Ep. 5: Deliberate Humor

0:00
all right welcome everyone to our next episode of the deliberate way what a
0:07
treat to have you all here it really is I’m Dan seawald I’m your host and I can
0:13
think of no better way to spend a lovely Thursday early afternoon or morning
0:18
evening as a case may be I’ve got one of the best guests you’re going to be so
0:24
excited to hear from Tom Fishburn Tom you may know him better as the market
0:30
tunist is here to join me to talk about cartooning humor telling complicated
0:35
stories but let me just pause for a moment big thanks Tom thanks for for being here and for joining thank you so
0:42
much for inviting me it’s such a treat to talk with you and uh Tom I’ll I’ll tell you one of the
0:48
things that uh that really excited me about have you here you’ve got in award-winning book your ad ignored here
0:55
you’ve done so many different things but let me I’ll tell more about you in just a moment for my friends who are first
1:03
time deliberate way guests quick word about what it’s all about you know years
1:08
ago I was a coach a wrestling coach specifically and I discovered something
1:13
kind of curious the best performers always always always had a systematic or
1:20
deliberate way of preparing and Performing and to fast forward 25 years
1:26
into the future I started seeing some of those same patterns reoccurring with
1:32
marketers inventors scientists mathematicians artists you name it the
1:37
ones who are really Elite performers the ones who did their jobs and their crafts they knew best they had a systematic way
1:44
of doing it so my goal is to be able to talk to these deliberate innovators get to know
1:51
them discover some of their practices and maybe maybe walk away a little bit
1:56
wiser with a little bit of uh of uh of capabilities and practices you can do in
2:02
your everyday so that’s my plan and let me just take a few moments to introduce Tom a little
2:08
bit more you know Tom the you know when I think about you as the market Tunis it’s hard to believe that you got your
2:15
start at Harvard Business School writing on the back of or doodling on the back of HBS business case studies I’m gonna
2:23
guess that didn’t make you widely popular with uh your professors but you
2:28
know be that as it may that hobby which started at HBS it’s blossomed into an
2:34
amazing career and uh you know if you don’t know the market Tunis you’re not subscribed to the series you have to go
2:41
to his website check it out subscribe because there’s hundreds of thousands of people that subscribe to Tom right now
2:49
now amongst other things about Tom you might not know Tom has been widely uh
2:55
you know publicized in the Wall Street Journal Fast Company the New York Times he’s a cartoonist in Residence at
3:02
Stanford’s business school and he’s also a lecturer at Harvard Business School on the topic of humor and uh as uh you know
3:10
I first met him he’s a Serial keynote speaker consulted to lots of companies and author and you know the best part
3:17
he’s actually a corporate Insider he got his start working in large companies so
3:23
Tom you told me you’d worked as a chief marketing officer at hotel tonight you were a director of uh of the
3:30
international business that method you worked in brand management at Nestle and General Mills you know where the bodies
3:36
are buried so to speak hopefully not literally but I’ll tell you it’s amazing the things that you’ve done and uh I
3:43
can’t wait to hear about how you parlay that into cartoon so thanks again for being here Tom I really appreciate it
3:49
thank you all right a couple of just quick housekeeping things I’ll let folks know we’re on LinkedIn live if you haven’t
3:56
used it before it’s pretty straightforward uh if you have questions ask your questions in the uh you know in
4:02
the posting feature like you would on any LinkedIn chat we will pick up some of those questions we’ll pause for some
4:09
q a in just a little bit and we’re gonna have after our opening round of conversation a speed round we’re gonna
4:17
get to test how well Tom knows his Market Tunis cartoons I have queued up a
4:23
whole bunch of cartoons unbeknownst to Tom well maybe some but notes you know a
4:28
little bit about it but you don’t know which cartoons I picked necessarily and I’m going to ask you to give us kind of
4:34
the caption or what’s the headline for it so tune in for that that’ll be coming in just a little bit
4:40
all right Tom I I gotta ask you the the first question which was always on my
Harvard Business Graduate to Cartoonist
4:45
mind maybe other people are wondering about this how in the world did you go from being a business guy to being a
4:53
cartoonist I mean it’s not like the most natural leap how did that happen
4:58
yeah it’s funny it’s a bit accidental a bit serendipitous um and it’s funny you mentioned earlier
5:04
about being at Harvard Business School drawing this cartoons uh and how it how it might not have made me popular with
5:09
the professors but the weird thing was it actually it actually did uh strangely
5:15
so I started drawing these just for fun we had a student newspaper I’d always wanted to draw cartoons when I was
5:21
younger and I never did uh but in business school a friend of mine was the editor and kind of urged me to submit
5:26
something urged all of his friends to submit something because he had to put out a paper every week and I finally did and I
5:33
drew made a cartoon kind of created cartoon making fun of a class we all took and I walked into the class the professor had an up on the overhead
5:39
projector and like singled me out for the the famous HBS cold call so I was in
5:45
the hot seat because of the cartoon uh but but a couple things happened when the cartoon was up on the screen I like
5:51
had a moment of panic but then everybody in the room started laughing and I just got hooked by that and but strangely
5:57
that led to uh to professors including this one commissioning me to create
6:02
cartoons for as as teaching AIDS as exhibits in the backs of HBS cases and
6:08
one of the professors I had around that time has been the one who in has later invited me back to Harvard Business
6:14
School to teach about humor and their Executive Education Program so it’s funny it actually came full circle and I
6:19
realized that uh what started as a hobby actually had some great value attached to it that cartoons and humor can help
6:27
us talk about things in business that we need to be talking about and sometimes that can be the best way to really
6:33
expose the you know the elephant in the room the emperor having no clothes the humor can play a really useful role uh
6:41
and it taught me that it can also be a great leadership skill and so it’s something I try to carry sort of in my
6:47
regular day job when I was working in marketing at those places you mentioned but eventually when I decided to make
6:53
the jump and do this on my own I realized that it wasn’t necessarily it
6:59
wasn’t as cut and dry as shifting from a business life to a cartoonist life it was realizing that cartoons and humor
7:06
could be a great way to unlock different things in business and so since I made that jump in 2010 I’ve worked with over
7:13
200 companies helping them communicate with cartoons a lot of that through
7:18
external marketing campaigns but increasingly a number of a number of projects have involved companies uh
7:25
talking to their own employees and going through a period of culture change and using cartoons and humor as a way to to
7:32
to walk through that change in a way that can feel a little bit more approachable and so for me it’s brought
7:39
actually weirdly everything that I’ve done in my whole professional life all together uh it’s it’s really it’s really
7:45
unlocked on a few different dimensions you know I want to come back to the uh that Professor it could have gone a very
How to Combat People Taking Cartoons the Wrong Way
7:52
different way not everybody is is full of Mirth in open he could have been very
7:57
thin skin instead and I don’t like the fact that you pointed fun at me yeah do you find that that uh how often is it do
8:05
you find that in the corporate setting or academic for that matter that people will take cartoons and humor the wrong
