Gratuitous sorcery and incantations from actual Wizards.

Rugged individualism is the essence of America.

It is also the reason that we, as a people, feel isolated and lonely.

Our focus on personal, individual success is the reason we feel disconnected from one another. This is happening even in our marriages according to Ian Kerner, author of the book, So Tell Me About the Last Time You Had Sex, and Terrence Real, author of Us: Getting Past Me and You.

“Individualism is not a natural fact; it has a history. In American Colonial days, society was communalism on a small scale. It was about farms and small towns and small villages. When you lived face to face with your neighbor, it was a palpable reality that the good of all was the good for each of us. Civic virtue was the force that went beyond individual gratification. It was part of being a civilized person that you had a sense of civic virtue. With the Industrial Revolution, and the myth of the self-made man, all of that went by the wayside and it was each man for himself.”
– Terrence Real

We are living in a very conflicted time because most of us hold two conflicting beliefs. (1.) We believe in a culture of individual achievement, “ME”, (2.) but as we approach the zenith of a societal “WE”, there is a desire to find our tribe, to join, to belong, to work as a group for the common good.

Next year is the zenith of our current “WE.” It happens once every 80 years.

The previous “WE” zenithed in 1943 when America was united against Hitler. We threw ourselves into something bigger than ourselves; something we believed in, something that satisfied our need to belong and make a difference.

And now you know why we see all those deeply impassioned splinter groups in the news each week.

Here’s the good news: you can harness that same “need to belong” to recruit and retain good employees.

Good employees are attracted to companies with a strong culture. They are looking for a company they can believe in, a place where they can belong and make a difference.

When you want to strengthen your company culture, you need to publish your Unifying Principles. I have previously called these your “We Believe” statements.

Publishing them is the easy part. The difficult part is that you have to live them.

About eight minutes into his famous TED-X talk at Puget Sound, Simon Sinek says,

“The goal is not just to hire people who need a job; it’s to hire people who believe what you believe. I always say that, you know, if you hire people just because they can do a job, they’ll work for your money, but if they believe what you believe, they’ll work for you with blood and sweat and tears.”

To learn more about how we can help you, book a call with Ryan Chute of Wizard of Ads® today.

We learn more from our failures than we learn from our successes. Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from bad decisions.

My friend is forever shouting about his Freedom. It is the only song he sings.

Freedom is a good thing, but our love of freedom is why family sizes are shrinking. Children are a responsibility.

Freedom and Responsibility are paired opposites, a duality. The more you have of one, the less you have of the other.

I had written only those few words when I received a request from the American Small Business Institute to answer a question from Glenn in Calgary; he wanted me to predict the Top Five Qualities of an Advertising Consultant in 2023.

I had the Freedom to answer however I wanted. I could be flip, funny, cute, self-serving, dismissive, scholarly, insulting, pedantic, or predictable. My Freedom was unrestrained. But I also had the Responsibility to give Glenn a list of five specific, attainable goals that would make him and his clients more successful.

I told Glenn the Top Five Qualities for 2023 would be these:

1. Ability to write good ads. I’ve never seen a business fail due to “reaching the wrong people.” Businesses fail because they say the wrong thing.
2. Knowledge of how to differentiate a business from its category. You must make your client’s business distinctive and memorable.
3. Honesty. You must be willing to accept responsibility for the failure of your ad campaign.
4. Courage to say what needs to be said to the business owner. This is how you avoid campaigns that fail.
5. Wisdom to know that good advertising will not fix a broken business. Choose your clients carefully, Glenn.

Depression and Joy are another duality. The more you have of one, the less you have of the other.

Pride – the inability to feel grateful – is what keeps us from feeling joy. The disembodied voice that tells us we need to be “proud, self-made men and women,” is the devil who robs us of our joy.

Depression is unfocused anger. Joy is unfocused gratitude. The more you have of one, the less you have of the other.

If you look for reasons to be angry, you will find them. If you look for reasons to be grateful, you will find them.

Don’t be angry. Be grateful.

Justice and Mercy are a third duality. And the tug-of-war between them is intense.

The only hard choices in life are the choices between two good things.

Justice and Mercy are both good things. When you encounter the tug-of-war between them, which one do you favor?

