Who is your savior

Anyone who has been active on the internet in the past 18 months will have noticed a weekly impassioned buzz bouncing from topic to topic, from race to immigration to gender to war to the economy to gun rights to vaccines to education to the legal system to climate change to tech company hegemony to whatever will happen this week. They’d also see the occasional “we’ve never been healthier, more affluent, and happier as a global population.”

The area where alarmism and Pollyanna meet is what I want to discuss today.

A couple weeks ago I was listening to Preet Bharara’s conversation with Tom Nichols. They’re famous together for their Indian food summit and separately as ex-US attorney and Naval War College professor of international affairs, respectively. Nichols recently wrote a book called The Death of Expertise (which I have not read and, in accordance with a hypothesis on the subject of the book, I will decline to comment on).

As the two spoke on some of the things that are causing us to feel divided, I started thinking about how double standards have such a toxic influence on how we talk about complex ideas. As Nichols says, citing an authoritarian point-of-view on fairness, “For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law.”

In Adam Grant’s Think Again, which I read in September and haven’t stopped… thinking about, he suggests we ask ourselves “How do we know?” I think that provides a powerful check on hot take tribalism and repost activism. Before I share this meme or thought, what makes me believe it? (And then, why am I sharing it?)

The abundance of information at our disposal makes us comfortable enough to opine, but often too impatient to get truly informed enough to offer a useful take. Why read on when you’ve already found the pull-quote you’re looking for to confirm your instinct? Why read the book when your friend can tell you what CliffsNotes said?

I think this happens in the marketing world too. Because our work is almost entirely about how we win in the future, there’s no single answer. Debates surround interpreting what we know so we can determine the best way forward — as well as what winning is, how far in the future.

When personal goals get involved — awards, promotions, notoriety — our gray area can be expressed more like a black and white double standard. Like Nichols’ line on authoritarianism, it’s, “For my friends, intuition. For my enemies, facts.” We hold our ground and give our counterparts large hills to climb to convince us what they believe.

(I recall a certain senior creative offering the classic, “Is that an observation or an insight?” after I shared a brief. Fwiw, I don’t remember presenting it as either.)

The answer, again, is both facts and intuition. Raw data and human interpretation.

It’s hard when marketers suffer from our own abundance of information. We can make the case for just about anything by looking through the right lens and citing the studies we find friendly to our cases. We empty our quivers of facts, not realizing we’re creating fact inflation with each arrow we shoot, not getting any closer to a decision.

So what do we do?

Facts won’t save us, but compassion might.

At a societal level, I think we should listen more. Some of my oldest friends my really different political views than I do. Our conversations are much more substantive than those I have with friends with more similar beliefs as me. I’ve changed my mind at times and I think they have too. As a minimum, I find myself way less likely to belittle people for thinking something that my instincts tell me is wrong.

…that helps us embrace mess and nuance as natural parts of understanding. There are few things we truly know for sure. Can a political figure be both doing the right thing for the public and also a corrupt narcissist? I think so. Good people go bad and toxic qualities can be redeemed. Endorsement doesn’t equal affinity; just because believes something today doesn’t mean it won’t evolve. Embracing the wabi sabi of people is critical to mutual acceptance.

And finally, reset the standard to what’s going to help create action rather than what’s going to tick every box for everyone. I did a presentation earlier this year where a team asked me to take off my client hat and put my strategist hat back on. I was elated to dust it off. I started it by saying what I think that means: creating action rather than being right. Being a client generally means greater accountability and more linear thinking. Part of agency strategist’s job is that corral those facts into an informed opinion on how we win.

Now that I think about it again, I’m not sure the distinction is so black and white.