"PPPPlans For the Future" (Four P's #168)
Embrace the Weirdness, Get Some Air, Build a Brand, See the Future
If you think you are weird, well, you probably are.
While every human on earth is unique -- an original blend of personal experiences, social encounters, and genetics -- being weird is more than just being different than anyone else. Weirdness is feeling out of place, feeling like you don’t fit in. It's probably so common that if you’ve never felt weird or awkward, that’s actually kind of weird, itself.
(If you’ve never felt that way, feel free to skip to Something Practical below. Otherwise, let’s embrace the weirdness!)
SOMETHING PERSONAL: Embracing the Weirdness
We’ve all felt weird at one point or another, but it's what you do with those feelings that really matter. This feeling, sometimes it lasts for a second. Sometimes it can last a full year. Either way, it is a growing trend in modern society. With TV, social media and other forms of technology, it can even be emotionally and physically debilitating. Some “weird” people end up as outsiders, shouldering the loneliness and social anxiety that come along with being different, whereas others are able to harness it. But many weird people can be, and are, incredibly social, successful, and happy if they can accept and transform weirdness into personal strengths.
As a fellow weirdo, I can promise you that you’re not alone. Whether you were bullied in school, didn’t quite fit in at summer camp, or maybe now you work in a field where most of your colleagues don’t look, sound, or act like you, it is definitely something everyone has experienced (whether they admit it or not). I remember specific times in my life when I felt my personality didn't quite fit the environment in which I was in.
Sometimes that feeling is caused by something physical, such as appearance, age, or gender. Other times, it is perceived differences in intelligence, experience, wealth, status, or capability. Accepting differences in other people can be really challenging – and at least part of the blame lies with our brains. Evolutionarily, humans seek out people who look and think like them. When social relationships were our only defense against extinction, we had to maintain them or perish. Our brains evolved so that when we see faces that don’t look like our own, we read them as a threat. The same is true of how someone sounds or the clothes they wear. Difference activates the brain’s threat center, and we isolate either them or ourselves.
I look at my children now and perceive them through my own lens. My son doesn't enjoy team sports and will find excuses NOT to participate. My daughter absolutely can’t be the last one to arrive at a birthday party or else it’s meltdown city… and she often talks in a funny voice when she's around new people. Is that weird? Does it matter? More importantly, should I be doing something different to help them get comfortable? As a parent, the last thing you want is for your child to feel pain or get upset. Watching their peers single them out or make fun of something, even innocently, is just about the worst feeling there is. As we grow up, we realize that being ignored, laughed at, or discriminated against by friends, acquaintances, colleagues, and strangers can be devastating.
Ultimately, trying TOO hard to fit in can be just as challenging. Being unique makes us memorable. It fuels creativity, art, and innovation. The better our adaptive resources, the more comfortable we will be in new and different settings. I have spent most of my teenage, college, and professional years feeling like a nonconformist trying to survive as the odd one out, but putting our unique qualities to work takes effort. And the first person you need to convince is yourself. Changing "who you are" is not entirely realistic, but improving upon the aspects of your personality that you’re not happy with can be easier than it sounds. Experts have found that changing your personality is not only possible, but can happen pretty quickly. For example, maybe you want to be a great public speaker. Forcing yourself to sign up for public speaking opportunities, and telling yourself you love doing it, can make you into one.
As an adult, the community in which you end up should be one where you can let your weirdness shine. If people cannot accept you, let alone celebrate you, for the weird person you are, fuck them. Seriously. You may not be able to cut them out of your life, but those people are just as weird for their own reasons, and in their own ways. We all have to test the limits of what we’re comfortable with, and make adjustments that work for each of us.
SOMETHING PRACTICAL: Getting Some Air
There are lots of things we take for granted in life. For some, it is our health, for others it is the love of our family and friends.
