- More meetings than ever
- More outputs than ever
- More departments than ever
- More stakeholders than ever
- Shrinking margins
- Less trust of marketing in the C-Suite
Everyone’s a strategist
But not all pressure is bad
A Theory of Pressure
Pressure
grows us
High expectations
A desire to achieve
A hungerto improve
Space to practice
High-achieveingpeers
Crisis
...can all push us further if they don’t break us, and if they happen within a culture of compassion
Pressure hurts most when you don’t have
AN OPERATING SYSTEM
in place to handle it
Or you are in an abusive situation
01 L
L
ve Problems
Focus on the real problemyou need to solve
02
Remember you exist to S£LL
This will stave off flights of fancy
03 Assess the culture
Assess the culture
of the category
How do other companies behave?
04 Take a critical
Take a critical 
v ew
of the marketing briefwhy is this the brief? What’s missing?
05
Work out what to research
based on the problem you need to solveFollow the vital information
06 Remain
Remain
Walk away from an idea if it doesn’tstand the test of new information
07
Keep your favourite techniques near
You won’t have to reinvent your process each time
08
Reality-check yourself
Get out of your head and into the real world
09
Borrow ideas 
Look at other categories you could learn from
10 Sponge the
Sponge the 
world
Keep living and learning as everything is stimulus
11
Take care near rabbit holes
Keep yourself and colleaguesaway from the darkness
12
Know your words 
Work out your team’s vocabulary so youdon’t have to second guess each other
If you are constantly under pressure
and there’s zero compassion,you’re not learning, you don’t get timeto rest, you’ve become difficult to bearound, and you’ve tried to implementchanges to no avail, well,
this operating system can wait for your next job
Get some more insight
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How Obsession With Uniqueness Threatens Brands
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