Welcome to your journey toward Selfship

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

― C.G. Jung

What is Selfship?

I define Selfship as:

A person’s ability to effectively integrate their self awareness with their personal and professional relationships.

Where did the term Selfship come from?

You may have noticed something. Leadership books, podcasts, and other resources help people manage other people. Self Help resources help the individual in search of self awareness, mindset, and personal growth.

But here’s the problem.

Do you want to follow a competent leader that doesn’t know themselves? Likewise, a leader that possesses self-awareness but lacks leadership skills will struggle to gain the influence they need to guide others.

The most effective leaders draw from both disciplines. In fact, they don’t differentiate between the two. They practice Selfship.

Since the early 2000s, I’ve used the concepts, frameworks, and tools you’ll gain through Selfship with leaders. This is the first time that I’ve codified it into a step-by-step process that you can follow from beginning to end.

What are the benefits of Selfship?

How can I regulate myself when I’m triggered? How can I effectively engage the people around me and build healthy influence? Am I bringing the fulness of my authentic self to my personal and professional relationships?

These are just some of the questions leaders clarify through the Selfship Journey. If you find yourself asking these questions, maybe this is a good fit for you.

Let’s find out.

Who is Selfship for?

I’ve noticed over the years that Selfship resonates with a particular kind of person. They tend to:

• Live and lead with a greater level of intention than most

• Strive to continually expand their awareness of themselves and others

• They want to know what it’s like to be on the other side of them

• Take personal responsibility for their actions

• Lean into discomfort rather than avoiding it

But this journey isn’t for everyone. People that have an aversion to these characteristics shy away from Selfship. Their self preservation, commitment to comfort, and fear of what they may discover along the way prevents them from ever stepping foot on the path toward selfship.

Which description sounds like you?

I relate to both descriptions. I assume you do too, so I’ll ask you the same question I ask myself: Which description will win the day?

Now what?

I’ll be coming to you in a few different ways:

1. Letters that explain the concept we’re going through

2. Audio Notes that you can download to enjoy anytime and anywhere

3. PDFs that you can print and complete to track your journey through Selfship

We’ll kickoff your Selfship journey with two tools that set a baseline that you can use to measure growth.

How to get the most out of your journey?

Subscribe!

If you’re subscribed to Selfship, you’ll get everything you need for the journey.

Consume the letters and audio notes. If you’re like me, you may even read or listen to them several times to get as much as possible out of them.

Translate insights into action. I’m going to help you translate what you learn into demonstrable actions.

Also, don’t go it alone. Contribute your thoughts and questions, and inspire others. Share your experience with friends and co-workers. Invite them to join you. Post questions and thoughts in the Comments section. I’d love to hear from you.

You ready? Me too.

Let’s go!

Losing my Resistance: A Case Study

Reflecting on Resistance got me thinking about where it shows up in my own life. I didn't have to look very far.

For some time now I've known I have something huge to share. It may not be huge to everyone, but for a particular kind of person, it could forever change their life. No doubt about it.

It's all here in my head. If you rang me right now, I could talk you through it from beginning to end. It might take the better part of a week, but it's so clear that I know every detail along the way.

So what am I doing to get it out in the world? Sitting on it.

That's not entirely true. I've written an outline that's sitting at eleven pages, and I'm just getting started. And I've asked eight intrepid individuals to serve as a "test group" to provide feedback about the resource as I create it.

But what have I given them to review since I asked them five months ago? You guessed it. Nothing.

To which you may say, "Hey, 'Lighten up Francis,' you've got a lot on your plate. You have a wife and daughters that need you. You have clients you serve, kids' activities, working on the house, and so on. Don't be so hard on yourself."

Thanks for the encouragement. I need that reminder. But that's not what I'm talking about.

What I'm talking about is that decision point that I come to most days where I have to choose: Do I do the work to move this project along, or do something else?

That's the crux of it. For the last five months I've chosen to do something else...anything else. But why would I shy away from sharing that which I believe can truly impact another human soul?

Simple: putting myself and my ideas out for public scrutiny is scary as hell.

When I think of moving from outline to sharable content, I hear those negative voices in my head in all their cleverness, "What makes you think you have such a great idea? There's nothing really new under the sun. Remember, someone thought the AMC Gremlin was a good idea too."

But lately something seems to be shifting. I'm moving from outline to content that I can share with my test group, and eventually with anyone else that's interested. I've created three portions of the resource’s guidebook and recorded three "Audio Notes" to accompany the guidebook.

