Monthly Message Design Office Hours

Hello, I'm Tamsen Webster and you have just joined, or not joined the SenseGiver office hours, which I do about once a month. What's a SenseGiver? Well, it's related to sense giving. And what's sense giving? It is making things make sense for other people. It's a term originally originated by Joya and Chidipeti. That would be Dennis Joya and Kumar Chidipeti back in 1991. And I have taken that on as my own as a way to describe that whole concept of how do we make things make sense for other people. I'm personally of the opinion that sense giving is one of the most necessary skills that we can engage in as leaders, as speakers, authors, leaders of thinking, etc. And yet it's something that we are not trained in at all. And thus why I am focused on sense giving and my Substack newsletter, The Sense Giver, is focused on that. All right. So speaking of my Substack newsletter, I wanted to talk a little bit today about just as we get started and as we wait for our special guest, who I see has arrived in the background, this whole concept of the minimum viable elements of making things make sense, how humans make sense of things. This is, in my view, a really critical thing, because if something doesn't make sense to someone, if they can't make sense of it, they can't make meaning from it. And therefore they are, if they can't make sense, they are immune to persuasion, they are immune to future action, et cetera, because nothing else happens if the sensemaking fails in the first place. So that means really always having front and center, what is it that somebody needs to have information-wise in like through their own sensemaking process, or if you're trying to make something make sense to somebody else through the sensegiving process, those minimum viable elements. And something that I'm increasingly seeing is that this is an X, then, because packet. And what I mean by X, then is that there's different ways this shows up. So for instance, when we first start to make sense of things as humans going through the world, we first observe, we experience that this happens and then this happens. And if we see that pair of this and then happen enough, then we start to lock it in as something that happens. And we may, for instance, if, if this happens, I throw a ball up, then that happens, the ball comes down, we may eventually learn that that because is not just because I threw it up, it's because gravity exists. Over time, that becomes locked as a kind of rule in our minds, uh, an automatic kind of go-to thing that we don't even think about. So that when something happens, then we know this other thing will happen because— and gravity still holds here, but— and this is where it gets tricky— the because often turns into because that's what it always does. We still need to know what that original because is though. And then finally, if that is tested and that works out enough, that this then that becomes the when then gets tested out enough, my current thinking on this is that then it becomes predictive. We start to think if then, if I throw the ball up, then it will come down. Why? Because when I do that, then that happens because I've seen it happen over and over again. And again, the underlying because is gravity. So just really thinking of this in the kind of this X, then, because, uh, unit is always going to be helpful, particularly when we're thinking about how to make something make sense to other people, which is a lovely segue to our guest today, which is— who will be my friend and colleague claiming you as a colleague, Andrew. Andrew McCluskey, who works with this amazing agency focused on helping people who want to shift paradigms, shift those paradigms at scale. That agency is called Viva Ellipsis. And so, Andrew, you came in, you're coming in today with a different hat on. And let's hear about that hat and what the question is that you've got. So Jen's going to bring you up. Hello, Andrew.

Hi, Tamsen Webster. How you doing?

Hello. Hello. All right. So bring me up to speed on the nonprofit so that we can have that piece of context in the background for us.

All right. So all the work I do with agency is purely to feed the nonprofit. That's, that's what I do on the planet. Um, and the nonprofit grew out of, um, My degree was psychology and my final year project was how sound affects human performance. And I've just been fascinated by that all the way through. So I had an artist, I came over to America 26 years ago to do music. And one of my music projects was music to work to, because I knew from my studies that with a little bit of oral stimulation, you can actually raise cognitive output. So I thought, well, yeah, I'm a pianist. So I had this brand, Music2Work2, where it was long form, not overly pattern driven, but recognizable enough so the brain could hang onto it, use it as stimulation, and then warm up the brain. And then I would listen to it while I was writing papers. So that was the artist thing. And then it grew into music2.com, which was a distribution play around music. So You know, back in the day when Spotify came in, we, you know, we grew up with albums and then we went to singles and then the playlist became the distribution container. And so we were a playlist play using SEO and, you know, community. So we developed this community at music2.com and the basic promise of the community to people coming in was if you come in and you grow an audience around a playlist, you will eventually be able to monetize that audience because you've got people's attention. And that would have worked in 2018, 2019. And yet Spotify changed the rules, you know, the world that we're moving in changed and the economic viability declined. So then we've got a community, a global community that isn't really sure what it's here for. So, um, at the same time, we found a mechanic that worked. We had two community members had a disagreement. And they were arguing quite vociferously and I mediated and the result was let's make a collaborative playlist together and they did and it was game-changing because you had two people with opposing views who decided, agreed that they would make a collaborative trade tracks playlist and it's so simple. It's like you like music, I like music, I send you a track, you listen to it and you go oh I like that, that track reminds me of this and you go back and forth exchanging a bit of yourself in that exchange, and there's an output. There's a playlist, which is a memory, a capture of your creative collaboration, and you get to know somebody in an area of shared agreement. So this was game-changing for us, and then we grew this community, and we didn't have an economic model, and we realized that we didn't want to be extractive, so we spun the nonprofit out of that. And so we now have a nonprofit. So the Music2 Foundation works with music to solve big human problems. That's what we do. And the big human problem we're solving right now is othering. And this is where we see it all the time. You get the extremes on the left and the right and the demagogues, and they're telling us that if you don't agree with me, not only are you wrong, but you're stupid and actually you're evil and that we can hate you. And we think this is absolute nonsense. And so our foundation works to change that. Okay, so that's all the content.