8:12
way and you know and how do you combat that if you’re trying to interject that because if you are even if you’ve got a
8:19
good sense of humor sometimes people will misinterpret it um what have you seen and what do you
8:25
recommend yeah so I found over time I didn’t know this right away but I’ve kind of maybe
8:31
instinctively felt this I think we all do but over time I’ve learned that there that there are a lot of different varieties of humor and some forms of
8:37
humor are appropriate in certain settings and other forms of humor are not appropriate in certain settings and
8:43
I found that in the world of business in particular I tend to focus on on what what academics describe as affiliative
8:49
humor which means that we’re laughing together about a shared experience and
8:55
so um I’m very careful about what the butt of the joke is I try not to do aggressive humor
9:01
um shock jock type humor um you know it’s not my nature necessarily anyway I think everyone has
9:06
a personal style of humor but I find that that particularly in business environments if we’re careful about the
9:13
type of humor that we’re using it alleviates the vast majority of concerns that can come up and actually humor can
9:20
be an act of empathy there’s a an old Vaudeville expression I’ve always liked that laughter is the shortest distance
9:25
between two people so when you’re laughing about a shared experience together and you’re thoughtful about
9:31
about you know where the humor lies it can be a real enriching sort of bonding
9:37
experience what often happens because there there is concern about about something misfiring we tend to over
9:43
correct so far in the over the other direction we don’t bring our true selves to to work uh we feel and that can
9:51
stifle a lot of communication and and Innovation um I I do this thought experiment
9:57
whenever I speak in an organization I do a New Yorker Style cartoon caption
10:02
contest where I have a cartoon needing a caption something that I’ve drawn that’s open to interpretation and I send that
10:07
out to an organization ahead of time and then when I arrive I kind of share some of the funniest things that come through
10:13
and it’s it’s always really fun because people often are uh they they tend to self-judge they might not think of
10:19
themselves as very creative and suddenly you have a cartoon with you know you know 10 to 20 different captions from
10:25
all their co-workers that are all really funny and you realize oh my gosh there’s a lot of creativity and laughter in the
10:31
room um it’s it’s one of my favorite things to do but I’ve learned that there’s a I’ve over time that that um that within
10:39
different organizations the response rate uh is different sometimes people feel more comfortable like putting a
10:45
caption out there with their name attached to it than in other environments and um I I’ve learned I get
10:50
over time my hypothesis is that can relate to how comfortable people feel communicating and being open with their
10:56
peers and letting their guard down and I feel like that’s an essential part of innovation and creativity in a healthy
11:02
culture and that as Leaders we can we can sort of set a tone that you’re that you can feel comfortable being your true
11:08
self around your colleagues and your sense of humor is part of that I think any any barometer that you’ve used when
11:14
working with a large company to get a sense of how much will they lean in and how much will they lean out how do you
11:21
get a sense of that when early on when you’re first talking to an organization well what are some things that give you
11:28
the the canary in the coal mine if you will yeah so when I’m speaking that that caption contest is the best barometer
11:34
I’ve found because it’s a uniform thing but often you know I’ve in all the organizations I’ve worked with you know
11:40
I generally don’t do any outbound marketing about what I do it’s really through my own weekly cartoon and so
11:45
that’s that’s been a great screening mechanism because people when they reach out to me they generally know my work
11:51
and so I’m not trying to knock on the door that I generally there the people who I get the privilege to work with
11:57
have already been following my work for a while so that’s one sort of barometer that they have you know that that that that type you know the humor I use kind
12:05
of kind of resonates to some degree but I think once I start talking with organizations I can tell pretty quickly
12:10
um and having worked inside big corporate environments there are certain behaviors um that that you get a sense of of you
12:17
know how hierarchical it is how much people defer you know some of the organizations I worked in we would look
12:23
at it we would look at a piece of creative from an ad agency and there might be you know 10 of us on our side
12:28
in the room and do people people wait for the the the most senior person in
12:34
the room to speak first or is it a culture where the opposite happens like we want to hear fresh ideas from
12:40
potentially the most Junior person in the room those types of things I think are things we can look for I look for
12:45
when I work with organizations but I think we also can look for in our own organizations wherever we work how do we
12:51
how do we feel more comfortable sort of opening up the gates because when we’re trying to be creative in an organization
12:57
create Innovative thinking um we want we want more ideas on the table we we don’t want people to
13:03
self-med it so much because when you’re self-editing and waiting for something to be perfect before you share it with a
13:09
colleague the most interesting ideas get left on the outside because we we we’re we self-judged them we we winnow them
13:16
out and I I think I think the organizations that that have a culture of of openness and providing our best
13:23
thinking out there they generally have the best ideas that make it through the gauntlet of bringing them to life and so
13:29
I I find over time this weird job that I have has given me an opportunity to spend time with a lot of different
13:35
organizations in different Industries and different cultures and styles and um and I feel like I feel like it’s
13:42
underappreciated sometimes but but those organizations that really Embrace that
13:47
it leads to a healthier culture which leads to more Innovative thinking I’m gonna I just want to pick up on
Staying Relevant
13:53
something that you just mentioned about the different cultures and different organizations you know to me it seems
13:59
like one of the most tricky things that you would experience or anyone else can they’re kind of coming in that’s that’s
14:06
not an Insider is the not just the culture but how things are changing the
14:11
trends and the patterns that are happening inside organizations how do you stay relevant and plugged in when I
14:17
look at your cartoons you seem to pick up on the nerve you know that as as it’s
14:23
happening um whether it’s about chat GPT or about downsizing and layoffs and you pick up
14:30
on that that Trend very early and you don’t necessarily get that from reading the Wall Street Journal it’s around
14:36
being around organizations what have you done to be able to to kind of get that
14:41
that inside knowledge those insights across many organizations to be able to create your cartoons
14:47
yeah it’s a great question it’s something you know because when I first started doing this and I you know out of
14:53
business school I joined I joined a large organization I found and I started basically drawing one cartoon a week and
14:59
for it was as much a diary as it was a um a creative practice that forced me to
15:06
pay attention to what was going on outside because it’s easy when you’re in a job to have your head down I’m just working on my tasks in front of me you
15:12
can lose what’s going on in the outside world and because I had a deadline every week it forced me to think about what am
15:18
I going to draw about this week what am I thinking about sometimes it will come up for my own work life but sometimes I would I would look across the transom to
15:24
