Reinvention often comes in spurts, after a long period of silence. Just as modern architecture recently enjoyed a comeback, brand architecture, a field with well-established principles for decades, is back in the limelight.

Simply understood, brand architecture is the art and science of structuring the portfolio to meet your strategic goals, defining the brand number, scope, and relationships needed to compete. Just as Modern Architecture prioritized function, a Brand Architecture is only as good as it is well-suited for the purpose it strives to achieve. Given the disruption observed today across industries and segments, it’s no wonder that companies are considering structural rather than topical solutions to the challenges they face.

Yet the context in which brand architecture decisions are being made has changed. Gone are the days of “competitive strategy”, with the military-inspired view of competition as a zero-sum game, where market share needs to be stolen from competitors, often in a street-by-street battle to win over each individual segment. The type of brand architecture required to win in this game demanded a dogged focus on each segment, and a sniper-like collection of individual brands sharply focused on each one. While there was always a place for a variety of architectures — see Joachimsthaler’s brand relationship spectrum — houses of brands were favored, as it enabled segment-by-segment competition and risk protection. P&G was the king of houses of brands, slicing and dicing the market not just by products and demographics, but also by psychographics, price range, buying patterns or attitudes. In B2B, houses of brands were omnipresent, with a product-driven logic that led to branding new features meant to provide short-term competitive advantage.

In today’s day and age, companies like Google or Amazon do not pursue growth through incremental market share gains; rather, they focus on understanding their customers’ needs and creating entirely new markets to answer them. Creating a house of brands for these markets would be folly — not only would each brand need to be created from scratch, increasing the already significant investment, but the new category itself often needs to be explained to consumers, compounding the cost.

Instead, investing in a strong master brand-led architecture and putting multiple if not all brands under the leadership of a strong brand, presents numerous advantages. First, mergers and acquisitions, or partnerships, are making it necessary to bring multiple market participants to “the same page” — and this common ground often involves a master brand recognized by all. Second, the risk profile of a “branded house” architecture has changed: the master brand can create an aura of innovation and risk-taking, supporting the launch of new products. Third, investments can be streamlined, as a strong master brand can be leveraged across markets and product launches. Finally, a track record of success in creating new categories can create goodwill, creating a virtual circle of success. To achieve this, brand architecture does not need to be a pure “branded house” — in many cases, a strong master brand creates substantial leverage and a much cleaner portfolio, even as a few particularly strong brands can continue existing as sub-brands. An example of this is Salesforce, that leverages its master brand consistently — yet allows more independence to a few specific sub-brands, such as Pardot.

There are 3 key imperatives to build this type of brand architecture — to be clear, meaningful and stretchable.

: Just as modern architecture thrives on clear and clean lines, so does brand architecture. In the age of micro-segmentation, micro-targeting, information overload and digital fragmentation, you need a clear and loud voice in order to stand out. In the context of short attention spans where specific moments and needstates need to be targeted in addition to consumer/customer profiles, multiple brands often lead to confusion. The technology space understood this early, where clear and simple architectures that bring together simple design, as Apple, with complex technology, as SAP — always under the discipline of a rigorously simple way to organize.

In addition, one of the key reasons for the regained popularity of clean, streamlined architectures, often organized around a single master brand, has been the emergence of platforms, or 2-way marketplaces structured around mutual value creation. By definition, bringing various stakeholder groups to one 

, in order to enable network effects so critical for building scale. As Uber expands into different marketplaces and “uberizes” different industries, leveraging the power of its master brand is likely to lead to faster expansion than building a targeted brand for each industry from scratch.

: Just as modern architecture prioritizes function over embellishments, a solid brand architecture is founded on brands and values meaningful to consumers (or customers), rather than product feature distinctions. Brand architecture needs to be re-organized around brands that have a “reason for being” compelling enough to elicit passion, and introducing a clear distinction between brands that merit air time with consumers vs. “clutter”. The “decluttering” trend is gaining traction in brand architecture — just as in the popular consumer “decluttering” technique, only brands that “bring joy” to consumers get the spotlight. TED, for example, leverages the powerful TED master brand, positioned around “ideas worth spreading”, in a set of sub-brands that target meaningful occasions and contexts for intellectual exploration (TED Talks, TEDx, TED-Ed, TED Prize, TED Fellows, TED Institute, TED Radio Hour).