It's a daily battle. My naysayers wake up with me every morning. They line the stairwell up to my office and hurl their abuses. But rather than believe their lies, I acknowledge them like fellow passengers on a train. "Mornin'!"

Maybe I am designing the next AMC Gremlin, and maybe it too will confuse consumers, break down, and serve as a source of national embarrassment, but at least it will be my Gremlin, whether anyone else likes it or not.

But I believe it's far greater than that. It can and will forever change lives. Even if it just changed one life, I'd do it. And maybe that life is yours. Who knows?

Stay tuned.

The Real Source of Resistance

I'm a big fan of Steven Pressfield. The War of Art continues to make an indelible mark on my own creative journey. I've recommended that little book to countless people over the years.

But I disagree with him on one key point.

In The War of Art Pressfield deftly and relentlessly exposes the innumerable ways we sabotage ourselves. He lumps these strategies under one term—Resistance. These are the everyday shenanigans we employ to avoid showing up as the authentic individuals we were made to be.

So true.

He challenges the reader to flush Resistance from its hiding, and that Resistance does its best work incognito. From the safety of shadows it weaves and whispers its lies about our lack of competency and worth. And we believe it.

Preach it, Steve!

He's absolutely right when he says that "Everyone hears that same voice". Self deprecation is woven into the fabric of every human soul. In fact, it's so integrated into being human that we can't amputate this voice if we want to.

Yep.

He says, "That negative, self-sabotaging voice you hear in your head is not you. Those thoughts are not yours. They are Resistance. Everyone hears that same voice."

Nope. This is where I part ways with Pressfield.

Those negative voices I hear are me. All of the naysaying, sabotaging, self-destructive deceptions have one source: the guy in the mirror—and I divorce myself from these voices at my own peril.

Here’s why.

How do you respond when someone tells you that you don't have a voice in a conversation? Chances are you don’t take too kindly to it. You want to make your voice heard even more. Right? Why would Resistance respond any differently?

The surest way to increase Resistance is to disown it. Every effort I’ve made to distance myself from these voices makes things worse.

What’s the alternative?

I need to draw nearer to these voices not distance myself from them. I need to own them. But that doesn’t mean I have to believe them or be afraid of them.

The voices of Resistance may be my adversaries, but the relationship doesn’t need to be adversarial.

You and I are not so fragile that we can't sit and listen to these voices spout their nonsense for a few minutes. The voices are wrong. Dead wrong. They're utterly delusional. But you can still befriend them. After all, the voices are part of you.

Just don't believe them.

The 20-70-10 Rule

We were on an early morning run on the first day of soccer training camp in college when one of my teammates started boasting about how little training he'd done in the offseason. He laughed as he told us about his summer escapades, none of which apparently involved exercise. He didn't laugh for long. He groaned and hobbled around campus for the first two weeks of camp as his body tried to make up for lost time.

But he wasn't the only one that ignored offseason training. Each fall about 20% of the team showed up completely out of shape. About 70% coasted. They did the bare minimum over the summer and arrived on campus unprepared for the rigor of training camp. And about 10% arrived at training camp in top shape. I always strove to be in that top 10%, which meant frequent workouts on hot summer days, often on my own. It wasn't the easy path, but I knew I had to put in the work if I wanted to perform at the best of my ability.

THE 20-70-10 RULE

I have a prediction: When we emerge from the chaos that surrounds us right now, we'll look a lot like my college soccer team in late August: 

• 20% of us will decline—we’ll groan and hobble around as we try to catch up with others

• 70% of us will coast—we’ll regain our game fitness, but it won't be easy

• 10% of us will thrive—we’ll enter the “new normal” in better shape than we are now

We'll all know the truth of how we used our time when the season starts up again.

HOW TO THRIVE

Two things will enable you to thrive in the weeks and months to come:

1. Challenge yourself

• Expand your capacity for self-awareness

• Develop essential leadership skills

• Learn and strengthen your knowledge base

2. Support yourself

• Limit overexposure to media

• Connect with loved ones

• Move your body

• Eat well

• Structure your day

We're in the offseason, folks. The challenges of our present day offer each of us an enormous opportunity. Even though it's difficult, let’s persevere and use this time to develop ourselves so that we’re ready when the season starts up again.