While pumpkin picking with my family this weekend, both grateful for the unseasonably warm weather while also anxiously checking the sky every few minutes for rain, I began to marvel at the expanse of openness that is our sky. The clouds were moving quickly and the wind moved across the open fields without restraint. Our atmosphere and planet are wonderous. I mean, how amazing is it that we can comfortably walk around outdoors, without any suits, masks or technology required? Anytime we want, just going for a stroll, a hike, a drive, whatever. All thanks to... air?
And not just any air, but the perfect mix of gases that enable us to perform basic life functions involuntarily. Sure, we evolved to survive on this current atmospheric mix over thousands and millions of years, but air has also evolved over time, as well.
Oxygen makes life, as we know it, possible. Without oxygen, we all die in minutes. But, oh, too, is it so much more. Most organisms alive today can only tolerate oxygen because we have antioxidants. These chemicals prevent the cell-damaging process of oxidation, wherein oxygen breaks electrons away from organic molecules, causing them to disintegrate. Early life forms didn’t have antioxidants, so oxygen was a deadly toxin. But single cell organisms then joined together when threatened by oxygen; and multicellular life began. At some point, multicellular life exploded (Hello, Cambrian explosion!), and most of the life forms that now inhabit the planet are its direct result.
Oxygen can still cause severe damage. In fact, oxidation and radiation cause very similar biological reactions. When you breathe, the same intermediate molecules are produced as oxygen is turned into water. Meaning that breathing is actually an extremely slow version of oxygen poisoning. That's why we should exhale in addition to inhaling. Sounds like a practical solution, yes?
A few weeks ago, I talked about how human beings try to extend their lifespans. Well, turns out a reader emailed me to explain how there are two basic types of theories on aging – programmed and stochastic theories. The programmed theories state that aging is hardwired into our genes, that it’s similar to other processes of life. The stochastic theories maintain that aging is an accumulation of wear and tear over time, but that it's not pre-programmed or pre-ordained to a certain clock. So it's possible that wear and tear is the result of oxygen poisoning over the course of any given person’s life.
We can't live forever, but those of us naturally selected to pass along our genes to our offspring can live on at an atomic level. By fueling natural selection, genetic variation and therefore being a vehicle for growth, oxygen has protected life from deterioration over time, even if it is fleeting.
Which is why we should stop staring up at the sky and get back to picking pumpkins.
SOMETHING PROFESSIONAL: Building a Brand
Over the past few months, I've worked on a couple of fun branding projects for two very different clients/companies. One is an established brand that was looking to contemporize its overall positioning for a new generation of socially-conscious young women. The other is an emerging brand looking to create and establish an identity in a totally new sector on the digital/tech industry.
Brands big and small, old and new, face constant and disruptive changes that are completely altering the ways in which consumers engage. Brands can’t simply ignore these changes, but must adapt to them. Both of the two companies with whom I have been working are investing in the development of a clear brand strategy to connect with customers, to create or change customer perceptions, to align and empower employees, and to act as a guide to management’s decision-making. It's just as important that the brand strategy works with the internal team AND for external audiences. New technologies have changed and connected the world in different ways than ever before, and these brands have to be both global and local. They have to adapt to the changing habits of consumers as well as the increasing convergence of digital and the physical environments. Their brand needs to “work” at all level, across all touchpoints.
But why does branding matter? It’s not enough today to just have a great service or product. To really stand out from the pack, companies need a clear and powerful narrative for their brands. A brand’s story will be a north star for the entire organization, will generate trust and engagement from its customers, and motivate its people. Marketing, sales, and growth plans fail without a clear sense of the brand: what it believes in, what it stands for, and how it should behave.
I've worked with some incredible strategists over the past two decades, and each has a slightly different approach to this. I like to start by making a list of what the company does well, how it does it, and why it does it. The end result will give everyone, internally and externally, a clear sense of your purpose in the world. Boiling it down, there are four essential steps toward defining a brand idea:
Gather team inputs and internal feedback. What does the team want to see? What do they most like about being a part of your brand? How would THEY sell it to potential employees or customers? Stakeholder interviews can help articulate WHY your organization exists.
Do the same thing, but with customers and prospects. Why are they your customers? What makes you stand out? And what could you do to be even better?
