Business leaders want honesty, not complicity. They are acutely aware that they’re living in a non-linear world and do not see the trends and dynamics of yesteryear playing out like a straight line into the future. They understand that the past as a solution set cannot be the only viable option and are hungry for a genuinely outside perspective. In such an environment, walking in smart is probably the dumbest thing we can do. But walking in ‘stupid’ and asking the questions that everybody with their experience and expertise has not thought of asking? That’s probably the smartest thing we can do. Emptying our cup is invariably the first step to filling it with something useful.

If you saw Bradley Cooper’s biopic Maestro about Leonard Bernstein, it’s worth noting that the movie chose NOT to tell this story. Yet the truth is far more inspiring. And for the practitioners, commissioners, and end-users of brand strategy, far more instructive.

If they want it.

We can debate the imminence of cultural collapse. But what feels more certain is that the sense (and promise) of development and progress feels less in evidence, despite the incessant hosepipe of novelty and entertainment and distraction we find ourselves on the receiving end of. Perhaps we really are, as the author Peter Watts has put it, “in love with the moment. Scared shitless of the future”.

Ian Leslie is right to caution us that “We exaggerate the permanence of the moment we’re in, and under-estimate the possibility of change.” Nonetheless, what gives?

But does everything, like everything always have to be a story all of the time? Cause and effect. If-This-Then-That. The reassurance that stuff will make sense. The comfort and warmth of knowing that there’s a bulwark against meaning-void chaos. The promise that we can figure it out. The reassurance that there is a pattern, and there is a structure to all of this.  That it is graspable. The comfort that the possibility of learning and anticipation is possible. The satisfaction of joining the dots. The satisfaction of closure. The satisfaction of causality. The need for causality. The promise that we can be agents of causality.  That we can not just understand, but shape and bend the world to our will and desires. Christ, we need this stuff so fucking badly. And let’s not forget the intoxicating knowledge that everything that can be turned into a pattern (and made to look like a pattern) can be replicated, codified, merchandised marketed and (praise be!) financialised (and infantalised) as Let Me Show You How expertise and sprayed over everyone’s LinkedIn feeds.

People who live in bubbles. People who don’t know they live in bubbles. People who don’t care they live in bubbles. People who deny they live in bubbles. People who hang out with people who agree with them. People who don’t travel outside the confines of their own minds. People who don’t travel outside the confines of their own habits. People who don’t travel outside the confines of their own culture. People who travel outside the confines of their own culture and compare everything with the culture they stepped out of. People who are uncomfortable being outside their own culture. People who can’t wait to get back to the familiarity of their own culture. People who can’t change their minds. People who won’t change their minds. People who don’t like their faith in the reality they’ve constructed for themselves being even mildly shaken. People who aren’t up for revising their most cherished beliefs.