VSA Partners is celebrating its 40th anniversary! Since our founding in 1982, VSA Partners has become an integral part of the Chicago design and strategy community and has worked with top brands, like IBM, Google and Nike, to help companies break through in an increasingly noisy world.

To mark the milestone of our 40th year, we sought to do something different from the typical approach that companies might take to celebrate such occasions.

“We easily could have focused this anniversary as a retrospective on the exceptional work VSA is known for,” says CEO Anne-Marie Rosser. “But what really makes VSA successful is our people and their laser focus on designing for a better human experience. We knew that any effort to mark our anniversary should reflect the VSA way of thinking that has driven our work for 40 years and will continue to empower us for years to come.”

With this framework, VSA created an insightful, playful and at times poignant video series exploring the power of design in all its forms. The result is a window into the minds here at VSA, and how team members channel the world of design into their work.

The editorial campaign focuses on a wide range of concepts, from museum branding to detective shows to kitchen gadgets. Each video then explores how these transformational ideas have improved and enhanced the creativity of individual staff members.

“We too often take for granted the products, services and social constructs of the modern world,” says Chief Creative Officer Curt Schreiber. “But when we take time to examine how these innovations have radically changed and improved our lives, we’ll often find deep inspiration for the next big innovation yet to come.”

The video series comprises short videos of less than a minute apiece. Partner and Head of Design Thom Wolfe explains, “The idea is to not overwhelm people with our inspirations, but to encourage them to consider their own sources of inspiration and ultimately create a social dialogue about the role of design.”

Explore the complete collection.

“If just one person or marketer who views this video is inspired to approach their world through human-centered design, we’ll count this as a success,” says Rosser. “When we lead with designing for the human on the other end of the experience, that’s when truly magical things happen.”

What aren’t brand playbooks

For starters, brand playbooks are not brand guidelines; we should get that established before we get too far into this. They aren’t the evergreen principles or the fundamental expression assets defined in the brand guidelines, and they aren’t the strategic guidance that informs all brand experiences. They aren’t meant to be referenced by all employees as traditional guidelines are intended. In fact, great care is taken to ensure the use of playbooks is limited to specific practitioners, often on confidential terms.

Brands need effective guidelines before creating playbooks. There can be guidelines without playbooks, but it’s impossible to have playbooks without brand guidelines. It’s the “only one sun, but many planets” approach.

OK, then, what are brand playbooks?

Brand playbooks allow brands to be united while creating distinction for multiple initiatives. Each initiative shares a common bond through its fundamental connection to the brand guidelines but provides an individualized approach, enabling them to achieve their unique objectives.

There can be playbooks for every facet of your brand expression, or they can be combined to create campaign playbooks involving multiple expression elements. More instructional than definitional, each play details the roles of each brand player and how to use expression assets correctly. Playbooks effectively run plays across multiple teams and disciplines for brands, removing variability and ensuring your strategy performs as intended. Playbooks also enable brand guidelines to stay flexible and encourage innovation, because they provide the structure and game plan when more precise operations are required.

An effective analogy can be found in automotive design. Audi has a defined design language and principles that effortlessly communicate the Audi experience, which we’ll refer to as the brand guidelines in this example. They’re how you know you’re looking at one of its cars from any angle, even without seeing a logo. Now, think about all the different models Audi produces, each for different audiences serving different purposes. The various “models” in our analogy are brand playbooks. It’s how Audi customizes its approach between performance sedans and economy SUVs while retaining one unified brand.

Or think of Google and its famously minimal brand guidelines philosophy, where building from white and using four colors, limited typographic choices, and illustration defines the brand expression. Now think about the multitudes of internal Google initiatives, brand partnerships and marketing campaigns across a nearly unlimited collection of technologies and products. It would be gridlock to ask for just one set of expression tools to define an endless number of marketing programs, and that’s where playbooks become integral to a brand’s success. Every Google marketing initiative is united through a shared connection to its brand guidelines but becomes uniquely impactful because of how it creates and applies brand playbooks.

Despite all the excellent use cases for them, brand playbooks should never aspire to replace brand guidelines. If your brand is creating rules in its playbooks that contradict guidance found in your brand guidelines, it’s time to replace or update your brand guidelines.

