Parenthood and the Art of Engagement

No.174: Mon 4th Dec 2023

Hi, it’s David here.

This week, we're treated to insights from Josh Hedley-Dent, Client Partner and Father of 13 week old daughter Lily, a man who literally has started looking at the world through somebody else’s eyes. 

Like all new Dad’s, this profound occasion has provided him with some profound thoughts on life inside and outside work.

As always, we are curious to hear what you think.

David Alberts

Co-Founder and Chief Vision Officer at BeenThere/DoneThat

Hi, it’s Josh here.

My wife tells me I have a real knack for talking absolute nonsense. Endlessly babbling barely recognisable English, whilst grinning from ear to ear like a crazed Cheshire Cat.

Thankfully for our marriage, (I hope) she’s referencing my interactions with our 13 week old daughter.

Becoming a Dad for the first time has been mind-alteringly magic, and I am very proud to report that, speaking objectively, Lily is the cutest/smartest/funniest/[insert superlative]-iest baby that has ever lived (and evidently can also report all parenting clichés are sadly true…).

Since Lily’s arrival, the thing I’ve become most obsessed with is how she engages with the world around her. Her interactions with us as parents, how she reacts to sound and light, to her toys, with friends & family.

As a result, it’s made me reflect more broadly on how I engage with the world around me too. Both how I am engaging with it, and what I am engaging with. I found a quote from Dr Iain McGilchrist particularly resonant, who touches on this in an Uncensored CMO episode:

“[Attention] is how our world comes into being for us. What we attend to and more importantly how we attend to it changes what we find in it... Attention changes the world and changes us."

The benefits of engaging in the right way have become obvious to me through my interactions with Lily. But beyond how we engage with other humans, there's huge benefits for us if we engage with the natural world in the right way too.

Recently I’ve been trying the ancient Japanese practice of Shinrin-Yoku (or forest bathing) - the simple act of spending time in forests and connecting with the natural world by really engaging all the senses. What we instinctively might feel is beneficial to us now has strong research to back it up. Effective forest bathing has the power to counter illnesses including cancer, strokes, depression, anxiety and stress, as well as boosting the immune system, lowering blood pressure and aiding sleep.

Engaging in the right way is one thing, figuring out what to actually engage with is another. I’ve tried to define that for myself recently too, and with some deceptively simple questions as a guide I’ve created a dashboard for my life. What’s important to me in my personal life, at work, and the ingredients I want it to be filled with. I try to refer back to it on a regular basis, score each of them out of 10, and scribble down actions against key areas I want to focus on improving. I’m finding it’s helping me appreciate what I have, and drawing my attention to the things that really matter to me.

It's made me reflect on how we engage and what we engage with at work too. In a world where the to-do list for marketing teams gets ever longer, focusing on what really matters, and engaging in the right way, has arguably never seemed harder, or been more important.

We talk a lot about Problem Definition as a business, and I think the act of doing this well can solve both these challenges for marketing teams.

By bringing together a diverse group of people around a problem, and keeping an open mind, we utilise one of the senses too often overlooked - our ability to listen. When busy, it’s easy to work in silos. Especially with tasks like annual planning & brief writing, it’s too often treated as a box filling exercise vs a strategic task that requires you to slow down, step back and bring different people around a table. Listening - to diverse perspectives, and importantly to consumers, is a superpower we all have that is criminally under-utilised when creating brand and marketing strategies.

Approaching defining problems in the right way encourages more of this, and we’ve found having a framework helps. Using SOLVE™ enables teams to unpack a brand’s struggle and look at it from different perspectives (business, category, consumer) - identifying gaps in knowledge, which signals you should listen to, and ultimately define which problems will really unlock growth.

A HBR study showing that 85% CMOs think their organisations are bad at defining problems maybe shows we’re not engaging in either the right way, or focusing our attention on what really matters. If you’re interested, we’ve developed a simple diagnostics tool to assess your ability to define and reframe problems. It may help you start to engage a bit differently.

Thanks for listening to my nonsense. Hopefully you’ve understood more than Lily.

Josh Hedley-Dent

Client Partner at BeenThere/DoneThat Partner

Supporting Articles

1. The divided brain, attention and how we see the world - Dr Iain

2. Getting back to nature: how forest bathing can make us feel better

3. The Best Way to Create a Vision for the Life You Want

4. No Mercy / No Malace

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