the other people who were a lot more angry than I.
Fortunately, I’d got there first. A new ticket later and once again I’m sat at another gate. And once again the screen has gone blank. No announcement can still be heard in the main area. So I’m stood staring at the other screen in the other area while I write this, seeing it change gate. The announcement works in this section of the airport. But crucially not where the original gate was. Where the people expecting the flight were directed and once again congregating.
Strength and clarity – the meaning behind the military phrase five by five. Also meaning loud and clear. If your message is unclear and has no strength, it’s just noise. How do you make sure you navigate the mud of multiple comms platforms? And get the actions you want? Call it out, use directional language, use the props of the platform and you won’t be relying on people finding your message In the mud. And also use common sense. If you’ve been told there’s an issue, fix it or find a work around. Don’t repeat the same thing over and over. Madness that way lies.
In the heat of multiple projects, cool heads, calm approach and strength and clarity of communication is key.
And then it doesn’t matter where you are in the world. Although it really matters to me that I get home now after a few days away.
Post script. I did get home eventually, some 6 hours after planned arrival.
autologia March 22, 2019
Posted by nicholas gill in automotive, italy, Uncategorized.add a comment
It’s not everyday you get asked to appear on an Italian automotive blog. Thank you, Eraldo.
How to live a remarkable life May 25, 2018
Posted by nicholas gill in advertising, agency life, career, digital nomad, freelance, office life, remote working, social media, Uncategorized.add a comment
This is Thalassa. Thalassa is happy. Not just because of the Tony’s Chocolonely in her hand. Because she’s engineered a way to make her work fit her life goals. Just look at her and how happy she is.
She always had a dream to live and work in Barcelona, a city she feels is home rather than her native Netherlands. (Apart from Tony’s Chocolonely which elicits the reaction you see in the photo). But life gets in the way… rent or mortgage… relationships… career… and then your goals become dreams… and then the dreams become unattainable because of the shackles of the life you created because of societal norms.
What would happen if you really focussed on making those dreams and goals happen?
Well, Thalassa is the result.
Although kick-started by a relationship ending, it gave her the momentum to make the change. She set out to start breaking the ties from needing to be present in an office to do her job. How could she take her skills and abilities and make them attractive to people to pay her money? How could she help people overcome the need for someone to be physically present? Partly she’s helped here by a shift toward more remote-working and organisations seeing the benefits of both giving more autonomy to people to work in a way that suits them best alongside an uptick in outsourcing to trusted partners rather than off-shoring for cost efficiency alone.
So she set out a plan to generate clients and to also create a passive income plan based on her experience to support or supplement as required. This wasn’t easy. Part of what you don’t see on the surface too is the investment in networking and talking to others in her situation, providing as much assistance as receiving.
And then the time came when she was confident enough to cut the ties, book the one-way ticket and move. She doesn’t have an office but uses the local co-working space in Barcelona which is hugely impressive, vibrant and is right next door the marina. A premium setting to work and to meet people. Which is exactly what we did when we went out to see her with our equally wonderful client who we all work with.
And you know why she’s managed to make this a reality? Because she’s damn good at what she does. She always delivers what she says. She’s smart, imaginative, creative and trusted. She’s flexible to work however we want whether that’s via Slack, using the community management tools clients prefer or on the phone. As a result we’ve grown our scope with her and the results and the way of working are just fabulous. What’s better is that she’s enjoying what she does, focussing on projects that also make her happy. Eventually getting to a place where she can pick and choose the projects that she wants to do, not just the ones that pay the bills.
So what’s my version of this? I think this is what I’ve struggled with for some time and why I’m now finally trying to work through this. To look beyond the immediacy. I don’t have the answers yet and I’m going to try and work through it but one thing that feels like it’s going to help me, at least to set the broad parameters, is Debbie Millman’s technique for living a remarkable life.
It’s pretty simple. Write a letter to yourself from the future. Ten years ahead. Write how you want to be, what you’re doing, be as descriptive as possible. And re-visit the letter every year. It’s uncanny how many of her students have realised their dreams using this technique. So I’m going to start here.
Here’s a neat site that summarises this technique and points to the interview with Debbie.
Here’s to a remarkable life… and here’s to Thalassa!