Just, oh, just little things. Just a little thing.

Yeah, just the little things. So the engine of that, the, the foundation is for programs. So what the dot-com is, is this brilliant global community. We've done 650 projects across, um, 40-plus countries. We've had hundreds of people come in, and the output of that, these playlists drive the dot-com visibility. And now we have thousands of artists who come to us and they submit their tracks. And what we're now doing is we're asking these artists, uh, emotions on Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions. So we're going through the 13 of them. So the first one is fear. What are you afraid of? We had 3,500 people answer that, and we segregated across continent and by generation. So we've got this awesome data set We're now asking them, what are you surprised by? And so we're gonna go for 5,000 responses. Then we're going to go to discuss. So we have this now data about how creatives are feeling across the globe, which is cool. And we're now pushing that into a Substack. So now we've got a Substack that's literally just sharing one insane human story and not asking for anything in return, but just a really low closed cognitive loop where you can connect with a human being. All of this is predicated on the success of the dot-com, and the dot-com is sitting there at the moment not knowing what it is because it was for music lovers and people who are motivated to grow an audience, but it's not that anymore. We know that the collaborative playlist experiment— not experiment— is good, but you generally do 4 or 5 or 6, and if you don't make a real-life connection inside the community, you tend to move out. So the flow of a human being through the community is typically high activity, it's great, and then they play it off. So we now need to architect the .com for a particular audience and architect it correctly, and we are doubling down on artists. Okay, so what is the positioning to the artists? Because here's— and we're now here, so thank you for the time getting the context where we are. What's the promise to the artists? Because we know artists want visibility. They are coming in and they're coming to music2.com to give their track to our community so that the track goes on playlists and we distribute their playlist, you know, across all the major platforms. That's what they want. But that's very super transactional. But we also know that we've got this community mechanic that if artists— there are artists who are very transactional, but we know that artists are lonely because we got that from the fear data. We know they want connection. We know they're terrified of failing. And we've got this community that we could architect for them. And what I'm asking your help for is how do we make this understandable to an artist coming in so that they— so that we can somehow filter out the really transactional ones? Because there are— we just, we have a lot of data on that. There are some artists that are just, I don't give a shit, and we want to filter them out. But how do we How do we make the case for connection and community to artists when a lot of them don't even know that's possible?

Ah, okay, again, you know, small task. Uh, first caveat, may not solve it right now, but so a couple things. I mean, one of the things that I'm hearing, and I— and then I want to, uh, spend a little bit more time on, was this, this idea of One of the things you said was we don't necessarily want— we kind of want to weed out— that may not have been your word— the more transactional people, because you're more interested in the people who are— my words, not yours— either actively or latently looking for that kind of community and connection that you believe that the dot-com provides. Correct?

Yes.

Or adjust or refine what I just said so that I make sure that I'm operating on clarity.

Communities are really hard. Communities are insane, particularly digital communities. So if you have a very transactional community, somebody comes in, gets what they want, then leaves, you don't have a community, right? So you want to architect your community for the kind of people that are naturally aligned for connection or who were interested and curious about other people. And to an artist who is looking for audience for their track, one of— well, I know this to be true— one of the best ways to have your track exposed to a new audience is have another person with an audience bring your track to their audience, like we're doing on Substack. So the— because we will get the artist to make a collaborative playlist. Collaboration will still be at the heart of the community, and access to the community will be making a collaborative playlist with another artist. You can put your track on the playlist, which will then be exposed to that artist's audience, and it's alignment for the artist, it's alignment for music too.

Yeah, so I mean, one of the basic And this isn't just sensemaking. What kind of one of the basic rules of marketing, frankly, is just that whatever you put out is what is to some extent going to be what you draw in. So for me, as I'm thinking about this, the— how do I want to talk about this? What would seem like the obvious answer, but you've already taken it off the table, I'm not saying it's the obvious. What we generally say is the obvious answer is like, oh, well, they want exposure. Let's anchor it on exposure, et cetera. And then you have already said that what that gets for you are people who are interested in exposure. And if they don't get that or they don't get anything else, then they tend to wash out, et cetera. So what that means is it's like, we gotta, we've gotta figure out a different anchor for where that's going. So if we go back to those like minimum viable sense-making elements, like those kind of smallest possible elements. And we go back to that kind of idea of if, then, because. You know, because we've talked about this before, so much of it anchors on the if. And what we're trying to do there is articulate in the if— I like to frame it as a question, happy to talk more about why, but I like to frame it as a question that serves as a qualifying question for both the artist and for you, the community, so that you can kind of, you can each say the question serves as the artist because they say, I have this question, oh, let me explore this community because they're saying they have an answer to this question. It's qualifying for the community because you're saying, if you're not already asking some version of this question, this probably isn't the right place for you. Right. So what that does— that— does that make sense? Let me pause.

