When I attended TEDxCincy in October 2010, there was one session where I was furiously taking notes: the session by Grant McCracken, author of Chief Culture Officer. Click here to find out more about the fascinating McCracken.
[For more on my so-so experience of TEDxCincy, read “7 Lessons for Delivering a Powerful Message.”]
So, here’s the best of what I captured [mostly verbatim] from McCracken’s talk. I’ve been trying harder to incorporate these practices into my life.
Study slow culture, not just fast.
We must be well-informed and keep up, of course. But we must have deeper understanding of American culture. Don’t just talk about the latest thing, that’s about 20% of what we need to be talking about—the froth, the churn. We understand it better when we understand the history and depth. Innovation coming from everywhere, we feel like we’re hydroplaning, as if patterns are no longer possible.
Track, not just spot.
We must track things over time, we must look with care at assumptions when we’re wrong and right. Study maps of culture; study displays that allow us to talk about and pick up trends over the long term. We want to have a sense of all the stuff that’s moving, so that when we read about a specific piece of information at a specific moment in time, we can say: Yeah, we’re tracking that—or that’s just noise.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
The insight about hydroplaning struck a chord. Thanks for the reminder to be mindful and study carefully.
Yes, there is a lot of trendy lightning in the air, grabbing all of our attention. But beneath it lies the earth–solid, bearing the weight of all that has been and will be, with much to teach.