From always on to mostly off March 13, 2018
Posted by nicholas gill in addiction, mobile, productivity, thought leadership, Uncategorized.add a comment
I can remember my first wireless mobile device. It was a BlackBerry. I got it even though officially my grade wasn’t high enough but because I had to deal with a range of clients and partners in the Wunderman network across Europe in person and across email and calls. A BlackBerry would help. And at the time I felt very smug and happy. Email on the go. Executive. Life was good. It was made better by the fact that the WPP email system at the time was bafflingly Lotus Notes; perhaps the most inefficient and incomprehensible email system ever. Inbox management using the BlackBerry was the only way to survive this terrible affliction. I only used Notes when sending or receiving attachments. So looking back, here’s where all the problems started. Thanks, Sir Martin.
You got used to managing your life on the go. Because it made your life better. And you felt important. Sitting in airport lounges in Köln for hours on end became sitting in Köln airport for hours on end reading and writing emails. We had to sit in Köln airport for hours on end because the agency agreement with the client was to fly super cheap so we had to get the 6am flight from LGW and then only ever the 9pm flight back. Even though the fortnightly meeting always finished just after lunch. Unless you wanted to brave GermanWings and then have the trauma of getting back from Stansted, by which time you’d be later than the original EasyJet flight home. Which was then another 2.5 hour drive home. So figure in a 3am start and typical 1130/midnight finish. There’s prudence… and then there’s madness.
I digress. You felt important though. And then there was that little red flashing light that told you there was a new email. It attracted you like a crying baby – you can’t ignore it.
And so fast forward some years and moving from BlackBerry to iPhones. The technology has changed but the problem remains. The flashing red light is now a fruit machine of notifications, noises and shouts for your attention.
Much has been made of the founders regret at causing anxiety in users needing the dopamine hit of instant gratification of their content and this Atlantic long-form read is fabulous.
But while acknowledging there is neediness built in, what can we do about it?
I flip-flop between addiction and abstinence but I’ve found the following tips/hacks/guidance work for me:
- Hard cover. I always thought these were crap. They got in the way of you looking your phone and then the cover flapped around when you were trying to make calls or take photos. But then I accidentally ran over my wife’s phone in our car one day (long story) and the phone survived. It was a heavy car at the time, a Ford Galaxy. Over gravel. Pretty impressive. So I ordered one. And then I realised that when you can’t see your screen, you stop looking at it. Stupidly simple.
- Turn off the sound. Beep! Bing! Or whatever alert sound there is, turn them off. I only have sounds activated for when the phone rings or text messages. Or vibrate on silent. Everything else is just a distraction.
- Turn off all notifications. All of them. Apart from calls and text. Yes, even WhatsApp; which continues to demand I turn notifications back on. Resist. In doing so you’ll also lose the tiny little number in a red circle that although elegantly designed, is designed to drag you back in.
- Airplane mode is not just for airplanes. Absolutely use at night. The only permissible function could be an alarm clock. And if you can’t trust yourself to not have a sneaky peak in the night, buy a damn alarm clock.
- Turn the screen to grayscale. It’s amazing how less exciting the world looks in black and white. You will spend less time surfing through social media and focussing on completing tasks. Intention trumps attention. It will also extend your battery life.
- Clean your screen top. Move everything into folders. Move all folders to at least the second page. Not seeing the glut of apps stops you. Adding friction to your experience makes it just that little more effort.
- Make eye contact with people, not pixels. If I had a Samsung phone, I’d be downloading this Thrive app.
- Break the habit. Stop looking at your phone first thing in the morning or last thing at night. Put it away. At least an hour before sleep.
- Delete apps. I killed Twitter in May 2017. Took a few days to stop looking at the cess pool but I don’t miss it all all. I managed to kill Facebook until we were trying to sell some old baby stuff. I only use Instagram to share micro-updates. I don’t follow anyone because otherwise I’d be looking at it all the time. Not following anyone avoids this temptation rather than some uber self importance statement. It may also be a short-term project.
What other tips do you have? Next time, let’s talk about email…
Photo by Rob Hampson on Unsplash
Everything has changed but nothing has changed February 5, 2018
Posted by nicholas gill in book review, thought leadership, Uncategorized.add a comment
As part of my little experiment, I’m going to read more and share more. Here’s some thoughts on Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. Where years later we’re still doing the same things our ancestors did.
This staggering book is a tour of the last 70,000 years of humankind. How we came to be, why we do the things we do and how it will shape us in the future.