A Different Way to Differentiate Yourself

You are different. No one else possesses your personality, perspectives, gifts, and experiences. Much of the value you contribute to the lives of others stems from your being different.

Those closest to you know you’re different, but what happens if your customers, clients, and coworkers fail to see how you’re different?

Is there anything you can do to help them see that you’re not like everyone else?

What’s “Different” about “Different”?

My bank recently debuted a new tagline: “Things are Different Here.” This tagline fails in part because it’s not true. My bank isn’t different. With a few small exceptions, their products and services are just like every other bank.

But there’s a deeper flaw in this statement that emerges when we compare it to Apple’s slogan, “Think Different.”

Both use the word “Different” and both infer positive associations with the word, but their similarities end there.

“Things are Different Here” draws attention to my bank. In a similar vein, a well-known hotel chain says, “You’ve come to a different place.” In both cases, these companies cast themselves as the hero in their taglines.

“Think Different” has a different hero in mind. It speaks to the “crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes … the ones who see things differently.” The hero of the Apple slogan is everyone that thinks different.

Why should you join my bank? Because they’re different. Why should you buy Apple products? Because you’re different.

See the difference?

Answer the Third Question

No one cares that you’re different. The fact that you’re different doesn’t interest the people—clients, customers, and co-workers—in the way we think it might. What they really want to know is:

1. Can you help me?

At their most basic level, people want you to solve a problem for them.

2. Do you enjoy helping me?

But people don’t just want you to solve their problems. They want you to want to solve their problems.

3. Do you know me?

At their deepest level, people want to know that you recognize them as unique individuals. They want to know that you know them, not just know about them.

You’re not in business for long if you don’t answer the first question. Fewer companies answer the second question. But if we want to build loyalty, we have to answer the third question.

How to Differentiate Yourself

An interesting thing happens when you answer the third question: People see you as different. From the sea of your rivals, you buoy to the surface, but not because you’ve talked about being different.

People come to see you as different because you first saw them as different.

Maybe the people you’re trying to reach aren’t “the crazy ones.” Maybe they’re buttoned up and boring. It doesn’t matter, I’ll ask you the same question:

Do you know them?

More importantly, do they know that you know them? Only then will they ever see you as different.

Turn Your Garbage Into Gold

We all have garbage. Some of it we can see. Most of it is we can’t. Customer complaints are as much garbage as a discarded Starbucks cup. 

The way we deal with our garbage reveals how we view ourselves, our customers, our culture, and our purpose.

Each year, for example, Walt Disney World averages 52 million visitors. Disneyland sees another 18 million. (That’s more than the combined populations of California and Texas.) Yet, not only will we never see any of their thousands of garbage cans overflowing, we’ll never see a dirty garbage can. Disneyland owns their garbage. 

Garbage, by definition, is a byproduct of our life and work. So long as it’s still around, it only serves to get in our way.

Disney doesn’t enjoy garbage any more than the rest of us. They just view it in a different light.

Turn Garbage into Gold

Zappos disrupted retail when they offered free shipping both ways and free returns. Shipping and returns are pure garbage for retail. Returned items not only cost the company in shipping, but also the item often can’t be resold by the retailer due to wear and damage. By offering both for free, Zappos turned garbage into gold.

We can all turn garbage into gold, but only if we have eyes to see the riches in the rubble.  

Owning Our Garbage

Zappos and Disney own their garbage. It’s deeply integrated into their business model and practices. You and I can adopt the same perspective when we integrate garbage into our lives. Rather than resist and resent its presence, we own it. We’ll even clean our garbage cans.

But before we do that, we need to differentiate what garbage should stay and what must go. 

Necessary and Unnecessary Garbage

We all have two kinds of garbage: the garbage that must stay and the garbage that must go. We’re on boards for seven different organizations that consume hours of time each month. Ninety-eight percent of our Twitter and Instagram feed. That’s garbage that must go. To pull from my previous definition of garbage, it only serves to get in the way. It’s self-imposed and, therefore, unnecessary. What’s left when we clear out all of the unnecessary garbage is the garbage that must stay. Customer emails, returns, business development, hiring and firing—these we can’t avoid. They’re necessary garbage. The question is whether or not we own and integrate them, or whether we resist them. 

Garbage is unlikeable, but we can grow to like the way we deal with it. I suspect Disney and Zappos derive a sense of pride from how they deal with their garbage.  

We’ll never like our garbage, but we can take pride in the way we deal with it, especially if we turn it into gold.

