Fish Food: Episode 606
Climbing the wrong hill, being comfortable with uncertainty, Fortune 500 churn, motivated reasoning in business books, recreating Cannes winning ads with AI
If you do one thing this week…
On climbing the wrong hill…
This week, after first reading it several years ago, I was prompted to return to Chris Dixon’s wonderful post about climbing the wrong hill. The term comes originally from computer science, but to illustrate it he uses the example of a young, smart graduate who works on Wall Street and is considering staying despite hating the industry and having longer term ambitions to work at a start up:
‘A classic problem in computer science is hill climbing. Imagine you are dropped at a random spot on a hilly terrain, where you can only see a few feet in each direction (assume it’s foggy or something). The goal is to get to the highest hill.
Consider the simplest algorithm. At any given moment, take a step in the direction that takes you higher. The risk with this method is if you happen to start near the lower hill, you’ll end up at the top of that lower hill, not the top of the tallest hill.’
For this graduate the lure of the current hill is strong. He is being offered more money and more responsibility to stay. The natural tendency, particularly for the ambitious, is to keep moving upwards on the current path. But he is climbing the wrong hill.
In my third book on Agile Marketing I talk about ‘local’ and ‘global’ maximums. It’s the same idea. Local maximums are the limits of where you can get to based on optimising the current system. There is a ceiling to the gains that you can make through optimisation, and as you approach it you may well see a plateauing in impact, or gain or progress. To reach a new global maximum you need a change in thinking, a change in the system, or a creative leap forwards that can put you on a new path to greater heights.
Local and global maximums are more commonly referenced in data teams and startups but the principle applies in many different contexts. In businesses we often chase optimisation of existing systems or processes even when we sense that a bigger change is needed because it is easier to do so. In life we often overvalue short term rewards and under value longer term benefits.
Chris Dixon notes that common approaches in computer science to tackle this problem may include introducing some randomness, and then reducing the randomness over time to increase your chances that you find the bigger hill. Many of us don’t have the benefit of a strong vocational purpose early in our working lives. So careers advice should be far more focused on teaching kids how to learn to find what they love doing. More experimentation, less limitation.
This principle has useful application in business strategy, running projects, in life and work. So, let me leave you with this question - are you climbing the wrong hill?
Links of the week
A brand new episode of Google Firestarters has just gone live, featuring the wonderful Sam Conniff, author, entrepreneur and the founder of Uncertainty Experts, talking about what is surely the topic of our age - becoming comfortable with uncertainty. A real masterclass this from Sam, on why we dislike uncertainty so much, how it leads to unhelpful behaviour and poor decision-making, and why our response needs to be both embodied (instinct, emotion) and cognitive (brain). Here on YouTube, Spotify and Apple. Do subscribe to make sure you don’t miss any
Recent research shows that more than half (52%) of the companies in the Fortune 500 list in 2003 no longer exist today.
This was an excellent post from Shawn Callahan about how business books can sometimes misrepresent case studies and stories because of motivated reasoning. He uses James Clear’s book ‘Atomic Habits’ as an example, and the story he uses about the benefits of marginal gains with the British Cycling Team (sidenote: I don’t claim to be perfect in this regard but have always taken research seriously when I’ve written my books. When I talked about John Boyd’s OODA loops in my first book for example, I read Robert Coram’s excellent biography). HT Johnnie Moore
‘Ultimately, AI's impact on creativity isn't a simple story of replacement or revolution. It's a nuanced collaboration between human expertise and machine capabilities’. Noah Brier had some interesting thoughts on the role of AI in the (ads) creative process. TL:DR yes, it can create world class, but it takes time and sensibility. Meanwhile, El Feo Revollo ran a series of posts seeing if he could recreate Cannes winning ads from AI prompts TL:DR yes, he was successful, but it takes time and sensibility.
And finally…
I really liked this visual which comes from Andy Scherpenberg (HT Juliana J). For me it captures the oversimplification of how we think about AI and the need to get the infrastructure and processes right before we can get true value from it. Simple, but powerful.
Weeknotes
This week I’ve mostly been back in the Middle East working with leaders from an organisation that helps small business owners and entrepreneurs. I’ll be back there in a couple of weeks running another session with them but in between then and now I’ll be on holiday, doing some incompetent surfing down in Cornwall. The difficulty in writing a Substack whilst simultaneously falling off a surf board means that there won’t be an episode next week but normal service resumes thereafter. Have a wonderful couple of weeks.
Thanks for subscribing and reading Only Dead Fish. It means a lot. If you’d like more from me my blog is over here and my personal site is here. Do get in touch if you’d like me to give a talk to your team or talk about working together.
My favourite quote captures what I try to do every day, and it’s from renowned Creative Director Paul Arden: ‘Do not covet your ideas. Give away all you know, and more will come back to you’.