Occupy Wall Street is, I think, a protest against Unsustainable Games (UGs).
When people say ’sustainability,’ they can be referring to a lot of different cosmetic concepts (monetary policy, geothermal energy, funding for education or manufacturing, urban gardening, solar power, vegetarianism, LED lighting, gender and sexual equality, etc. etc. etc.). In fact, we know this ‘multi-causism’ to be characteristic of the OWS scene. The meta concept is, for all these causes, the same: Are you playing constructive or de-constructive games? Zero sum or positive sum games? Are your games sustainable or not? OWS is, ultimately, itself a game, one designed to focus attention on the UGs of Wall Street.
The protesters arrested yesterday on the Brooklyn Bridge represent the most creative generation living in the most creative nation on earth. No doubt they have roots in every language, race, religion, culture, science, art form and evolutionary instinct in the human species. And daily, on Manhattan Island, they are forced to confront the 1-percenters who control 99 percent of the nation’s wealth, people who are, for the most part, not creators, but extractors. That’s what their games are designed to do—-extract. These people getting arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge? they’re doing it to point out the difference between where the money is and where it needs to be for us to get a bigger bang out of the creativity they represent. 99 percent of our creativity belongs to 99 percent of the people. That’s a biological fact, Jack. It’s the ultimate sustainable resource. The protesters know this and are calling it to our attention with one of the games they and their friends originated, flash mobbing.
The OWS players understand that if the ratio of ‘99 percent of the wealth to 1 percent of the people’ ratio stays where it is, we will never get out the doldrums economically, because we’re getting no Return on Creativity. No ROC. Because we are putting most of our money where 99 percent of our creativity isn’t. For the ratio to change, the game must change. The OWS players grew up on games. They are the gamingest people in the history of the world. You think they don’t know a bad game when they see one? Wall Street plays bad games. They want game change.
Game change will come about only when we find ways to invest in the creativity of the 99 percent. We cannot afford to have the most creative Americans sitting on the bench right now. We need them in the game. Just not the old games. New ones. The OWS players are screaming at the coaches to put them into a game they can play.
The old game, in addition to being unsustainable, has left a bitter taste in the mouth of the world. Those protesters sitting on the Brooklyn Bridge? They’re bitter too. They’re bitter because they have the ability to change the game and they know it. They understand the scope of the work ahead, and are in a hurry to get on with it.
They have good taste, let them cook with it, and bring the world to our table again. They have stories to tell that are not the same old stories, let them tell them. They have visions that are not blueprints of the past, let them build them. They hear music that has never been sung and have crazy ideas that no one else would even think of attempting. Let them sing. Let them try. We need that now. We need them. And every day the ‘1 percent to 99 percent ratio’ stays where it is, we are one step closer to losing them.
They are getting arrested for squatting on a symbol of America’s great creative past like birds who have come home to roost, when what they really want to do is fly.
Before yesterday, I’d never, to my recollection, heard the phrase ‘burning platform’ used in a business conversation. Yesterday I heard it used multiple times in two different conversations, with teams in two different businesses, in two different parts of the U.S., to refer to issues they are addressing.
A pattern defines a game.
This is what a burning platform looks like:
What’s the story here? Well, let’s see…it’s an environmental disaster…lives are no doubt endangered (many have already escaped in lifeboats, jumped or been killed (e.g. ‘fired’)…the focus is on containment instead of productivity…the PR spinning is beginning…a hundred lawyers are circling…Wall Street is manipulating markets based on shareholder emotions…the media is fanning the fear…the government is organizing committees that will haunt and impede productivity for years to come…cities, states and municipalities are seeking reparations. Whatever good can emerge from this mess will be years, maybe a generation, in coming.
Metaphors like ‘burning platform’ represent a level of meaning that accompanies all communication, the Meta level. (The other two are Cosmetic and Emotional). The Meta level contains metaphor, symbolism, allegory, parable, analogies, etc. Meta meaning is powerful stuff and should be chosen with great care. It’s why brands work so hard, at such great expense, on their identity. Those symbols mean a lot.