Your Competition is NOT Your Enemy

Rivals, competition, and enemies—we all have them. The problem is that we confuse the three. In our confusion we misdirect precious time, attention, and resources, which contributes to malaise, frustration, and underperformance. 

We perform at our best when we accurately identify all three. We gain ground on our rivals, rise above our competition, and claim victories over our enemies. 

Rivals

Rivals have one goal: to defeat one another. This is as true of Steph and LeBron as it is of Apple and Microsoft. Though we may at times wish they would go away, our rivals make us better. They drive us deep within ourselves where we uncover capabilities we didn’t know we had. True rivals value one another, which helps explain why it’s not uncommon for rivals to be friends, or even family members. Where would Serena be without Venus? Image where you would be without your rivals. 

Competition

Our competition shares nothing in common with our rivals. As John Wooden said, “The best competition I have is against myself to become better.” We are our competition. Our competition reminds us that we can do better and to expect more from ourselves. When we compete with ourselves, we know we can defeat our rival and still lose, and only when we compete at our highest level possible can we truly claim victory, irrespective of the outcome.

Enemies

Our true enemy lies within each of us. The enemy will do anything in its power to hamstring our ability to perform at our best. Fear of criticism and inadequacy sabotages a leader’s ability to perform at her best. Distrust drives down a team’s capacity for collaboration. Misalignment within a company contributes to inefficiencies and confusion. Whatever its form, defeating the enemy requires that we not confuse our enemy with our rival or competition. Such confusion ensures our defeat.

Nike’s True Enemy 

Nike, for example, performs at their best when they recognize that Under Armor and Adidas are not their enemies. They’re not even Nike’s competition. They’re Nike’s rivals. Conversely, Nike loses their way when they confuse the three. The same is true for all of us—as individuals, teams, and companies.

Who is Nike’s enemy? Since their inception, Nike has had one enemy, though it goes by different names—laziness, self-doubt, and even shame. This is Nike’s true enemy. It’s at the heart of the company, which is why they perform at their best when they rightly identify and align their resources against this enemy. They resonate with consumers because we see our story in the Nike story. We’re both fighting the same enemy. 

Life as a Story

Binge watching wouldn’t exist without tension in a story. Tension comes from the struggles, villains, and conflict within the story. These make stories worth watching. Your enemy makes your story worth telling. Without your enemy, you wouldn’t be who you are. Your enemy is an essential character in your story, as long as you’re sure you’ve rightly identified it.

Three Reasons to Celebrate (and the Real Reason You Don't)

“So when do we celebrate?”

I know what you’re thinking, “Celebrate? We don’t have time to celebrate. We’re too busy getting things done.”

But this is among the most important questions you can ask. Why? Because we’re a bunch of  forgetful, ungrateful whiners.

Getting things done feels good, but head-down obsession with our daily tasks leads to a project-induced stupor in which we can forget the purpose behind our projects. We know we’re making progress. After all, just look at those checked boxes. But to what end? We’re not sure.

Celebrating wakes us from our stupor. When we celebrate, we pause to acknowledge one another and what we’ve accomplished.

If celebrating is so important, why don’t more of us make it a priority? I think I know why.

Three Reasons to Celebrate

Before explaining why we don’t celebrate, let me give you three reasons why we should:

Celebrations remind us of the past.

When we celebrate, we look at where we’ve been. We remember what we’ve accomplished, what’s gone well, and what we would do differently.

Celebrations ground us in the present.

When we celebrate, we clarify our progress thus far in a project. We can take stock of the people and resources we have in place as we move forward.

Celebrations pave the way for future success.

When we celebrate, we generate momentum for future efforts. Whether we’re celebrating mid-project or at the end of a project, we reconnect with our team and with the purpose of the project.

The Real Reason You Don’t Celebrate

I ran into a friend yesterday who’s a designer. The last time we spoke she had just been recruited by a large technology firm to head their digital design efforts. Having spent nearly a year at the company, she’d grown concerned about its culture. She described an environment in which people don’t trust each other. What really drives her nuts is how everyone seems to be content with mediocrity.

My friend became increasingly agitated as she spoke until she finally exclaimed, “We never celebrate!”

She went on to say, “We limp to the end of projects and eventually complete them, but by then we just want them to be over.”  (Sound familiar?)

How could celebrating possibly help this situation?

