Everyone has their own perspective on what works best. Here are my principles and priors:

01 Ends Then Means.

Having a single, stupidly ambitious goal unlocks enormous potential in yourself and others. But many leaders and organizations spend their lives in pursuit of means without meaningful ends - or worse, means to someone else’s.

Effective leadership requires answering the hardest question first: what do you ultimately want to achieve with your resources and your life? Answering this question ambitiously has a transformative impact on leaders, organizations, and their ability to communicate. Deciding on an “End” determines the problem roadmap that will define your life’s work, provides a clear framework for decision making, frees organizations to think creatively and act boldly, and reveals values that will shape your brand and reputation.

02 Zero the Argument.

To be relevant, organizations and leaders often define themselves within the parameters of conventional issue frameworks and ideological debates. Worse, many exist to perpetuate them.

It’s never been easier to rally people to your cause, but the trend towards polarization on every imaginable issue makes it challenging to win arguments in a way that resolves them. It’s much better to build solutions that “obsolete the dilemma,” reframe false choices, and abstract debates to a level where it’s possible to identify or create shared ends and realities.

03 Create Your Own Weather.

Sometimes a bold statement is all that’s necessary to set the agenda, but too often organizations rely on words as a substitute for action.

Smart brand positioning and inspirational manifestos will only get you so far. Success requires fusing communication with action. Adopting an “active communications” posture means doing things that will define the frame of reference for everyone and it means moving quickly and assertively to maintain the offensive. It is always better to force others to react to you instead of the other way around.

04 Always Add Value.

Our information environments are crowded with brands and personalities getting out messages and telling people what to think, leaving audiences numb and cynical. If you want to influence the way people think, you need to start by understanding and addressing their information needs.

What does your audience want to know? What problems are they trying to solve? What can you do to help them? If your focus is on adding value to people’s lives in every interaction, they will be open to hearing your message and start adding value to yours.

05 Work is Stupid.

I love work. Putting everything I have into advancing campaigns, ideas, people, and companies I believe in has defined much of my life and afforded me incredible opportunities.

But I also believe AI will take on and then transform much of what counts as work in today’s communications landscape. We should be doing everything we can to prepare for the intelligent era by embracing automation and designing information systems for a world moderated by machines.

Even more importantly, we should all be thinking about what we can do to ease the transition to post-labor economies as more and more work is automated. Making this shift go well is the challenge - and opportunity - of our lifetimes.