Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

Most non-fiction books are written as reputation builders. We write them because we want to be seen as experts. We want more speaking opportunities, more customers, more recognition. These “how to” books appear to be about the subject matter, but they are really about the author.This sort of reputation-building was the motive behind my Wizard of Ads trilogy.There is a second, less-populated category of non-fiction books whose authors have a different motive. These books appear to be about the author, but look closely and you’ll see they are about the reader.Memoirs, when well-written, reveal the brokenness, the triumphs, and the tragedies of the author. They describe an event-filled journey.Memoirs inspire us and make us believe that we can make a difference. They encourage us, showing us how someone else passed through this dark forest and how we can pass through it, too.We laugh at the silly mistakes, cherish the faithful companions, cry at the suffering and loss, cheer the little victories, and feel that we know the author.Memoirs are not written as reputation builders, but as relationship deepeners.If you want to write a good memoir, you must make yourself vulnerable, revealing all your fears and flaws and secrets. If you don’t, you will be guilty of the sin of Margot Asquith:“The affair between Margot Asquith and Margot Asquith will live as one of the prettiest love stories in all literature.”Dorothy Parker, in her 1925 New Yorker book reviewof The Autobiography of Margot Asquith.Even worse, they might say of you,“He is a self-made man and he worships his creator.”Vulnerability is the price of intimacy. Confession is the price of trust.Never trust the advice of a man who doesn’t limp.It is our belief systems and our scars that make us who we are.Do you want to build a strong culture in the company you founded? Write your memoirs.Do you want your customers to feel like they know you? Write your memoirs.Do you want to cast your bread upon the waters, pay it forward, help thousands of people you will never meet? Write your memoirs.Do you want your descendants to know who you were, the clay from which they were formed? Write your memoirs.Other people will be faced with the fears you have faced.Other people will make the mistakes you have made.Other people need to know the lessons you have learned.Do you have the humility – the vulnerability – to tell us how you got your limp?Roy H. Williams

In about 650 B.C. the Greek poet Archilochus wrote, “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”The renaissance scholar Erasmus quoted Archilochus in 1500 in his famous Adagia, saying, “Multa novit vulpes, verum echinus unum magnum.”In 1953, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin expanded on Archilochus and Erasmus in his often-quoted essay, The Hedgehog and the Fox.In 2017, University of Pennsylvania psychologist Philip Tetlock completed a 20-year study that contrasted the abilities of the one-big-thing “hedgehog” experts against the many-little-things “fox” non-experts to make accurate predictions about geopolitical events.Does it surprise you to learn that the “fox” non-experts outperformed the “hedgehog” experts by an overwhelming margin?What Tetlock discovered will help you tell the story of your company in a way that will cause customers to feel like they truly know you.American businesspeople tend to believe that every successful business is built on a single big idea, “one big thing.” But sadly, that bit of traditional wisdom is more tradition than wisdom.“One big thing” is hedgehog thinking. But foxes roam freely, listen carefully and consume omnivorously. Foxes know “many little things.”Customers will love the “many little things” story of your company told from the perspective of a fox. The story you need to be telling is the real one, a fascinating tale of hopes and dreams and failures and successes and realizations and refinements.Don’t worry, we’re going to help you write it.In 2011, the fox-like director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, used 100 objects in his museum as prisms through which he told the entire story of our world. That book, A History of the World in 100 Objects, became a wildly popular radio series and a blockbuster New York Times bestseller. The Wall Street Journal called it, “An enthralling and profoundly humane book that every civilized person should read.”The fascinating, riveting, highly-engaging story of your company is hidden in 10 objects that lie within your grasp.Bring those objects with you to Wizard Academy. It is time for “Show and Tell.”Dr. Richard D. Grant is a founding board member of Wizard Academy. Chris Maddock has been a Wizard of Ads writing instructor for 22 years. Tom Wanek is a Wizard of Ads partner with a particular talent for helping people discover wonderful stories that have been hiding in plain sight. These three masters will help you unleash the pivotal moments captured in your photographs, artifacts, and documents, and turn them into the fascinating story of your company’s origin and evolution.This wonderful adventure through time and imagination will happen November 5-6.We’ve only got room for 18 people.Roy H. Williams