Are brand playbooks right for you?

Here are a few questions to ask when investigating if a brand playbook is right for your next project: Has something changed in your industry and you need a rapid response not included in your brand guidelines? Does it require ever-increasing effort to create your marketing, but the return on investment isn’t worth it? Are your practitioners and partner agencies creating wildly different and disjointed outputs? Are the product owners in your organization frustrated by strict brand rules that limit their ability to promote the unique attributes of their products? Or maybe you’re asking brand architecture to solve problems that brand expression enhancement could answer instead?

If any of these sounds familiar, brand playbooks can help dig your team out of “stuck and overwhelmed” and turn it into a well-oiled machine.

How to begin a strong brand playbook

The best brand playbooks have beginnings rooted in awareness of circumstance and audience.

Circumstance: Identify what duties you’re asking your brand to perform, as well as the circumstances and where they fall short. This gap is the entry point for your brand playbook.

Audience: From there, you focus on the people requesting and creating brand assets. You talk to them and discover how you can help them accomplish what they need to do better, more efficiently, with the highest level of fidelity. You craft your guidance to match their needs, ensuring everyone who creates in your brand’s voice is invested in its success and values their role in creating work they are proud of within the structure of a playbook.

And then you get started. It’s important to note that brand playbooks created in a tight-knit, focused group tend to have the best impact. That’s because brand playbooks are often created in response to market forces or sudden opportunities where a swift brand pivot is essential and time is a primary concern. We find it’s vital to work quickly, with small teams identifying unique approaches in collaboration with the brand decision-makers entrusted to approve work.

VSA Partners has worked with countless clients to create quick-turn, responsive brand playbooks that help them react to market changes, new product offerings and countless other circumstances that require a more precise approach than their brand guidelines currently offer. Got an idea? Let’s talk.

Depending on whom you talk to, brand guidelines can be considered either indispensable or completely invisible. For some brands, guidelines are a lighthouse, transmitting a reliable signal and uniting brand creators through the fog of uncertainty. For others, guidelines are an unused and unseen formality, considered a restrictive tool that inhibits creativity.

But putting aside the emotions they evoke, what brand guidelines are is simple: a set of rules and standards that create a cohesive brand appearance across channels. From typography, imagery and tone of voice to countless other expression decisions, brand guidelines provide a single source of truth to communicate the brand strategy.

We consistently find a direct connection between high-achieving brands and thoughtfully constructed brand guidance. And brand guidance has only increased in importance over the past few decades. Considering the rapid acceleration of modern marketing channels, more is being asked of brands than ever before. Even once-sleepy B2B categories now force brands to compete in a world where coordinated performance across social media, digital, earned and paid media is no longer voluntary. And competing in this new reality forces brands to consider every aspect of their brand execution by transforming their brand guidance from invisible to indispensable.

How to get there? We rely on three principles when creating brand guidelines for our clients: intended audience knowledge, dynamic interfaces, and consistent brand training. Together, these considerations build brand guidelines that will not only be used, but will also be supremely useful toward creating cohesive brand experiences, building brand awareness and ultimately driving revenue and growth for our clients.

Know your audience

The world of brand execution is rapidly evolving—and with it, there’s exponential growth in both the quantity of content required and the number of roles necessary to create it. For example, what was once simply referred to as “digital design” has blossomed to include multiple disciplines of creators, from animators to influencers to media buyers—each with a distinct responsibility for brand output.

Branding has expanded beyond the output of what traditional designers and writers can achieve, and brand guidelines must evolve to value the unique needs of these new creators.

Without brand guidelines, chaos ensues. But with too tight a grip, the innovation and flexibility required by these fast-paced digital platforms is stifled by a cage of brand requirements. Choosing the right level for your company begins with recognizing that different types of creators and users require different levels of exactitude—and building your brand guidelines to reflect their needs.

The best-designed brands will fail if the people executing the brand are unable to successfully deliver the intent of the brand guidelines. Indeed, it’s common for brands to have talented creatives at the ready without the infrastructure that would allow them to succeed. Whatever the talent level available, brands must be realistic in assessing the skill and commitment required to implement their brand systems, and it starts by identifying each brand’s unique priorities. A direct-to-consumer brand will prioritize brand guidance principles differently than a business-to-business brand, and the rules will vary for each group of practitioners.