Opportunity and Security, a fourth duality.

When Opportunity increases, Security declines. This sounds like Risk and Reward, but it’s not. If Risk and Reward were a duality, increasing your risk would decrease your reward. But increased risk of failure increases potential reward. This makes Risk and Reward a synchronous potentiality contained entirely within the realm of Opportunity.

Ultimately, it all comes down to Choices.

Our plan is always to make good choices, not bad choices. But most choices are neither good nor bad in the moment we make them. They become good or bad in hindsight. They become good or bad due to consequences. The outcome is never clear until after the show is over.

We learn more from our failures than we learn from our successes. Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from bad decisions.

You cannot judge a person’s experience by their age. You can judge it only by what they have experienced. A person can have 30 years of experience, or they can 1 year of experience 30 times.

Which will you have? Will you choose to embrace risk and take your beatings when you fail and learn hard lessons and win great victories? Opportunity is a good thing.

But then again, so is Security.

Book a call with Ryan Chute of Wizard of Ads®, and we’ll hook you up.

Eighty-eight percent of the Fortune 500 companies that existed in 1955 are gone. Poof.

Half of them withered because they had a manager in the role of CEO when they desperately needed a leader. The other half were destroyed by a leader when a manager could have held the company together and grown it incrementally.

The most important role of a board of directors is to know when their company needs a leader and when it needs a manager.

Managers prefer incremental change, evolution.
Leaders prefer exponential change, revolution.

Managers guard the status quo. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Leaders invent new ways of thinking. “If it ain’t broke, break it, so we can create something new.”

Managers prefer a map and a path.
Leaders prefer unexplored territory.

Managers say, “Ready, Aim, Fire.”
Leaders say “Ready, Fire, Aim.” But this isn’t as crazy as it sounds. When shooting a cannon, this is called finding your range.

Managers focus on planning and execution.
Leaders focus on improvisation and innovation.

Managers make organizational charts.
Leaders make messes.

Managers are given authority over others.
Leaders are voluntarily followed by others.

Kodak, Blockbuster, MySpace, General Motors, and General Electric were overwhelmingly dominant in their categories until their Manager-CEO’s fell asleep while guarding the status quo.

Do not think the internet killed K-Mart, Montgomery Wards, Sears, J.C. Penney, or Bed Bath & Beyond. Walmart sells all those same products and they’re still doing fine because they saw the marketplace rapidly changing in August, 2016 and responded by putting visionary leader Marc Lore in charge of Walmart’s US e-commerce operations.

Amazon did $398.8 billion in 2021.
Walmart did $488 billion.

Managers mistakenly think they can lead.
Leaders mistakenly think they can manage.

I know only two men who can perform both functions. Dewey Jenkins is one of them.

If I had written those words during the 10 years Dewey and I worked together, it would have sounded like flattery. But now that he is retired and I have stepped away, I am free to speak the truth.

Good mothers can also perform both functions. Every good mother is a miraculous manager and a visionary leader.

I was raised by an extremely good mother and my sons were raised by another.

Good managers know what to “protect at all costs.” They know what not to change.

Bad managers look only for compliance and conformity, blind to the special abilities that hide within their employees. But good managers see those special abilities and call them to the surface where they can sparkle. A good manager encourages your special ability and uses it to maximum effect, while partnering you with someone who sparkles in the area where you are weak.

When you see a legendary duo, you can be sure that a brilliant manager put them together.

The genius of visionary leaders is that they charge full speed ahead when they see opportunity on the horizon. When they see a storm coming, they steer around it.

Visionary leaders recognize what is no longer working and do not hesitate to change it. Bang. Gone.

If you want to listen to the inner thoughts of visionary leaders and understand how their minds work, there are only two books you need to read.

1. Sam Walton: Made in America (John Huey and Sam Walton)
2. Iacocca: An Autobiography (Lee Iacocca and William Novak)

As a special bonus to yourself, take a look at – Where Have All the Leaders Gone? – a slim volume written by Lee Iacocca when he was 82 years old.

I love that book.

And I love you, too.

Thanks for reading my ramblings.