see things coming in the world of marketing or business that I could potentially Riff on for cartoons and it’s been um it’s been a creative
15:31
practice that’s that that you know even if I wasn’t doing this as my day job I would continue because it forces me to
15:37
keep my eyes open and so for me it’s it’s a mixture of um being I’m grateful
15:42
to have an audience that reads my work regularly and will often often write
15:47
back when they respond to something or tell me stories uh it was actually quite
15:53
funny sometimes when I was actually had a day job inside organ an organization sometimes our direct competitors somebody would write me stories
15:59
happening on the other happening in their organizations um uh yeah and um and then so I would
16:05
often like pick up on things like that and I found um that that was often sort of early early things like I could I could like
16:12
hear a story happening somewhere and then I would go deeper and want to learn all about it so that’s part of it I do a
16:18
lot of reading a lot of reading from strange sources I like to see I like to see sort of what are some extreme
16:24
sources I got I gotta ask what what’s a strange source that you would throw out for people so I find
16:31
um particularly entrepreneurs who are in different Industries and different environments you know sometimes they’ll
16:38
they’ll have their own uh takes on things whether it’s through social media or their newsletters my favorite you
16:45
know in a way he’s almost a mentor even though we don’t actually talk that often I’ve met him once or twice as an
16:51
entrepreneur in in Western Wales named David Hyatt he started a denim company called Hyatt Denim and it’s in a small
16:57
town in Wales um he’s a Serial entrepreneur it’s on his first business but he started with his wife Claire and and he writes this
17:04
periodically we’ll just write his thoughts about being an entrepreneur doing what he’s doing and I may not live
17:10
in the western part of Wales and I may not work in a denim company but uh but in the act of trying to do creative
17:17
things in business I find a lot of inspiration he said you know Challenger brand and um he’s building a challenger
17:22
brand and his approach I found over time he’s by my most reliable go-to source and thinking about how to do work
17:31
creative work that matters you know to me and and he’s developed a whole community of entrepreneurs around him so
17:36
that’s just an example I’ll come across a story like that and then um and then
17:42
um I’ll want to know more and then that becomes something I I just sort of keep my keep my eyes and ears open to see
17:49
what what what interesting things are company coming and so and I that that kind of thing happens all the time I
17:54
just had something recently there’s a Cool brand that’s starting in Oakland uh
17:59
it’s a new a new football club that’s based in Oakland the oak Oakland roots and uh and I’ve it’s a great cool
18:07
interesting Challenger Brand Story and I had a chance to learn more about what that organization is doing trying to you
18:14
know do the opposite what a lot of football clubs do which is sort of a top-down approach an owner will drop a team into a city and they’re trying to
18:20
create a bottoms-up approach that’s a community oriented approach so I’ll come across a brand story like that and I’ll
18:26
just want to go deeper and want to learn more about the team involved and what their approach is that’s the type of
18:31
thing that I do I find that because my regular weekly cartoon is just a weekly and it works like a diary and I don’t
18:38
have an editor I get to follow my own interests and Pursuits and I found over time a lot of my my my friends are
18:44
people I admire have a similar creative practice in their life that forces them to keep their eyes and ears open just
18:50
for the sake of kind of tapping into what’s going on broader and culture now a couple things I’ll just say that first
18:56
off if uh you haven’t looked other people haven’t looked at your cartoons behind behind a cartoon Tunes there’s
19:04
some really great musings like really great insights stories examples so like the denim example
19:09
um being a challenger brand coming from Western was a western Wales um you know there’s those types of
19:16
stories that often sit behind a lot of your cartoons so I love that as I dug in like oh there’s a lot of depth behind
19:22
this so I really love that uh be able to elaborate the other thing I’ll just mention is for folks who are listening
19:28
and you have questions comments thoughts put them in LinkedIn we’re going to come to you in just a handful of minutes I’m
19:34
so gonna dominate a little bit and take the you know the floor and ask a bunch of questions to Tom but you’ll have your
19:39
say in a few moments um Tom as somebody who who enjoys writing personally uh I I find that
How to Deal With Writer’s Block
19:47
sometimes I can just get blocked like it could be a week that goes by and I feel like I haven’t had a genuine thought and
19:53
it could be so frustrating I’m gonna guess that you have the same thing cartooning how do you break cartoonist
19:59
block or writer’s block for cartoon what’s your any Secret Sauce behind that
20:05
because you’re so prolific and I started thinking man how does he keep pumping these out so consistently so I’d love to
20:11
hear if there’s any uh sort of uh some deliberate tips you could share with us sure absolutely well it’s it’s a little
20:19
bit it used it was a little bit different when I had a day job and I was just drawing one cartoon a week because I generally would have something to
20:24
write about over the course of the week something would happen now that I’m working with all these other companies and my output has to be that much higher
20:30
because I’m creating you know I’m working usually with five to six clients at a time on on you know cartoon types
20:37
of campaigns where we create a whole bunch of a whole bunch of material I had to get a little bit more more kind of
20:43
deliberate about my strategy like to come up with ideas um and sorry I just realized the word
20:49
deliberate plays right now that was not intentional
20:55
um so I uh I’ve decided I decided that I had to block time for for deep creative
21:01
thinking time every day like like exercise that I couldn’t I couldn’t do what I had done before which is you know
21:07
I’d over schedule myself and constantly be in meetings and then not have any time to think about stuff and I found that that helped a lot so I usually
21:13
block two two hours at the start of my working day for Pure creative time every single day
21:19
um sometimes it’s not a full two hours but I’d really try to hold it as sacred as I as I can and that um I find helps
21:25
because what I what I hate is knowing that I have to have an idea in an hour it helps if I think I need to have you
21:32
know 10 ideas at the end of the week and I have an hour today just to work on it because it takes that immediate pressure
21:37
off because my goal for that hour is not to come up with the perfect idea it’s just to provide the space for me to work
21:44
on whatever I was working on yesterday take it a little bit further over the next you know period of time to to kind
21:50
of kind of work on so I have a bunch of creative rituals I use to kind of get myself in the zone um so to speak but but usually I’ll have
21:57
some stimulus I’m ready to work on that are the research phase is done because I find that later afternoon is a better
22:04
State time for me to like do do research early in the morning is a better time for me to come up with ideas so if the
22:11
research work is done and I have something I’m just like I just like to sit down in the chair get ready to be
22:16
creative and I’m going through what I’ve already prepared and I I have the other creative ritual things like I have the
22:22
same music every day that I listen to for Creative work little things like that really use a track that that plays or the same
22:30
types of songs it’s it’s weird it’s the exact same album I play it on a loop it’s so strange it’s a 1959 uh Miles
22:38