When creating brand systems, we’re consistently thinking about the user experience of the people who will ultimately build the brands we’ve designed. The final assembly of brand guidance is for us a culmination of the insights and decisions that guided us from the very start of the project.

Consider how a pioneering DTC brand like Warby Parker continuously uses a brand expression on the cutting edge of trends by prioritizing design aesthetics. It’s a delicate balance for Warby Parker to stay culturally current while building brand equity. Striking that balance requires a collection of uniquely talented practitioners to create nuanced branded experiences. Brands in this scenario recognize the freedom their practitioners need and prioritize brand principles over prescriptive brand rules. Generally speaking, the more advanced and specialized the makeup of your creative team, the more appropriate these flexible brand principles become.

A different scenario is common for B2B brands, where brand consistency and systems thinking is prioritized. This approach also requires a collection of talented practitioners, but this group is skilled in different ways. They’re able to unite disconnected executions, creating consistent branded experiences. Doing this requires the brand to provide definition, structure and clearly defined rules. A positive byproduct of this structure means brands in this scenario can work with a broader selection of practitioners, because general skills are best suited to accomplish the brand’s goals. Accordingly, when creating guidelines for this scenario, brands must recognize that they are simultaneously speaking to multiple skill levels and craft their guidance to match that reality.

It’s simply not enough for us to just design a beautiful brand. Brand guidelines must match the executional realities of the practitioners who will execute the brand every day, and support them with both the appropriate amount of structure and flexibility.

Create a dynamic interface

In a rapidly fading past life, brand guidelines were delivered via PDF. Today, the best brand guidelines are digital—and dynamic. The PDF guidelines of the past created significant challenges for the users, specifically the density and lack of clarity in the guidance found in PDF due to their extended length. Add in small text sizes and missing navigation functionality, and interfacing with PDF guidelines often felt like taking an AP test when you’ve only taken the regular class for the semester. Secondarily, once a PDF of the guidelines is created, it immediately becomes nearly impossible to update. The guidelines become a frozen monument to a moment in time, making ongoing brand updates all the more challenging to implement.

Digital solutions solve these problems. The fundamental relationship between curated guidance and website hierarchy forces a distillation of information that prioritizes clarity. And the dynamic nature means updates are easy and immediate. The ability to push updates to audiences while providing instantaneous access to assets allows brand guidelines to move at the speed of the digital world—evolving with the users, not holding them back.

The importance of brand training

We believe every employee plays a role in the successful representation of a brand’s strategy. Even the employees you wouldn’t normally consider integral to delivering brand messaging are routinely in a position to communicate on behalf of the brand, and each of those moments needs to align with the brand strategy for a modern brand to thrive. From those unexpected brand ambassadors through traditional brand creatives, every person who interacts with the brand should receive initial brand training followed by update sessions at regular intervals. For corporations, training on the brand guidelines should be as commonplace as security training.

Building on a baseline of brand training, customized training can then be deployed for creators where more specialized knowledge is required to produce nuanced aspects of brand expression. And for advanced creators, brand playbooks are a useful tool to communicate how to implement modified campaign expressions for niche audiences. (We’ll cover more about brand playbooks in part two.)

A quick Google search will highlight many off-the-shelf brand training approaches, but in our view, brand training needs to be every bit as unique as the brands they represent. Both the subjects communicated and the method for delivering the guidance need to be appropriate for the expectations and personality of the individual brands.

Conclusion

The brands that succeed in today’s fast-paced marketing ecosystem create thoughtfully considered digital brand guidelines that keep the audience in mind—and then train their creators with customized, flexible brand education.

VSA Partners is dedicated to creating better human experiences for our brand partners, and these human experiences don’t end outside the company’s walls. By building the framework for employees and creators to consistently carry out a cohesive brand experience, brand guidelines create a powerful force for brand cohesion and awareness. From the starting line to years after implementation, the brand guidelines we build are not just built to last—they’re built to scale.

Interested in working with us? Let’s start a conversation to discover how we can help you more clearly communicate your brand to your brand creators.

