Embracing mild absurdity

Order and structure always appealed to me. As a child, I was never one for getting creative with a LEGO set. Follow the steps, build the ship, play with the ship. A to B to C. I've carried that over into my work life. I love a good model, a good process. Clarity, order, precision. It doesn't always come easily. Sometimes order is dull. Sometimes process is overcomplicated. But when you get it right, it's so satisfying. 

The challenge with the pursuit of order in our world is that comms is a people business. And people mix rationality with irrationality in equal measure. As Heleana Blackwell puts it, "we don’t say what we think, do what we say, or think what we do". We think we're rational, but no end of scientific study shows that we're not. 

That means processes and linear thinking will only get you so far. To get into the interesting, you must embrace irrationality. Uncertainty. Mild absurdity. And thanks to Justin Lines and Heleana Blackwell, I've recently discovered the best way of uncovering those mild absurdities - comedians. 

Justin wrote a paper on the links between stand-up comedy and uncovering insights and was recently a guest at GroupThink's Open Your Mind event (hosted by Heleana). He talked about how comedians create humour. Whether that's bringing together incongruous combinations (like inserting pictures of cats into American Psycho) or using exaggeration to make the uninteresting seem interesting (like this video of French people struggling to pronounce English words).

And you know the best part of this approach? You can build it into your planning models. Go on to YouTube, watch some videos that relate to your brief. Heleana's most recent newsletter uses the example of buying a car. I recently did it when tasked with finding a different way of approaching "the future of work" - Chris Rock's sketch on "job vs career" was the key. 

You can't rely on processes for everything. Use them as a guide; let them help you get started. Then follow the rabbit holes and add some absurdity into the mix (not too much). You'll end up somewhere way more interesting than just going from A to B to C.