Have you ever casually started down a path and then the journey got a life of its own?The White Rabbit appears in chapter one, inexplicably wearing a waistcoat. So what does Alice do? She follows him down the rabbit hole. There’s just no turning back after a decision like that.The journey is alive and it’s bigger than you.At twenty, I followed a White Rabbit and became an ad writer.At forty, I wrote The Wizard of Ads and it became Business Book of the Year.At sixty, I announced I was going to create The Ad Writers Masters Class for The American Small Business Institute and that its graduates would be qualified for admission into The Ad Writer’s Guild.The journey got a life of its own.Becoming an AdMaster will be like becoming a Black Belt in the art of ad writing.I expressed my biggest fear about that 52-week online class in last week’s Monday Morning Memo. Did you read it?“I sometimes worry that we have an instant-gratification attitude regarding education. We believe that when we have learned from an expert how a thing is done, we now have the ability to do that thing expertly. But there is a long and winding road to be traveled from Information to Proficiency. And then there is a second long and winding road from Proficiency to Authority.”My partner Jeff Sexton read that and immediately sent me a video featuring Ira Glass, the producer and host of the award-winning public radio program This American Life.“Nobody tells people who are beginners – I really wish somebody had told this to me – is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But for the first couple of years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good. Okay? It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite good. But, your taste – the thing that got you into the game – your taste is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell what you’re making is a disappointment to you.”“A lot of people never get past that phase. They quit. The thing that I would say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting, creative work, went through a phase of years where they could tell that what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short.”“Everyone goes through that, and if you’re going through it right now, you’ve got to know it’s totally normal, and the most important possible thing you could do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week, or every month, you know you’re going to finish one story. Because it’s only by actually going through a volume of work that you’re actually going to catch up and close that gap. The work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions.”“It’s going to take you a while. It’s normal to take a while, and you just have to fight your way through that. Okay?”When I followed up on that idea of becoming a black belt, I learned that it was a far more accurate comparison than I had realized. WIKIPEDIA says,“In Japanese martial arts; the shodan black belt is not the end of training, but rather a beginning to advanced learning: the individual now ‘knows how to walk’ and may thus begin the ‘journey.'”When The Ad Writers Masters Class is finally announced, I hope you’ll consider it. And if you decide to pursue your black belt in ad writing, I hope you’ll remember that there’s a long and winding road from Information to Proficiency.In the meantime, you can learn How to Become a YouTube Influencer. Not that it’s any easier. But that class is fully polished and coming up in September.Indy said to tell you “Aroo,” and that he’ll see you in the rabbit hole.You know the way.Roy H. Williams

Pennie and I have criteria we use to judge the success of Wizard Academy. In a recent meeting of the board of directors, they asked us to share those criteria with them.I began by saying, “A non-profit educational organization would be foolish to judge its success by its revenues. And we would be equally foolish to judge our success by the number of people who attend classes. When we complete The House of the Lost Boys, we’ll be able to accommodate 24 students per class. But we have just 40 classes per year. Nine hundred and sixty students per year is our self-imposed maximum and we’ve been hovering at that number for a long time. The goal is the high-touch sharing of valuable insights, processes, formulas, tips and lessons with self-selected insiders who had to pass through a lot of filters to even hear about this place and then cross a lot of barriers to get here.”“So how, exactly, do you measure success?” asked one of the board members.“Three things, ” I answered.“Number one is how often we hear reports from students saying they went home and implemented the things they learned and it made a gigantic difference.”“Number two is how often they return for additional classes. Because this tells us they had a great experience the first time.”“Number three is the number of newcomers who were told to come by someone who had already been here.”“Results, Returns, and Referrals,” echoed 38-year-old Ryan Deiss as he nodded his head in affirmation.“I thought I made those criteria up!” I said. “Are you telling me they’re a known thing?”“They’re not widely known, but all the better schools use those criteria,” he said.Manley Miller is another 38-year-old that the board has asked to fill the position of a member who has been serving for 20 years and has announced he will be retiring next year.In Manley’s not-yet-published book, he writes,“When you have a talent for something, you have an aptitude. But when you become a master of it, you have proficiency.”