3 big lessons from collaboration, Anote Tong, SXSW voting & Electric light

Happy Thursday, I hope this finds you well!

CEOs and Boards rely on me to develop strategy that leverage the 4 Investor Trust Builders and increases their access to capital. It’s great work that I love doing, and as we develop insights together through the phases of Positioning, Direction, Attention and Relatability, we find tremendous opportunities for value creation.

If you’d like to know the headline questions for each area, reach out and let’s setup a time.

Whilst advisory and facilitation work makes up a lot of what I do, in most cases clients ask me to direct and author the material that captures those insights, and over the past 14 years of operating Bravo Charlie, these are 3 of the biggest lessons I’ve learnt, working with world class service providers.

1. Rework is the devil - use Stage-Gates

Working with Denise Lackner , our Head of Design who runs her own independent businesses as a freelancer, as well as our copywriters Katrina Strathearn and Lisa O'Sullivan , and being a MarCom Director for 4 years with an Atlassian Enterprise partner, where it was all about agile project management methodology, burnt into me how important locking things off is.

It often feels like my biggest task and challenge is to press the 'next' button between stages, as we go from strategic insights, to concept, copy writing, design and development.

In this way, Stage-Gates are about only moving to the next stage, through a ‘gate’ once everything required for the previous stage is completed.

If the copy changes half way through the design, it's rework.

If design tweaks are requested once we are in development, it's rework.

If the captions in videos aren't 100% when the client sees them, it's rework. And that can mean so many hours, simply in getting the communication back down the line, to re-rendering a video file and then uploading due to bandwidth constraints on large files..

.. though clients wants to see things, and things are needed to push projects along and get sign-off or request revisions..

The pain of going backwards when I'm so orientated to forward momentum drives me bananas at times!

Q. What areas in your business do you experience significant rework? What could you put in place to reduce this?

2. No one wants to look grey, and loyalty is priceless

Working with Love Hawkridge , our grooming and makup artist, I've worked with her for over 10 years and called her from Cairns spontaneously and had her arrive within 14 hours when we needed her on a job - that kind of impromptu drop-everything and show up in an emergency is priceless - in fact I'd say everyone who has made the cut past 1 project with us has that same attitude of getting it done as an independent professional.

Anyway, Love always does the grooming (men) and makeup (women, though same thing) to make people look even under set lighting.

That's all good for the filming, though colour grading is a part of every video finalisation. In the grade, there are generally three things that are easy to play with, chroma, brightness and contrast, and I realised after about 6 years if everyone comes out reasonably tanned, looking maybe a bit redder than normal (just a touch) there will never be a complaint. If they are looking flat or ever so grey, you're going to hear about it.

3. Theories of change, Underpants Gnomes and underlying assumptions

Working with both Andrew Hollo , Principal at Workwell and Dr. Jodi York , Chief Impact Officer of Kilara Capital over the past years has been a transformative experience in my approach to the world.

I'd spent 4 years burning into myself the agile methodology for project management from having an Atlassian partner as a client, and have always been a business development / executive strategy consultant to CEO's and the board, so I was used to planning and implementing, though my time with Andrew and Jodi has shown me what focusing on fundamental assumptions is all about.

My background mixes business, strategy and investment (I have a Masters Degree in Entrepreneurship and Innovation), and I’ve seen likely thousands of pitches so far, and most of these fall short in logical ways going from A to B to C, in this case 'Step 1 = Collect underpants, step 2 = ???, Step 3 = Profit' to quote the South Park meme and this conversation between Jodi and I - Investees, alignment, evidence, strategy & theories of change .

Andrew is also a strategic advisor to some of the biggest names in the world and between the two of them I've become almost hyper-fixated on the A = B causality that is implied when people tell me things, or that may not be implied and simply haven't been considered.

This is leading to much better outcomes as I work with clients to validate their casual assumptions, work with them to develop insights in the areas of Positioning, Direction, Attention and Relatability, and then use these insights to ask leading questions, that get people to answer me in a way that paints the picture of their organisational strategy.

If you’re a super sleuth, you could potentially work backwards from the array of videos on both Andrew Hollo’s Investor Engagement System , and the Kilara Capital Investor Engagement System , and work out some of their business strategy, based on the way we structured the narratives? Here’s Andrew and I discussing the process:

The Former President of Kiribati

"There is no doubt in my mind that if we continue on the path we are going, there will come a time when we will have no choice but to come together to deal with climate change, but by then it would be far too late."?- Mr Anote Tong, Former President of the Republic of Kiribati.?

Join me from the conclusion of the Climate Investor Forum, held by Climate Zeitgeist , where I had a mix of honour and dismay, to interview the Former President about climate change, and the inevitable destruction of his homeland in the coming decades:

You can also watch it on YouTube:

".. so as long as we continue on the path that we are heading, then we will continue to be headed towards this catastrophe. And I can assure you, once that catastrophe comes around the corner, there will be no politicians, there will be no partitions, there's no division, because it's going to be a rush for survival. And we'll all be together on this.." - Anote Tong.

SXSW Voting is open - we need your help

Can you please take 5 seconds to open this click and click the heart icon ? Voting closes in just over a week, if we don’t get votes, we don’t get a session, simple!

Dr Jodi York and I have proposed a session at SXSW Sydney for October this year, the session is called "Using money & technology to accelerate the response to the challenges of our civilisation" - it's a simple premise, use all the money floating around to do good for the planet, and measure that it's working (and adjust as necessary) using the worlds best practice impact measurement tools, and tell the story whilst doing so, so more people get on board.

Click to vote, only takes a second! Thanks!

Electric Light

"I have noticed that when all the lights are on, people tend to talk about what they are doing – their outer lives. Sitting round in candlelight or firelight, people start to talk about how they are feeling – their inner lives. They speak subjectively, they argue less, there are longer pauses. To sit alone without any electric light is curiously creative. I have my best ideas at dawn or at nightfall, but not if I switch on the lights – then I start thinking about projects, deadlines, demands, and the shadows and shapes of the house become objects, not suggestions, things that need to done, not a background to thought." - Jeanette Winterson

Q. What moments can you take, without electric light this week?

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