Most dropped out, but a designer and I kept it up. We began this great exercise in creative chaos, letting go: One of us would start a story - craft the first paragraph - the other would add and send back, and so on, back and forth.

This guy’s decidedly a bit wacky, so it took a real hands-off approach for me to keep it going, and my inclination was often to bail when his tangents were too obtuse.

But funny thing - 6 years and divergent paths later, we’re still in touch regularly. It helped me learn a lot about him, and my own grips.

I’ve since tried it with other people. It’s a terrific way to ‘let go’, but I realized that unless the others in the chain have brains that process and structure life and information similarly - or there’re some basic rules set - there’s a lot of mess, nonsense, veering all over the road.

It was and is personally a great exercise for me - I like to influence and even control outcomes, like companies - and this has been a source of some conflict, as you can imagine.

So maybe for those companies (COKE!) that have lost their audience’s understanding, and an understanding of themselves and their quirks, it’s invaluable. At the right time.

I even read again today how ABC was trying to get everybody on board to battle the evil DVR machines through trying to create something that disables it.

They should, but probably won’t learn something from Janet Jackson about “letting go.”

The majority of them still don’t seem to understand the power of doing it.

I would have made mention to my favorite time machine - “the way back machine” but you are likely too young to know that one.

Many are still building brands based on a 1986 model to be generous - I’d say 1976 if I was being a bit more realistic.

Good posting; thanks for extending the conversation and creating helpful perspective.