“When you have something to say that is worth hearing, you have wisdom. But when people are willing to listen to you, you have authority.”Manley says he learned that from reading the Bible. “Jesus spoke with wisdom in the Temple when he was 12 years old, but when he was 30, he spoke with authority. You’ve got to add a lot of experience to your wisdom before you can speak with authority.”A few days later, Rex Williams, another 38-year-old board member said,“We judge ourselves by our intentions, but we judge others by their actions. Likewise, we judge the value of our thoughts and opinions by the depth of our feelings, but others judge the value of our thoughts and opinions by our words.”Rex went on to say,“Millions of people are involved in social media, podcasting, video blogging, ad writing, book writing, speech writing. Everyone wants to be heard, but few learn how to be heard.”Listening to these 38-year-olds, I had a revelation.Let’s say you have an aptitude for communication, (because you probably do.)You’re still going to need:Information, which becomesKnowledge, which leads toExperience, which leads toProficiency, which gives youWisdom, which gives youDeeper Experience, which gives youAuthorityI sometimes worry that we have an instant-gratification attitude regarding education. We believe that when we have learned from an expert how a thing is done, we now have the ability to do that thing expertly.But there is a long and winding road to be traveled from Information to Proficiency.And then there is a second long and winding road from Proficiency to Authority.I believe this is a message every high school and college graduate needs to hear. Because when we fail to tell them, we condemn them to learn these things the hard way.Indy says Aroo.Roy H. Williams

When you’re in “inside” sales, customers come to you.When you’re in “outside” sales, you go looking for customers.When I was a baby ad-man in outside sales, I had the good fortune to spend a day with Gene Chamberlain. He taught me three things that day that made me a lot of money. Today I’m going to teach those things to you.A: When You’re in Outside Sales, You’ve Got to Prune Your Account List.There are only 24 hours in the day and no way to get any more. Outside salespeople run out of time long before they run out of opportunity.If you’re in outside sales, this is how to prune your account list:Look at your total billing for the past 12 months.Divide that dollar amount by the number of accounts on your list.This will give you an “average annual yield” per account.Give away every account that spent less than that amount with you last year.Sell no new accounts that are going to spend less than that amount with you this year.When you run out of time again, repeat this exercise.Follow these steps and you’ll see your sales volume spiral higher and higher.B: Always Add, “Which Means…”No matter how well we understand features and benefits, we too often name a feature and assume our prospective customer knows the benefits. What I’m about to teach you will increase the impact of your sales presentations and the effectiveness of your ad copy, even when your customer does already understand the benefits of the feature you named.Always add “which means…” after every feature you name. You can add these words verbally, or you can add them silently, but this habit will bridge you into language the customer can see in their mind.“This blade is made of Maxamet steel which means you’ll never have to sharpen it.”“This is a 52-week schedule which means your name will become the one people think of immediately and feel the best about.”“I’m going to write your campaign in a conversational style which means the customer will categorize you in their mind as a friend.”C: When Asked, “How much?” the First Digit of a Number Should Always be the First Syllable Out of Your Mouth.I was one of only a few advertising people in the room on that fateful day I met with Gene Chamberlain. He said, “When a customer says the word ‘How’ followed by the word ‘much,’ there is only one intelligent way to answer that question: Take a breath and name a number and then – without pausing – name everything that is included in that price at no extra charge.”Most of the crowd sold mobile homes, so Gene used their industry in his example.“A man wants to buy a mobile home, so he drives up and down mobile home row, then back to his office. He saw two mobile homes he liked, never realizing it was the same model on two different lots.”“So he calls the first mobile home dealer and asks, ‘How much is the mobile home next to the road?’ The first dealer said, “Sir, you have an eye for quality! That’s a Northwind mobile home. Those are made in Minnesota where it gets really cold, so they’re extremely energy efficient. That mobile home is made with 2 by 6 lumber instead of 2 by 4s, and it comes fully furnished and fully carpeted and with all your major appliances…” Gene stopped in mid-sentence and said, “The customer was no longer listening, he just wanted off the phone. He was thinking, ‘That mobile home is overpriced and the salesman knows it.'”Gene looked at us for several seconds before he continued,“So the man calls the second dealership and asks, ‘How much is the mobile home next to the road?’ ‘Thirty-four thousand two hundred and seventy dollars,’ the second salesman answered, ‘which includes at no extra charge, vaulted ceilings and a wood-burning fireplace in an open-concept floorplan, every room furnished with your choice of Bassett or Broyhill furniture, granite countertops in the kitchen and bathrooms, Kohler fixtures, mini-blinds and draperies on every window and we also deliver it, set it up, and tie it down at no extra charge, then we build a 20 by 30-foot redwood deck outside your back door along with a two-car carport for you to park under. And that’s just the beginning. Would you like to hear everything else you get for just thirty-four, two-seventy, or would you like to come down and walk through it first?”The more things you list that are “included at no extra charge,” the cheaper the price becomes. But only if you name the price first.Gene Chamberlain is gone now, but I honor his memory by passing along the best advice on selling I was ever given. My only regret is that I didn’t tell him ‘Thank you’ before I left the room.Roy H. Williams