Fyodor Dostoevsky, in his book Notes from Underground, says that the best definition of a human is “a creature who walks on two legs and is ungrateful.” Though I want this only to be true of my children and not of myself, if there were a Lack of Gratitude award, I’d probably finish in the top three, or maybe even win it outright.

We’re ungrateful because we’re hopelessly forgetful. We’re productive—employing our best project-hacking measures to slice and dice our way through tasks—but we remain in a project-induced stupor. We know what we’re doing, but forget why we’re doing the project in the first place.

What Happens When You Don’t Celebrate

Celebrating connects people. As my friend can attest, failing to celebrate separates people.

I was recently speaking with the CMO of a large health care company who was furious after a meeting about his company’s new mission and values statement.

“We’ve been working on this for months,” he said, “and the lead on the project said that she just wants to get it over with.”

When I asked how they were going to celebrate it, he laughed and said, “Oh, we’ll do the same old same old. Send it around to everyone and wait for the crickets to start chirping.”

This company would have achieved far greater returns on their mission and values project if, from the very beginning, they had made celebrating a priority.

Instead, news of the project will dribble out through email to everyone else in the company.

Chirp. Chirp. Chirp.

A Celebration Case Study

A tech company asked me last year to help a group of their brand leaders develop their storytelling skills over the course of a year. I worked with an internal team to develop the project and prototype it before implementing it. The project came together beautifully and the prototype surpassed all of our expectations. We knew this project was going to be something special.

Rather than rush to implementation, we paused to celebrate. It wasn’t elaborate. We ordered in lunch, raised a glass to commemorate our accomplishment, and took some time to acknowledge the talent and effort we’d each contributed to make the project such a success.

Then we launched. As we’d hoped, the project went well. The leaders loved it and said they were able to immediately improve their ability to use storytelling in their daily lives.

The project came to an end, and you can guess what we did. We planned a nice dinner out to celebrate. We shared, laughed, and listened as we each reminisced about what we’d done together.

It would have been so much easier not to celebrate, but we planned for it from the very beginning of the project.  

How You Should Celebrate

I celebrate every Friday afternoon. Inspired by Greg McKeown’s book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, I spend about forty-five minutes writing down what I’ve accomplished in the past week and I forecast what I’d like to accomplish the following week. Finally, I write down one thing I’m grateful for. I try to be specific, otherwise I’d write down things like my family, my health, and my career every week. For example, I find it helpful to write down something like, “I’m grateful that my daughter and I had lunch on Wednesday.” It’s not that I would have forgotten these things, but apart from this weekly ritual I would have forgotten their importance in my life.

Something inexplicable happens each time I do this. Without fail, I draw in a deep breath the very instant that I remember the things I’m grateful for. I feel at peace with the past, present in the moment, and confident about the future. That’s what celebrations do.

Three Steps You Should Follow

Whether I’m going through my Friday afternoon weekly review or planning a project, celebrations always include the following three steps:

1. Plan it.

You can decide exactly how you want to celebrate later, but you have to plan for it now. If you wait until the project starts, you’ve waited too long.

2. Personalize it.

Tailor your celebration to fit your culture and the context of the project. Know your team and what they would appreciate.

3. Protect it.

Excuses for why you shouldn’t celebrate will mount as you near your planned celebrations. It’s your job to ensure that doesn’t happen.

In the coming weeks I’ll wrap up the strategic planning process with a health care company. We’re going to spend a two-day retreat completing the company’s plan and prepare to implement it. At the close of the second day, you can probably guess by now what we’ve got planned. Yep, we’re going to celebrate. You should too.

The End of Uber: How "Storyless Brands" Fail

The Storyless Brand

A brand built on profit alone has no story. Of course, a brand without profit has no future. But survey the strongest brands in the world, or even in your neighborhood, and you’ll find a common thread: their story sustains them.

A brand’s story captures our loyalty because their story overlaps with our story. Their villain is our villain. Their portrait of a hero aligns with ours, and we discover that they’re going where we want to go. We value the product and service they provide, but what we really value is that we’re part of their story, and they are part of ours.

A brand’s story is their identity. It’s the brand’s lifeblood. It explains why a brand exists, the purpose it serves, how its unique from other brands, and every other element of a brand’s identity.

But what happens when a brand doesn’t have a story? 

It dies.

How did Uber decline so quickly?

My oldest daughter and I loaded into an Uber in downtown Seattle on our way to see U2 play at CenturyLink Field last May. I noticed the driver’s windshield also featured a Lyft sticker.