Sapiens follows four key revolutions. From the cognitive revolution, where we changed from an ape of no significance to the rulers of the world, through to the scientific revolution which accelerated humankind. It has us on the precipice of being able to alter forever humankind as we know it.
At almost every turn, the book blows your mind, covering an enormously broad range of topics. Starting with the fact that homo sapiens, were not the only form of human species that walked the earth. Even now we are uncovering evidence and it is said that up to 4% of European DNA is from other human species and up to 6% in Asian countries. There is no purity of form.
We evolved through fire, which enabled us to cook things we could not naturally process, decreasing the size of our teeth and shortening our intestines. This enabled more energy to go to our brains, making them jumbo-sized and accelerating humankind. With this came civilisation and then globalization, making the business world what we know today. It is evolving at a much faster pace due to the advances of technology and the efficiency needed to fit people’s lives. Food is still of the upmost importance but in the current day, food comes to us.
It used to be that food was foraged, making humans move from place to place, eating a varied diet. When we found high calorie food such as fruit, we gorged on it before other animals did. This gorging is hard-wired in our DNA and why we gorge on food now. Because it’s so much easier to get food now, obesity is the result. The action of gorging and greed has been applied to all different aspects of human life including businesses who are often being accused of monopolizing markets making it hard for smaller competitors to stake a claim. Everything has changed but nothing has changed.
The book points out that food also became the enslaver of humans. The domestication of crops and animals was a great lie. Rather than making lives easier for humans, it made it harder. Settlements require more work than foraging. In a desire to create plentiful harvests, we worked harder in ways unnatural to the body, we created more people, which required more food and more work.
It’s no different today. We work ridiculous hours in the hope that we will retire early. But by then we have huge mortgages, partners, children to school and a liking for holidays, cars and food – so, we repeat the same mistakes from 9,500 BC. Nothing has changed while everything has changed.
Gossip was the basis of language that separated us from animals which also helped alert us to danger. Language allowed us to move beyond this, to discuss who hates us, who we like, who to trust and who not to. Gossip, which is now proxy for social media, is now global. Nothing has changed while everything has changed.
Language gave us the ability to transmit information about things that are not real. If humans increased in numbers and empires formed, our need to collectively believe in things grew. This imagined order helped maintain law and order. Fiction, myths, gods became figments of our collective imagination. So strong was this belief that they became real in people’s minds.
This imagined order started as polytheist religions – where many gods were appealed to. Over time, people favoured one of these gods and monotheist religions began to rise. This accelerated with Christianity and then Islam, both of which became fast-spreading. Interestingly, polytheism inserted itself back into monotheism in the way of saints – each of whom looks after particular areas of interest in the same way as the many gods. Everything changes but nothing changes.
Segregation is still rife in modern day but we are starting to tackle problems like gender equality. It transpires that the mythology of the imagined orders are also to blame for that; assigning roles to genders with no basis that have stuck. The only theory that suggests why we ended up in a largely patriarchal society is that while women are just as good at hatred, greed and abuse, men are more willing to engage in physical violence.
So if imagined orders enabled the unification of humankind, the highest order is money. There is nothing that comes close. Which is why our economies are accelerating and the pursuit of money is overtaking the imagined orders.
After 4 billion years of natural selection, science and money together are challenging our morals, beliefs and capabilities by engineering new paradigms in human and animal life. By 2050 some humans will have achieved a-mortal status. Bionics is already commonplace and our language is already evolving beyond words. Mathematical script is accelerating AI, and a new future of computing is becoming real.
In time, the human form will change, seeing a new species of human appearing. Will they accept the same imagined orders as us? Will they make the same mistakes? Will we view them as friend or foe? These humans may well be viewed as mutants, like us but not, the same as we were viewed 70,000 years ago. Everything has changed, but nothing has changed.
Tools of Titans or Follies of Fools? Today’s the day. January 31, 2018
Posted by nicholas gill in best self, life coach, personal brand, productivity, Uncategorized.add a comment
Today is the 31st January 2018. I’m two years into co-running my own business. It’s demanding but we have great clients and projects. I have a stable and demanding home life and a loving family. But I’m feeling overwhelmed.