No, no, I'm loving it. I'm so happy that we're doing this.

Yay! Fabulous. Yeah, because it's— so I'm, I'm inclined towards, right, so if we're starting to think about what that would be, yeah, so while you can offer exposure, that's kind of like What you're finding is, yes, exposure and community. And what I'm hearing you say is you're looking for people already at some level are looking for that connection, community, collaboration, opportunity. And in those kinds of situations, this other thing of exposure becomes what Seth Godin would call a free prize inside, right? It's not what's drawing them to the community. It's this extra cherry on top of being in the community because, oh, by the way, you also get this other thing that's attractive to you, rather than saying, hey, let's dangle that because I'm sure you want that, but I'm not sure you want the other stuff that we're really about. Let's start here.

That's 100% aligned. Matt and I have been spending a lot of headspace in this, and he's very, very strong on you cannot lead with the SEO benefits or the audience benefits because you are architecting for the short-term transaction, which won't actually deliver the real promise of connection and collaboration and all the things that come from it.

That's right. And even if you do deliver that SEO stuff, if all the follow-on experience and messaging of the platform is around the other things, then you start to create this gap and this break in expectation between the audience, the artists and you. And you don't want that because as soon as there's that break, then you start to erode the trust, the, you know, the very community that you want to be building in the first place. Um, so based on what you've said, I would say pursuing a question along the lines of, how can I find— or, uh, you know, make it bigger— how can I find or collaborate with other— I put it in brackets, but that's a choice there— interesting artists like me, right? So, um, do you see what I'm saying? Like, that— if they're looking for that, like, if they're not at least at some level looking for that, sounds to me, based on what you've said, they'd never be happy here, you know? And so it's like, hey, I'm looking to— and you can, you can say underneath why you might be looking for that. You're looking for collaboration, you know, you're looking for a community, you know, you can define what you mean, but like why other people would find. But again, what you're looking for is that question that A, starts at kind of as far along their awareness as they would, as you know, like one of the ways I like to explain this is I know you spent a lot of time in the US, but have you ever seen The Price is Right, which is an American game show?

For sure. For sure.

And on various— it's a weird analogy, but like on various games there's like a red acrylic perspex, I think other people call it, um, like range for the prices, right? On— and one of the games is that you have to like move the perspex, you have to move that red acrylic so that it's spanning where they think the price is gonna be, right? And if the price is revealed to be within that range somewhere, woohoo, they win. And if it's not, all right. Think of this question as that red Perspex, is that red acrylic range, right? Like that question should capture the people that you're looking for and it should leave out, right? If they're not already asking this question at some level, you don't want to help them. And it's not that you're like, they're bad people and that you couldn't help them. It just means that if they're not already asking some version of a question that's in that range, then you're going to be spending a lot of your time convincing them to want that question. And that's wasting a lot of people's time, right? So I like to think of this as like this— thinking of this question, or even a range of questions, as, you know, if if somebody's not already in this range of at least finding other artists like them, right, or finding other artists that, um, have interests or taste or something in common, or even it doesn't have to be in common, right? So you could choose instead of find, how can I collaborate? How can I find a community? Those start to be a little further into that red space. Do you see what I mean? Like, if— like, starting to say, I want to collaborate with someone, means you're starting to cut out the people who are just kind of looking to connect with people, right? But if you say— like, if you put the question at, how can I get more exposure? Like, or how can I get my work in front of more— or in front of other artists? That may be like the outer edge of what you'd be willing to cover in like the range of the folks that you want. Do you see what I mean? Uh, but that's really to me like the, the big decision. And you know from working with me before that once we've got that, then it starts to kind of wrap out from there. But given that, let's pause. What's that for you with all of that, Andrew? What feels right or wrong.

No, I love the question. Yeah, and you know, what was it? This then that, when then that, and if then that. So this is, you know, we're now in this stage, and the one thing that we have to wrestle with is because of the nature of the audience, You know, we've, we've been with music lovers, not necessarily artists, and I think that's healthy. Um, I think one of the things that the core nature of our mechanic is that you don't need to be a musician, you don't need to be an artist. The reason the collaborative playlist works as a connective connective mechanic is that 99% of the people on the planet love music. So, you know, you can literally— you don't need to have any skill to do this. And if we focus it too tight on the artists, and then the word collaborate can be perceived as, I'll play my piano and you play your guitar, and that then becomes too restrictive because we want it to be for anybody who loves music.. But, you know, the insight for me was, you know, we were architecting too wide, we were casting our net too wide. And if we want music lovers, well, who are the biggest music lovers? Well, they're generally artists who are, you know, who are doing that. But I don't want to filter out people who just love music because then you've got not an elitist, but then you've got this moat that is just, that's against how the foundation is, is sourcing, is solving for othering.

Yeah. So, which I hear, and you, you, to some extent, you can't have it both ways. And I know, and what I mean, what I said, so, so the thing is, is that when you say we want it for anybody who loves music, that That is how it feels, and I fully support that, but I'm gonna gently invite you to consider that what you actually mean by that is anybody who loves music and loves interacting with other people around that music. That's not everyone.