“Which do you like better, Uber or Lyft?”, I asked. 

“They’re pretty similar,” the driver said, “but I prefer Lyft. They treat their drivers a lot better.”

“Which do you use when you travel?” I asked. I wanted to test his loyalty. 

“I use Lyft whenever I can,” he said.

Employee loyalty is the “canary in the coal mine” for a brand’s health. Strong employee loyalty breeds a solid customer fanbase. And brands that haven’t earned loyalty from their employees find their foundation rotting beneath them. 

The driver’s lack of loyalty made me suspect that Uber may be in trouble.

And I was right.

The video of an altercation between an Uber driver and then CEO and co-founder, Travis Kalanick, came out just a few months before. Sexual harassment allegations, controversy over their response to Trump’s immigration policy, and several high level resignations sent Uber into a nosedive as 2017 unfolded. Under mounting pressure, Kananick finally resigned as CEO.

So how could such a prominent brand decline so fast?

Do NOT “Start with Why”

One of the most watched TED Talks ever is Simon Sinek’s 2009 TEDx presentation where he encourages brands to “Start with Why.” Sinek says, “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.”

Sinek’s right about the value of Why for a brand, but he’s wrong when he says we should “Start with Why.”

We should start with Who.  

A brand’s Who is their identity. Their Why arises from their Who. Their identity is the beginning. This is where we should start. 

Uber doesn’t have a Why because they lack a Who.

Uber thinks they have a Who, but what they call their identity is just a great idea—Ridesharing. A good concept alone isn’t enough to sustain a brand. A brand needs substance, integrity, and purpose. 

A brand predicated on profit lacks a story. Consider what Logan Green, co-founder of Lyft, Uber’s main competitor, says about their culture, “The company culture is about being human, being good to other people.”

That’s a story that excites employees and resonates with consumers. Despite Uber’s concept and profits, they lacked a story.

Now we recognize Uber for who they are: a Storyless Brand. 

Can your employees and customers see themselves in your story? 

Strong brands function as a story. We see ourselves in their story and want to be part of it. 

Your brand story is your foundation. It sustains all other aspects of your brand. Know your story, own your story, communicate your story in everything you do.

The result is a story that draws us in. We want to be characters in your story.

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Brand Amnesia: Causes, Symptoms, and Treatment

Brand Amnesia plagues millions. Apple, for example, suffered a bout of Brand Amnesia after they fired Steve Jobs. They regained their senses when he came back.

Unchecked, it leads to brand obscurity and, in many cases, the death of the brand. What's worse, the majority of the brands that have it don't know it.

Given its prevalence (and the fact that I made up the term) I thought I'd explain Brand Amnesia, what causes it, how to avoid it, and what to do if you discover you have it.

Definition:
Brand Amnesia, also known as brand dissociation, is a memory disorder that affects brand leaders and is characterized by episodic memory loss, said to occur for a period of time ranging from months to years.

Diagnosis:
Obvious signs of Brand Amnesia may include:

• Personality confusion, in which the leader mistakes his or her brand for another
• Confusion about ones brand identity
• Difficulty articulating a cogent brand story
• Erratic, unexplainable shifts in ones identity
• Inability to retrieve stored memories that preceded the onset

Prevention:
Brands who wish to avoid Brand Amnesia’s debilitating grip need leaders with courage and a strong sense of their own identity identity. A leader who doesn't know his or herself can't help a brand know itself.

Prognosis:
With said leaders installed, the brand can capture, clarify, and commit to their brand story. They can become the loyal shepherds the brand deserves.

Warning Signs, and Risk Factors:

• Holiday party speeches that sound strangely similar to the one from the year before
• When asked to describe their brand story the leader's jargon-laden explanation rivals a presidential State of the Union address in unnecessary length and lack of clarity
• Referring to brand initiatives as "fluff" or otherwise dismissing their value
• Obsession with other brands, especially competitors, which can alternate between worship and seething disdain
• Turnover among vendors and staff related to culture, marketing, and sales

Causes:
Brand Amnesia stems from a single cause: fear. Fear about the insufficiency of ones own brand spawns episodes that vacillate between aggression and wedging ones head under the cushions of an overstuffed couch. But don't be confused by such behavior. It's fear cycling through a rotating wardrobe of disguises.

