Thinking forward
Last month I was driving to the mountains and binging podcasts as the topography slowly changed from coastal hills to high desert to the snowy Sierra to my left. I listened to an episode of an old favorite, Stay Tuned with Preet, on a case being decided by the Supreme Court that could change the way government agencies like the EPA are able to interpret laws (tl;dr — right now, ambiguity goes to the agency to figure out. This outcome of this case could require congress or judges to make those decisions).
My friend Leigh recommended the excellent and timely series, King Slime, about Young Thug and his alleged gang of co-conspirators, YSL. They’re being prosecuted under the same RICO statute being used to prosecute President Trump, and by the same prosecutor. The drama is thick. The federal RICO statute was signed into law by President Nixon (ahem) to prosecute mafia members who participate in organize crime.
This hasn’t become a legal blog and I’ll shift back into my lane before I veer into a ditch. But I think the law is a fascinating parallel to building brands and the organizations that foster them. To making plans based on what we want to happen, and leaving room for adjustment as situations change.
As McLean and Conn write in The Imperfectionists: “All real-life strategic problem solving is a wager on an uncertain world.”
Laws are bets on what lawmakers believe will be most effective to stop unwanted behavior. We don’t want people working together to perpetrate crimes, so we write a law that makes that behavior, not just the crimes, illegal. The Young Thug and YSL case is fascinating because it tests the design implications of this law: what’s a criminal enterprise, and what’s a group of friends who hang out and make music, (while some might commit crimes on their own)?
Architecture also attempts to control behavior through design. I picked up Matthew Frederick’s 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School a couple weeks ago. Item 79 is about controlling movement through a space: “The two most important keys to effectively organizing a floor plan are managing solid-void relationships and resolving circulation.” (Solid = things like bathrooms and stairways with defined uses; Voids = spaces like living rooms with many uses).
In Thinking in Bets, Annie Duke shares a framework on how to make more objective decisions that consider future implications:
“Business journalist and author Suzy Welch developed a popular tool known as 10–10–10 that has the effect of bringing future-us into more of our in-the-moment decisions. ‘Every 10–10–10 process starts with a question: What are the consequences of each of my options in ten minutes? In ten months? In ten years?’”
The Imperfectionists has a similar model they called Dragonfly Eye: using multiple lenses to see near and far.
Attempt to control behavior in law and architecture offer us insight into a dynamic future. When people get involved, things get wild.
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I write these posts, 3-MINUTE MONDAYS, every other week. My goal with them is to share a snippet of insight into how to do strategy, build teams, and grow. Comment here or message me on LinkedIn if you want to chat. — Ben