Logic and math tell us that purpose-driven brands earn more love from employees and customers—not to mention a higher share of wallet. Of course, making clear what you stand for in a way that people actually care about is much easier said than done. For VSA clients, defining—or redefining—who you are and what you stand for often begins with three definitions: purpose, vision and mission.

Why? And what are the differences? Fair questions. After all, a quick Google search shows you that many companies only have one or two, and “purpose” and “mission” are often used interchangeably. But we think the three work best together, setting the North Star and providing direction for those cloudy days when the path forward feels a little hazy. Think of it this way: purpose sets the course, vision acts as the map and mission is Siri telling you where to turn (and when you’ve gone off course).

Definitions and tips

As mentioned above, terminology is all over the place when it comes to purpose, vision and mission. So, it’s probably helpful to start with how we define the various pieces:

Purpose

Put simply, this is why the company exists. It’s a calling, meant to distill corporate aspiration into a memorable and actionable phrase. In a few words, these statements clarify criteria for success, drive understanding among external audiences and stakeholders, and inspire consistent action within the organization over the long term. They’re also the basis for brand development and for function as a business tool—guiding decisions in R&D, product development, market expansion and M&A, for starters.

Make it:

• Big, bold, long term
• Grounded in the human benefit
• The why, not the how

Vision

A vision statement is an ideal end-state that the corporation and its work will make possible. By definition, it’s aspirational—a stretch goal, a guidepost for ongoing change and achievement over the medium term. The statement should be specific, and it should evolve as the company achieves its goals.

Make it:

• Connected to—but more specific than—purpose
• Open to evolution as business goals are achieved
• Medium term

Mission

This is a statement of the actions needed to achieve the vision. These are specific, measurable, near-term goals. This statement is often fairly long, detailed and dry. That’s OK; in fact, that’s the point. Whereas a purpose statement is written to lift a company’s gaze, the mission statement is meant to keep its feet on solid ground.

Make it:

• The how, not the why
• Detailed and measurable
• Short term

The power of purpose

Purpose statements are tough to crack. They just are. It might take dozens (maybe hundreds) of versions to get right. The good news is that once yours sings, vision and mission tend to come together a little more easily because they anchor off the purpose. With that in mind, here are a few of my favorite purpose statements:

Marvin: To imagine and create better ways of living

This one is easy because VSA had a hand in its creation, and we witnessed up close the impact it had on the organization. After more than 100 years of making high-quality windows and doors, Marvin saw a greater consumer need for light, air and connection to the outdoors, and needed to set a new agenda. The statement works so well because it challenges employees and—pun warning—opens the door to innovation (“imagine and create”) while landing on a human benefit (“better ways of living”). On the heels of its introduction, Marvin launched a new modern product line and two new innovations, Skycove and the Awaken skylight—all inspired and influenced by the company’s bold purpose. See our work with Marvin.

Nike: To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world

*If you have a body, you are an athlete.

In one of those little terminology quirks, Nike calls this its mission. But it functions like our definition of a purpose statement, so that’s how I’m cataloging it here. I love this one because it’s big and ambitious, leaning into Nike’s design heritage while stretching the company toward future innovation. It’s also inclusive. We sometimes think of athletes as the ones with multimillion-dollar shoe contracts. Here, Nike invites us all into its sports community. Lastly, the asterisk is a great little tone setter—a fun wink from a company that doesn’t take itself too seriously, even in a corporate statement.

State Street: We help create better outcomes for the world’s investors and the people they serve.

We’ve worked with many financial institutions, from century-old stalwarts to today’s disruptors, so we know well the joy and pain of carving out a distinct point of view in this space. State Street’s purpose works because “better outcomes” is about going beyond monetary success, suggesting that the value of money is in what it enables. The last part of the sentence also serves as a reminder of investors’ role in the financial success of others.

Great. But how?

Definitions? Check. Examples? Check. But how should you go about writing purposeful purpose statements? It’s helpful to get outside perspective (VSA can help, of course), but here are a few tips if you decide to go it alone:

Be bold but grounded in real value.

That’s the trick, isn’t it? A good purpose statement is big, daring, maybe even a little out of reach. But it can get unwieldy very quickly if you’re not focused on what you do for people. If you run a local organic ice cream shop in Boise, Idaho, your purpose can’t be to “to nourish the world’s spirit,” because, well, you’re only in one city, and no matter how good it is, ice cream isn’t going to change the world.

