The other day I was sitting in a reception area of a large asset manager. Waiting to see the CMO, who we’d done a little business with over the year since starting up Content Equity, my mind got a little excitable. Uncontrollable might be another way of describing it.
The reception area was great, but in hindsight overstimulating for me and my momentary mood. The screen showed rotating images of photography linked to a natural History Museum award (I think). All the photos helped depict the importance and impact of money and how and where it flows to across the world.
Powerful stuff and my mind went off in all sorts of directions. I tried to wrestle it back to what I might talk about with the CMO – maybe I could use this anecdote as an icebreaker, or perhaps I should talk about some of the personal details I remembered from our last conversation?
I look around… ooh, a brochure about natural capital. Pick it up. Is it by the author of the responsible investing book the CMO told me about at our last meeting? Hmm. Don’t recognise the name. Google. LinkedIn. Ah, no it isn’t. Regardless, maybe this is a rapport-inducing talking point.
There’s a screen to my left with financial news on. Useful, I think. Also, this chair is really comfy. It’s a swivel armchair, but sleek and with curvy winged headrest. I want one like this. Google again. Nope, can’t find anything like it. That’s annoying. It doesn’t seem that unusual. I wonder what the chair manufacturing word is that would magically unlock Google’s algorithm. (Yes, I did consider using an LLM, but for image-based searches I still think the ‘old-fashioned’ method has a place.)
Get up. Look about. Spot a model replica of The City – classic play, for a real assets-heavy investment manager, I reflect. I still have my headphones around my neck from listening to the podcast the firm sponsors on the way in. It’s very good and genuinely up my street.
I sit back down, without putting my headphones in my bag. Oh, back to the main screen – the one with the photography – and the rotation has moved on. It’s kids now, talking about finance. I know it has been done before, but this feels authentic and beautifully executed. I wrote one of the lines down because I liked it so much: “Kids can sometimes know things that adults don’t.” Very nice, and true.
None of this is really helping me prep for my meeting, or is it? Unless I can wrestle any of it into some sort of coherence. Or just pick an anecdotal icebreaker and run with it.
The CMO arrives, I awkwardly smuggle my headphones into my bag (why didn’t I act on that earlier impulse?), we walk to the meeting room and chat. They are incredibly friendly and calm considering all the plates they are spinning. I weigh that against my own chaotic state of mind. The meeting goes ok, I think. I get some good feedback on an AI and investment writing workshop proposal that I was there to talk about. That part of the conversation only lasted 2-3 mins, mainly because I skirted around it in very British way. But I got what I needed – or at least that is what I tell myself afterwards. It was a ‘no, but re-work it, there is something there’. The CMO is a clear advocate of ours. I pause on that thought for a moment and feel lucky.
Ok. Here’s the point. Put us in verbal, face-to-face or virtual situations, we are all at the mercy of the gods. I have no idea what is going to come out the other person’s mouth, and only a faint idea about what might come out of mine!
The CMO meeting example is just the most vivid one currently occupying territory in my brain – there are countless others. Whether a presentation, a panel, a business meeting, a conversation, seeing friends or so on – oh, and group dynamics are the worst – I am often paralysed by the randomness of it all. A train of thought can go in a million different ways; add another person into the mix and you multiply the variables. Add more people, and the situation compounds and gets out of control very quickly.
Writing is different. You can go back and finesse things. You are in control. That, for me at least, is very comforting.
