9. Strategic thinking, monogamous words, and creating meaning with Mark Pollard.

How can we become better at thinking strategically and creating meaning from the mess that life throws at us?

In episode 9 of the B-side I speak to Sydney born, New York based, hip-hop journalist-turned-strategist Mr Mark Pollard, Strategy CEO of Mighty Jungle. Strategy CEO is a made-up title, but according to Mark, people don’t listen to him unless he uses the word “strategy” at all times.

The title isn’t too far off really. Mark lives and breathes strategy, he writes, gives talks and does strategy consulting. And holds strategy training workshops for the likes of The Economist, Twitter, Facebook, Euronews, Mozilla, the Wall Street Journal, Poo-Pourri, and bunch of agencies around the world.

In a previous life, he worked agency side, leading teams at McCann, Leo Burnett, and Big Spaceship. Judged the Jay Chiat Awards and the Webbys, and sat on the Australian Account Planning Group (APG) committee. He also founded Australia’s first full-colour hip hop magazine, Stealth, in 1998.

He is the founder and host of the Sweathead podcast which has almost 400,000 listens. Runs the Sweathead Facebook group with nearly 9,000 strategists from around the world. And he is about to publish his first book, “Strategy Is Your Words”.

Mark and I dig deep into the power of words and how they’re used to give structure and purpose to the way we think, live and work. We breakdown the role of a strategist and the principles of strategy itself, and we jam on a whole lot of other topics too.

Mark is a super cool cat, a razor-sharp dude, and a good friend. I really enjoyed talking to him and spending a little time inside his amazing head, as I’m sure you will too.

You can find mark here: https://www.markpollard.net
And find out more about Sweathead here: http://sweathead.co