Leadership must participate.

Agenda-setting language needs agenda-setter involvement. Bringing in the C-suite at the last minute is a recipe for getting nowhere. Instead, set up a working session with the CEO or other leaders to make sure you understand their aspirations and maybe even road-test language together.

Words are hollow without action.

Marvin’s promise of “better ways of living” isn’t just talk. It’s investing in innovation, making employees part of a profit-sharing program and spending significant time and dollars in its communities. It’s important that people feel your purpose in ways big and small. When writing, think through the tangible ways you’re going to make real for employees, customers and communities.

A strong purpose, vision and mission can help guide your organization in a rapidly changing consumer and technology landscape. Getting there will be tough, frustrating and you’ll likely want to give up a time or two. But in the end, these statements provide a framework to guide big and small decisions and to create stronger relationships with employees and customers.

I’ll admit I said it.

I said it out loud, before all the shutdowns, and before we knew how long this would last.

You know, if we get to work from home for a while, that part may not be so bad.”

And for a while, it wasn’t so bad. I liked sleeping in an extra hour. I enjoyed making my own lunch in my own kitchen. And it was a treat to spend more quality time with my significant other.

Today? I miss going to the office. Working from home has been a little tough on me because I’m a Connector. That’s my work personality.

Connectors feel a deep need to share their truest, honest selves with their teammates and their bosses. We want to connect as people—not just co-workers. We think it’s important to go through the ups and downs together. We believe those experiences tend to facilitate collaboration, which leads to better work.

There are lots of employees out there just like me, but importantly, there are even more employees out there who are not like me. And we have the data to prove it.

You see, different employees care about different things. Yes, all of us value functional, tangible benefits, like perks, paychecks and job security. But when it comes to emotional needs—the intangible stuff that rarely appears in a job description—that’s where we start to segment into different work personalities.

We conducted a quantitative survey of 1,100 employees who are working primarily from home. We asked them to identify what they most want—functionally and emotionally—from their employer. We also interrogated them about their attitudes on working from home, and we sought to understand their WFH conditions. (Do they have kids? Do they have roommates? How big is their living space? Are they in the city or the country or the suburbs?)

This study is helping us and our clients better understand how we can motivate, retain and reward our people in this new remote working environment.

VSA REMOTE WORKER STUDY: OVERVIEW

The quantitative study revealed five distinct needs-based segments. Because their needs differ, their employers must add value in different ways.

Climbers: Achievement driven

Climbers are frustrated by the lack of consistency, clarity and structure in their WFH routine. It’s harder for them to feel acknowledged or rewarded for the work they’re doing, and they are less likely to see a path forward with their company.

Connectors: People driven

Connectors derive a lot of their self-identity from their workplace relationships. When they WFH, they feel distant from what they value most: their team and workplace culture.

Believers: Purpose driven

Believers know their company’s mission—but not always the company’s plan. They refuse to let these strange circumstances slow them down. They’re working more than ever—and burnout is a risk.

Grinders: Engagement driven

Grinders love the work for its own sake. WFH helps them focus more deeply, and they love how productive they feel. They already tend to detach from their teammates and workplace culture, and remote work pushes them even further away.

Balancers: Balance driven

Balancers put their personal life ahead of their work life, and for the most part, remote work allows them to better achieve the balance they seek. The increasingly blurred lines between when they’re at work and when they’re not is a creeping frustration.

Which one are you?

If you run a business or manage a team, there’s a good chance you have folks in all five of these segments. If we understand what motivates them, we can design solutions and communications that drive happiness, engagement and productivity for all types.

To learn more about each work personality, read the white paper. And if you’d like our help assessing how your own workforce fits into these segments, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Seriously, I’d love to connect. It’s kind of my thing.

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Study conducted by Michael Girts, Kyle Flynn, Elizabeth Hancock, Ryan Monroe, Joe Nio, Linda Vo and Emily Woodward.

Few understand that procrastination is our natural defense, letting things take care of themselves.”