Possible Treatment:
Leaders need to be reminded about the brand's authentic story. For best results, read the story aloud. This may chase dormant memories out from hiding. Consider also reading aloud books like Extreme Ownership or The Failure of Nerve. These too may arouse latent memories and, with time, help a leader remember the brand's true identity.

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Walk In Stupid

"See, when you don’t know, you try desperately to find out. But the minute you think you know, the minute you go – oh, yeah, we’ve been here before, no sense reinventing the wheel – you stop learning, stop questioning, and start believing in your own wisdom, you’re dead. You’re not stupid anymore."
Dan Wieden, Co-Founder, Wieden+Kennedy

Mike stepped inside our house, took off his boots, and shuffled across our wood floor in his wool socks. He walked into our kitchen, set his toolbox on the island, leaned against the counter, and removed his glasses.

Then he turned to my wife and asked, “What’s the problem with the washing machine?”

As my wife described the issue, Mike tipped back his head and closed his eyes. He looked like a sommelier letting the tasting notes of a fine wine wash over him. For several minutes he asked my wife questions and listened.

Pivoting like a marriage counselor, he turned to me and asked, “And what do you notice about the washing machine?”

“This guy is an appliance therapist!” I thought to myself.

He listened to my description with the same curiosity and intention he showed my wife, again closing his eyes and occasionally running his fingers through his grey, bristled hair as he thought.

Then he was done. Mike grabbed his toolbox and disappeared into our laundry room for the better part of two hours, emerging once or twice only to clarify something my wife or I said.

Mike’s brilliant. Having worked on several of our appliances over the years, I now realize that his experience and comprehension of physics and electricity qualify him to teach courses at most any college. 

Which is why the most remarkable thing about Mike is that even though he’s been in countless kitchens and laundry rooms, dealt with the same problems with appliances day after day for more than 40 years, he walks in stupid every time.

Why? Because he genuinely cares — about his craft, about his customers, and about their appliances.

We all used to be like Mike. As children we brimmed with fascination.

But then we got smart. Our knowledge of the world expanded and our curiosity shrank. Our teachers and bosses rewarded us for knowing (or at least pretending to know). We stopped asking stupid questions.

And we watched as our curious mind, along with our careers and the companies we worked for, calcified.

But I want to be like Mike. Don’t you? I want to walk in stupid every time.

And here’s the good news for others who want to be like Mike:

We can retrain ourselves to ask stupid questions. 

You’re not alone. Curious people find other curious people.

There are leaders and entire companies that value people who ask stupid questions. They’re the ones driving innovation: LEGO, Pixar, Patagonia, IDEO, and many others.

“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”
Walt Disney

Retrain yourself to walk in stupid. Ask yourself the following stupid question:

How many uses can you think of for a single paperclip? 

We’ve trained ourselves to think of paperclips fulfilling a single function. This exercise challenges us to view the same object in a fresh light. Keep in mind that children typically outperform adults in this exercise.

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What's Your Fall In Factor?

I just started reading The Hobbit to my two youngest daughters. Each night as I sit down on their bedroom floor, open the book, and start reading, something magical happens: all three of us fall into the story.

We’re no longer in a bedroom. The three of us enter the story and travel along side Bilbo, Gandalf, and the others on their journey. This explains why every night my daughters say the same thing when I close the book:

“Don’t stop reading!”

Great stories have a “Fall in Factor” that captures us and won’t let go. The same is true of great brands.

You’re probably accustomed to thinking of your brand as having stories that you communicate through messaging, marketing, and advertising. Your brand has a lot more in common with The Hobbit and other great stories than you think.

Just like a great story, great brands have a villain, a hero, struggles, crises, and resolutions. These elements reach out and captivate us.

Nike’s villain, for example, isn’t Under Armor, Adidas, or any other competitor. Nike’s villain the human proclivity for apathy, laziness, self-doubt, and disdain of losing. Read Phil Knight’s biography, Shoe Dog, and you see that this was true from the very beginning of Nike’s story.

Clarify and protect your brand story. It’s yours! Don’t let it devolve into someone else’s story.

Ask the following questions at your next team meeting to clarify your brand story:

Who is our true villain?
What does it look like to be a hero in our brand’s story?
What distractions prevent us from moving our story forward?
Everything becomes more clear when we view our brand as a story. We remember who we’re fighting, what we’re fighting for, and our role in the story.

You build that “Fall in Factor” that every brand craves. The people who come in contact with your brand will say the same thing:

“Don’t stop reading!”

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