Davis album called kind of blue for some reason that just uh I started doing that early and now I don’t even listen to the
22:45
music it’s almost like pavlovian I just kind of put it on because it’s my my ritual it’s a it’s a sign to me that
22:50
it’s time to be creative and then I’ll usually just sit with a whole stack of empty index cards and just play with
22:55
ideas and they may not they may not go anywhere you know sometimes I may sketch
23:00
something for 45 minutes and it doesn’t turn anything but but whatever I create at the end of that two hour period
23:06
um is valuable even if it may not look like it uh then I put it away come back to it the next day keep playing on it
23:12
and inevitably by the end of the week some of those initial kernels of ideas that didn’t look like they had potential
23:18
suddenly I see a non-linear connection to something else I put the two together and it can turn into a cartoon and so
23:23
that’s usually what my process looks like is to keep going even if I feel like I’m not being productive even if I
23:29
feel like I have writer’s blocked I just remind myself my only job right now is to sit in this chair and when I’ve when
23:36
I’ve held true to that it acts like a create a creative muscle I remember I met an editorial cartoonist once and he
23:42
said I used to think my ideas were like a well and I would pull them out and once they would just be dry sometimes
23:48
things like now I think of it like a muscle that if I exercise it every day it’s constantly processing the stimulus
23:54
that I that I put in front of it and if I treat it like a muscle and which means I’m being healthy and I’m exercising it
24:00
like it does its job and at the end of the period period of time there’s there’s work that I can feel comfortable with love it love the analogy it’s it is
24:07
a really good point about muscle memory but muscle building as well um you know there are a whole bunch of
Recognizing The Best Times to Get Work Done
24:14
things I want to pick up on from that but I what I I really really found it
24:19
fascinating that you’ve recognized that there’s certain times of the day that you’re better at that certain things and
24:26
that may sound really obvious I have not personally trained myself to focus on the morning I’m doing this the night I’m
24:33
only going to do that although you start noticing those Tendencies when did it actually click for you that
24:40
I’m best at doing this in the morning and I should be doing that at night what was the Epiphany and if you or somebody
24:46
else out here listening like me and thinking how do I how do I use this
24:52
um what would you tell them the big Epiphany happened when I I left a an office job where I had you know
25:01
traditionally my schedule was almost booked out for me you know I I was so over scheduled moving from one thing to
25:06
another and I was constantly hungering for for deep thinking time I just felt a real a real lack of it when suddenly my
25:14
schedule was my own and I could schedule my client calls and other things when when it went work when times that worked
25:20
for my schedule I started to naturally gravitated to realizing that I my I was
25:26
felt most creative in the morning I kind of intuitively knew that and then I started being just more more you know focused about blocking that time and
25:33
holding it sacred and um I found that um I changed my whole morning routine a
25:39
little bit because I I I sometimes find that you know I would look at my phone first thing in the morning and then
25:44
essentially my to-do list was set by whoever happened to write me that morning as opposed to thinking about how
25:50
do I really want to get the most out of this day and in my case like being creative is the number one priority and
25:57
so I I really I I blocked that time and hold on to it because I feel like when I hold on to it I I prioritized it then
26:04
later in the day I’ve got a million other things coming on that are coming across the transom whether it’s emails or the conference call I just had or
26:10
whatever my head’s too full to come up with creative thinking and so a lot of a
26:15
lot obviously a lot of reading about what deep thinking you know the importance of it and I feel like there’s a growing appreciation for that in
26:22
everyone’s work lives I think covid allowed people to have moral control of their schedules and some degrees I’ve
26:27
talked to people who’ve started to carve out time for for deep thinking time but that that was the big shift for me is
26:33
when I could actually control my own calendar and really and it should and and now and now I kind of hold to that
26:39
as much as I can and I realize you know the drawing at the drafting table for me is like my dessert I could do that doing
26:45
anything and so that that’s like the end of my day when ordinarily I would I would feel tired and not that productive
26:51
then my great joy as I have you know approved Concepts from clients I can sit at the drafting table and just and and
26:58
that that’s fun I’ll always have energy for that I won’t always have energy to sit down and look get a blank sheet of
27:03
paper and try to make something creative out of it I love the the way that you move about the the different things that
27:08
give you energy and that maybe suck in a little bit of energy um two more things I’m going to ask you and then I’m going to unleash the
27:15
questions lots of questions are coming in which I’m not surprised about in the least um two very different ones one is about
Technology vs. Creativity
27:22
uh this technology you mentioned you put your phone away and you lock it away do
27:28
you do you allow it near you when you’re at the drafting table do you sequester it and put it in a in a Timeout or put
27:34
it in the spa well what do you how do you handle that I have um so my phone I
27:40
put away I put on I like the airplane mode for me is is creative mode because it shuts out all the distractions uh
27:48
again from the outside world it’s designed to grab your attention and that’s the opposite of what you want
27:53
when you’re trying to be creative I do use technology and devices sometimes in the idea process
27:58
um and so I have a separate iPad that does it doesn’t have any alerts or anything like that that I’ll use if I’m
28:04
like if I if I really want to uh I’m suddenly I’m doing I’m doing a cartoon in a particular environment let’s say
28:10
like an airport you know Google image search can be really can be really can spark ideas suddenly I’m like I’m like
28:16
what are what are different environments in an airport and suddenly I’m seeing the long lines of check-in or I’m seeing
28:22
you know people sitting in a lounge for food or whatever I my creative process is sparked by by stimulus and so there’s
28:31
no boundaries for you then like you’re a dangerous man in the DMV I bet in the airport that’s how I I think
28:38
creativity is very non-linear thing our office lives are designed to be linear processes so you have to be forceful to
28:44
have non-linear thinking time um so anyway yeah I like having I you know I do use technology in that way but I uh
28:50
but anything that might interrupt me from the outside world I I turn off and put away including my phone
28:57
another another question for you and then I do promise to folks I’ll I’ll turn it over to your questions for a bit
Reactions to Leaving Business And Becoming a Cartoonist
29:04
as well you know I I think about my growing up my parents told me when I was
29:09
a kid um hey you should take a very practical job something that’s purposeful like being an accountant and I became a CPA
29:16
as my first job believe it or not um I didn’t really particularly care for it and when I said I was working in the
29:22
space of innovation my parents like are you crazy I don’t even know what Innovation is and I think a lot of
29:27
people don’t what did your parents say to you what did your family and friends say to you when you said you know this
29:33
whole business gig I’m out I’m gonna be a marketoonist um what did they say or the things that
29:39
came out of their mouth were they support them or were they like um we got your back but uh you know with
29:45
the cardboard box over there things don’t work out so you better really hustle what what did they say I was I
