Welcome to the Future, We Have Ice Cream Cookies [Ice Cream Sundae]

Image Credit: Roxanne Ready

This newsletter was originally published via email on the 3rd April 2016. You can also sign up to receive Ice Cream Sundae with the form on the right-hand side column or here (The newsletter format shifted from long to shorter form since).

A few Sundaes ago I started a series to illustrate my top Gallup Strengths. For those who missed it, Gallup is an American research-based performance management consultancy. They’re particularly known for their opinion polls, and increasingly for their Strengthsfinder test and strengths based coaching.

Based on extensive research and in-depth interviews with over a million professionals in almost any type of field you can imagine, Gallup identified 34 Strengths themes in total. As of December 2015 over 13 million people have taken the Strengths test and found out what their top strengths are. I already wrote about my top strength, ideation.

This Sundae is about my second strength: Futuristic.

This is what it’s about, from Gallup’s short description:

“People exceptionally talented in the futuristic theme are inspired by the future and what could be. They energize others with their visions of the future.”

I just turned some music to listen to while writing. I appreciate mostly instrumental or electronic music while I’m thinking, writing and working. Music with lyrics distracts me. I first thought of classical and started Beethoven’s 6^th Symphony “Pastoral” that I love. It only took me a few minutes to realise it wasn’t right for the context of sharing how this Futuristic theme occurs for me.

Tron Legacy’s original soundtrack by Daft Punk popped into mind and is working a whole lot better. You can read and listen along for additional atmosphere and context. Whatever you think of the movie itself, I think the soundtrack is pretty cool. It boasts a great balance of elative tunes and gritty tones.

If you have also found out about your strengths, I recently found out there is a series of discussion videos about each of the 34 strengths and how they occur for people. I just watched the one about Futuristic and learned that so far approximately 11% of the people who took the test have it in their top five, apparently one of the more uncommon ones to have.

Welcome to the future (We have ice cream cookies).

Well not the actual future, more like a few of the many visions I have of the many futures I constantly think about.

Have you ever read Choose Your Own Adventure books? You might have at least heard about them, they’re written from a second-person point of view and the reader assumes the role of the protagonist. As the reader, you are offered to choose the main character’s actions and the plot’s outcomes. At each page or two, you can either go to page x for action a; or to page y for action b.

Of course I loved these kinds of books. Imagine each one of these stories are like decision trees, different actions branching out from one beginning and leading to a variety of different outcomes.

At almost every moment of ever day I envision sights, smells, sounds and flavours of what a multitude of different possible futures could be.

That’s how my mind works, almost every moment of every day. Images, smells, sounds, flavours of what alternative moments to follow this one could be. The scenes I picture are extremely vivid. They bloom and disappear replaced by another faster than I can entirely appreciate them. There’s so much going on it can even get confusing. I need to make a mental effort to focus on one at a time, consciously slow down the flow.

I constantly play out entire fictitious conversations in my head before talking to people, many of them completely hypothetical. More often than not, it’s someone I’m going to talk to or should because I have something to tell him or her. I imagine all the different things I could say, the many different ways in which they could respond, what I’d reply for each of those, etc. On one hand I think it’s something you can identify with and to a certain level we all do, but I wonder if I, or people with similar strengths to mine, do it more than others.

I naturally ask friends what they have in mind for their future; we share and exchange how things might turn out, what could happen. I build and expand on what they’re telling me. I don’t really ever ask where people see themselves in however many years. To me the future is so fluid and bursting with possibility that a thousand answers to that kind of question would barely do it justice. All of these visions are exciting and inspiring.

Once I focus one particular vision of the future, I can share and inspire friends, family, colleagues and clients with what it can make possible.

Fortunately I can also focus on one inspiring vision and share it with others, bringing it to life. This shows up in the way I can take the lead and instigate plans for activities with friends and family for example. I share the excitement and inspiration I have for an event or occasion, I tell people how amazing it’s going to be.

I already wrote about how I love theme parks in a previous Sundae. The Disney connection reminds me of the film Tomorrowland. I thought it was brilliant and unfortunately didn’t get the box office success I it deserved. I don’t want to give away much, I just recommend checking it out if you haven’t seen it. I believe you’ll at least smile. I felt great about the future watching it.

