Ignore the Haters, IDEO's New Principles, How Leaders Can Communicate More Effectively

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10 stories we've enjoyed this week

A frightened looking pig wearing a nightcap lies in a single bed, illuminated by a candle; under the bed is the ghostly outline of another pig.

Illustration by Emma Erickson – Work with Emma

Hi All,
Our friends at Little Green Pig are hiring a Development and Partnerships Manager. Little Green Pig are part of a worldwide community of charities and not-for-profits focused on giving children and young people agency through innovative creative writing and literacy programmes. They run after-school clubs across Sussex, host multi-sensory, highly immersive residencies in primary schools as well as themed projects for young people. If you know any exceptional fundraisers please share this link with them.

Episode two of How We Got Here, a podcast we make for UK Parliament Education, went live this week. This episode looks at how we got the secret ballot and why the election of 1868 was considered relatively peaceful because only eight people were killed. Give it a listen and subscribe.

OK. Enjoy today's stories and have a wonderful weekend.
Hugh

The Short Story

This Work Can't Wait
(4 min read)

How Leaders Can Communicate More Effectively
(5 min watch)

RIP Raymond Briggs - RIP Lamont Dozier
(10 min read)

Comfort Blanket - Better Call Saul
(7o min listen)

Execution is Exponential
(6 min read)

The Right Kind of Distraction
(Tweet)

Powerful Decision-Making Rules of Thumb
(11 min read)

Forget the Haters and Listen to the Fans
(4 min read)

DJ Kool Herc Items for Auction at Christie's
(4 min read)

Art But Sports
(2 min read)

How can we help you?

Storythings is a strategy and content company based in Brighton and London. We'd love to help you with some creative and bold ideas.

Here's 3 reasons to get in touch.

1. You want to talk to us about content production: podcasts, videos, animations, illustrations, editorial.

2. You want to talk to us about content strategy or format development.

3. You want to create a brand or an identity that makes it easier to communicate your message.

We do other things too. We're very friendly and always enjoy meeting people, so get in touch.

The Full Story

This Work Can't Wait
Design company IDEO has developed a new set of design principles to reflect a more responsible way of working: "At the center of our evolving practice and language is owning our impacts on cultural, environmental, ethical, and social systems. We need to respond to the unintended consequences of innovation, seeking new information and standing at the ready to adapt and redesign. More than minimizing harm, we need to improve what's broken. We need to include more people in our process – from experts to end-users to entire communities affected by our work. We need to design more responsibly. And so we are."
(4 min read)

How Leaders Can Communicate More Effectively
I enjoyed the book The Power of Us by Dominic Packer and Jay Van Bavel, and subscribe to their Substack too. This week they released a bunch of videos that take a closer look at themes in the book. In this video, they look at the importance of collective language and modelling behaviour when leading teams.
(5 min watch)

RIP Raymond Briggs - RIP Lamont Dozier
This week we lost two incredible writers; writer and illustrator Raymond Briggs, who gave us The Snowman and Father Christmas, and Lamont Dozier whose songwriting credits read like a Motown Greatest Hits compilation. These two pieces serve as a reminder of the joy they brought through their incredible work.
(multiple articles)

Comfort Blanket - Better Call Saul
Comfort Blanket is a podcast about the films, TV shows, books or music which people go to again and again to feel safe, happy and welcome. In this episode, Joel Morris speaks to writer Will Maclean about the similarities between Better Call Saul and the 80s British TV show Minder, including how the writers manage to keep you on the edge of your seat, and what makes Saul and Kim such a brilliant couple. They've done a great job in this episode to avoid spoilers for anyone not up to date.
(70 min listen)

Execution is Exponential
It's often the case that when businesses run into tough times and something needs to be done the problem is seen as a strategy problem. They get excited about big narratives explaining where they are, why they’re struggling, and what they need to do differently to fix it. We get hyped to embark upon a bold new chapter. But often, they don't need to think big. They need to think small. They need to think about what they already do and how they can do it much better. It's not a strategy problem, it's an execution problem.
(6 min read)

The Right Kind of Distraction
This week on Twitter, Neil Perkin asked, "When I'm writing I find the radio too distracting but film soundtracks are great for deep work. Current favourite – the Interstellar soundtrack. Any others that people find good?" The replies are filled with Spotify playlists featuring the perfect music ambiance for working to.
(Tweet)

Powerful Decision-Making Rules of Thumb
These rules of thumb will help you make better decisions faster. For example: "The Writing Knife Block - If you're struggling to understand something, try writing it out. When you write, you expose the gaps that exist in your logic and thinking. Study to fill the gaps. Writing is the ultimate tool to sharpen thinking – use it as a "knife block" for life."
(11 min read)

Forget the Haters and Listen to the Fans
Wieden+Kennedy’s Tass Tsitsopoulos offers insights and learnings from 'Famous Orders', the fan-orientated campaign that reimagined McDonald’s advertising for a new generation. I really liked this about focusing on the small truths: "First of all, we built a creative strategy around what we called Fan Truths – those moments, memories, rituals, and behaviors that make this brand so special. Inside jokes understood by millions of people. This brand is too big and multidimensional to make it stand for one ‘big’ thing. Instead, there’s huge power in the small truths our audience already know, the warm and familiar, the insightful and commonly understood."
(4 min read)

DJ Kool Herc Items for Auction at Christie's
DJ Kool Herc is a legendary DJ and universally recognised Father of Hip Hop. When his sister asked him to DJ at her birthday party he decided to try and solve a problem. The problem was that the best bits of songs, the parts people liked to dance to most, were only short. If he had two copies of the same record, he could mix them together making the good parts longer. In doing this he created a huge part of hip hop culture. Anyway, a lot of his possessions are up for auction at Christie's and I think we should all chip in and buy the lot. Who's game?
(5 min read)

Art But Sports
Professional sports are brilliantly paired with historical art pieces.
(2 min read)

We hope you've enjoyed this week's newsletter. I'm sure some of your friends would love to read it. Sharing it would be really appreciated. If you've received this from a friend you can subscribe here and get it direct to your inbox every Friday.

Thanks for reading and see you all next week,

Hugh, Matt, Anjali and the team at Storythings

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Ignore the Haters, IDEO's New Principles, How Leaders Can Communicate More Effectively

10 stories we've enjoyed this week

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