Clarity First
A notebook about how we work and learn and love and live.

Doing my part to filter and make sense of the tsunami of ideas that fill my inbox every week…

Headlines are all about the promise.

Some trends that track how the field of marketing continues to evolve and change.
Article: 10 Things We Learned About Marketing This Year

Free, online resources for professional communicators

If you write, you need help using inclusive and non-discriminatory language, for example, and using proper grammar and punctuation. Here’s seven resources to bookmark.
Article: Beyond AP Style: Terrific Writing Resources for PR Pros

Trust leads to emotional and intellectual shortcuts.

As well as generating a sense of belonging, which is great for ensuring that community members show up and contribute, trust also allows us to make emotional and intellectual shortcuts. But trust can’t be rushed. It’s built in increments, and by setting boundaries.
Article: Why Trust is a Must When Working Together 

From “Who’s the Leader?” to “We’re the Leaders!”

Curtis Ogden has been musing about network effects for years. Benefits include small world reach, rapid dissemination of ideas and information, adaptability, resilience and true system change. He’s recently updated his observations based on what he’s been learning.
Article: Thinking Like a Network 2.0

The reason we suffer, the reason we’re not enduringly satisfied, is that we don’t see the world clearly.

Darwin and the Buddha agree on the problem, says evolutionary psychologist, Robert Wright. And, according to Wright the Buddha solved the problem.
Article: Why Buddhism is True
Video: Why Buddhism is True   (same content, different medium)

How the nonprofit sector can help save capitalism from itself

Economist Karl Polanyi (1886–1964) studied the evolution of capitalism. In his 1944 book, The Great Transformation, he observed that throughout history business and government have worked together to advance their mutual self-interest, always at the expense of of the majority of the population. He would not have been surprised by the election of Trump.

But does it have to be so? What new and better ways can we devise for blending government, markets and the commons? Elizabeth Castillo suggests that our current nonprofit organizations offer a working, proven model. She suggests that rather than nonprofits learning to act more like businesses, if they are to be sustainable it is business that must learn to operate more like nonprofits. “Commerce must restore reciprocity to the exchange process.”
Article: Restoring Reciprocity: How the Nonprofit Sector Can Help Save Capitalism from Itself

Do just one thing every day that helps you move toward what you want to achieve. 

Doing something as simple as performing one sit up or drinking a glass of water is progress. The mind is an amazingly easy thing to trick.
Article: Make Continuous Progress Toward Your Goals with “Non-Zero Days”.

Playlist

Sometimes only Radiohead will meet the mood of the room. For just those special times, Spotify user Tyler Shelton has created a lovely playlist: Thom Yorke – Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes, not to be confused with the record of the same name, which Yorke will re-release on CD and vinyl on December 8 in support of a new U.S. tour.

Image of the week

“These issues of power, and control, and physical damage, and death, and predation are ages old”, Barbara Kruger, one of my favorite artist truth-sayers, told the New York Times. In her trademark style she raises the issues again, this time as a new MetroCard design. The cards were available last Wednesday, November 1st, at four subway stations around New York City in a limited-edition batch of 50,000.

I’m not a commuter, but I’m just guessing that my mind is going to get a little stretched when my subway pass asks: “Who is healed? Who is housed? Who is silent? Who speaks?”
Hyperallergeric has the story.

What’s Clarity First?

If you’re new to Clarity First, it’s the weekly newsletter by Clarity, the consultancy that helps mission-driven companies use their brand – their purpose, values, and stories – as powerful tools for transformation. Learn more.

If you get value from Clarity First, please pass it on.