At GameChangers, we practice what I call the science of narrative. This science requires specific, deliberate and objective choices about what metaphors we put into play.
The Center for Public Policy and Administration defined the phrase ‘burning platform’ in 2005. ‘Burning platform’ according to the CPPA, came into meaning when a driller on a burning offshore oil-drilling platform calculated that his best chance of survival was a 150-foot jump that he’d never make under normal conditions. A burning platform came to mean an ‘urgent condition requiring bold choices.’ All good, and useful. Context is huge, however, and after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the context for this phrase changed and, along with it, its meaning. Now it means ‘unmitigated disaster.’
Look at the photo again. That’s the image of a burning platform most of your audience will conjure when this phrase is used. Whatever changes come about because of the pictured scenario promise to be painful, litigious, lengthy and costly. This is not what we want when we change the game. We want change that is productive, agreeable, fast and inexpensive to implement.
Clearly, we need a new metaphor to capture this meaning.
It’s like that old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon intro, where Bullwinkle pulls a monster out of a hat and says “No doubt about it, I’ve gotta get another hat.”
In his ‘brand narrative,’ Avidon does a good job of communicating on the meta level, and he speaks well on the emotional level, too. The images he uses on his job search blog are pure meta, not the least of which is the fact that his own image is balanced with the other five. It suggests a balanced life. But not TOO balanced. Avidon, an industrial designer by training, has laid out the page so that the images and the program description near the bottom are justified left while the rest of the content on the page is centered. It doesn’t matter whether this is Avidon’s conscious design or an accident, it’s brilliant, because it uses the meta meaning in design to communicate the INCOMPLETENESS of the narrative. Something’s missing. Something we, in the audience, naturally want to fill. We are coded as human beings to strive for completeness, and the incompleteness on Avidon’s page gets us leaning forward, into his narrative, as a result.
As a systems thinker, Avidon has plugged, somehow, into the HuffPost network in order to expand his narrative in a quantum way that is of his doing, but is now, by his design, out of his control. His work now consists of channeling the chaos that ensues. This is good narrative science, and conjures up something that cannot be present in a flat resume. Energy, vitality, generosity, creativity, dimensional thinking.
Compare Avignon’s narrative to a typical job query or resume, which is primarily cosmetic: information, facts, history, data points, objectives. There’s no comparison.
Employers today are looking to invest in personal narratives, in trajectories, and in generative, ‘Yes-And’ thinking. Companies hire individuals who can make good moves when faced by unforeseen circumstances. Who share their own success with their team. Who can be engines of newness and positive change. That you’re knowledgeable at what you do is just table stakes that can get in the game, maybe. Whether or not you can change the game in your favor is what really counts
I hear Oblong Industries is hiring. They need Scott Avidon on their team.
The ‘Los Mineros’ scene ended in Chile this week with a worldwide swelling of joy at the safe rescue of all 33 trapped miners. They survived for a total of 68 days 2,300 feet under the earth’s surface, the longest anyone is known to have been trapped underground and lived to tell about it.
We have been analyzing the scene here since shortly after the miners were discovered alive. One of the most instructive aspects of the ‘Los Mineros’ scene is that it has very little spin. The cave where they were trapped was truly a no-spin zone. Events were not manipulated or interpreted to someone’s economic or political advantage. There were no conspiracy theories. No, this was as unadulterated as a media narrative can be.
During their 68 days in the darkness, the miners had time to ponder their lives in ‘the normal world,’ as Joseph Campbell would call it. Many, if not all, seem to have been enlightened by the experience, emerging with a newfound clarity about themselves and the world they are re-entering. “I have been with God and I have been with the devil. I seized the hand of God,” said one, Mario Sepulveda.
“I have changed. I am a different man,” said another, Mario Gomez.
Here is a post-by-post summary of the GameChangers series about the ‘Los Mineros’ scene:
One of the ways GameChangers defines a ‘Scene’—no matter what its duration, could be minutes, could be months—is with a classic three-act structure. We label these acts Connect, Adapt and Deliver. Continuing with our analysis of ‘Los Mineros,‘ the Trapped Chilean Miners scene, we can clearly see that the scene is entering its third act. The drill boring through the 2,300 feet of solid rock to the hollow where they are trapped has just made it through to them. That’s a clear signal for the heightening of energy and emotion, increasing tempo and sharpening focus that typically indicate the beginning of Act Three of any scene.