29:51
was very fortunate um because my my mom in particular had a very very kind of non-traditional path
29:59
she went back to college in her late 30s with young kids at home my younger
30:06
brothers in kindergarten and this was the 80s and it wasn’t it wasn’t a common
30:11
path she announced that she her lifelong dream would have been to be a doctor so not only going to college she announced
30:17
she wanted to go to college then four years of medical school then three years of residency and her friends thought
30:23
that she was crazy but she did she actually went to college the same time as my older brother they were pre-med
30:30
together at the same school at the same time and it was in newspaper articles
30:36
and things like that you know at the time and my my mom watching her go
30:42
through this process where a lot of people were like what are you doing following this path and she and she
30:48
grabbed on to it and she did it she graduated Phi Beta Kappa became a you know went through Medical School became
30:54
a practicing pediatrician and and realize this lifelong journey and so she
31:00
graduated from Medical School the same time I graduated from from high school and so
31:06
you know my professional life you know coincided with watching my mom’s
31:11
professional life start and so whenever I felt like I had to follow the linear
31:16
path of whatever else my fears were about what other people were doing my mom was usually there to say why don’t
31:22
you why don’t you listen to what you want to be doing and follow the atypical path and that led out of college I uh
31:29
you know I I I nearly moved to Atlanta with a bunch of my friends and and and and I was going down this path and my my
31:36
mom it was a big role in me deciding to take a a crazy turn and move to Eastern
31:43
Europe with a one-way ticket and a backpack and later and I and uh it’s it it was a strange goal but I felt
31:49
compelled to do it and a week after arriving in Prague I’d uh I’d met my future wife who was another American
31:55
doing the same thing thing and it changed my life and so those kind of moments allowed me to listen to whenever
32:00
I had sort of a wild hair about something felt like I wanted to chase something to do it but not to do it uh
32:06
in a in a in a crazy um fashion without any planning like when I made the jump to to to to to
32:14
cartooning I I was I was very focused on the right time to do it I at the time I
32:20
left my day job I had this side business that was earning uh Revenue at half the
32:25
salary I was walking away from I had a business plan I had Focus so I’ve I’ve always been a big believer and I talked
32:32
to my own kids about this like follow your interests and passions you have no idea where there will lead who knows
32:37
what work will even look like in 20 years given all the changes happening right now the only thing uh the most
32:43
important skill is adaptability and Agility and following your interest and keep an open mind and and see where it
32:49
leads and be sort of focused on what you know what the next you know step looks like you know have a have a plan as much
32:55
as you can and but no the plan is probably going to change well I know what I’m probably a long answer to your
33:01
question no a great great story I’m your mom I mean what an impressive story I’ll
33:06
tell you what when I’m looking for the future of business I’m going to your cartoons because you seem to be a bit of a soothsayer I need to look all right I
Audience Questions
33:14
I’ve been promising that I would share some of the questions that came up through Linkedin live and I am a man of
33:20
my word sometimes this time I’ll be a man of my words so the first question that came up was who are your early
33:26
influences how do you draw daily Inspirations I I feel like we might know
33:31
some of your early influences but I don’t want to answer for you but there are other early influences and uh you
33:37
know who do you else you know who else do you draw inspiration from in your everyday yeah absolutely well a lot of
33:43
my early aspirations were different cartoonists I really I fell in love with cartooning at a young age and Calvin and
33:49
Hobbes with Bill Watterson Gary Larson Far Side Berkeley breath in bloom County those were my my three big kind of
33:56
heroes from the the newspaper Comics era uh but we always had New Yorker subscription growing up so all the New
34:02
Yorker cartoonists and then over time um I had a big light bulb moment uh
34:07
around the time that I was drawing the cartoon for the for the uh for the business school um my wife and I it took a took a trip
34:14
to Paris um for a week and I came across a gallery of cartoons and there’s this
34:20
French cartoonist uh named jean-jacquesompe who just passed away in the last year actually but he’s a kind
34:26
of a he’s a hero in France like everyone in France knows him in the U.S he’s less well-known but he he draws New York
34:32
either New York recovers and so a lot of people don’t know his name they know his style his style just resonated with me
34:39
so much and the fact that he can look at a situation and a lot of his funniest
34:44
cartoons didn’t even have any words in them they were sort of pantom on cartoons there was some funny situation but they’re all beautifully drawn but
34:51
also not not uh photorealistically drawn they were really played with the medium of cartoons he became sort of my my my
34:58
my icon and my one of my favorites and then you know I I find that uh most
35:03
creative people I know they they sort of surround themselves with their Heroes and then they find their own style eventually and then and then they keep
35:10
their eyes and ears opens for other things happening out there so I do that too I look I um I’m not a big social media consumer
35:17
but I make an exception for certain um certain uh Instagram accounts for
35:23
illustrators particularly I like finding I like looking at artist portfolio sites
35:28
um and and coming across new ways that people are experimenting with illustration next question that came up we kind of
35:36
indirectly discussed this but I’ll ask it anyway how do you find companies that are open to communicating with cartoons
35:42
rather than seeing them as frivolous and um I I can hear it in my the back of my
35:49
head right now of some of my old bosses saying cartoons we don’t have time for this silliness you can I can hear it how
35:57
do you find or maybe avoid those companies uh and you mentioned they’ll they’ll reach out to you but maybe
36:04
you’ll send the business development side more on the you know when you when you come across them like how do you know like what are your the what are
36:10
some of those signals yeah the greatest filter I have is the fact that that I don’t do any outbound push of the work
36:17
it’s it’s always people who have seen my work and they’ve come to me because somehow it’s it’s resonated with them in
36:23
whatever their industry they’re they’re working in um and but once when I start having the conversation usually that’s it’s not
36:29
just that first person they have a team they need to bring on board and often sometimes there is sort of a knee-jerk
36:35
response that cartoons are frivolous and so I try to approach it through a combination of one sharing my my work so
36:43
you can see how I’ve covered topics potentially in similar Industries I work with a lot of risk adverse Industries
36:49
like one of my longest running clients is is in HR and you can imagine all the potential landmines or sensitivities and
36:56
and this isn’t something yeah but we’ve that you know but but those are often the areas where there’s
37:02
the most potential that if you approach the topic with some sensitivity you can it often provides a way to stand out
37:08
from the Clutter uh you know when when there’s there’s sometimes this feeling better too serious than sorry but when
37:13
every business thinks that way the ones that can actually approach it with a little bit of levity can often Stand Out
37:19
can often approach you know a company that has a lot of technical products it provides a a human Dimension to it it
