In my favorite speaker community of all time, we talk about speakers needing something called a “Battle Cry.”
This isn’t a “mission statement” or a “vision thing,” exactly — it’s more of a rallying “call to arms” that tells the world the cause we fight for, highlights our “weird” (as my friend Frankie would say), and gives event planners and leaders a taste of what they’ll get when they hire us.
It’s the “above the fold” of our website — the “hero” section, the very first big, bold words that people read.
A battle cry has to be short, pithy, and completely unique… which means it’s really frickin’ hard to create.
And today I’m testing a new one at joshallan.com.
“Create A Future That Doesn’t Suck”
Before, I had: “Create the future you want to work in.”
The old one was (and still is) accurate regarding what I’m about. It’s aspirational, socially-constructionist, forward-leaning, and truthful regarding what I want to help everyone do.
But it never quite landed right with me; it never felt quirky enough or punchy enough.
Last week I got to attend a couple sessions at Boulder Startup Week. One was a marketing-focused topic, and I’m not even totally sure what exactly they said that connected the dots for me, but at some point during the session I had one of those “lightning bolt” moments in my brain.
You know what I mean, right?
For me, it literally feels like a flash of light, but of course the spark isn’t happening outside, but inside. My friend Chuck calls these moments a Blinding Flash of the Obvious (BFO).
In that session I got a BFO: “Create A Future That Doesn’t Suck.”
This is what I want to do.
It’s provocative, a little weird, a little bold, and actually super on-brand for me, given I published a book with a very similar subtitle 13 years ago. I’ve been talking about “making work not suck” for what feels like for-eh-ver.
When I put this subtitle on my book all those years ago, it was really fun to share… with almost everyone.
Al Restivo, the very first professional consultant to take me under his wing back in 2007 and show me the ropes of the consulting profession, always hated it. He was a friendly, energetic, quintessentially-outspoken Sicilian New Yorker who had relocated to a small town near Pasadena, and had no problem telling me exactly how he felt about my subtitle, pretty much whenever he saw it, or even thought about it. He was a very important mentor in my life so I took what he said seriously. But I felt the subtitle was right, so I kept it. (Al has passed on now, but I’m pretty sure he would delight in telling me how much he hates this idea too, which makes me smile to think about.)
Almost everyone else delighted in my subtitle. It usually got some kind of reaction, and was almost always met with a smirk, a chuckle, or positive comment.
When I came back to speaking a year ago, I had no idea if it would still feel relevant. The world has changed a lot in the last 13 years, of course. But much to my enjoyment, it still gets a reaction when it’s mentioned in my stage intro.
It’s memorable.
And even better, it’s a lot deeper than it sounds, because I’m not just talking about organizations “sucking” in the colloquial way.
They often do that, sure, but it’s more than that — it’s existential, systemic.
Over the last 15 years, I’ve come to believe that organizations are actually designed to suck… as in, their operating system is designed to suck the energy from people, suck the purpose from lives, and suck the resources from the planet.
The current default way of working is built to suck.
This isn’t a bug, it’s a feature, y’all.
As I look forward into the next chapter of life for me, I am seeing clearly that it’s not just the private sector workplace that is built this way. It’s organizations and civic structures and institutions of all kinds, shapes, and sizes.
I am still researching, but I have a strong sense that nearly every system we humans have built — meaning, all systems that are not biological in nature but were constructed by people — is extractive and not generative.
Put another way, I am becoming convinced we have built our entire “normal human existence” on a substrate of sucking.
And this is what I want to work on, moving forward.
Creating a future that doesn’t suck.
I’ll still be focused on the future of work, but in the coming months and years I’m also going to explore how this problem isn’t neatly contained to the workplace. Many (most? all?) of our big, hairy global predicaments stem from the way we think about work and business and capitalism. This means, unfortunately, the operating system of sucking is now everywhere, which includes being deeply embedded in the social and civic structures that will determine the quality of our collective future.
My friends, we deserve to have a future that doesn’t suck.
For our kids, our grandkids, your friends’ kids and grandkids, and all other life on this beautiful planet, we deserve to have a future that’s not endlessly extractive but is thoughtfully crafted to be regenerative — more like the biological world all around us.
This is what I’m about.
Of course I can’t do this alone.
And if you believe in this battle cry, neither can you.
So together… what do you say we go create a future that doesn’t suck?