Here’s how the three-act structure has defined Los Mineros to date.
Act One: Connect. This is where we first heard about this story. We were introduced to the main characters. The conditions of their life-threatening predicament were explained to us. With the news that it was going to take a long time to reach them, a kind of ticking clock was set in motion. The clock was not life-or-death, but it helped us frame the scene in our minds. The ‘Game’ —defined by Objective, Environment, Roles and Rules—came into focus. A lot of the meaning associated with this act was cosmetic—that is, strongly oriented toward data, raw information, clinical analysis. A mythic theme, one you might call, ‘Trapped in a Cave,’ got defined. All of this earned the audience’s attention on a global scale. Clearly, this was going to be a story that many, may people could relate to.
Act Two: Adapt. In this act, complications were introduced to the scene, and communication began to turn toward the Emotional level of meaning, as emotions like Urgency, Fear, Jealousy, Camaraderie, Patience, Frustration and Surprise colored the events during this stage. We began to learn more about the main characters, and new characterss–wives, mistresses, politicians, drillers, NASA scientists and a newborn baby—entered the scene to interact with the main characters and make the scene deeper, richer, more complex. This is where the scene often takes unexpected turns, hence the need for the characters to adapt. Three drill bits were tried before one worked. Original plans were discarded in favor of new ones. A miner’s wife and mistress both showed up at the rescue site on the same day. The newborn baby’s name got changed from what its parents originally intended—to Esperanza, the Spanish word for ‘hope.’ In other words, everyone involved rolled with the ever-unfolding reality. They had to improvise. There was no script for this.
And now…
Act Three: Deliver. Typically, the third act is shorter than the first two. This has the effect of compressing time, as does the increasing tempo of entrances and exits, and the steady release ‘new news’ by the world’s media. We are building toward a 24-hour news cycle in a couple of days in which Los Mineros will dominate current events. It is during this cycle that the scene will reach its emotional apex, and the audience will feel more pull and lean forward more than it has at any other time in the scene. There will be a lot of postscripts added after this climactic 24-hour cycle, but in terms of the three-act structure, this scene will have ended, and new scenes (you can think of them as ’sequel’ or ’spin-off’ scenes) will begin.
For business communicators, the three-act structure is a really useful framework. It gives players and audience alike a sense of where you are in your scene, and helps you organize the many narrative elements that are part of it. It will give you the ability to put the emphasis where it belongs, when it belongs there.
Spencer, I agree to this extent: The phrase ‘Social Media’ is so amorphous as to be essentially meaningless. In fact, all media are social. It’s like saying Wooden Tree, or Feathered Bird.
The most social medium is sexual intimacy, followed (if we’re talking relevance; preceded if we’re talking chronology) by meaningful face-to-face conversations, scaling out from there, and eventually reaching the nebulous netherworld of thoughtless Likes, meaningless Tweets and snarky YouTube comments. Noise. Cosmetic data with no emotional or meta resonance.
What’s usually ignored in conversations about Social Media platforms is the Science of Narrative. Narrative is the force that makes media meaningful. Narrative may not make the world go round, but it describes for us why and how it does. It provides context for information that would otherwise appear as random. The reason social messaging echos and evaporates is that it’s not connecting with a narrative. (A hashtag or a mention does not a narrative make!)
The most relevant aspect of Social Media will turn out to be the lens it afford us with which to perceive narratives. We are, I believe, at a stage in the history of narratology that parallels where physics was at the turn of the last century, when the science moved from the Newtonian to the Quantum.
Marketers who use social media as you have described it, as a fashion statement, are doomed to keep firing blanks at a target they cannot see. They are using Industrial Aged models to engage in a Networked environment. It’s like trying to split an atom with a pendulum.
Those who use it as a lens on narrative, will be able to direct ‘particles of meaning’ at the quantum narrative made visible by social technologies and capture the massive energy predictably released by these interactions.