That’s another funny thing about it: future is never here; it’s a conceptual imaginary projection. We create and recreate what the future might hold may it be a few minutes from now, a couple of hours, tomorrow or in a year. We’ll never actually get there. Meanwhile, I draw strength from imagining what could be and sharing it with others.

You probably won’t be that surprised I love science fiction.

I love reading science fiction. I get excited about new technologies and what they can make possible to benefit humanity. I look up to Star Trek’s universe; it’s a positive vision of the future and of humanity, where real global issues like hunger and poverty are no longer in large thanks to technology. Star Trek’s replicator technology can make anything including food; so material objects and possessions don’t have the same value as we give them today. I’m not a specialist Trekkie so I’m abbreviating its fictional history; in short the kind of technology described were precursors to shifting to a moneyless society and paving the way to explore space. The near ubiquitous touch screen devices we own these days owe much to Star Trek and other science fiction stories designers, scientists and engineers grew up with.

A several points in Dan Simmon’s beautiful Hyperion Cantos, we discover different branches of humanities in a far future, people evolved and adapted to different spatial, chemical and climatic environments rather than the other way round.

As a game master or storyteller in tabletop roleplaying games, I share my visions with players and bring these fictional and fantastic universes to life.

I get excited about reading and sharing about the possibilities of the future and visions of other worlds far from our own. It’s likely to be one of the reasons that got me interested in tabletop roleplaying games. As a player interpreting a character, I get to play out different possible and fictional futures of different personas I can imagine. As a game master or storyteller, I share my visions with a group of players and bring these fictional and fantastic universes to life by telling friends around the table how the world around them looks, feels, smells, tastes and sounds.

Gravitating towards new technologies was natural. The opportunity I had to learn and work as a designer was of particular interest because I’d be working with 3D technology. When I had the opportunity to start working as a strategic planner, I was and still am fascinated by how digital technologies impact communications and present both opportunities and challenges for brands to leverage. These days Virtual and Augmented Reality headsets like HTC Vive (I’ve experienced this demo, it’s amazing!), Oculus Rift or Microsoft’s HoloLens are one of the hottest topics discussed around technology and video games. The technologies aren’t yet going to be in every household, though possibilities they promise are impressive.

That said I don’t believe technology is an answer to anything in and by itself. In order to leverage them as part of a solution; challenges and opportunities need to be defined. As part of my work as a marketing strategist I often hear digital technology to be the answer before any question was asked. It’s one of the pitfalls of shiny and exciting new technologies.

The usage and democratisation of technology is growing at such a pace it is not just a dreamer’s fancy to quite seriously mention Star Trek or other science fiction franchises as inspiration to build a better future.

We don’t have to wait for negative impacts to make up a different kind of future.

I know there are heavily negative impacts to the way we’ve evolved and the technology we’re using. We are damaging the Earth we live in and large swathes of the global population live in dire conditions, lacking regular access to necessary water, food or healthcare – not to mention education. Meanwhile, I don’t think the kind of prevalent sensationalist and scandalous media is helping build and share visions of what a better future could be, nor is the trend for young adult Dystopian future à la Hunger Games.

We don’t have to wait for that to make up a different kind of future. It’s down to all of us, in every small or big way you can contribute. Consider what inspires about the future you and tell friends, family and colleagues around you. You might be surprised where the conversation takes you.

I had the chance of speaking with Cindy Gallop for the podcast a few days ago; it seems fitting to borrow her favourite quote to complete this Sundae:

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
~ Alan Kay, Computer Scientist

The conversation I recorded with Cindy will be out in a few weeks, in the meantime this week I published a brilliant & fun conversation I had with Luke Crane, an award winning game designer known for his roleplaying games Burning Wheel and MouseGuard. Luke is also the Head of Games for Kickstarter, the popular online crowdfunding platform.

I hope this Sundae gives you a flavour of what having Futuristic as one of my strengths means to me. If you’re looking for science fiction of fantasy novels or movie recommendations, give me a shout. Similarly if you’d like to talk about how you or your company could be leveraging digital technologies to solve business and communications challenges, I’d definitely be up for talking.

Live long and prosper.

Best,
Willem

My Top Strength is Ideation [Ice Cream Sundae]

Image credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre photostream

This newsletter was originally published via email on the 21st February 2016. You can also sign up to receive Ice Cream Sundae with the form on the right hand column or here (The newsletter format shifted from long to shorter form since).