If you need new branding guidance, book a call with no other than Wizard of Ads®. We'll help you figure out what new perspective on branding can work for your business.

Authority can be given to a person. Leadership cannot.

People with authority often have no followers.
People with followers often have no authority.

Leaders require no authority. They say, ‘This is what I’ve decided to do.’ And then they do it. Others see them doing it and decide to follow.

On Tuesday I was on the phone to my friend Manley Miller in New Orleans when he said,

“No one wants to be a leader anymore. Everyone wants to be a commentator. You want to know how to identify a leader? Just took for the person who’s making the decisions.”

The notorious billionaire oil man and corporate raider, T. Boone Pickens passed along this advice at the end of his life,

“Be willing to make decisions. That’s the most important quality in a good leader: Avoid the ‘Ready-aim-aim-aim-aim’ syndrome. You have to be willing to fire. Learn from mistakes. That’s not just a cliché. I sure made my share. Remember the doors that smashed your fingers the first time and be more careful the next trip through. Be humble. I always believed the higher a monkey climbs in the tree, the more people below can see his ass. You don’t have to be that monkey.”

In his book, “Where Have all the Leaders Gone?” Lee Iacocca, that innovative leader who breathed new life into one of America’s most important corporations said,

“The most innovative research is often killed during the peer review process. Why? Well, let me put it to you simply: Imagine if every time Chrysler wanted to bring a new car to market, it had to depend on positive reviews from GM and Ford. Are you starting to get the picture?”

During his rant at a Wizard of Ads partner meeting a few years ago, the dazzling Mick Torbay said,

“You need to understand something: the committee is not evil. The committee doesn’t want you to fail. The committee has nothing but good intentions. But the committee can’t innovate. More than anything, the committee wants to look good to the rest of the committee… So don’t be surprised that when you present a really, really great idea to a committee, the only thing you’re gonna get is a reason why that idea won’t work; one reason for every member of the committee. The committee will always pull you to the center. The committee will help you avoid risk, but risk and reward are two sides of the same coin. If you avoid risk, then huge success is out of the question. Are you okay with that?”

As we approach the beginning of a brand-new year, let’s go back to what I said in the beginning:

Authority can be given to a person. Leadership cannot.
People with authority often have no followers.
People with followers often have no authority.

Leaders require no authority. They say, ‘This is what I’ve decided to do.’
And then they do it. Others see them doing it and decide to follow.

What have you decided to do?

Book a call with Ryan Chute of Wizard of Ads® today.

I want you to:
be more productive,
reduce your mistakes,
shorten your learning curve,
and elevate your success.

If I am going to help you do these things, we must first look at what’s hiding in your blind spot.

Are you ready?

Teamwork in Business is Highly Overrated.

Teamwork is never the answer.
Individual responsibility is the answer.

A relay race is really just a series of individual runners, three of whom begin their efforts with an advantage, or a deficit, handed to them by the previous runner. If a runner increases that advantage or shortens that deficit, he or she was successful.

When individuals are rewarded collectively, we create the illusion of a team.

1: Individual responsibility brings out the best in us.
2: You create a committee when you remove individual responsibility.
3: Every bureaucracy begins as a well-intentioned committee.

But we love to be members of a tribe. Being part of a team – a tribe – gives us a sense of identity, purpose, and adventure. These feelings help us to perform as individuals.

Americans love football. But it isn’t the teamwork that attracts us. It is the tribalism and the tribal leaders.

Quarterbacks, running backs and receivers – the tribal leaders who score the most points – are paid a lot more money than the rest of the team. So why do coaches tell players that every member of the team is “equally important”?

I can’t help but hear the “Animal Farm’ voice of George Orwell, his tongue about to punch a hole in his cheek,

“All animals are created equal. But some animals are more equal than others.”

The role of a tribal leader is to instill the values, beliefs, and culture of the tribe into each of its members and each of its fans.

Tribal leaders are different from tribal managers.

A Manager – a Coach – holds each individual responsible for delivering the outcome that he or she has been assigned.

Steve Jobs did not invent the Apple computer. Steve Wozniak invented the Apple computer.

Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs were not a team. They were partners, each of whom had specific responsibilities.