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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Call me a phlegmatic neophobe. (Actually, don’t.) Where others may dive right in, hit the ground running, or perch precipitously on the bleeding edge, you’ll find me keeping cool and dry on the sidelines. From touchpoints to toolchains to tech—when it comes to solving business problems, it’s often hard to know where to begin, thanks to the rapidly increasing complexity of it all. And while common wisdom privileges a “fail fast, fail early” mentality, I’m here to propose an alternative that has less to do with “fast” and “early,” and more to do with strategically sitting back.

For innovation

As someone who likes to flirt with career suicide (see my HR jar), I’m going to go out on a limb here and admit that despite working in tech for over a decade, I’m a big, bad laggard. You won’t find me whispering sweet nothings to Siri, motorized longboarding to chatbot meetups or even updating my OS unless I’m nagged about it a few times first.

There’s a logic to my inaction, and it has something to do with the Lindy Effect. The concept most notably appears in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book, “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.” Taleb, a trader and risk analyst turned essayist, generalizes that the lifespan of technologies can be roughly predicted by their existing age. Newer technologies (VR, tablets, chatbots) are more fragile and have shorter life expectancies than older ones (leather shoes, wheels, books). By this logic, we can comfortably predict that most of the stuff touted as the hottest new tech is destined for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch—physically, metaphorically or both. It’s just a matter of when.

For organizations and the individuals that comprise them, it also follows that while staying informed of trends is necessary and helpful, not investing too deeply, too quickly is not necessarily hurtful. In fact, being strategically impassive—that is, saving yourself the trouble of reacting to things until they’ve been “time-tested” or proven their staying power—has its upsides. To quote Frank Chimero: “In one way, it is easier to be inexperienced: You don’t have to learn what is no longer relevant.” When it comes to technical infrastructures, you don’t have to disassemble what’s no longer relevant, either.

Beyond the short-term upside of conserving energy (and capital), waiting before acting has longer-term benefits. It’s a topic that Peter Thiel of PayPal and Palantir fame tackles in another good read, called “Zero to One.” He believes that companies that forfeit initial mindshare—and the attendant downsides of firsthand exposure to volatility and risk—in favor of watching and learning from others’ mistakes can set themselves up to capitalize on what he calls a “last-mover advantage.” The gist is this: Make the last big development in a specific market, monopolize mindshare, reap outsize upside. (This is precisely what Google did with its search engine.)

For brands

It’s not just techies and tech companies that stand to benefit from keeping themselves on ice. At a work session with a Fortune 50 big-box retailer just last week, I was heartened to hear a senior leader loudly dismiss the idea that they should be “ashamed of being a follower and not a leader.” From her perspective, her company’s competitive edge lay in staying laser-focused on an enduring promise (which has more to do with serving people than the shiniest new tech), while allowing others to pioneer solutions to complex operational, supply-chain, technology and culture challenges and clear a path forward.

After all, in a crowded business landscape, differentiation is predicated on being disproportionately good at something. (Thiel offers 10x as a rule-of-thumb multiplier for just how much better you have to be than your closest substitute on some important dimension to count as disproportionately good.) In the endurance sport of business, the principles of motion economy apply: Being good is just as much about the stuff you don’t do as the stuff you do do.

And what if motion economy is as much a predictor of performance in business as it is in athletics? This is sort of what Frances Frei and Anne Morriss are getting at in “Uncommon Service.” Frei, a professor at Harvard Business School (slash short-lived, would-be Uber savior), and Morriss suggest that in order to strategically outperform on the things that matter most to your customers—that is, to be disproportionately good at some some things—companies must necessarily and deliberately underperform on some others. That means they must not do certain things.

Take the example of Norwegian Air Shuttle. Taking a page out of the Southwest playbook, the European airline began vocally positioning itself as the the first low-cost long-haul carrier back in 2014, promising $69 flights from the U.S. to Europe in the coming years. While competitors have historically relied on in-flight service offerings for differentiation, chairman and CEO Bjorn Kjos took the opposite tack, offering no-frills service in exchange for rock-bottom fares. The most basic tickets don’t include baggage, food or drink, or a seat reservation; entertainment is limited; and blankets and pillows have to be purchased for all fare classes. To borrow Frei’s parlance, the secret to Norwegian’s continued success—today, it’s the third-largest low-cost carrier in Europe, worth just shy of $1 billion—comes down to Kjos’ commitment to underperforming on the things budget travelers don’t care about (amenities) in order to outperform on the things they do (price).