Not so much that I can’t cope and need time out. But that I’m far too easily distracted. That I can’t focus. My mind flits everywhere all at once and I’m struggling to maintain focus and direction. Too much noise, not enough signal. I have plans but then don’t execute. I put off. Procrastinate. Write lists but get bored. I feel impatience rising. I can’t concentrate with general hub-bub.
Over the last year or so I’ve been listening and reading more and thinking, “that’s a great idea, I could try that.”
Sometimes I do and it works. Sometimes it stays in the Slack private message to myself or Evernote – the digital equivalents of the scraps of paper, overflowing drawers or scribbles in notebooks. I have those too. I’m currently carrying around three note books, a journal and a plastic wallet with stuff in. Because all have bits in that I need. Or I think I need. But haven’t sorted them out. My bag is like an old woman’s handbag in this respect.
I’ve been listening to podcasts for the last few months. I have a long drive, it helps. And I enjoy them. But then quickly forget.
And then last night I was listening to Tim Ferriss’ interview with Bozoma Saint-John – the new Chief Brand Officer at Uber. And it was interesting, very interesting. As 90% if Ferriss’ work is to me. But it wasn’t the stories about marketing but her experience of living on 10c bread rolls in New York City and the kindly Asian shopkeeper who took pity on her, giving out life advice and human warmth without expectation. And the thing that hit me was this:
“Today’s the day!”
Everyday she would say this to Boz.
Relentless optimism in the face of adversity.
I’m drawn to the optimistic view. I was once knocked down in an appraisal because I see things through rose tinted glasses. It still smarts some 15 years later. I guess the point they were trying to make – badly – is that sometimes you need a balance but you know what? Forget that. I like being positive and optimistic. ‘Can do’ and ‘relentlessly optimistic’ are things I do. Things I like. I’m a positive, no. 3 type person. I struggle with any negativity or confrontation. Let’s make it happen.
“We spend far too much time complaining about the way things are and forget that we have the power to change anything and everything.”
– Bozoma Saint John
Today’s the day.
So I decided that today would be the day. Why wait till February 1? Why wait for the start of the week?
Start today. Because today’s the day.
And try out these things. Make the changes. Try the things that started to work and the you stopped. Try new things.
So I took inspiration from some of Ferriss’ interviewees and those that appear in Tools Of Titans and Tribe of Mentors and started. Today.
My first start was early. 5am early. Because early risers are more productive. Allegedly. Let’s try it. I’m pretty good at getting up. But then so are two of my three children. And this morning the smallest one beat me to the 5am alarm announcing that he’d wet his bed. 4.40am. At least I was awake. I was heading into London on the early train anyway.
I just don’t recall any of Ferriss’ interviewees or ‘titans’ having to deal with 4 year olds and wet mattresses. So instead of meditating or journaling, I was stripping sheets and loading washing machines and trying to get him to use his quiet voice. That’s why I’m going to call this series Tools Of Titans or Follies Of Fools?
For now, at least.
But today’s the day. So I get to London and I’ve achieved one thing.
My phone has been in airplane mode. All this time.
I get to Century Club on Shaftesbury Avenue – my peaceful place in town – and while having a nice coffee I get my journal out. I’ve tried this before. But today’s the day. I like the premise. I bought the Best Self Journal. It’s lovely. Nice texture. Solid. Looks great. I struggle with a few things in it that I’m going to try and solve over the next weeks. More on that later but what I do enjoy is the focus on what are your top 3 things to achieve today – or as they say, “what will make today a win?”
3 things written. 1 done, 1 in progress, 1 yet to start. Better than the to do list that just gnaws away.
And then and only then do I turn the phone on.
More thoughts on that another time.
And I started a new Instagram account to do micro updates on this experiment.
I have lots of things I’d like to do better and improve. I’ll be sharing them here. Feel free to share your experiences.
Today’s the day.
Today was a good day Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash
All others by me.
Introducing Zuck – Facebook’s new Chief Creative Officer January 18, 2018
Posted by nicholas gill in advertising, facebook, social media, thought leadership, Uncategorized.add a comment
Yet again, a Facebook newsfeed update garners more column inches in our feeds than atrocities happening across the world. But that’s the echo chamber we live in. So here’s my thoughts.
