We’ve made it to 10 issues! Thank you to everyone who’s taken the time to read what I share, I hope you’ve found it interesting and useful. Here’s this week’s list.
Biggest upgrade in AI I’ve been using his week
OpenAI has been selectively releasing a new memory feature and I just got access a few days ago. This function allows ChatGPT to remember information across conversations and incorporate it when answering new prompts. I spent four hours this weekend training ChatGPT on my writing style and voice, personal and professional life, and more. Now the answers it gives me are more personalized, accurate, and relevant to me. This is a huge upgrade if you use ChatGPT regularly and will help users save a lot of time writing prompts and editing the results. I’ll be digging into this more and sharing the results.
What I learned from attending a marketing roundtable this week
I was invited to an excellent roundtable on Friday, the second one where I’ve been an attendee instead of a host. The first one was a couple of years ago and honestly wasn’t great. This week’s roundtable was fantastic and drove home the point that as an attendee, the other attendees are a key factor in getting value out of the session. As an organizer, I have focused on the topic, moderator, logistics, and getting the right audience for our business. However I realized that the reason I enjoyed this session so much and felt it was valuable was due to the quality and makeup of the other attendees. In reality, the conversation drove itself without much need for the moderator to step in and that was because the discussion flowed naturally with input from people in various industries, company sizes, and seniority levels. We were all able to learn from each other and hear different viewpoints that sparked reflection in our own work.
Management lesson from swimming with my daughter
My 19-month-old daughter has fallen in love with “swimming” (she can’t actually swim yet). I try to take her to the pool almost every day, and recently she has gotten the hang of holding her breath, so she enjoys going underwater. Now she goes straight into the deep water where she can’t reach and flails around until I pick her up, she loves it so much that she gets mad when I hold her instead of letting her “swim” by herself. Quite a few other parents have stopped by and asked about this because she is so brave, at first I thought she was just fearless (and naive). But then someone said “Wow she must really trust you”, and that got me thinking about it as an allegory of our work environments. Yes, she trusts that I will always be there for her and pick her up when she needs it, which allows her to experiment and fail at things while she is learning. The best bosses in my career have done the same thing, I can trust that I won’t be fired or get in trouble if a new idea doesn’t work so I can innovate and grow. On the other hand, I’ve had bosses that are too fearful of failure, so they want to stick to the tried and true methods, which often will end up being less effective as time goes on without any innovation.
Game I’ve been playing this week
I’ve started playing chess again and am loving it. I played quite a bit when I was younger, but it has been many years since I’ve done it consistently. The thing I’ve always loved about chess is that there are no surprises, no luck, and no advantages, you can see every possible move your opponent will make and that makes winning more gratifying. In chess, at least at lower levels like mine, usually, the losers beat themselves, they make a mistake that allows their opponent to win. It’s a far cry from the pay-to-play model of so many games today, which makes it very compelling.
What I watched this weekend
I found a show that has been around for a while, but I’ve never watched called “Finding Your Roots“. Celebrities are brought on and told about the history of their family based on deep genetic and historical research. The show is interesting to me because as an adoptee, I have an unusual relationship with family history. I have never had a strong desire to find my birth parents and their families, and my adopted parents family were great and have an interesting history (great grandfather was mayor of Seattle and in Nixon’s cabinet), but since we are not related by blood it isn’t really “my family’s” history. Having a daughter that looks a lot like me has changed my thinking a lot, it’s the first time I’ve ever had someone look like me and I didn’t realize the impact it would have on me. A few years ago I wouldn’t have been able to understand the extremely strong reactions people have to learning about their family history as well as I do now.
Most interesting marketing news this week
Tesla has laid off their entire marketing staff just a year after the team was put together. Elon Musk tweeted that the ad campaigns were far too generic and could have been for any car. Putting aside the fact that he as CEO is ultimately responsible for any ads that go live, and the sad news for forty people who just lost their jobs, it is an interesting situation since Tesla has grown this big without a marketing team to begin with. Whatever you think of Elon, it is clear that he has a core community of diehard fans (enough that he can decide to sell a flamethrower just because). It seems similar to Steve Jobs, but Apple is famous for its marketing campaigns. Founder/CEO led marketing is powerful, but if it means that ever more wild and controversial things need to happen for the leader to stay relevant it could cause more problems than growth.
That’s all for this week. I hope you have a great end of your April and happy Labour Day!
Note: My goal is to eventually move this newsletter to email format which will land in your inbox every Sunday evening (Singapore time). Subscribe here if you want to receive this by email after I make the change.