Feral: Weeknotes #36
It’s funny how you run into ideas… no sooner than I’d posted about Kate Waters talking about ‘splitters and lumpers’ than I bumped into the very same thought in Richard Huntington’s book Feral Strategy. There is so much richness in this little book - it’s only 100 odd pages - but I found myself liberally scribbling away and applying little post-it tabs to the pages and pages that caught my interest.
I particularly liked the ‘three little questions’ he asks the clients and organisations he works with:
What is your business world class at?
What are the people in your business passionate about right now?
What are the sincerest beliefs of the organisation?
Not dissimilar to Tom Morton’s ‘appreciative enquiry’ questions, either. More and more, I’m absolutely convinced in the power of brilliant questions to guide people through the work they are doing, rather than using people because they have the answer.
Hungtington’s book references George Monbiot’s Feral as it’s inspiration. An earlier incarnation of this blog reveals that I read this book sometime in late 2015.
I’m still fascinated by the idea of trophic cascades and the application of this idea to the advertising industry as a metaphor for the benefits of a more joined up ecology of disciplines and skillsets coming together to create solutions to client problems. Free from predators Sheep will eat and eat and eat, creating monocultures. Reduce the population of sheep by even a small fraction and the conditions for a more vibrant and varied ecology are created.
I revisited my paperback copy of the book - I’m always interested in where I’ve put tabs. What things I found interesting at the time. In this particular book I’ve placed many. I’d also made notes in the final page of the book. One note reads ‘what used to exist vs what will exist again (and how)’. My interest in trophic cascades in 2015 stemmed from the notion that a return to some kind of fullservice agency would solve the issues of integration. Monbiot talks about the danger of nostalgia, of longing for a bygone era which can not and will not ever return. His desire to rewild is grounded in the practical limits of what can be achieved today - rather than wanting to reintroduce long extinct flora and fauna. I realise now, that in 2015 my desire for a return to fullservice agencies was misguided. It was longing for a time which could not ever be reintroduced. And as we see the Advertising industry being rewired before our very eyes as AI technologies mature, it is more evident than ever before we can’t get by on nostalgia: lamenting the lack of more modern day versions ‘Guiness Surfer’ isn’t helpful.
Advertising isn’t what it used to be. And to some extent that is fine and natural. More important is what should it be: what work should we be doing? how do we create value? The industry might benefit from being ‘rewilded’ - of finding a way to break out of the dominant cultural hegemony - but it has to do so in a way which is reflective of the future, not some dewy eyed memory of the past.
In other news, it’s been a quiet kinda week:
Reading Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico. Recommended to me by Simon. All too close to home both personally and professionally.
Finished watching Shifty and rewatched Can’t Get You Out of My Head. Adam Curtis docs have a habit of blurring into one.
Heat wave in the UK. I struggle with the heat. Temperatures in the shed reached 40 celsius. Too hot too think.
Delivery of several projects at work in last couple of weeks so had head down. Need to carve out more space for intellectual nutrition. Typically the first thing that goes when busy, tired, distracted.