No, but that's, but see, that's what's the, I mean, music's on the side of the bus. Yeah. You know. But what's the core behavior? Is collaboration—

is it though, or is that, is that, that is, it's a way to achieve the thing, right, that they're looking for? And so that's one of the things that sometimes we have to discover, like, is it actually collaboration that they're looking for, or is the collaboration one of the ways to achieve that kind of more slightly more amorphous outcome. So just as a— just to give you another thing to think about, not saying this is the right answer, but it could be, you know, another version of that question could be something like, how can I discover other music lovers like me?

Yeah, I mean, right off the bat, that feels great because—

well, tell me more about that. I don't want to say like, well, of course it is, but like, I mean, I know what feels right about it. For you. I just want to— I also want to kind of point out, like, you know, do you see what it's doing? Because again, this is all about helping it make sense both to you but to also other people. Do you see what that question does as opposed to how can I discover music or something like that?

I, I, I, I— the reason it resonates with me is it solves a lot of the conversation you just had. So discover, discovery, it's a powerful word. Um, but it's music lovers that accommodates artists, non-artists, people who love music, that— but like me is bringing them into it and is, is predicting or presupposing a connective act.

I mean, yes, right, it's already, it's already seeding it into the question. And to me, that's— this part of it. What we're doing, I mean, one of the foundational elements of sensemaking is this idea of frames. So meaning, like, sensemaking, we have to give somebody a frame in which to make sense of something else. And so I think, and I'm not sure yet, that this question provides an initial frame for anyone else to make sense of anything else that comes back. Because if you're saying, hey, if you want to, The frame here is discovering other music lovers like you. Now, there's still a lot more work to do about what that discovery looks like, what kind of music lovers you're putting in there. What does like me mean? Does like me mean I just want people who share my taste? Could it also mean I want people like me who really want to push the edges of my taste? Great. Like, I mean, so you get to define within that, but by putting it that way, by creating that boundary, And this is now where I love that post by Martin Wallraven that you pointed me to. You're basically saying, this is— we're operating within this frame. So if you're not interested in, in whatever might show up in this frame of discovering other musical lovers like you, it's not that this isn't for you. We're not shutting you out because you can keep exploring, right? It's just saying it's probably not going to be as attractive to you. And it also frees you and Matt up to say, well, yeah, like if anybody else happens to stumble across it and is interested, great. But what we're really trying to do is serve this group of people that don't feel properly served right now.

100%. And you could even swap out other, I mean, curiosity and curious is a word. It's one of our values. 'Cause we're curious. How do I discover curious music lovers like me?

So, and I would say, so pros of that, you're injecting your value into that question, right? Con of that, one could argue that curiosity is already embedded in the desire to discover. Okay.

Yeah.

Second, right, the minute you start to pre-qualify the kind of things. Again, it's just a choice. I'm not saying it's wrong, but if somebody goes, yeah, I'm not interested in curious music lovers, I'm just like, you know, and what do you mean by curious? You mean like curious as in Curiouser Said Curiouser said Alice, or do you mean like I'm interested in new stuff? So it's kind of like it really does depend on what your— what the community actually supports, because again, it's I don't know, you know, whether or not like finding like music lovers, is that always going to be people who are quite expansive in their taste, or are you also there for people who are just like so into their not just Swedish death metal but Swedish death metal from this particular neighborhood of Malmö, right? Like, and so, like, so because I mean those people need people too. And so do you see what I'm saying? So I don't know the answer, but we want to make sure that that person, if you do serve that person, they don't feel excluded by that question because you want to make sure that they don't feel excluded by—

I absolutely hear that. And in your sense-making construct or sense-giving construct, it's what's the lowest You know, what's the lowest unit of understanding? And you're right. I mean, other is actually, other is great because that's built into the actual mission of the Foundation in terms of combating othering. So there's not that that makes any sense within this construct, but it's like discovering others.

Isn't that kind of cool? By discovering others, you're actually bringing them in, right? Like, and so that's the, that's the kind of thing is like the only way to eliminate isolating othering is to have, is to find the others and bring them in, right? And so like that, to me, I mean, again, the final test of any of this, particularly when we're talking about creating, you know, what's this, when, what's in essence, like you might, whether you want to think of it as a brand statement, we still need to figure out a name for this, but particularly for nonprofits, the theory of change is appropriate here, Because what you're basically saying, again, from the, from the for-profit side is if you want to discover other music lovers like you, whatever that might mean, right? Then you need whatever it is that this platform provides. And, you know, from, again, from previous work that we've done, that, that means we still have to do that work of figuring out how do you describe it? Because it's not just, you need a platform. That's, that's a thing. It's not a way to think about the thing. Right. And so we're really saying, okay, well, what would make sense as a way of discovering other music lovers? Then, you know, there's probably those elements of, okay, well, we're, we actually want to, like, what do you, what do you believe both of you believe to your core is necessary to— for discovery and for finding like people, right? Um, even if like means people who like to find people who are different, right? Um, does that help?