After being lauded for doing ker-azy things as CEO like spending a year in another country or visiting every state in the US just because… because he can, the revelations of Russian interference and blatant click-baiting in both the US and UK political scene, it looks like Zuck got back to work. And has re-framed the conversation to make Facebook seem all cosy again. By making it much more about those real ‘moments of interaction’. So you’ll see more posts from people you want to interact with – your friends and family – and less from people you don’t. I, for one, will be happy to see less of the dreadful memes and those Lad Bible videos. I can but hope.
Basically he’s just weeding out the crap. Again. And again, everyone reacts in horror. How will I get my brand message in front of people now?
Well, stop creating shit content for a start.
In effect Zuck has just laid a red line (I listen to Radio 4 and that seems like a new fangled phrase these days) about shit posts. Unless your friends did it. Shit posts from brands are dead. Find stock photo, add motivational line, add copy, slap it on the page. Dead. Organic posts. Pretty much dead too.
And we should all celebrate that surely?
What is incumbent on brands is to bring back creativity. And align it to a media strategy. Creativity of thought and execution. Thought into those meaningful moments of interaction. Hasn’t marketing always been about that? What is my audience thinking/feeling/doing now and what would I like them to be thinking/feeling/doing? The joy if a platform like Facebook is that it is an advertising platform (because that is what we really should start to think about it as if you are not already) and you can micro target to the niche you want and exactly when you want minimising the wastage of other larger advertising platforms. What’s become the downfall of recent times has been shit content.
The move to video as a preferred format by users also drives the level of creativity up. You’re not going to enjoy a stock film are you? It starts to make the case for better investment in a channel where you’ve built a community. It starts to make a case for treating ‘social content’ like an advertising campaign. Call it moments of meaningful interaction if you like but it’s more advertising mindset than ever.
What can brands and agencies do?
- Make better creative content that has relevance and impact.
- Experiment with closed groups to truly deepen relationship with your core fans and bring added value.
- Experiment with video and live video content.
- Experiment with ‘tag a friend’ content but in a non-shit way. Obvs.
- Seriously invest in your paid strategy and advertising messages.
- Stop thinking of social content as calendar filling fodder.
Won’t you miss those random brand associations with random national day of blah? No, me neither.
Photo by Sticker Mule on Unsplash
Postcards from the beach – 2017 edition December 12, 2017
Posted by nicholas gill in advertising, digital advertising, influencers, silicon beach, social media, thought leadership, Uncategorized.2 comments
At the end of September, I spent two days by the beach listening, learning and starting to live again. Curated by the self-styled most selfish event organiser in the world, Matt Desmier, Silicon Beach is a complete mystery. You have some idea of some of the speakers but no idea when they talk, what they will talk about or indeed what may happen.
I went last year and was completely smitten with the format compared to the typical bloviation from other conferences so had high hopes. Hopes that were fulfilled. And then some. And while I wrote some digital postcards last year to some people who really stood out for me, I wrote some actual postcards this time.
You may have got one in the post. There are still one or two who haven’t even got one yet because it really has been impossible to find the addresses of some people; easier to find an address in Montenegro than Marylebone. But let’s get back to the beach…
Matt makes a thing of there being no theme, just people he wants to listen to and learn form. And that seems to be good advice for life in general, let alone a conference.
But there was a theme for me.
To get on and do things.
Because time is short. Because we’ve been hoodwinked that timesheets are the most important thing in advertising. That the colour by numbers dumbing down of creativity by Facebook et al is the temple we should all be praying at because they dominate over 2/3 of the internet.
That actually, we should be more rebellious in our behaviour and intent. Because life is short. As Billy Connolly once observed, you should be anarchic and put stink bombs under the rim of the toilet or cling film over the porcelain on train journeys because…
“Do these things. You’ll improve your life no end.”
A theme that really came alive and punched you in the face with Chris Barez-Brown’s talk right at the end with him sharing that you spend 80% of your life on auto pilot with a need to Wake Up!
A theme that Paul Armstrong showed in high-speed fashion (I may have to buy his book to try and remember what he speed-talked through) with his tiny square of paper showing you what little time you have left to do something.
A theme that Scarlett Montanaro recognised and that advertising wasn’t fuelling and did her own thing. Being the dependable back-up and timesheets are not the reason we got into advertising. Scarlett encouraged everyone to spend at least 20% of their time at work working on side projects or things you really give a shit about. Because while the industry still requires you to be chained to a desk for hours on end, you may as well be productive and doing stuff you like and can make a difference rather than endlessly staring at social media.