37:26
can humanize technical topics so there’s a lot of a lot of you know surface level aspects of using humor and uh and and
37:34
and particularly cartoons that are hand-drawn they can actually that can actually take take a company’s
37:40
Communication in a totally different direction that’s really welcome but I also have had the benefit of working
37:46
with over 200 organizations there’s a lot of proof points um you know cartoons generally perform
37:51
at triple the engagement rates of other types of visual media um you know there’s there’s there’s an
37:57
aspect to you know a cartoon which is typically words and pictures put together where the reader has to has to
38:04
Solve the Riddle of why these words are with this picture and there’s an engagement factor to that like why is
38:10
that funny when they see why it’s funny there there’s an appeal to it and so there’s you know the the companies that
38:16
have worked on that have done heavy analytical modeling of how cartoons have performed relative to other ways they
38:21
typically communicate have seen have seen a huge uh a huge lift and so I I’ll
38:27
point to that I’ll I’ll generally you know you know when I talk along those lines unless somebody has a tremendous
38:33
bias against cartoons they can generally see the potential once we start talking and um and and you know and thankfully I
38:40
get to work with a lot of organizations that started with a pilot and have turned to a long-running uh campaign the
38:45
the company I mentioned in HR we’ve now been working uh for most of the time with the weekly cartoon since 2010 and
38:51
that’s a lot of a lot of material in the space of HR uh that to prove that you
38:57
can cover a lot of topic sensitive with cartoons I like to appeal to both the right and the left brain depending on
39:03
who you’re talking to now kind of appealing to different cohorts somebody asked a question about how do you reach
39:10
different age ranges in particular Millennials do they do they connect with
39:15
does it resonate with them um how do you see it playing out differently amongst different
39:21
Generations yeah it’s really interesting I think that I mean cartoons as a medium
39:27
go back you know centuries you know the Bayou tapestry was a comic strip you
39:32
know so at the at the S at the at the kernel of it it’s basically words and
39:38
pictures you know you know the whole explosion in in meme culture through Millennials proves that words and
39:44
pictures together it’s a powerful communication medium I think that one of the aspects of cartoons that they’re
39:50
crafted you it takes me a long time to get to a final cartoon so you can be very focused on what you’re trying to
39:56
communicate I think it it’s it’s strange change that you know cartoons in the
40:01
newspaper for instance you know that’s a struggling industry and yet in some ways it’s a medium that’s perfectly designed
40:08
for the short attention span world that we live in and uh they work really well with that so I’ve I’ve seen quite an
40:14
explosion in in readership among Millennials and gen Z I’m experimenting
40:20
uh more and more which I haven’t I haven’t released some of these projects yet but experimenting with how cartoons
40:25
can be extended to short form videos and Instagram reels and Tick Tock so I’m
40:30
trying to always continually adapt and evolve but if the kernel using humor in the workplace and using the medium of
40:38
cartoons and that unique that unique way of communicating um I feel like it’s it’s perfectly
40:43
suited for the world that we live in so just to plan that a little bit more somebody asked another question and I
40:49
have a little interjection on this um the question was related to have you ever seen people use a series of
40:56
cartoons in lieu of or in support of an internal survey and I was just going to mention years ago United Therapeutics
41:04
their you know life sciences company they did their entire 10K as uh their
41:10
you know they’re they’re filing with um you know their financial securities finally they uh had done that all in
41:16
cartoons which I thought was Madness um but people loved it have you seen
41:22
that use like internal surveys in in little over in support of things like
41:27
that uh 100 about a third of the products I work on now are internal communication campaigns
41:34
um and they’re exactly for that reason the same way trying to reach a consumer or a customer it’s a cluttered world how
41:41
do you break through the Clutter the same thing is true in an organization trying to reach their own employees you know they’re besieged by HR
41:47
communication coming across the transom slack channels it’s just how do you keep when you’re in when your employee inside
41:52
of an organization that’s a lot coming at you and so having being deliberate about about uh having using
41:59
communicating in a way that’s going to be fun and engaging and humor is a great way to do it it’s been what some of my
42:06
most fun projects because I really get to understand the inside jokes inside their culture that are respectful and
42:13
use that affiliate of humor I talked about earlier but also have references that only if that you’ll only get if
42:18
you’re inside that organization those are some of my some of my favorites and yeah yeah there some organizations have
42:24
had ongoing uh you know series sort of a once a month kind of series others have been launching a new uh a new uh some
42:34
type of cultural transformation inside the organization here are 10 values and there’s a cartoon for each one sort of
42:39
unpacking that in a funny way I’ve done a lot of work like that and it can be really effective I find I always try to
42:45
think about the cartoons in an ecosystem of the other Communications so the cartoon might make them laugh but then
42:51
what else does it link to and so you know it like mentioned the survey having having you know a cartoon that tees up
42:57
you know potentially a conversation starter and then there’s a survey on the back of that or in some case I’ve worked
43:02
with an executive team to cultivate a series of 20 cartoons on the topic the executive team wants to talk about
43:07
amongst themselves but then they also want to have have lunch and learns with all the different leaders throughout the
43:13
extended organizations and the cartoons are individually used in cards to have people laugh and also respond to what
43:19
does this mean to you and your group it can be a fun way because because it’s a very participatory medium everybody can
43:25
see something a little bit differently in it it can tee up certain topics that might be uncomfortable to talk about another way and it and it uh but in an
43:33
unthreatening way you can all laugh together and then and then on the back of that you can have more focused conversations I love it there there is a
43:41
um there was an Israeli uh social psychologist that created these cartoon cards no words on them just pictures
43:47
they would hand them to couples who are going through counseling or dealing with
43:52
grief in some cases and they would have them use as a medium to be able to discuss and people said it was
43:58
incredibly effective Beyond just sitting there and talking it was so I I was
44:03
struck by that you just kind of uh reminded me of that that uh that story all right we are there are plenty of
44:11
other questions but we’re running short on time not a surprise because there’s so much to talk about but I did promise
44:16
that we were going to play a speed round so Tom here’s what we’re gonna do I’m
Speed Round
44:21
gonna put up on this screen in just a moment a series of cartoons you’re the
44:27
the cartoonist so you might recognize them I’m going to ask you to give me 30 seconds or less what’s the headline not
44:34
not what it says but like what’s the takeaway how does it connect with maybe kind of business culture and what’s
44:40
going on today how’s that sound sounds great ready all right I’m gonna bring it
44:46
up on the screen right here for us right now so first cartoon here we go
44:52
we need to stay focused on our marketing priorities and not get distracted oops I went backwards sorry there we need to
