Over the past weeks I tried to get back a bit more into my old “reading interesting stuff the industry is talking about” routine. Staying up to date on strategy, planning challenges, the industry and their thought leaders is, after all, part of what enables a strategist do to their job. Or at least that’s what I thought. What a mistake.
Too much of the same?
After clicking a couple of links on Twitter that all led me to the same WARC articles and after skimming through a bunch of newsletters and trend reports that all talked about the same observations within a couple of days I realized that this won’t get me anywhere.
This won’t open up any new perspectives.
This won’t help any the brands I work with getting a competitive edge.
This won’t make me smarter.
This won’t get me anywhere new.
This is only the stuff that keeps you in the game but won’t bring or anyone in your team or your organization to the front. This will get you and your brands where everyone else already is going. That means if you’re not the one with the most money or the fastest, you’ll end up pretty much in the same position where you’ve started off.
Hit unfollow
It’s time for us to hit unfollow. And try something else.
Read what you find interesting. Read what you stumble across.
Read the bare minimum about industry trends (at least from your own industry.)
Read more about the fuck-ups and failures and apply that to your current challenge.
And if you just read this, keep it in mind – and so something else.
Image: Swarm by Simon Bleasdale
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