I was bagging my groceries when the checker handed me my receipt and said, “Happy Yesterday.” Unsure of the correct response, I just smiled at him and nodded.A few moments later I realized he had said, “Happy rest-of-your-day.” But that brief exchange put my mind on an interesting track: can we choose to have a happy yesterday?Strangely, we can. According to a number of studies published since 2012, we don’t really remember the events in our lives. We remember only our last memory of those events. Events in our memories alter and morph with each retrieval until, finally, we are “remembering” things that never really happened.The first of these studies was conducted at Northwestern University and published in the Journal of Neuroscience.On September 19, 2012, journalist Marla Paul wrote,“Remember the telephone game where people take turns whispering a message into the ear of the next person in line? By the time the last person speaks it out loud, the message has radically changed. It’s been altered with each retelling.”“Turns out your memory is a lot like the telephone game, according to a new Northwestern Medicine study. Every time you remember an event from the past, your brain networks change in ways that can alter the later recall of the event. Thus, the next time you remember it, you recall not the original event but what you remembered the previous time.”“‘A memory is not simply an image produced by time-traveling back to the original event,'” says Donna Bridge, a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and lead author of the paper on the study recently published in the Journal of Neuroscience. ‘Your memory of an event can grow less precise even to the point of being totally false with each retrieval.’”In a subsequent article in Psychology Today, we read,“Not only are our memories faulty, our memories change each time they are recalled. What we recall is only a facsimile of things gone by. Memories are malleable constructs that are reconstructed with each recall. What we remember changes each time we recall the event. The slightly changed memory is now embedded as ‘real,’ only to be reconstructed with the next recall. Memory isn’t like a file in our brain, but more like a story that is edited every time we tell it. We attach emotional details with each re-telling. Not only do we alter the story, we alter our feelings about it.”We unconsciously choose to alter these emotional details and feelings for better, or for worse. To make ourselves happier, or more miserable.I vote for remembering happiness. “Have a happy yesterday.”“But Roy,” I can hear you say, “you’re saying that we should lie to ourselves.”No, I’m simply saying that you’re already lying to yourself when you believe that you recall past events accurately.The simple, scientific truth is that you colorize events each time you recall them. I’m merely suggesting that you consider the colors you are choosing.Will they be dark, sad, angry colors? Or will they be warm and happy ones?Roy H. Williams

Vertical thinking is step-by-step, procedural, outcome-focused. It helps you get things done.Always asking, “What is the obvious next step?” vertical thinking leads to incremental evolution and refinement. It is a ratchet that maintains what you’ve accomplished, then “click,” gives you a little bit more. The Japanese call it kaizen, “continuous improvement.”Vertical knowledge is narrow and deep. Specialized. Expert. Orderly.Horizontal thinking is boundless and broad. It is a searchlight that spots anomalies in a sea of similarities. It is the network of intersections in a map of metaphors. It is a detective that solves puzzles by seeing patterns, connections and relationships.Intuitive and instinctive, horizontal thinking leads to innovations by asking, “What doesn’t belong, and why?” It is a magnet that pulls the needle from the haystack. Linguists call this the Aha! moment or the eureka moment, that common human experience of suddenly understanding a previously incomprehensible problem or concept.Horizontal knowledge knows a little bit about everything. It is chaotic, pattern-seeking, creative.Every healthy person thinks vertically and horizontally, though most of us tend to prefer one or the other.The most effective partnerships have one partner who prefers to think vertically and another who prefers to think horizontally. These partners are the makers of miracles when they’re not driving each other crazy.Do you have a strong preference for one type of thinking? The first major milestone on your journey to success will be to find a partner who is your opposite. A person who brings the Willy to your Wonka.But that’s the easy part. That hard part is to respect that person’s opinion and take action on it, even when your instinct is to dismiss it out-of-hand as “irrelevant.”Chances are, you’ve got that person in your life already. Probably more than one. So here’s a suggestion: the next time they offer an opinion, or a possible solution, look at it as a valuable gift that needs to be opened and examined.You’re going to be surprised at the difference it makes.Roy H. Williams

