Antonym Baffling Conditions Edition
“So now get up.” — The first line of Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel.
Dear Reader
The loss of Hilary Mantel at 70 this week was a very sad surprise. As her publisher said, she had more novels in her and she was very much at the height of her powers.
I was rapt—and still am—by the Wolf Hall trilogy. I could write a whole month of letters about her genius in those books.
And Mantel was a genius, an exceptional and unique author. I may be on my fourth of fifth cycle of reading them now. You read the books the first time and are gripped on and entertained and fascinated. Then you read them again with deeper understanding because of hindsight an understanding Cromwell’s arc and the names and politics of court a little. Then you read a biography or watch a programme about the court of Henry VIII and read it again and see it in a different vivid shade.
Whether you’ve read her not, I urge you to watch this wonderful BBC Arena documentary “Hilary Mantel, Return to Wolf Hall”. Notice the deep awe and affection some of the people who found themselves in her orbit, talented and accomplished in their own right. She inspired eminent historian Diarmaid MacCulloch to write a biography of Thomas Cromwell because he thought she’d got so much right about a figure who had been overlooked and often cast as a villain. He’s amazed by her talent as a historian. The actor who played Cromwell in the RSC adaptation of the book, Ben Miles is inspired by her too, and in turn is a kind of muse to Mantel. She’s given a burst of energy and urgency to their work and they are in a kind of wonder about her.
Uncertain times 100
Business books and articles often talk about how unpredictable and volatile the world is and how hard it is to make plans, lead organisations or just get on with any business at all when the world seems to be turned on its head every six months.
A cynic might point to the first example of modern “thought leadership”, a monograph by McKinsey 1940 called Supplementing Successful Management that opens “Business has been forced to adjust itself to staggering acceleration in the rate of change. Revolutions in buying habits.” There was a European War on as well. Are things more uncertain and tricky now than then?
The FT management editor, Anjli Raval wrote a piece this week called “The Age of Uncertainty For CEOs” that while not a repeat of McKinsey’s concerns in 1940, certainly has echoes:
Chief executives have always had crises to deal with. The last 15 years alone have seen the global credit crunch, the sovereign debt crisis in Europe, Brexit and US-China trade tensions. But the sheer number of factors today that could potentially derail companies and their leaders is unusual — from market volatility, supply-chain crises, surging inflation, the war in Ukraine, talent shortages, digital transformations to culture wars within companies.
One “top boss” told her:
“Every CEO is spinning plates. Before there were 20, now there are 200 and you’re getting RSI.”
Meanwhile, Bob Iger, former CEO of Disney, was interviewed at the Code conference a week or so back by Kara Swisher. You can listen to the whole thing on the Pivot podcast (an absolute favourite of mine). Here’s an excerpt where he talks about “the age of anxiety” for leaders. He’s talking about entertainment companies, but this could be applied to so many industries, if not all.
The Jeweller of Naples
Silverview, the late John Le Carré posthumous last novel was on Barack Obama’s reading list.
It’s easy to imagine Le Carré writing a new work called The Jeweller of Naples after reading about Maria Rivera, whose exclusive jewellery store delighted the ridiculous rich of Napoli, as she developed a network of influential friends, and NATO officers who were members of the local Lions Club (I know) and customers. As Eliot Higgins of online investigations organisation Bellingcat said in a Twitter thread, it turns out she was a Russian agent (full Bellingcat article here). A delicious detail of the story: the very exclusive jewellery was tat she sourced from Aliexpress…
Why it’s useful to understand technical debt (even if you aren’t a techie)
"Technical debt" is one of those terms from an adjacent discipline that's so interesting that you just have to nick it, turn it into an analogy and start seeing it everywhere. James Stanier, an author and tech leader, wrote a piece about moving house and the analogies with technical debt that make it even clearer.
In a nutshell, technical debt is what tech people call the experience of diving into a project full of energy, good intentions and bright ideas and a few weeks later find yourself in the mess of reality and wondering where it all went wrong.
And if the concept is still a little cumbersome, here's a cartoon he included from Monkeyuser.com:
Ben Horowitz, a VC and formerly a tech company CEO, used the analogy to describe the effects of fudging or avoiding hard management decisions, for instance by giving two people leadership in the same group. A decision that seems to solve a problem neatly today results in lots of pain a little way down the road.
Me, talking marketing
I'm talking to 90+ marketers for the World Federation of Advertising this week about how to apply a test-and-learn approach that lowers waste, carbon and free up surprisingly large amounts of budget.
The efficiencies that come from methodical test-and-learn programmes is the theme. There’s a huge amount of waste in modern organisations. There’s wasted money, but there’s also a dreadful amount of carbon that gets coughed out by poor practices. I was struck by this quote from an interview with the Advertising Association’s Matt Bourn:
We need to approach content the same way we’ve been approaching plastic – by phasing out anything single-use. Recycling content is essential.
Re-cycling content’s not a way I’d thought about it before. But the amount of wasted effort and work that can reclaimed is, I believe, enormous.
Also this week, on a related note, I’m very proud to say that Brilliant Noise has become a B Corp certified company. It’s a demanding and reassuringly long process to go through, and one that’s been useful in honing and testing our values and purpose.
Other really good reads
How Russian Trolls Helped Keep the Women’s March Out of Lock Step — a case study in creating division through social media.
Going Nuclear, by Lawrence Freedman. From his Comment is Freed. There's a lot of loose speculation about the potential for Russia starting a nuclear war — this sort-of-reassuring analysis by an actual expert in strategy. Also includes my Odd Fact Of The Week: "The Americans famously developed a nuclear gun – the Davy Crockett – which had a lethal radius greater than its range)."
Attentive, by Scott Galloway. Last week's No Mercy / No Malice newsletter has interesting reflections on the concept of the attention economy. A idea I've found useful and kept coming back to since 2007, and which remains very useful.
That’s all for this week, folks. I hope you found something useful.
Antony
P.S. Glad to see that Alan Partridge has shared his WFH routine on LinkedIn. We can all learn something from Alan, like:
9.15 - your shower shouldn’t take more than an hour. If it does, film yourself on an iPhone, watch it back and and see where you can trim out some dawdling. Then it’s breakfast.
Great edition, thank you.