The bottom line? Forfeiting activity on some fronts to consistently invest in others promises greater opportunities for differentiation and competitive advantage over time.

For data

Nowhere is strategic inaction, or at least strategic ignorance, more important than in the world of data. To quote Taleb once again: “[People often] think that intelligence is about noticing things are relevant (detecting patterns); in a complex world, intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant (avoiding false patterns).” In ”Fooled by Randomness,” a book entirely devoted to big errors in the ways we interpret big data, Taleb advises against regularly reading the news as a way to adjust for the cognitive illusion that the more information we consume, the more knowledge we absorb—and overreacting to fragments of information.

If you can handle an exercise analogy from someone whose whole premise is sitting it out, here’s an electrical engineering analogy from someone who also routinely trips the circuit breaker.

There’s a concept called signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) that can be used to illustrate the types of mistakes we’re prone to make when we expose ourselves to too much information. Signal here is the valuable stuff; noise the proverbial chaff. The larger the measure, the more the desired signal stands out in comparison to the noise. The problem is, the ratio of signal to noise changes based on the frequency of sampling. Anyone who checks their stocks or cryptos knows this all too well. Your Ethereum might be down $24 this hour but up $650 this year. Your hourly view is not wrong, but it’s a distortion of a larger reality.

Because we’re both flooded with data and wired to hunt for signals, our habits of getting information actually run counter to our capacity to make sense of it. Exposing ourselves to more stuff—whether numerical or trend data, or just the headlines in the paper—more frequently can actually undermine understanding rather than help it (as anyone who’s ever spent a lunch break on Twitter can attest). The trick, according to Taleb, is to engage less frequently so we can better catch “very large changes in data or conditions, never small ones,” operating on the faith that the “significant signals have a way to reach [us].”

For people

So what does this all mean for you and me? Outside of being a really lofty way to rationalize procrastinating to your manager (give it a try and report back), a healthy dose of strategic inaction can actually make us better team members and client partners.

Allow me to wax metaphysical for a moment.

By design, agency life privileges activity—effort, outputs, hours, busyness, “utilization.” At its extremes, this can create a production mentality which invites insecurity and panic in the absence of constant (and apparent) forward motion, scatters our energies and penalizes both efficiency and invisible acts of thinking. We routinely treat creative labor the way we treat manual labor: standard set of inputs in, standard set of outcomes out. But the math doesn’t work out, and we all know it.

Creativity is irrational, nonlinear, alchemical. It requires a state of natural focus or “flow.”

As W. Timothy Galloway writes in the cult classic, “The Inner Game of Tennis”:

“(It) is not achieved by staring hard at something. It is not trying to force focus, nor does it mean thinking hard about something. Natural focus occurs when the mind is interested. When this occurs, the mind is drawn irresistibly toward the object (or subject) of interest. It is effortless and relaxed, not tense and overly controlled.”

Think about the last time you kicked off a project. Did everybody scatter in a semi-panic? Did you jump right in and begin to decode a vast trove of documents? Have you ever found yourself more confused the more you learned? Have you ever abstained from just asking the client, opting instead to MacGyver your way to the answers you needed? Or have you tried to predict what they were going to say when you did? Has your perception of the ask ever done an about-face two weeks later? And what about all the stuff you think you need to do to grow your career? The classes you want to take. The new tools you want to learn. All the books you want to read but haven’t.

The alternative doesn’t mean succumbing to inertia or opting out of the Sisyphean slog. (Spoiler alert: You’ll still have to fill out your time sheet.) It just means becoming more comfortable doing less. Less forcing, less striving, less task completing, less overengineering and hamster wheeling. By shifting the burden to things to prove their need to be done, we create space and buy time for the “significant signals” to reach us. We convert the unknown, the unplanned and the unmanaged from headwinds to tailwinds. The payoff? A more natural, more intentional state of momentum.

All you gotta do is, well—don’t.

Reads in this piece

• ”The Black Swan,” Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• ”Zero to One,” Peter Thiel
• ”Fooled by Randomness,” Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• “Uncommon Service,” Frances Frei and Anne Morriss
• “The Inner Game of Tennis,” W. Timothy Galloway