Specificity

As Nora and I are plotting out our economic path, we're looking at what others have done in related kinds of work.  And for the most part, as I see what other companies do, I don't trust them even a little bit.  There's SO MUCH business-speak, complex ideas crammed into one meager package.  How can I trust someone to be a sensitive, contextual, thoughtful partner when every sentence is packed with meaningless marketing phrases like innovative and best-in-class and no longer optional?  The business cheerleaders move into cliche generation with remarkable pace and alacrity.

They must really think we're stupid.

The reason why Nora and I are good at the kinds of work we've done is because we're captivated by the specific.  We listen to the exact words that people use.  We notice the things they have on their walls.  We know how to read beliefs and decisions through physical objects like clothes and truck bumpers and decoration. 

And we also know that categories aren't always helpful.  "Teenagers," for example, are a multitude—divided by music and activities and social class and economic conditions and rural-suburban-metropolitan communities and a dozen other major groupings.  To "make something that teenagers want" is to fail.

But "to make something that teenagers want" is the goal of most of the people who might hire us to help them think about young people.  The single solution is what they want; but multiple, smaller, specific outcomes are what they really need.  Most organizations are still set up to provide one thing really well to one group; we want to help organizations provide many things pretty well to a lot of groups.

Nora's going down to New York this afternoon for a meeting tomorrow about teaching her course at FIT this fall.  She's also teaching two courses at the BAC, as am I.  Plus my regular job.  Plus writing, putting on workshops, doing consulting with other schools, helping a friend with a real-estate development plan...   We joked about calling our company Intellectual Piecework.  We do a hundred things, pretty well, for anybody.  It's a lot of work.  Making one thing and perfecting it and selling it ten million times would be a lot easier, if we believed in it.