After some consideration for this week’s topic I started thinking about strengths, what I’m good at.
More specifically, you may have heard of Gallup’s Strengthsfinder (If you haven’t I’ll tell you about it now). Gallup is a management consulting company, and they are particularly known for their opinion polls. One of their founders also came up with this idea of analysing the data from over a million one on one in-depth interviews with professionals from just about every field you can imagine and turned it into Strengthsfinder.

The premise is pretty simple: rather than spending so much time and energy in our lives on what we are not good at, let’s focus on our strengths instead.

Out of their research, they identified and developed 34 of what they’re calling “strength themes”. For the most part, the themes are described and organised differently from the way we usually think of strengths. They’re both interesting and thought provoking.

You can take an online test and they tell you what your top five strengths are. There’s also an option to unveil the order of all 34 themes. I’ve done both. I’d say the top five is entirely sufficient to begin with.

As an experiment, I thought it could be fun to start a short strengths series to write about mine and attempt to illustrate them in writing.

I probably won’t do the five in a row; I’ll come back to it whenever I feel is appropriate.

Let’s start with my top strength: Ideation.

I took the test once with the first edition in 2006 and then a few years later when the 2^nd edition of the book was published in 2010. Both times ideation came out first.

In case you’re wondering if ideation is a proper word, it’s both in the Oxford and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.

From the Gallup Strengthsfinder the Ideation theme is described as such:

“People exceptionally talented in the ideation theme are fascinated by ideas. They are able to find connections between seemingly disparate phenomena.”

A friend who reads this newsletter told me he particularly enjoys the way in which I jump from one topic to another and then tie them together.

I make these connections as I’m writing and I’m not planning them half the time, they just come naturally.

The word idea has Greek roots, and means form, or pattern.

One of the dictionary definitions for idea is a thought, plan, or suggestion about what to do.

By now, you might already have the image of a light bulb come to mind.

Unless I just turned that light bulb on by writing it and you reading?

I’m not sure where it comes from, though signs point to the inventiveness and popularity of Edison when he invented the light bulb, often represented above him in photography portraits.

This was popularised even further in cartoons and then animations, with symbols representing characters’ thoughts and emotions. I read this interesting article that specifically attributes the light bulb idea to the animated character Felix the Cat. It’s an interesting theory though I think drawn cartoon characters with ideas likely came first. I don’t have any proof, it’s just an opinion.

Edison’s light bulbs were all the rage at the turn of the twentieth century. If you wonder what they look like, I’m pretty certain you’ve seen one recently. A hundred years later, they have made a serious comeback and are totally in fashion now. Almost every new popular bar and restaurant features large Edison lights. They’re the ones with complex and winding filaments, lit in a warm deep yellow or orange glow. For some reason most of the recent coffee shops, microbrewery pubs and trendy bars feature these kinds of lights.

It’s ironic given these light bulbs had been generally phased out because they were wasteful and didn’t produce as much light as following generations of light bulbs. We now have super long lasting and energy saving light bulbs but we’ve reverted to the old school Edison lights. That said most of them are probably the LED kind; they replicate the same shapes and style without being as wasteful from an energy perspective

I doubt a secret conclave of hospitality professionals and interior designers met and voted on the implementation of Edison light bulbs as a trend to bring back, though it is interesting to see how we imitate and reproduce what seems to be working for others.

Mimicry is one of the ways human beings learn. I’m seeing it closely at the moment with my toddler nephew; he’s quickly improving at repeating words and names he hears.

It may be one of the ways we learn, though we generally think of something new with the word idea. Repetition and ideas aren’t necessarily exact opposites but they’re certainly not synonyms either.

Ideas also hold a notion of appearing out of thin air, suddenly. Maybe in the same way flicking a switch magically turns a light bulb on. It’s not actual magic of course; among other reasons it looks like it because light travels so fast our naked eyes can’t see it.

Growing up in France, in Chemistry class I learned Lavoisier’s Law: “Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed”

Antoine Lavoisier was a chemist in the late 18^th century generally considered “the father of modern chemistry”. His statement was meaning to show that however matter changes state, the total mass of matter remains the same. I believe it’s also known as the law of conservation of mass. Like the experiment in the second film adaptation of Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy, Smoke, when the main protagonists who frequent the same tobacco shop in Brooklyn burn a cigarette, weight the remaining ash to try and deduce the weight of smoke (if I remember correctly). If you include the mass of the smoke and other residue regardless of their physical state, the total mass should be the same.