So yeah, very much. And we've got this weird thing, we have a fire hose of global musicians and we, we have their attention. Because we are offering them a thing that they want that's still vibe, you know, like an opportunity to get their track heard. And so we're giving them, and we don't charge. That's the beauty of being the nonprofit as well, is that every other artist community or, you know, tool is ultimately extractive because they have to pay for their overheads and whatever. And we've all had experiences as artists growing up But to do it under a nonprofit vehicle, it means you never have to worry about that. And artists are so attuned to your, you know, no persuasion.

So, so, so that tells me like that some part probably somehow in the answer needs to telegraph relational over transactional, right? So, because— so it's kind of— so I don't know what that looks like yet. But if we were to— if so, but if we're starting to build the narrative sensemaking frame, right, you know that I personally like to make sure that we've got the kind of reasoning frame figured out first. But sometimes it helps to pull back to kind of a narrative sensemaking frame. And for you to say, like, and what you started to do very naturally, which is why the narrative sensemaking frame is useful, as you said, OK, if we want to discover other music lovers like me, in a narrative thing, once we've established something somebody wants and doesn't yet have, right? In this case, the answer to that question, the next natural thing is, well, why aren't we getting it right now? Like, what is the thing that's getting in the way? And you very naturally said, yeah, because right now everything is either about music discovery, right? Or it's about playlists, or it's about individual playlists. And oh, by the way, all of it is monetized and surveilled. Right. And so, so, and that's a problem because, right, like if you're trying to create real connections, that a real connection is really hard to do that right on a transaction than on a relationship. So then you're saying, so element number one in what's necessary is something relational. Now, is that enough? No, right? Like, that's where the other piece would come in. And again, that's how we start to bring and bridge and build that kind of sense-making frame. Sometimes it's just saying, okay, let's talk it through. Like, what else is necessary? It's okay, it's not transactional. So it's not transactional, what is it? Um, and if once we've got that, is that enough? Answer: no. Um, what else needs to be there in order to make it the kind of non-transactional thing that will actually pay off that will make sense as a way to achieve discovery of other music lovers like me.

Yeah. My brain's firing in all different directions.

No, I mean, and, and, you know, as I said at the beginning, it's hard to say like, oh yeah, we're gonna like nail it right away. But again, when you come back to these elements, we can almost always say, all right, most sensemaking issues start with a question that's either too broad or it is located in the wrong place for what you're trying to achieve or what you actually have to offer, right? So like, and you came to that, came here with that. You said, hey, when we're talking about get your music heard, it's like, that was, that was, it was too broad and, and it was mismatched with what you're offering. Can your thing still do that? Yes, That's where the beautiful free prizeness comes into it because ultimately the solution also pays off on that. But by starting the story there, by starting with that framing of transaction, everything else is going to be like evaluated through that lens. And it doesn't make, it doesn't make sense why I would need a community to get my stuff heard. That's not required. But if I want to discover other music lovers like me, a community, 100% makes sense. But again, free prize, the more people there are in the community, the more people there are to hear my music so that you can then offer that as a benefit that now makes sense, right? Rather than being something that's just like, oh hey, we've got this benefit, and that's just like, now it's just hot to something.

We know from behavior and data that the act of making a collaborative playlist is a change-making activity.

I can see that. Yeah.

So, and we can now incentivize community and incentivize— you can incentivize the more collaborative playlists you make, you know, then that's more opportunities for your music to be heard. Because when artists make a place for another artist, they cross audiences. So there is— yes, the core mechanic of collaboration is what enables you, because here's the other thing, foundational belief: you can't— I believe deeply you cannot monetize relationships. I mean, you can because we just saw it the last 20 years with the arrival of Facebook and whatever, and they monetize the crap out of it, But it was dreadful apart from that initial thing. So that is, yeah. Yeah.

So, well, so because what it does is it, it, it, it takes a very natural human value, which is reciprocity and replaces it with revenue generation. Right. And almost always in revenue generation, now we've taken we've taken natural motivation out of it, and now we've introduced a power dynamic because we've introduced a third thing, right? We've introduced money, which is a third thing than two people, right? Like, when it's just reciprocity, when it's like, you've done a thing, I'll do a thing— by the way, the research says that that is like the one, like, pervasive, multicultural, number one baseline value is reciprocity. As soon as you put a third thing in, you can't be reciprocal because there's a third thing, right? And revenue, money, adds a third thing. And so, like, again, I— it's one of those basic things where it's like, yeah, we can talk about it in terms of reciprocity, but it's also like, it's math. You can't have a two-way thing with a third thing present. Like, it's like, it warps it. So to me, it says that on your, like, As you're starting to figure out, okay, what's necessary. Now, this is where we get back to the reasoning piece is to say clearly collaboration is, you're saying that one of the ways to discover other music lovers like me, you're saying that requires collaboration, right? We know for that it's sitting outside or something like it that checks the, can we have a transactional collaboration? It's harder, right? You know, so, um, again, it doesn't mean collaboration is it. We may need to, you know, kind of drive further to like—