A serial analysis of the quest to rescue 33 miners trapped 2,300 feet underground in a copper mine outside Copiapo, Chile…
Levels of Meaning
With the eyes of the news media fixed on one very specific location, everything about the Los Mineros narrative is tightly focused and vividly portrayed. There’s no mystery to it, no hidden agenda (with maybe the exception of a mining company looking to avoid liability, which itself would be no surprise). With the focus so intense right now on the mine itself and the rescue efforts, almost every element of the narrative is visible even to a distant observer like me, who might check the story every day or two on the webs to see how the miners are doing.
It is extremely clear how the narrative is conveyed on three distinct Levels of Meaning.
All communication happens on three levels: Cosmetic (data, information, quantification, surface descriptions, neutral language), Emotional (passion, mood, empathy, attitude, ups, downs) and Meta (symbolism, context, iconography, metaphor, perspective, interpretation, the subconscious connections).
Observe, and learn from, how the Los Mineros narrative is conveyed on these three levels:
Cosmetic:Tons of information here. Plans and backup plans described in detail. The three four-inch pipes that have become their lifeline. The NASA psychologists who’ve arrived to help. The number of calories they’re eating every day (2,000), and how much water they’re supposed to drink every day (5 litres). We know about the ’super drill’ being brought in to bore through the rock. This early in the story, there’s still a lot of cosmetic meaning to be conveyed, an abundance of factual information. Expect that, at some point, this level of meaning will begin to lose steam, and that the tellers of the story will begin to place more emphasis on the other two levels.
Emotional: As always, this is where the most meaning resides, where the story is most potent, and touches us most profoundly. We know that some of Los Mineros have been depressed. We know that they have been able to communicate with their families. They have shared their frustration. We feel their claustrophobia. They have begun to play roles, and these will rouse emotions, too. Who will give the pep talks? Who can get them to smile? Keeping their emotions positive will be key to their mental health during their ordeal, and so, the longer the ordeal goes on, the more crucial the emotional content of the narrative will become.
Meta:The video feed is an existential lifeline. “I video, therefore I am.” For this reason, its very existence is a hopeful symbol. The handsomer guys are getting more facetime on camera. Stars of the narrative, those who can best hold our attention, will emerge as the Cosmetic flow slows. Bringing in the NASA psychologists to deal with the miners’ prolonged isolation is a recognition of the global significance of the narrative, and it ennobles Los Mineros by equating them with astronauts, Los Astronautas, and to the heroic qualities we ascribe them. This blog post is, itself, meta communication about the rescue effort.
Sometimes uncovering the Meta language requires digging beneath the surface, because beneath the surface is where the Meta meaning works. For example the number of miners, 33, has deep meta significance in the predominantly Catholic country of Chile, because 33 is commonly believed to be Jesus Christ’s age when he died on the cross. When Los Mineros finally walk into the light, the date on the calendar will not matter, they’ll be celebrating Easter in Chile.
Because it is so tightly tethered to comedy, we almost never use the word ‘improv’ in relation to GameChangers (unless we’re referring to actual comedy improv).
We do, however, use the word ‘imp.’ I have always associated the idea of impishness–of being playfully mischievous–with improvisation and even sometimes refer to improvisers as ‘my fellow imps.’ While waiting on a Skype call this morning with Hildy Gottlieb of Creating the Future, I decided to look up the roots of the word ‘imp.’
Turns out that ‘imp’ comes from an entirely different strain of language than ‘improvise,’ which is derived the Latin root ‘improvisere,’ meaning ‘not foreseen.’ ‘Imp’ has Old English roots, a little Latin attribution. Yet there’s a lot of overlap, like a family from Naples and one from Nottingham having a lot in common.
Here’s how the TheFreeDictionary.com, an aggregator of print dictionary listings, defines it:
imp(mp)
n.