Back in those days you didn’t shoot nobody unless they really needed shootin’.So when someone showed you a gun, you knew there was a reason. You didn’t always know what that reason was, so the polite thing to do was ask.“What’s with the hog leg?”“Keeps folks from takin’ the cash box.”“I just want a watermelon. You sellin’? Or just sittin’ here showin’ em off?”The truck was a 1950 International Harvester that had been ugly since the day it was born and the boy was a 1955 Hatfield with a homemade haircut that wasn’t gonna win no prizes, either. He looked to be about eleven.“We’re sellin’. Seventy-five cents.”I dropped three quarters into the slot in his tackle box and heard the slosh of a hundred others when he slid it under the truck seat where he’d been sleeping.“Take your pick,” he said.“You choose.”“They’re equal good.”I flipped him another quarter and he dropped it in his pocket. Barefoot, he clambered to the top of the pile and reached to a spot behind the cab. It was worth the extra quarter.“Truck not runnin’?”“We always sell a few after dark and this is a good spot. Didn’t want to give it up.”“Your daddy’s smart.”“Don’t have a daddy.”“Granddaddy, then.”“Don’t have to be smart to stay parked in a good spot. Just common sense.”“He’s smart for teaching you how to flash that hog leg without pointin’ it.”“Illegal to point it.”“I know. And your granddaddy’s smart for makin’ sure you know.”He held it out to me on an open palm. “Walker Colt. Belonged to my granddaddy’s daddy.”I looked at it and nodded, “Nice one,” but I didn’t touch it. My granddaddy taught me, too.I said, “Want some watermelon?”“Whatcha thinkin’?”“Sell me one for 35 cents and I’ll split it with you.”“Eat it here?”I nodded. He reached into his pocket and with a quick flick of his wrist produced a slender, 7-inch blade.“This time you choose,” he said. Two minutes later I laid my fingertip on a melon and made eye contact. He smiled. “You picked a good one. What’s your name?”“Roy.”“I’m Mack.” He quartered the melon and then with a barely perceptible motion folded the blade against his hip and slipped the knife back into his pocket. The hand became an open palm. “You owe me 35 cents.”I dropped a dime and a quarter into it. We both sat on the tailgate and began eating melon. “I’m named after my granddaddy. You named after your granddaddy, Mack?”He laid his hand on the knife in his pocket as he shook his head slowly from side to side. “After my daddy.” Mack changed the subject. “You don’t look old enough to drive,” he said.I smiled, “The police think I do.”“You fifteen?” he asked. I nodded.I let the subject of his daddy lay for a few minutes as we ate the heart of the melon in silence. When we were done eatin’ and I had put my 75-cent melon in the passenger-side floorboard, Mack said, “Your mama didn’t raise no fools, Roy.”“Why do you say?”“Most people put the melon in the seat. Then when they hit the brakes, the melon rolls into the floorboard and busts.”“How do you know?”Mack smiled, “’cause they always come back and buy another melon.”I started the car, put it in reverse, and started to sing softly, “Oh, the shark, babe, has such teeth, dear. And it shows them pearly white.”I heard Mack’s voice in the darkness, “Just a jackknife has old MacHeath, babe. And he keeps it, out of sight.”I turned on the headlights but Mack was already lying down in the seat of the truck again, falling asleep with his great granddaddy’s hog leg pistol and the knife his daddy left him.Roy H. Williams

Amateur ad writers assume everyone makes decisions based upon the same criteria they use. This causes them to unconsciously frame their messages to reach people exactly like themselves.Professional ad writers frame their messages to speak to the felt needs of a specific consumer.People are multi-dimensional. We make decisions to purchase based on a variety of criteria, but two of the big ones are Time and Money.“Time and Money are interchangeable.You can always save one by spending more of the other.”– Pennie WilliamsA person who feels they have no money and no time is buried in financial and relational obligations.A person who believes they have more time than money is a bargain hunter.A person who has more money than time is overworked and highly paid.A person with lots of money and time is looking for something to do.Consciously or unconsciously, every ad is framed to speak to one of those four perspectives.It isn’t really about whether we can afford to spend the money. It’s about whether we FEEL we can afford to spend it. A person may feel they have the time, but not the money, to purchase a product in one category, but later that day feel they have the money, but not the time, to purchase a different product in a different category.We evaluate messages – news, information, and advertising – based on Relevance and Credibility:Relevance: “Does it matter to me? Do I care about this?”Credibility: “Do I believe it?”A message high in relevance but low in credibility is hype.“I would be interested if I believed you.”A message low in relevance but high in credibility is a tedious waste of time.“I believe you, I’m just not interested.”Are you speaking to the felt needs of your customer, or are you speaking only to yourself?Are the things you’re saying believable, or do they sound like unsubstantiated hype?Identity Reinforcement and Self-Expression:We buy much of what we buy to remind ourselves – and tell the world around us – who we are. A surprisingly high percentage of purchases are about self-expression.We bond with organizations that show us a reflection of our best self-image. When we perceive that an organization shares our outlook and our beliefs, we prefer them and their products.Win the heart and the mind will follow. The mind will always create logic to justify what the heart has already decided.Indy said to tell you “Aroo,” and that he’s waiting for you in the rabbit hole.Roy H. Williams