A theme that came up with Sally, with Victoria and with Vanja about attention, sleepwalking, doing the same thing. We think we know our problems inside out, but history shows that sometimes the excuses we make are preventing progress (or survival). When we say ‘that’s the way it’s always been done’ or ‘that’s just how it is / has to be’ there’s a danger in complacency, and that the competition will overcome that challenge first.
Where advertising has become colouring by numbers to feed the digital machines of Facebook and Google. Where our short-termist, instant gains culture has created an obsession with quantifiable metrics. We need to embrace the chaos (Bo Hellberg) that we seem to process out of everything in search of efficiency. Chaos is the part of every story where the magic happens, and it’s the same with work. We can start with data, but it should never form the whole solution. If we want to affect real change, we must change our centre of gravity from chasing data to embracing chaos.
And put penis’ on 20 foot presentation screens. Because life is too short. Do these things, they’ll improve your life no end.
That we over-complicate, we spend time on the wrong things and that we need to wake up, do things that matter and do things that excite us. To think without the restrictions growing up places on us (Richard Gerver).
To demonstrate our value, we’re overcomplicating things and obscuring potential solutions. Embrace the clocks and clouds in life as Matt Ballantine would say. Clocks work in a very specific way and require expertise to make them work and carry out a necessary task. Clouds are intangible, transient and ever changing – this is where we should experiment, not knowing the exact value of the activity going in.
Be inspired, be braver (Dave McQueen) and think about what our own legacy may be. Don’t follow the herd (Up Your Elvis as Chris B-B would say, a nod back to Mark Earls from last year there too).
And in a dystopian manner, I loved Marcus’ ‘The Passing’ to bits. I say talk, it was art. Beautifully conceived and delivered. Truly stand out. But also terrifyingly believable following on from several of the talks about the rise of the influencers. The man is a genius. Read the Forbes review if you don’t believe me. I hope he does get a book deal.
It’s hard to really tell you more. I have lots more notes. I have lots more actions and ideas. And in a way, that’s the joy of Silicon Beach. You really should be there to experience it. To try and do a post about it really doesn’t do it that much justice but I have tried.
Do these things. It’ll improve your life no end.
See you on the beach in 2018.
Be nice. November 27, 2017
Posted by nicholas gill in agency life, pitch, Team Eleven, thought leadership, Uncategorized.add a comment
I
n John Niven’s book, The Second Coming, God returns from holiday to discover the world has gone to shit. And he’s none too pleased about it. So he sends his son, Jesus, back down to Earth to sort it out. Along the way via much debauchery and swearing, we see JC come to prominence through the modern cathedral – the talent show. In his journey, JC also reveals that there was actually only one commandment. It’s just that Moses thought one was too simple and decided to write some more. And add more complexity and confusion.
The original commandment was: Be Nice. Two simple words that everything hangs off. If you subscribe to Be Nice, you don’t need any other rules or nonsense.
Be nice.
Sounds simple doesn’t it?
I was reminded of this recently when working on a multi-agency, multi-country pitch. Locked in the bowels of an agency meeting room in Torino for 4 days straight over a weekend, I was an outsider to a team that had already been working on the pitch for the past week at least. Be nice – drop in, say hi, ask how you can get involved, listen and learn. Go out for dinner even though you’re knackered and would rather curl up in the hotel? Yes. Because that’s nice and you really get to know people over dinner. And also a very strange mountain drink that you pass round and keep drinking until you pass out.
Be nice and offer opinion in a constructive, non-confrontational manner. Debate, listen and discuss. Be nice and learn from those with a different experience, different culture and point of view and enrich your own experience along the way.
Be nice and surprise and delight people when you take their words and really focus on making the presentation as best you can. Be nice and make sure everyone feels comfortable, prepared and ready to go. Join in, be collaborative and immerse yourself fully and commit to the cause. Be nice and send a note of thanks for the experience and make new friends along the way who you never know may be the gateway to future opportunities. Because people like to work with people they like which is a fundamental principle we have at Team Eleven.
I write this because I also experienced the opposite of Be Nice that weekend. Of people who would arrive late, be aloof, detached and not be part of the team. With some distance its easy to see but only vindicates what you believe in when you see the opposite. Being part of a team means you commit to it and behave with professionalism and dignity.
Be nice.
