Some Googlers went to Burning Man and somehow procured this giant fin. I can’t imagine how they transported it. They thought it would make a nice art installation on the Google campus. So, they reached out to facilities. Facilities pointed them to another group, who pointed them to another group, and it kept ping-ponging around HQ. No one wanted to make a decision. 

So, one evening around Midnight, these Googlers hauled the thing into the middle of the campus courtyard and anchored it to the concrete. Done. No permission. And years later it was still there. 

I was struck by this story. I saw a clear metaphor - sharks have to keep moving to stay alive. These rogue Googlers had a bias for action and just kept moving when confronted with red tape. I think about that example a lot. 

On the flip slide, there is a quote I have admired for many years from Abe Lincoln: 

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I’ll spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

I’ve seen this approach pay off in marketing over and over. Take the time to develop a galvanizing story and everything else is more potent. Ambitious missions become tangible and prospects, customers and employees rally behind it. But it can be slow work at first and requires some patience before it accelerates everything that follows.  

So, for years these two concepts were in conflict in my mind. The careful work required to sharpen the steel of an axe and the forward momentum of a shark. 

After years of experimentation across dozens of in-house and client companies, I eventually developed a system that reconciles the two. It requires some tradeoffs - doing less of the good to make room for more of the great. It’s built into the frameworks we now use to marry strategy and speed. To be clear, it isn’t always easy to strike this balance. But it’s effective, more fun and it moves fast. 

Once the steel of the sharpened axe and the speed of the fin in motion were aligned, SteelFin marketing was born.