The Jewish Sabbath begins each Friday at sunset because the fifth verse of Genesis reads, “And the evening and the morning were the first day.”Every beginning starts with an ending.Thirteen colonies became 13 “united states” when our fight for freedom ended and our government under a Constitution began in 1789. This was the beginning of the first America, a land of freedom and opportunity.Those “united states” became somewhat less united during our Civil War of 1861 to 1865. More about that later.In 1880 and 1881, Charles M. Russell and Frederic Remington headed west to capture memories of a time they saw to be ending. Their paintings and sculptures of the Wild West now sell for millions of dollars.Teddy Roosevelt took the last traces of the Wild West to Cuba in 1898 when he led his “rough riders” to the top of a now-famous hill during the Spanish-American War. His arrival on that hill signaled the ending of the Wild West, the ending of the Spanish Empire, and the ending of the first America.The second America began when Teddy Roosevelt became President in 1901. America was now a land of achievement, a World Power, a nation of cars and department stores and Coca-Cola, electric lights, running water and tract houses.We fought two World Wars, Korea, Viet Nam, and Desert Storm before the end of that century and we taught our children that anyone could work as a tradesman, but if you wanted a “good-paying job” you needed to go to college.It took 112 years to move from the end of our fight for freedom to Teddy Roosevelt’s land of achievement and the beginning of the second America in 1901.In 2013 – one hundred and twelve years after Teddy took the White House – we saw the unwinding of achievement and the beginning of the third America, a land of virtual reality, virtual currency, and virtual ownership. Massive multiplayer online games, Bitcoin and Uber, Facebook and Twitter, Google and Airbnb.*2013 also marked the halfway point in the upswing of society’s pendulum toward the zenith of our current “We.”The halfway point in the upswing of a “We” is where we begin to take a good thing too far. We shift from “fighting together for the common good” to simply “fighting together.” Western Civilization has done this every 8th decade for the past 3,000 years.I wrote at length about this in Pendulum a number of years ago. Do you remember that book?1783 marked the ending of our Revolutionary War.1783 was the zenith of a “We.”1863 marked the middle of our Civil War.1863 was the zenith of a “We.”1943 marked the middle of WWII.1943 was the zenith of a “We.”2023 will mark the zenith of our current “We.”I wonder what we’ll be in the middle of, then?It is important to remember that the swinging of society’s pendulum between the zeniths of the “Me” (1983) and the “We” (2023) is a sociological swing, not a psychological one.Sociology is the study of the values and beliefs and motives of people groups. Psychology is the study of the values, beliefs, and motives of the individual.Let’s talk some more about endings. And sociology.Scientific American recently published the definitive explanation of why the final season of Game of Thrones fell short of the mark set by George R.R. Martin. According to Zeynep Tufekci, we loved the first 7 seasons of the show because, “it was sociological and institutional storytelling in a medium dominated by the psychological and the individual… This is an important shift to dissect because whether we tell our stories primarily from a sociological or psychological point of view has great consequences for how we deal with our world and the problems we encounter.”A little help on how to “deal with our world and the problems we encounter,” would be welcome right now, don’t you think?Tufekci then goes on to warn us, “The overly personal mode of storytelling or analysis leaves us bereft of deeper comprehension of events and history. Understanding Hitler’s personality alone will not tell us much about the rise of fascism, for example. Not that it didn’t matter, but a different demagogue would probably have appeared to take his place in Germany in between the two bloody world wars in the 20th century. Hence, the answer to ‘would you kill baby Hitler?,’ sometimes presented as an ethical time-travel challenge, should be ‘no,’ because it would very likely not matter much.”It’s easy to blame WWII on the psychology of one man because that’s how we prefer to tell stories in America; we like to zoom in so close that the picture and the story become pixelated. But if you pull that camera back to see the bigger, sociological picture, you watch an entirely different story unfold.With a much better ending.America’s problem – whichever one it is that has you most concerned – wasn’t caused by one of us. It was caused by all of us.And its solution will depend on all of us, as well.Roy H. Williams