The undeservedly unknown
Part VI b: John Boyd continued
Friends,
I hope that all is well with you and yours, and that this e-mail finds you on a boat with shoddy connection, in the tropics, three months after I sent it.
Now accepting keynotes for 24Q4-25Q1
Every year, I create three main presentation decks. For 2024, they are:
What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do: How to turn uncertainty into a competitive advantage. (Based on my new book by the same name.)
Regression Toward the Meme: Why modern leadership falls into old traps - and how to avoid them.
The Efficiency Illusion: How to uncover the hidden costs of digital commerce and create profitable growth.
If you want to book me for your event, corporate speaking slot, or workshop, merely send me an email. To make sure I am available, please do so at your earliest convenience; my availability is limited and the schedule is filling up fast. More information may be found here.
A couple of updates before we go-go
Apologies for the unusually late send-out. Yesterday morning, I was informed that there would be a parent-child picnic at the kindergarten the same afternoon. For some reason or another, we had not been informed, nor had I seen any notes about it at drop-off/pick-up. Given that there was absolutely no way in hell I would miss the event (my wife was unable to attend and I would never let my daughter be the only kid alone while everyone else was having fun with their families), most of the time I had set aside for writing was lost.
Speaking of personal matters, the feedback from last week’s update has been heart-warming. Thank you to everyone who reached out; clearly, the consensus is that I should continue to be authentic, transparent, and other such descriptors that consultants love to use these days. Any jokes aside, though, thank you.
Having said that, I will not rant about my personal life today. Instead, I will do something entirely different… …and rant about a few other things:
It is comical to see marketers rediscover in-store advertising, waxing lyrically about how physical locations are “the next major media channel” with “eyeballs and audiences that can be reached with high-quality, contextually relevant, brand-safe creatives near the point of purchase” as if they would be revealing some ground-breaking insight. Yes, we know. That has been the case for literally decades. You would know that too if you actually left your offices and visited the places about which you speak so confidently.
A real-life challenge with gen-AI solutions such as ChatGPT is not that they are unable to write better than competent writers, but that they are able to write better than incompetent ones. What I mean is that since few managers rose to power through their writing and reading prowess, many see no difference between automated platitudes stacked upon one an other and properly constructed text. Yet they nonetheless decide whether human writers are needed.
The Being Human podcast has really gone off the rails. In the past, the show has had guests such as Dave Snowden, Steve McCrone and David Woods. The latest episode features something called an “angel intuitive” who “helps people hear and see” not merely angels but also “Buddha, Sai Baba, Mary, Plato, Thích Nhât Hanh” and “passed-over loved ones”.
I mean, I understand that one should keep an open mind and all, but for the sweet love of fuck.
What you should do instead is wait for the recording of Steve’s most recent keynote. In the talk, which should become available online soon, he discussed a number of ideas from our new book - and I am hearing that the crowd came away very impressed indeed. While a lot of it will be down to Steve’s skill as a speaker, it is yet another sign that we truly are on to something.
Finally, earlier this week, I wrote two short pieces on the nonsensical way in which the term risk is used in popular discourse these days. The first can be found here and the second, in which I reply to some of the comments to the first, can be found here. Premium subscribers will undoubtedly recognize some of the content from old newsletters, but for those who have yet to become one, there are important points about risk (duh), uncertainty, decision-making, the client-advisor relationship, portfolio design, and strategic experimentation, to be found.
Moving on to today’s three-piece.