44:59
stay I got distracted we need to stay focused priorities and not get distracted by every shiny new look
45:05
squirrel what’s this all about Tom this uh this is one of my favorites I
45:11
actually love dogs this is what this is one of the ones I actually have framed in my wall uh because I I I can’t
45:17
remember when I drew it maybe six or seven years ago but it’s one of those that I try to draw cartoons that are kind of Evergreen that the issues never
45:24
get old and I think there’s always a new squirrel I can’t even remember what squirrel was on the horizon at the time
45:29
that I drew this cartoon but uh you know last year it might have been nfts it’s constant I feel like in business but
45:35
marketers in particularly it we’re we’re attuned to what’s happening outside which is great the challenge is how to
45:41
use how do you stay focused on your strategy and and pay attention to those things but not have the the the the the
45:48
the distracting squirrels become your strategy I also I love the the LCD
45:53
projector looks relatively modern there so it doesn’t feel like it’s that dated so that was a nice LCD the dogs are
45:59
using all right next one I I this is one of my all-time favorites Tom we have to do more of less I feel
46:07
like you must have written this like in the past few weeks but this isn’t new is it no I I this might even go back to to
46:13
2008 to be honest when I was living in living in London we I was I was helping
46:18
uh launch the the European business for an American business so we had this bootstrapped uh satellite office and I
46:25
was the general manager of it and uh and 2008 happened and uh and and we were
46:31
launching in a totally new market and we were told we have to be uh we have to be uh self-funding within it within a year
46:36
and it was that big it was a heavy lift a big ask and so that more with less was definitely something uh that was said to
46:43
us on more than one occasion and so that would I think a lot of my cartoons like I said were like a diary this is I
46:49
definitely felt like somebody trying to uh trying to make things happen with uh with very limited resources then I feel
46:55
so bad for that guy they didn’t even give him a shirt [Laughter] all right next one this is one of my
47:02
favorites as well but they’re all my favorite digital transformation is years away I don’t see our company having to
47:07
change anytime soon man I’m that Wrecking Ball of covid-19 I mean it
47:13
feels like it’s you know while that was a few years ago but you know there might be a new wrecking ball lurking but when
47:19
did you when did you craft this one that was literally a week or two into the shutdown that was very early so that
47:26
funny this this brings back a lot of what that that felt like at the time uh I think there is something floating
47:31
around that I came across that it was a funny poll someone posted who is you know what I guess who was driving your
47:39
um your your digital transformation strategy and it said the CEO the CIO the CTO or covid-19 and someone’s Circle
47:46
covid-19 and it was uh I think that was the moment when everyone had these projects that might take you know six
47:52
months and suddenly they were doing them in three weeks because covid-19 was a was a force effect and so yeah I think I
48:00
was also probably motivated by feeling like a big wrecking ball was coming through my life and so yes there are
48:05
constant wrecking balls you know you could write chat GPT on the side of that right now yeah each one there you really
48:11
could keep interchanging that all right I’m going to turn to the topic of creativity Innovation one which we’ve
48:18
talked quite a bit about and that’s near and dear to my heart as well and this one really this stood out for me here so
48:24
someone like to share next the poor guy in the stockades what what inspired this one
48:30
I feel like there’s uh there can be um
48:35
organizations you know there’s a high failure rate in Innovation a lot of ideas don’t work and organizations
48:41
wanting to improve their improve their their hit rate they’ll often they’ll
48:46
often like focus on the previous failures and it can sometimes send a an effect that will just clamp down on
48:53
anybody being uh comfortable sharing their their ideas in an organization um one one early example to me when I I
49:00
was worked I worked for a snack food or a large food company and they had a snack food that failed the snack food
49:06
brand was called Wahoos I remember this really distinctly because it launched when I was an intern and then it failed
49:12
and then I later joined the company and everybody would talk about uh oh we don’t want another Wahoos and it became
49:18
this joke about the Wahoo’s hangover and I feel like a lot of organizations whatever they have there’s something
49:24
that didn’t work a few years before that everyone brings up like we don’t want to do that again but the effect of of that
49:29
public punishment almost is that it keep it keeps people from really feeling comfortable being creative and coming up
49:36
with new ideas I love it that’s I did not get that I didn’t get that that level of of uh intuition now that you
49:43
say it to Stockade was about publicly shaming people as well it’s a great great metaphor really like it all right
49:49
it looks like it got cropped at the Top Line there I think that uh I think I can’t remember what it said above it but
49:54
does anyone else have another idea they’d like to share look like I got it cropped here yeah I’m gonna just jump to
50:00
this one Tom now that we’ve brainstormed all these exciting new ideas time to sort them
50:10
this feels so real unfortunately to me it’s um I feel like a lot of
50:18
organizations and trying to be more creative and having having Innovation you know the approach can often be to
50:23
think about and off-site once a quarter twice a year
50:28
once a year where you have permission to be creative and sky’s the limit Blue Sky Thinking but then but then the rest of
50:35
the time in the organization with your critical thinking hat on is all about thinking what’s wrong with it and that’s
50:40
a healthy thing to do but I feel like I feel like uh I feel like more of our
50:46
creative thinking uh can carry through in the organization on a day-to-day process
50:52
um one one big contrast with this when I worked at method we had floor-to-ceiling magnetic white boards
50:57
uh and and certain spaces of the office where ideas were constantly out in the open and everybody could add to them we
51:03
called them our Wiki walls like Wikipedia everybody could add to them and think about how they could work and sure some stuff came up that were you
51:10
know in the zone I’ve tried it before yes but too risky but it it was a cultural artifact for all of us to feel
51:16
like the job of the wiki wall is not to think about what’s wrong with it but instead think about how you’re going to
51:21
take it Forward um how you know how you’re going to how you’re gonna you take it in a New Direction and so I think in an
51:27
organization we have to I think a lot of times uh kind of thinking through when is the right time to be creative when is
51:33
the right time to be critical and a lot of times organizations can emphasize a little too much on the critical side
51:39
I like it the I’m curious what sparked this one because I could hear this in my
51:44
off in the distance now let’s tear apart everything we tastly supported just five
51:49
minutes ago you need to send it or laugh with this one uh what sparked the
51:55
meeting after the meeting yeah I I can’t even where I was professionally but I’ve
52:02
I’ve experienced that a number of times I feel like there can often be a bit of meeting theater that can happen I think
52:09
particularly in large organizations but really anywhere where um uh where I I drew a cartoon once they
52:16
had like a meeting schedule of the typical day and it was like you know eight to nine meeting before the meeting you know then planning meeting and then
52:22
you know the meeting after the meeting and the whole day can be spelled up with free selling before the meeting and then post selling after the meeting and just
52:28
