AUFSCHNITT 5: Functional Approach to Leadership Analysis (FALA) probably mid to late 70s

 

I’m resurrecting my Aufschnitt series, which I started back in 2019. The original idea was to immortalise cuttings I’d held onto, so I could chuck them out with a clear conscience.

So the two sausagey series are:

Retrowurst: my own scribblings, anything directly related to my own rather bedraggled career

Aufschnitt: cuttings and found bits and pieces from others

Today’s cold cut is an unusual one because it dates back before I entered the world of work. I was still at school. It’s from my dad’s bits and bobs - he was an RAF officer, in case you don’t know.

I guessed this was from late 60s to early 80s (from the typeface and what I know of my dad’s career). ChatGPT narrowed it down to 1973 - 1979, which seems plausible.

This was known as FALA and was used in officer training. I have to say that I like the approach and it’s not completely out of order for leadership training today. In fact, many commercial operations talk far more about “Leadership” these days than “Management.”

Looking at leadership on three overlapping areas - Task - Team - Individual - seems a pretty nifty way of doing things. The conciseness is great - all on a postcard, cutting down on bumf and BS in a very military manner.

But, to 21st century eyes, two things are very odd. 

“Discipline: Insisting on obedience, Punishing.” I wonder if this still appears in the military context.

And:

No mention of “mental health and well-being” in the “Personal (Problems)” section.

I think I’ll hang onto this one for the time being.

Ooohs, Ahs and Apple Juice

 

I listened in to a webinar from eat big fish and System1 last week on "The Startling Power of Surprise". Surprise and its use in the world of brands and their communications is something I've often posted about, for example here and here. 

The webinar - and my surprise posts - pick up some big (and maybe unsurprising) themes about surprise:

First of all, the pursuit of seamlessness and consistency (rather than coherence), the predictability inherent in algorithms, the requirement to be formulaic so that you can be found by AI, all leads to a rather unhappy dearth of surprise in our lives.

And then there’s getting the balance right - novelty and the familiar - as mastered by brands like IKEA with just the right mix of innovation and ritual.

And finally, there’s surprise and surprise. What about negative surprise? The word is usually prefixed by nasty/unwelcome/unpleasant in this case, but how do you judge that? Then there are those cognitive dissonance types of surprises where things are so off-kilter/not fitting to the brand where the brain simply switches off and ignores it.

And there’s there’s plain old shock-value, just for the sake of it.

What I found particularly interesting in the webinar was the dictinction between surprise as a little creative flourish/an executional twist ,and surprise as a strategic tool. Adam Morgan calls this the “Oh!” and the “Ohhhh!”.

The long “Ohhhh!” has more lasting effect on the memory - and can reframe the category in people’s minds, or change their relationship with the brand. 

I was surprised recently by the design work by the Stuttgart agency Papa Tom for wildling apple juice spritzer. Most German apple juice/applewein brands tend to use artisanal/homely/countryside/traditional imagery and design, which gets pretty samey, especially once AI is let loose on it. 

But wildling is surprising in its approach - which includes the nettles in the product itself - it looks a touch dangerous, edgy, mysterious. Not something for a kiddies’ birthday party.

Gets a definite “Ohhh!” from me.