there was, there was the point that I, I didn't quite close. So, because I went down the commercialization relationships, but in a lot of communities there is either a commercial output for the, the, for the, the community, and then when you think how you connect in a community is just— it's strange. You go to a Discord, you go through somebody's profile, it's like How the hell— what do you do? So then they have community, uh, joint mechanics, but then if it's a mature community and I'm new and you— whereas, so the efficacy of most communities, online communities that I know, in terms of developing real connections between humans is lame. Whereas this thing where you create something together, there's something powerful about creating a duality because it's limited. Um, you know, you don't need muscle memory for it. It's limited cognitive load. The output far outweighs the input in terms of what you get back socially. And you have that— yeah, we, we see the communication between two people change, you know, and because, you know, by the end you're no longer strangers because you've created something together, and it's just wildly powerful.

So, and a question— so, so, and this is normal in a good way, that the, the tendency is to jump forward and to say, look at all this other cool stuff that happens, right? And so one of the things that And again, it's all valuable, so I'm not saying it's not. It's just that these are some of the harder conversations, or the— just the— it's not harder, it's just that our own thoughts make sense to us, right? And because we're just operating them all the time, and the moment we have to try to explain them to something else is actually when we have to start to abstract this thing that makes perfect sense to us into something else that like can transfer. And, and so we, we try to skip to the things that we're like, yeah, but it'll help you, right? Or yeah, the creation is awesome, uh, this is good, you should do it, it will change your life.

Yeah, you're right, you can't.

And so one of the evaluations to do when we're always— so if we've got an if, right, then we're trying to figure out the then piece of it. If we've got the X, then we've got to figure out the then of the Y, um, when concepts like this come up, it's about thinking about, is that the thing, or is that an input to the thing, or an output of the thing, right? And, and what you're trying to do is, like, back to that kind of sliding— you're, you're— we're really trying to find the thing that everything else depends on, right? You're really saying, listen, we can have creativity and whatever, but it doesn't matter if it's not doing X. Or in order to get this other stuff that's really valuable for, for all these other things, this must be present, right? And so whether that is, you know, things like, you know, so, so for instance, collaboration, you could see how that could lead to creativity, something new, emergence, because any number of theories and science piece— science fun stuff says that you need two things to get a new thing, right? Like, two begets new. Um, you can't get something new out of just one thing. So as soon as you start to collaborate, then you start to open the possibility of new, right? And so, but we can't say you from what I'm hearing you say, like creativity doesn't come before the collaboration, right? It's coming as a result of it. So that tells me that like I, I would kind of move it from consideration to it's at least post-collaboration. So now we're trying to see if— how far— is there anything else that's further up than collaboration, right? Or is collaboration where we're going? Right.

And, and there is, of course, because now we're distilling down and I love that we get to do this. I so appreciate your time and expertise on this. It's brilliant. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Um, it is ultimately, we were talking about humans. We're talking about humans post-COVID. We're talking about, you know, distributed individuals. We're talking about a loneliness pandemic. We're talking about. 72 people of our respondents, uh, what are they, what are they terrified by? It's being lonely. Yeah, it's so there is connection. So there is, and it's not so much connection, but it's whatever the opposite of loneliness is because that's a big, big thing. Yeah, so there's a, there's an almost like I dislike loneliness. Let's, let's define the edge there. But then it becomes about status. And I know that's a huge leap, but what does belonging— you know, how do you feel, you know, belonged to a thing? What online communities do because of that visual interface— you know, there are things like leaderboards, which I'm not a fan of when it comes to relationships and communities. I'm a fan of that for tracks, but there is Having run this for 10 years, people feel good when they're more visible. People feel good when they're closer to the executive. People feel good when they are seen to be part of something that's bigger than they are. So that's the real true offer of this is come and be part of something cool. But what do we do with that?

Okay, so, but that's it. So, so one of the things that's really helpful I have found with this whole if-then thing is that it really helps to say, like, a lot of the time when we talk about things like that, we are just giving other versions of either the if or the then. So you see, I took loneliness and belonging and say those are often driving the question of how can I discover other music lovers like me. So to me, that's just saying, hey, how can we solve for loneliness? Whatever. If we want to solve loneliness, then whatever. If— right, status, creativity, again, we already said with those are the— those are outputs of whatever this is. And so what we're trying to figure out is, what about— since you know that it's this community, what about this community is what provides the status and the creativity, and the loneliness and the belonging. So, you know, you were bringing up a concept that I would say the closest I could get to is proximity, right? Like, so, like, how can I discover other music lovers like me? And, and you start to see how even if we just look at collaboration, reciprocity, proximity, personally, you may have a different opinion, one of those words pops as one that makes sense as a way to discover other music lovers like me, as like a clear boom, I can see why that would help me do that. And I'm curious which one pops for you.

Proximity by one, by a mile. Collaboration is, doesn't, shouldn't sit anywhere in the language.