Aggregate and Synthesize. Cull through the insights to craft a simple, but meaningful, narrative that can inspire management, employees, and customers.
Edit and test. Once you’ve developed a brand strategy, put it to the test. Is it relevant to key audiences? Does it really capture your organization’s purpose? Does it articulate a sense of value? Is it authentic? And can it stand the test of time? The really important thing is to live up to the brand narrative every day.
A brand is obviously much more than its logo, its colors, its blog posts, or its advertising campaigns. A brand is a promise that tells the customer what they can expect when they engage with it, buy its product, or use its services. Delivering a consistent and authentic brand experience is crucial to a company’s success at every touchpoint of the customer journey, from app to shop to product packaging to social media channels. It will extend to buildings, vehicles, even the napkin holders in the company cafeteria. It happens behind the scenes, in public, in the factory and in the customer service experience long after the product is purchased or services are provided.
Building the brand may feel like a one-and-done step on the path to a company's success, but it is truly an underlying pillar that must be considered and leveraged over the months, quarters, years, and decades. And if it's no longer working, or requires a reset, there is no time like the present to shake things up.
SOMETHING POLITICAL: Seeing the Future
With a little over two weeks to go before Election Day 2021 (or as I like to call it, "the midterm elections before the midterm elections"), most of the important races are at the state and local level. There are two more special elections to fill vacancies in the House of Representatives (Hello, Ohio!) as well as two gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia.
But the more popular conversations this year will already start looking ahead to 2022 and the potential for significant Democratic losses in Congress. This is not atypical. Opposition parties typically do well in first mid-term elections (see: 1994, 2006, 2010, 2014, 2018), which doesn't bode well for a less-than-popular Joe Biden (45% approval rating) and the Democrats (who are struggling to implement their ambitious agenda).
A failure to pass their agenda could compound the Democrats’ problems by disillusioning their base and sending a message of dysfunction to swing voters. Joe Biden was also elected to do one thing: defeat COVID. When COVID was on the decline, his numbers went way up, and when COVID surged back, his poll numbers fell. The key to him getting his numbers going back up is he has to defeat COVID and get credit for it. Republicans know this, and it's why the vaccine and masks have been politicized. The emergence of the Delta variant surprised and dismayed many Americans who thought the country was on a steady path to recovery.
So COVID matters more than the Congressional legislative battles. Bill Clinton lost 54 House seats in 1994 after passing a sweeping budget bill, a substantial crime bill, and the most significant gun-control legislation Congress has ever approved. The losses were even greater in 2010 after Barack Obama passed his stimulus plan, expansive financial-reform legislation, and, above all, the Affordable Care Act, extending health insurance to more of the uninsured than any other federal initiative had since Medicare and Medicaid. Despite, or perhaps because of, all that, Democrats lost 63 House seats in 2010, the biggest midterm loss for either party in more than 70 years.
Why? Those victories actually stimulate the opposition party base, whereas the majority party voters get complacent. The reality is that legislative wins rarely have an immediate impact heir benefits are rarely fully felt by voters as soon as the first midterm.
No single cause explains all of these results, positive and negative, for the president’s party. But from these cases, the clearest rule might be that midterm elections turn less on assessments of legislation that may eventually affect people’s lives than on verdicts about the country’s condition in the here and now. Pundits like to point out that presidential elections are always about the future, whereas midterms seem to be more about today.
What it means for Democrats is that they should expect very limited benefits, even if they pass the economic agenda now being stalled by DINO Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Arizona's Kyrsten Sinema. A PAC associated with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is already launching ads targeting the cumulative cost of the Democratic program.
So it will come down to a common theme from recent elections: Who do swing voters feel like is the lesser of two evils? Democrats can point to evidence that they are doing more to alleviate voters’ COVID and economic strains than Republicans. For now, the surest way for congressional Democrats to improve their odds in 2022 is to wrap up the contentious wrangling and reach a deal on the economic plan as soon as possible and put the focus back on beating back this pandemic.
With that, I encourage you all to get your third vaccine (when eligible). I did it and I feel great!