Ask The Record Keepers
“If you don't understand vulnerability, you cannot manage and lead people. If you're not showing up vulnerably as a leader, you can't expect anyone to follow you—period.” -Brené Brown
Whales are ancient. Whales have gigantic brains. Some Native Americans believe that the whale is Earth’s record keeper, our living library. If we want to understand the universe and our place in it, we might ask the whales. But first, we must learn to tune into the whales’ frequencies.
Do you believe this is possible?
I believe we have the capacity to hear the whales and to learn their songs. I also believe that it will take hundreds, maybe thousands of human brains working in harmony to tune into one whale brain.
It will also require a new humility. Humans have lost our way and unchecked ego is at the root of our collective global problems. Ego pits me against you. Ego assigns false worth to one person or group of people. That’s why we need to let it go, and replace it with something better.
What’s the key to this new enlightenment? Humans working as one for the common good is the ultimate test that we must pass, or we will remain stuck and unable to hear the universal truths in the whales’ songs.
To Move Forward, Trust the Team
If we could hear and understand the whale’s messages, I believe we would hear their Songs of Interdependence. Interdependence is the framework for healthy teams, healthy families, healthy neighborhoods, and so on. We all rely on one another and take care of one another. Or we fail one another.
There are shelves of management books on the topic of healthy teams. Condensed to its essence, healthy teams run on trust, and trust is built through shared experiences and vulnerability. Trust is also one hundred percent reliant on honesty and transparency. When team members wonder what management might be hiding or vice versa, it’s a problem for everyone.
Screens Down, Down with Screens
Quitting Facebook is a thing now. It has been for years. There are reasons to flee and just as many reasons to stay. Social media is an online hall of mirrors. It only reflects what it sees, and it only sees what you put in front of the mirror. If your Facebook feed is a junk food diet of trolls and haters, your daily visits to the Facebook fridge will result in a sugar rush followed by a hard drop. The good news is you determine what you see. Yes, the machine suggests relentlessly, but you decide and the more you decide the more you gain control of your daily digital experience.
This Newsletter Is A Snack
My friend Katherine Hollar Barnard loves this passage from a recent article that I wrote and published. With her support in mind, I highlight it again here.
Ask yourself, is the company’s website offering visitors what they actually want, versus what you think they want? We often assume that visitors to our website want more information on our products or services. When you run a pizza joint, it’s a good assumption. When you run a Software as a Service (SaaS) company, or a marketing services provider, the customer’s journey is much more layered, nuanced, and lengthy.
To move people toward your company’s larger offers, I suggest a steady routine of content snacks as a prelude to richer meals like white papers or case studies. There is a reason to deploy landing pages and A-B testing of multiple offers, but let’s confront the boogeyman in the room. We too often assume that people are ready for a deep dive into our materials, but that’s more wishful thinking in many cases.
Six More Clickity Clacks
The tools common to resilient people are optimism, a moral compass, religious or spiritual beliefs, cognitive and emotional flexibility, and social connectedness.
A new school of social-media influencers is helping to give hunting a fresh and decidedly female face.
Heads up: Birds are 'falling out of the sky' in a mass die-off in the southwestern US.
Simple, shareable, and private, these one-page websites are Gen Z’s choice for activism and more.
“Nothing beats good books in paper form for me. They are another form of dreaming.” -Rishad Tobaccowala
Reach Out, Say Hola
My homepage is DavidBurn.com. If you want to look at my pics, I am @dburn on Insta.
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My email is david@davidburn.com. Feel free to ask me any writing or marketing-related questions.