I don't think, not in the core. Do you see what I'm saying? Like, because this is, this is the thing that It's Bayesian probability, but this is what our brains do automatically is that when you say, hey, if you want to discover other music lovers like me, and you say something like, well, you need something that gives you status, someone's like, what? Like, why? But as soon as you're saying, hey, we need— you need to be like, you need proximity to what? Right? And again, this doesn't necessarily yet capture the collaboration piece of it. But it might be that collaboration is the mechanic by which you create proximity. Like you—

100%. It is. You're absolutely right. And we wouldn't lead with the mechanic, would we?

No, no, exactly. Because what we're trying to do is we're really trying to have— and, you know, we've talked about this before— what we're trying to give people is what we're really transferring is how you think about this. Because if how you think about this is like, hey, we think that if you're near other people, digitally or otherwise, that are like you, that's how that— like, you're not going to discover it if you're never actually near these people, if you have no way to get near to them, because it's only that proximity that allows you to kind of get that, see something up close, see the details, see that all the other stuff that happens. And so Would there be other ways other than an online community to create proximity? Absolutely. Are there other ways to create that discovery, you know, and then pro— yes, absolutely. But your perspective is that, at least for now, I'm gonna pin it for now, is that proximity is absolutely required in some form or another. And the way that you choose to do it, at least for now, is through this community. Right? Do you see what I'm saying? Which now it gives people a reason. Well, not just what are you asking me to do or what are you asking me to engage in, but why are you asking me to do that? And the tendency is that we want to— when we say why, why a community, we tend to keep going back to features and benefits, which are just other ways of saying the if and the then. But proximity is not one of those two. It is a why about why a community would get you there. Do you see what I mean?

Yes.

Yeah. So you look horrified, Andrew. So—

oh no, I'm not horrible. I'm absolutely thrilled. Um, it's, it's the deep work. It's, it's not It's not easy.

No, no, it's not. Because I think it's because it is an undeveloped skill. Because what I've seen over and over again is that once you start to use those kinds of just basic frameworks of going, wait, is that just another way to say, like, why somebody would be asking us? Or is this just another way to say the benefit? Okay, fine. What about our thing? Provides status? What about our thing enables creativity? And, and you're like, well, one of those things is 100% we've just actually gotten everybody together. And it's not just you've gotten them together, it's that you have a very specific perspective. You have a point of view on what getting everyone together, what aspect of that is critical to discovery of other music lovers like me. And you're just saying it's, it's nearness. It is, it's being, it's access, right? It's just being able to, like, you got to be able to like get in the room to be able to figure out which of the people in the room are the ones most like you, right? Um, and so that's a piece of it, but you're already, we're already starting to move logically to proximity itself isn't enough, right? So that's where we're saying, okay, well, again, if proximity is just— let's hold that as a straw person in there for now— what would the other thing be? So again, we could get everybody there and it's more likely that I'll discover, but now we're saying there's also problems with just bringing everyone together doesn't solve it, right? Because you're like, I may not actually interact with those people, they may not be the people I may never find them? Like, what is— how do— like, what's the extra piece that you all think?

There is. So in communities and, you know, people, there is— okay, now you've got them in the room. There have to be cultural norms of behavior that new people can adopt that has zero risk for them. In terms of their, um, there have to be cultural norms that are very obvious and very clear to everybody in the community.

Absolutely. But that would apply to any group, right? So I want something that, which is great, like you're gonna need to have that, that's table stakes. Like if like a community isn't successful if you don't have norms. But what—

so the norm in our community is collaboration.

Okay, so is it— but we'd already said that proximity is the precursor to collaboration, so proximity can hold collaboration. What I'm saying is, is there something about the nature of the proximity or something that happens?

Again, it may be that collaboration sits in this other In my understanding of the logic, proximity sits before collaboration, right? And so now we've got proximity, but then what is the cultural norm? What is the accepted social behavior? What is the core red thread that runs through the community?

Yeah.

And there is, there is the act of human beings creating something together. Now we call that collaboration, but what's the core human behavior here is we are making something together that didn't exist before that could only happen with two entities trading, you know, because when you look at the behavior of that, the, the, when you create something with another person, there are basic social constructs. I agree to give the time to listen and read what you put into me. So that's a, that's a low social agreement now. And I agree to do this, you know, so they're going to go back and forth 5 times, so you get a 10-track playlist. So I am, I am expending my time in this process, but the output is something that couldn't exist. AI couldn't touch this. I could make a playlist with an AI, sure, but great. I mean, then, you know, we'll go and be her and we'll go down that rabbit hole. But in terms of the, the behavior here is that listening and response, the reciprocity between two human beings who are creating something together that literally delivers something that is bigger than the sum of the individual parts and has so many outputs.