“Most inventors and engineers I’ve met are like me … they live in their heads. They’re almost like artists. In fact, the very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone …. I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone… Not on a committee. Not on a team.” *

That is Steve Wozniak’s advice to you.

“Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy… Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.”

– John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Wozniak was the first runner in a relay race. He handed the baton to Steve Jobs. When Jobs was forced to hand that baton to John Sculley in 1985, Scully stumbled and handed the baton to Michael Spindler who stumbled and handed it to Gil Amelio who fell on his face and left a 20-foot skid mark on the track.

Steve Jobs returned to the company in 1996 and brought it back to life. After he died in 2011, tribal manager Tim Cook lifted Apple to a $1 trillion stock valuation, the first ever in history.

Professor Scott Galloway made a piercing comment about the power of tribal leaders when he was interviewed by Christiane Amanpour,

“As societies become wealthier and more educated, the reliance on a super-being and church attendance goes down, but they still look for idols. Into that void steps technology leaders because technology… …is the closest thing we have to magic. Our new Jesus Christ was Steve Jobs, and now Elon Musk has taken on that mantle.”

Although I admired the abilities of Steve Jobs, he was merely the popularizer, the face, the dynamic leader, the pitchman, the philosopher, the high priest of the Apple religion. Without Wozniak, Steve Jobs would likely have been just another California techie bouncing from company to company in blue jeans, a black turtleneck, and sneakers.

I will leave Elon Musk up to you.

Book a call with Ryan Chute of Wizard of Ads®, and we’ll hook you up.

There are only three reasons to have a list of core values.

    1: Inspire and reinforce “on-brand” behavior from employees.
    2: Assist in the orientation and onboarding of new hires.
    3: Inform investors, customers, and other interested parties of what they can expect from you.

PROBLEM: When your core values include aspirational words that describe attributes rather than actions, your core values list will be interpreted differently by different readers, regardless of any clarifying language that might appear beneath the aspirational words.

Use descriptions of actions
rather than create a list of attributes.

These are a few core values
that describe aspirational attributes
rather than observable actions:

“Transparency”
“Integrity”
“Quality”
“Accountability”
“Respect”
“Passion”

How do you know if a person is transparent, accountable, or passionate?
It is hard to know what a person is being, but it is easy to see what they are doing.

Actions are easier to recognize than Attributes.
This is why lists of attributes rarely ring true in the hearts of employees.
When you list aspirational attributes instead of observable actions:

1. Employees aren’t exactly sure what to do.
2. New hires are intimidated and confused.
3. Investors, customers, and other interested parties will not be able to clearly observe your core values manifested through the actions of your people.

If your employees do not see your core values modeled by their fellow employees and reinforced by management each day, you don’t have a core values list; you have a wish list, a poster on the wall that will quickly become invisible.

An actionable Core Values List will improve your company culture as well as the experience you deliver to your customers.

Ray Seggern teaches:
Your core values list is the STORY you are telling,
the daily experience of your employees determines your CULTURE,
and the reactions of your customers will be determined by the EXPERIENCE you give them.

If you have a Wish List of aspirational attributes rather than a Core Values List of observable actions, here are a few examples of how attributes can be expressed and described as actions:

Rather than say “Transparency,”
we might say, “We make only honest and accurate statements about our products.”

Rather than say “Integrity,”
we might say, “We always follow through on our promises.”

Rather than say “Quality,”
we might say, “We will only sell products that are expertly manufactured from the finest materials.”

Rather than say “Accountability,”
we might say, “We never make excuses for our shortcomings or try to shift the blame to others.”

Rather than say “Respect,”
we might say, “We use courteous language at all times and maintain eye contact when others are speaking.”

Rather than say “Passion,”
we might say, “We smile and display energy, attention, and enthusiasm at all times.”

In conclusion: A core values list, by definition, should contain only your core values. Don’t let it morph into a comprehensive list that feels like a sermon or a pep talk. Short, tight lists work better than long, rambling ones. Your core values list should not exceed 100 words. (The “actions” list in bold letters is 71 words.)

If you aren’t a showman or a storyteller, you’re still in good company. Wizard of Ads® can help you create the brand or marketing story you need to drive your user experience. Book a call.