the amount of time organizations spend in meetings uh it’s really it’s really crazy
52:34
um so yeah it’s anyway I’ve definitely experienced this not just someone occasion
52:40
now this one I I have to say I looked at your your uh some of the posts there
52:47
were some folks who worked in legal and Regulatory that were not very happy with this cartoon and they said hey it’s not
52:54
our fault you’re pointing fun at us but this definitely exposed a nerve about uh the blank advertisement up there on the
53:01
billboard this definitely was a bit of a lightning rod tell me about this one yeah
53:06
um actually the attorney who commented was an attorney I had worked with myself about six years previously so I knew him
53:12
personally um and he and he was he was right we had we had to we had a good natured back and forth about that
53:17
um he was right uh in the sense that um a lot of times in my professional career I would treat uh I would think of
53:24
the legal team as sort of the last right like we gotta we’re gonna do what we’re gonna do and then we’re gonna bring this final thing to the legal team to like to
53:31
like do something with it and at that point all they have left is a red pen to say you can’t do this can’t do that my
53:36
bigger successes later in my career or when I really learned to to befriend the
53:41
legal team and include them in the process at the very beginning and a lot of times when you’re doing something that’s risky
53:48
um um if you bring only the the end solution uh that you’re missing you’re missing the ability to to to to to think
53:55
of the lawyers as almost as an extended part of your of your marketing team here’s the challenge we’re trying to do
54:00
how do we approach that um and once I started approaching that way I realized that a lot of times those with legal
54:07
Specialties have really creative ideas and when you include them up front gen things generally went a lot better
54:14
so this is definitely uh yeah the the comment on the blog was kind of funny um I think I think as a response to that
54:21
I ended up doing drawing and accompanying cartoon that kind of made a little bit more fun of what marketers
54:26
typically do with lawyers because again as what I said earlier I like to do affiliative humor I want to make sure
54:31
like we’re I think a lot of times if I’m ever making fun of anything I’m making fun of myself because I’m just kind of
54:37
like all of us trying to learn in this world that we’re in and how and how uh and and ultimately I feel like all of us
54:44
an organizations are trying to go through a lot of things together and so there’s a there’s a there’s a fellowship effect that comes out of uh for me at
54:51
least drawing these cartoons and seeing what people think about it and then and then how we’re all operating today and
54:56
all of our various Industries and I I have to it’s laughing with instead of at I really do like that I
55:03
think it’s a it’s a really important Point all right last two um the penultimate one just to turn the
55:10
page from Innovation creativity to technology this feels like a familiar
55:16
Word chart just you just insert the names here I I it’s this this one always
55:21
makes me laugh because of the bottom and I just have to point that out manager of business results vacant
55:28
um let’s sparked this one I could say there’s probably a hundred things that sparked it but in particular if you go
55:34
back what what sparked that for you yeah well I’ve done a few different org chart uh
55:41
ideas because I feel like I feel like it it can apply to a couple of different instances but particularly in this case
55:47
with digital at the time digital was often treated as a as a bolt-on that
55:52
most of the organization we don’t have to worry about it but there’s gonna be this separate organization that’s thinking about digital things a way of
55:58
over here and um and there’s so much hype in that and how does it apply to the business and so I was riffing a
56:05
little bit on the friction that can happen um you know over time I think that you know I I think everybody’s jobs have to
56:12
think about digital we all have to so it’s part of the organization so I was reflecting a little bit on the siled uh
56:19
the siled treatment of digital all right Tom you’ve come to the final
56:24
cartoon you ready for it well you know no better way than for us to be able to close out the cartoons than to talk
56:30
about chat GPT I love it this is I this one really stood out for me
56:36
um how will AI impact our business and then having AI tell you there are many ways AI can impact your business and I
56:42
think I’ve actually even typed that in before so but that’s pretty close near and dear because everybody’s talking
56:48
about AI generative Ai and chat GPT this must have been pretty recent I suspect
56:54
this was recent and it was surreal because the official chat GPT social
56:59
channels started sending out this cartoon um right after I drew it so that really
57:04
felt like it was talking to me um no I drew this I drew this uh you know just as everybody has been trying
57:10
to make make sense of what these tools mean this is pretty early on this is right right after it was sort of launched and everybody had that moment
57:16
and I wrote an accompanying post about how it reminded me of the famous uh the famous Microsoft Internet moment when uh
57:23
when Bill Gates wrote a memo in 95 that they were going to Pivot the entire strategy of Microsoft to to to you know
57:30
you know to realize the internet was one of these game-changing moments and so I I wrote an accompanying post about the
57:36
the AI moment and uh and and how everybody was approaching it interestingly with also also with
57:42
Microsoft at the center of it awesome well you’ve come to the final round you
Concluding Thoughts
57:47
did a great job big high five for that time thanks for playing along that so we
57:53
are just about out of time but I want to just kind of uh wrap up with a couple of thoughts well first things first really
57:59
appreciate all the Insight the personal Stories the examples how cartooning and
58:04
humor really play in it’s really it illuminates and it brings things to life I also appreciate some of the deliberate
58:11
practices that you shared really helpful and I’m going to try out a couple of these myself but let me ask you kind of
58:17
a closing thought or or words of wisdom for folks who maybe they’re aspiring
58:22
cartoonists they want to bring a little bit more player humor into their their homework or office work life what would
58:28
you what type of uh you know guidance or counsel would you give them I would say
58:33
um I think having having some sort of creative practice of some type could be useful to anybody and I but I think the
58:40
main thing whether you’re a cartoonist or anyone in business is um is to is to keep experimenting not to get stuck in a
58:45
rut I think it’s tempting sometimes I feel like the longer I’ve been doing this I feel like I can I can I can go to
58:51
what’s tried and true and I need to you know AI is a good example of this like
58:56
it’s a you know I try to play with new tools when they come around and um and to continually be learning and
59:03
finding how people are approaching approaching things so so my my big message would probably be to keep our
59:08
eyes and ears open have some sort of creative Pro practice that allows us to process what’s happening in the change
59:15
around us and and be open to experimenting with that change awesome well you heard it here Tom
59:21
Fishburne the market Tunis awesome to have you thank you for taking the time and being generous with your Insight and
59:27
wisdom I will say our next episode is a perfect build on what you’ve just been
59:33
talking about we’re gonna have Matthew Liau from Newark University professor of bioethics talking about some of the
59:39
ethical conundrums that come up with AI and other emerging Technologies so tune
59:45
in for that next one on April 25th but for me from Tom from the deliberate way
59:51
thank you guys for tuning in and uh we look forward to hearing about your deliberate practices Tom thanks again
59:57
take care everyone thank you