Yes. Okay. So I am going to suggest— again, we're not— I'm not saying we can solve this, but I am actually wondering if proximity isn't it. I actually think that we're— what I'm hearing you say is that there's— in order to discover, something has to be put in to be discovered. Right? So I've put that right now as the word contribution. Right? You can't get a collaboration if somebody doesn't put something in first. Do you see what I'm saying? And I think— and so as soon as we're thinking about that, then proximity is just— it's not— we don't want proximity there because then it's like we don't just want people contributing individually near each other. Right? What you're— to me, it it brings back into the fold something like response or reciprocity, because what we're talking about is if you're trying to discover other music lovers like you, then what you mean by collaboration is a system of reciprocal contributions. I give, you give, I give, you give. And that is your community's definition of collaboration is is reciprocal contributions. You see how that in and of itself becomes a cultural norm? But it isn't. It isn't. It isn't like basically saying, hey, we need norms. Well, no shit. Like, which norms? Sorry, sorry. Um, do you see what I mean? Like, so to me, like, it's, it's about— it's really about listening to what is— what— like, because when we Words for each of us are always a shortcut. And what we're having to do when we make sense of something to somebody else is that we're having to break apart the words that we're using as a shortcut into their most load-bearing elements, right? So you can say, yeah, we've got, we've got to collaborate. But why? Well, because collaboration is reciprocal contribution. And in that case, because reciprocity does X and contributions does Y. That's why those two things, when fused together, will help you discover other music lovers like you.

Yes. Just yes.

So again, it may not be the where you like finish, but like it's based on what you've said so far.

This has been game-changing, Tamsen Webster.

Woo!

Yes, please!

Something along these lines. Do you see what I mean?

You know, you know, so yeah, but, but so, but for nonprofits doing this work, it's this, and I sure hope other people get to see this process because it's— you have taken my perspective on what we're doing and how to present it, you know, hugely away from where I was starting. But, you know, but accommodating all my previous paradigms. I'm now here. And that, I mean, that's amazing. I'm not sure there's more work to do, but no, it's—

more people do it. Yay! I mean, but it's like, this is what— I mean, thank you, but this is also what I'm trying to figure out out loud. And the more that I can do it with people and people can see it and they're like, oh, I think this is what's happening, please tell me. Um, because I think, you know, yes, it is about creating— it's about making explicit the actual paradigm that's in play when you're thinking about this. Now, is it, is it this simple, really? No, but what we're trying to do is find the, you know, what reason why we do so much thinking about those different, uh, words is we're trying to find the words that do contain everything else so that we're not eliminating the things that are important to you, right? Like, we don't want to choose a word that basically cuts out something that's really critical to you the same time, we needed to allow for the benefits that, you know, it contains, right? So we're— it's— it is like deep. It's one of the reasons why I'm so currently and have always been so interested in language, in linguistics, right? Because it's— the words matter, uh, to what we're choosing here. And the more specific we can be, even if this doesn't end up being like you know, market-facing language, but to have the clarity of saying we're talking about people giving things in equal measure. Now you've like, yes, that could be a transaction, but that's not what you're talking about. You're talking about reciprocity, which is, which does not have an imbalance in it, right? Like it's, it is a perceived equal exchange, um, and the equal and the contribution is what keeps it from being transactional with money, right? We're making a contribution. And, you know, yes, you're going to define that, but it's probably either a taste contribution, a creative contribution, actually track, you know, contribution, you know, something that— so that you're like, even if it's like, oh, I like that, I don't like that, that's also a contribution, right? That's going to help you understand how to get there.

So it's for people who are working with people, but in communities or nonprofits where the rubber meets the road on how you change how a human feels. Yeah. And the brands have done this for years, but a shoe's a shoe, a sneaker's a sneaker, red is cool. Oh, Jordan likes them. I mean, so that's marketing and that's pretty straightforward. But when you're working with human feelings and human time, this work becomes so much harder, but even more important. So it's pretty—

and I would argue it is just as important to do it for, for brands where like a shoe is a shoe is a shoe, because it's like people are really skeptical now. And if they don't understand, like, and to me, again, this is current view, how you think about something, even if— even at the brand level, even at the nonprofit level, is truly the only a unique thing that you have. And B, it's how you think about something that, my opinion, don't have anything to back this up yet, is the basis of that deep, longer-term alignment with another human, with an organization, with a brand, because it kind of says, yeah, the way you think about this fits with the way I think about this, or at least it's compatible. And so, you know, the reason why I think it's important even for brand work is that we've all had brands where we're like, well, I like their shoes, but I hate how they do business. Yeah, right. And it's just like, and for some of us, that ends up being a no-go after a while. You're like, I just can't, I just can't go there anymore. But we have spent lots of time together. Andrew, thank you for being willing to kind of like put all this out there for everyone else. So yay.

Thank you. Thank you. That's brilliant. Anybody thinking about doing this, do it because it's amazing. Yay. Awesome.

Thank you, Andrew, and thank you everyone else. As always, thanks to Jen running things backstage. Again, sometimes we're topic-focused, sometimes we're work-focused and trying to just show the process to some extent to help people understand why I feel like this is so fundamentally different than the way we typically go about finding a message. This really is about understanding why it is what you do makes sense to you, and then translating it into the structures and the language and the concepts that will make sense to the people that you're really for. Does that mean cutting people out? Not in an othering way. It means making sure that you're being clear enough to include the people that you want to include and that for anyone else who may be interested by what you offer, even if you hadn't been thinking of them in the beginning, to put what is valuable to you and important to you out and transparent so that other people can see it, evaluate it, and decide for themselves whether or not it's the right thing for them. So as always, thanks so much. See you next time.