I come to you at the end of a typical week in a typical May of the typical middle American family... which is to say—it's been marathon wedged into the tighty-whiteys of a sprint.
We've had three soccer games, three music concerts, an AP test, an ACT test results brou-ha-ha, two golf lessons intersected by many opinions on said golf lessons, and a breakthrough on the yo-yo routine that is two weeks away from competition at the Mall of America. Is this what Justin Timberlake meant?
In between I was supposed to submit the final draft of my book
The Damn Rules: How Vulnerability, Inefficiency, and Love Liberate Leaders from the Trustbroken Economy (join the waitlist, giveaways and goodies ensue...) but alas I am here writing to you all instead of finishing the final edit.
I am told that we will still meet the September 1 release date. <<whew>> Relief.
The book is the result of twenty-five years of work, making a map out of extraction and into expansion. When I first started this work, I didn't know what those words meant. I just knew I was constantly in places that claimed loudly they were for the good of their customers and/or audience and yet behaved in ways that created exhaustion, anxiety, and isolation. This trustfall has only accelerated through the last quarter century, and with it an economy and society sinewed by cynicism.
People are asking the logical question: with industries consolidating and deconstructing en masse, with power centralized in the hands of plutocratic class of tech companies and autocratic leaders, what is there to do but to post pithy memes on LinkedIn about authenticity and "late-stage capitalism"?
Or, if you are of the quieter variety (as most of you are)--you are hoping that you can wait this out, or at least play along until something somewhere breaks, and an opportunity emerges.
As I say in the first chapter of the book, the adage "we are the ones we've been waiting for" is true. But so is it's corollary, "we are the reason we've been waiting."
I'm sensing a rising readiness to get back to growth, in the historic ways that people build, collaborate, and buy, an escape from click-chasing, clout-chasing, scale-chasing, and all that goes in its wake. The good news, the phenomenal news, is there is a way forward, a broad way, that isn't some guru's twelve-step program, but one deeply intertwined with your best instincts, your human capacities, and your connections to others. We can and should play a different game.
Before we finally get into this week's YES + NO + MAYBE + NOW, here's a whole slew of newness to help you actively move out of the Extractive game...
YES, the movies are back, baby.
This is a personal yes, as the theater-going, movie-watching cultural zeitgeist is one of my most favorite things, but it's also a strategic one. For the last 10 years (or more) the rise and fall (and rise again) of the film-going experience has been a bellwether for how we mediate culture and grow communities. The "same day small screen" strategy that Universal led the way on in 2020, not only decimated the theater business, incentivizing people to stay locked in their homes during Covid, but it changed how we think about leaving the house.
Today, the 2026 box office is set to be 87% increased over last year at this time, putting back on its pre-Covid pace. And more than financial dynamics, this is coming from a broad base of familiar and new, With potentially five films doing $10M or more in North America this weekend. Gone is the superhero hegemony where the only stories we can tell are predictable hero's journeys wrapped up in quippy sardonicisms. Not the formula for a broad-based, optimistic culture of humans who lean into the future and each other.
But the times. they are a'changin'. (Blatant reference to last year's genius Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, which you should definitely see.)
NO, Trust is not "Authenticity."
I'm grateful that the work of Trust-Made Growth® is spreading wide and fast, and more and more people are reaching out to me to say, "Hey Nick, I've been thinking about trust..." and then share with me their take. We must always celebrate the small victories.
And yet, many people trying to pull trust into their public thought leadership are doing so in pretty damn extractive ways. I could write pages and pages on this, but I will just say that the "authenticity" movement online and in social spaces (particularly on Substack and LinkedIn) aren't doing anyone any favors, except for maybe the LinkedIn personal branding people who are using it to see their services.
Authenticity (particularly the online performed variety) has very little to do with trust. In fact, it's more often trustbreaking than trust-making. Cause while you think you're out here "being authentic," and building your "personal brand," what is happening in real time is you're quippy heartfeltness is tinged with the algorithm, coded for clicks, and contextless of the exact stuff that makes something authentic: raw vulnerability outside a game where it plays for engagement.
In theory, authenticity (whatever that means) in online spaces is better than its alternative, but if we're going to solve for trust, we've got to look deeper than and more introspectively than just whatever has become of the online performance this week. Which leads me to my maybe.
MAYBE its all in 0ur bodies
I had a great call with a client this week who was struggling through internal alignment on a big change to their offering structure. Folks who seemed to be on board where doing very not on board things and it was creating chaos downstream. Normal stuff, TBH.
But he was reading the situation as intentional. "Why can't they get on board? Why are they always undermining this?"
The situation didn't read to me as intent. It read to me as classic reactivity, the behavior of a person who in their nervous system feels unsafe. A person who is, even while feeling unsafe, taking risks to try and get on board with the change, which... dangerously, only makes them feel more unsafe. Pushing them further into reactivity.
Reacting out of fear of the unknown isn't a cognitive reaction it's a somatic or body reaction. It's the nervous system doing what makes sense when it believes it's under threat. The solution isn't to convince, but to bring down the risk.
When we experience resistance in the org, we always want to make things bigger, to make our case how important THE BIG CHANGE is. But the right move is almost always the opposite. To lower the temperature. Calm nerves. Make things smaller.
Bodies react to systems, no matter what their brains tell them to do. I dig deeper into systems work and what it means for managing change in this week's podcast. Check it out and tell me what you think.
NOW... go listen to Noah Kahan.
Speaking of shrinking it down and keeping it light. I know this isn't the most refined cultural selection and I'm not your guy for the niche cut of that band from that place that did that one thing that one time and it blew everybody's minds. But I do know a work of real artistry when I hear one. One that comes from the body and speaks to the raw nerves bound up in all of our trustbroken era bodies.
Noah Kahan's latest album, The Great Divide, which dropped about two weeks ago is the jam. And do yourself a favor, listen to the explicit lyrics version, the other one is for babies.
Forward, forward, friends. We'll see you next week.
Nick
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