1. A mischievous child.
2. A small demon.
3. Obsolete A graft.
tr.v.imped, imp·ing, imps
1. To graft (new feathers) onto the wing of a trained falcon or hawk to repair damage or increase flying capacity.
2. To furnish with wings.
[Middle English impe, scion, sprig, offspring, from Old English impa, young shoot, from impian, to graft, ultimately from Medieval Latin impotus, graft, from Greek emphutos, grafted, from emphuein, to implant : en-, in; see en-2 + phuein, to make grow; see bheu- in Indo-European roots.]
1. (Myth & Legend / European Myth & Legend) a small demon or devil; mischievous sprite
2. a mischievous child
vb
(Individual Sports & Recreations / Falconry) (tr)Falconry to insert (new feathers) into the stumps of broken feathers in order to repair the wing of a hawk or falcon
[Old English impa bud, graft, hence offspring, child, from impian to graft, ultimately from Greek emphutos implanted, from emphuein to implant, from phuein to plant]
1 a small devil or wicked spirit. kwelgees عِفْريت дяволче čertík, skřítek lille djævel; trold das Teufelchen διαβολάκιdiablillo kuradike بچه جن؛ شیطانک pikkupirudiablotin שֵׁדוֹן छोटा प्रेत या पिशाच vražićak kisördög setan kecil púkidiavoletto 小悪魔 꼬마도깨비 velniūkštis velnēns anak syaitanduiveltje smådjevel, djevelunge chochlik diabrete drăcuşor чертёнок škriatok vražič vragolan smådjävul ภูตน้อย; ปีศาจน้อย; เทพธิดาน้อยküçükşeytan 小魔鬼 чортеня, бісеня بھتنا tiểu yêu小鬼
2 a mischievous child Her son is a little imp. kwajongوَلَدٌ عفريت ، مُشاكِس пакостник rarášek, nezbeda spilopmager der Schelm διαβολάκι, άτακτοπαιδίdiablillo, pillo võrukael بچه تخس vintiöpetit diable שוֹבָב बच्चा, शैतान बच्चा nestaško huncut kölyök anak nakal óþekktarangidiavoletto いたずらっ子 악동 velniūkštis draiskulis; nebēdnis budak nakaldeugniet trollunge, skøyer diabełek diabrete drac împieliţat озорник nezbedník porednež obešenjak satunge เด็กซุกซนyaramazçocuk 頑童 пустун شریر بچہ đứa trẻ tinh quái顽童
adjimpish
——————————————————————————————
GameChangers summary: Both ‘imp’ and ‘improvisation’ express themes of playfulness, the getting of wings, a childlike view of the world, and a mischievous spirit that results in some kind of transformation. Like improvisation, the imping that describes a plant graft builds on an existing reality. Impishness isn’t a seed. It is a branch grafted onto the existing reality of the tree. It isn’t a new wing, it is adding feathers to a bird that already has wings.
Growth, flight, magic. What fantastic themes these are. Imp on!
The end of the year, the decade, passed fitfully, at times stressfully, with no pause for reflection, and no Resolution for the New Year except the fairly vague intention of being more Resolute. What to be resolute about? That was still the question.
And then this article by Errol Morris in the New York Times came across the network this morning, the hook being a quote from Walt Disney (”I only hope that we don’t lose sight of one thing — that It Was All Started By A Mouse.“) as its headline. I’d already seen the link a couple of times when Howard Green from Disney Studios called to invite me to a tribute for Walt’s recently-departed nephew, Roy Disney, on Sunday at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood. Suddenly the universe was in my ear bigtime, whispering that I had to click on the link to the Morris article. Something was there to be discovered….
The article itself is a photo essay and dialogue with photojournalist Ben Curtis about the forensics of war photography, the context of image vs. imagemaker, the technological challenges and dangers that come with altering photos to create propaganda or enhance a certain point of view. The kind of stuff in which Morris specializes. After I got the context, I began skimming. But I kept coming back to a photo by Curtis that led off the article:
In seeing the photo, I found what had been missing over the holidays. I might have decided to be resolute, I was still waffling on a theme, what, exactly I’d be resolute about. This photo resolved that. I wrote the following Comment on the Morris piece:
Errol
As our old friend Onosko, who worked at the House of Mouse for many years, might have said, you’re making it more complicated than it is. Focusing on the cosmetic level of communication–the toy itself, the shards of glass, the smoke, the interaction between imagemaker and image–is a fascinating narrative, and yields neverending complexity, but this complexity obscures meaning instead of bringing it to light. How Mickey got there is not nearly as important as the meta and emotional levels of the communication: War’s awfulest tragedies are its children.