I believe something along the same lines happens with ideas.

We like to think new ideas are born all of a sudden and out of nowhere, but they’re more likely to be a product of all sorts of stuff coming from existing knowledge and previous experiences. Half the time we just don’t realise where these idea components come from.

I use the word stuff purposefully. I like it.

I just wondered why and checked the definition.

Stuff (noun):

1. Matter, material, articles, or activities of a specified or indeterminate kind that are being referred to, indicated, or implied.
2. The basic constituents or characteristics of something or someone.

It’s basically all-inclusive. A magic word I can use to replace almost any other word.

Just be careful not to become lazy to think about the most appropriate word and overusing this one, turning it from magic into mush, or smurf. This could be a topic to explore another time.

The Edison light bulbs in most of the restaurants I mentioned earlier dangle from long wires.

Consider this for a second; these light bulbs look like big lollipops turned upside down.

They are probably lemon or honey flavoured given their warm yellow glow.

The thought of lemons just reminded me of the citrus smells from orange and lemon trees in the streets of Seville I visited for a weekend years ago, before the Edison lights were so trendy.

Lemon was never my favourite lollipop flavour though.

When I was growing up I’d go to the village’s boulangerie to buy candy, they both had the traditional Pierrot Gourmand lollipops and the now more famous Chupa Chups brand too.

I’d generally choose the cherry flavour if they had it.

When I moved to France, the first house we lived in had a huge garden with many fruit trees, including two cherry ones. We picked the fruits and ate them straight from the tree when they were in season.

If you hold a cherry by the stem, you could imagine it’s a red Edison light bulb, in a trendy restaurant hanging from a wire.

It could be a cool look for a fruit smoothie and juice bar.

And of course cherries are a traditional topping to complete an ice cream sundae.

Everything comes from something we’ve experienced, never out of thin air.

From this perspective the new is a blend of several old we had all but forgotten about.

We naturally collect and regurgitate information, experiences and sensations in newly transformed states.

Apparently I can do that particularly well.

I certainly leverage this strength in my job.

Leading and participating in creative brainstorming sessions is something I really enjoy about being a strategist. Being in a room of people firing new ideas is energizing and compelling. It’s rich in ways that are difficult to discern while we dwell in this space of uncertainty where there are no bad answers and no concept is too silly.

The key however is to not lose sight of an agreed upon objective, without that it’s impossible to consider the quality of any given idea. Without a goal, ideas are just pointless ramblings about lollipops and Edison light bulbs.

The mush isn’t that far away from the magic.

My first step as a strategist is to ask questions that will help define my clients’ objectives.

It’s the best advice I can give you if you’re interested in coming with new ideas: first determine what your objective is. That becomes the framework your ideas can be developed in and out of, the proverbial box you can now think out of.

It’s possible that this combining of traditional ideas into something is what I found fascinating about Sensible Object studio’s new game project on Kickstarter. Fabulous Beasts blends components of a physical balancing board game with digital elements of a world-building video game. I had the chance of meeting with Tim Burrell-Saward for an interview I published on my podcast this week, it was a fun conversation to find out about the game and their inspiration, though unfortunately there were some issues with the recording and I decided to cut a few parts of it. I’m still learning to use my audio equipment correctly and I need to invest in a new digital recorder for these cases when I meet interviewees in person.

I also got round to writing a short post about the quality of the advertising and sponsored messages in Gimlet media’s podcasts, and the way they talk about it in a few different episodes of their brilliant podcast, StartUp.

I’ve also started publishing the Ice Cream Sundae newsletter more widely online, in my blog as well as on Medium, so that more people can discover and read it. This won’t change anything to what you receive in your inbox every week, I’ll repost it online a little later so you still get to read it first if you’re signed up to the email list.

If you’re enjoyed reading this and you think a friend of yours will enjoy it too, forward it along.

If you find out about your Gallup strengths, I’d love to hear what they are, send me a reply via email, or you can also get in touch via Facebook or Twitter.

Have a great week!

Best,
Willem