Until we begin thinking of children first–begin with the Mice!, that what Walt would’ve done–War will be an adult theme park where children get crippled, grow old and perish before their time.
And so, finally, thanks to Howard and Errol and Ben, I have it — my New Year’s theme — the thing I can be Resolute about: Be Nice to the Mice.
I entered the arena this week all snarky and snarling, as if awakening from a tryptophan coma. It didn’t help Monday morning when what was supposed to be an 11-minute hold to speak with Bank of America’s service people about a problem we were having with our online banking turned into 45 minutes. One must find a healthy outlet for one’s darker moods, a way to vent. Yoga can lift the clouds. So can playing the guitar, a strenuous workout, or a good long laugh. Writing and the arts are good tonic, too, creativity being a prime refuge for malcontents from the beginning of time. The caveperson who did the drawings on the walls of the caves at Lascaux was probably a lousy hunter, got ridiculed for it, and found that drawing on the walls with a burnt stick was good therapy.
In the interest of venting creatively, let’s talk about why this billboard on south La Brea Avenue is the worst billboard in Los Angeles.
Naturally there are a lot of unsold screenplays around town, just like there are a lot of unsold cars in Detroit, billions of lines of unused code in Silicon Valley, and a legion of uncaught lobsters off the coast of Maine. It’s a company town, and this is what happens in company towns. Inventory gets stockpiled, and when the economy is troughing like it is now, it seems as if nothing moves off the shelves and more moves on all the time. Besides, everyone who’s ever written for films or television can show you a trunkful of unsold scripts, manuscripts, treatments and pitches. The bookshelves of every agent and D-person in the system are buckling under the weight of screenplays, spec pilot scripts and the galleys of unpublished novels to be pitched as film projects. The titles of these projects are all written on the spines. Occasionally you might see the name of a film that actually got made (”Memento”) a few that might have gotten made (”Naked Kill 3″???) and many, many more that you suspect will never get made (”Cletus the Fetus”). So yes, cosmetically, the billboard states a kind of truth. Most screenplays remain unsold.
Emotionally and metaphorically, however, this billboard is a terrible affront to the industry, and to anyone who ever put their time and effort into writing a screenplay. Here’s why:
Chase, the bank with all the ATMs, has never written a screenplay. Chase has never stayed up late at night after the kids have gone to sleep, or gotten up extra early in the morning before work to labor over a story in the longshot hope that the story will be the ticket out of a podunk town or a flatlining job. Chase has never been so inspired by the lives of others or moved by the tide of human events that the urge to turn the experience into a screenplay, a movie, a grand statement about the way you feel about the world, is every bit as biological and undeniable as a seed’s drive to seek the sun. Chase has never sat around with its college buddies, Citi, B of A, and Wells Fargo, and co-written the next big teen comedy, only to discover that nobody’s making teen comedies any more, the market has shifted practically overnight to RomComs.
Every one of those unsold screenplays was written by a human being with a dream, an idea, an inspiration. Chase isn’t human. Steinbeck put it this way in The Grapes of Wrath: “The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it.” This is what makes the billboard on La Brea such a monstrous offense to the industry it claims to court. All those unsold screenplays are the hard-won badges of our humanity. They are the flags that keep flying despite the hardships of battle. They are the symbols of our striving, of our willingness to believe in our dreams, and confront the obstacles that stand between us and their realization.
As Christopher Walken might say, “If an actual person spoke to me like that billboard does, I’d stab them in the face with a soldering iron.”
Spencer, I agree to this extent: The phrase ‘Social Media’ is so amorphous as to be essentially meaningless. In fact, all media are social. It’s like saying Wooden Tree, or Feathered Bird.
Levels of Meaning
mp)
- in Indo-European roots.]
imp – (folklore) fairies that are somewhat mischievous
imp – one who is playfully mischievous