: Modern architecture is dynamic — it finds its force in the midst of usage; movement is often embedded into its very bones. In today’s fast-changing world, brand architecture is a moving target — clients increasingly ask to design architectures that fit their growth ambitions, thinking through future growth scenarios and architecting space for the future product pipeline. In particular in industries undergoing disruption, where next generation products aim to upset the status quo, their addition to any brand architecture may require a fundamental rethink.

Much as strategy has become “real time” as the window for strategic planning has shortened, brand architecture is also becoming more “real time”, requiring more frequent reassessment, adaptations and flexibility as markets change. Witness the frequency with which Uber readjusts its portfolio. WeWork, the popular co-working space, also exploits the strength of the master brand to stretch into near-in categories such as hospitality with WeLive or the ventures space with WeWork Labs.

Traditionally, companies considered a house of brands architecture as a risk management tool — a way not to put all your eggs in one basket. It turns out, in the age of platforms and digital disruption, a masterbrand-led architecture can help you build a bigger basket, to hold more eggs.

Every Next Level of Your Life Will Demand a Different You

Sitting on a patio overlooking English Bay, I am eating dinner and talking with a woman I have met only hours earlier. A memorable evening for both of us, it will see us share some of the most difficult and personal memories we have. Details will be different, but the trajectory similar, in both our cases centered around death. Not one, not a few, but hundreds of deaths. For each of us.

Okay, one, don’t worry, we’re getting to the sunsets! And two, please be assured that despite what it sounds like, I do have appropriate boundaries. Because what I have just described is the life of an HIV researcher. In town for an annual research and treatment conference, it was three days of the latest science, prevention, and support findings. And meeting people like Leena, who, like myself, is a qualitative researcher, working exclusively with women who have contracted HIV from rape or abuse. While my field is HIV, PTSD, and stigma, we do share the same approach, which uses a narrative model of inquiry. Meaning, our data is the individual and community story of HIV. If you’re interested in reading more about what I do, check out the piece below.

Not surprisingly, we had a lot to talk about and found we had many things in common. Like, for example, sunrises and sunsets. For both of us, seeing them is inexplicably tied up in remembering loss from HIV. Something else she said really hit me. Originally from San Francisco, Leena talked about how HIV had literally torn her city apart. But then, oddly enough it became the shared history that helped it mend.

Last night as I watched the sunset you see above and below, I thought again of what Leena had told me about San Francisco, inspiring me to write the poem that follows below the next image.

3 Meaningful Ways to Practice Self-Care as an Introvert

The Rise of Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humans

How do we become better every single day? We develop practices that will help move us incrementally forward. Small steps, taken consistently. This is the path to a good life.

“Seneca gives a pretty simple prescription for the good life. “Each day,” he wrote, “acquire something that will fortify you against poverty, against death, indeed against other misfortunes, as well and after you have run over many thoughts, select one to be thoroughly digested that day.” One gain per day. That’s it.”- 

While routines can be important for consistency and productivity, what is even more important is our practices. These are things we do, no matter what our routine looks like, no matter if something comes up that derails us.

But we need to start small and make sure our practices are sustainable. The idea is to take small but consistent steps, every single day — 1% improvement.

“Success is not a destination. Success is a decision you make on a daily, hourly, and even moment-to-moment basis.” — Nicolas Cole

Epictetus called this incremental action “fueling the habit bonfire.”

Focus on the following 10 practices, and you will begin to see consistent improvement in your life.

While I know we’ve all heard we should meditate, I truly believe it is key to moving forward every single day.

Meditation provides stillness. It’s time alone with your breath and your body. It’s time to get to know yourself, to be aware of what is going on inside of you — both mentally and physically.

Having this self-awareness is the first step toward growth. If you don’t know yourself, how can you expect to make meaningful progress?

Develop a regular meditation practice by following 

 Aim for 5 minutes, or even just one minute if you think that’s all you can commit to. The idea is to commit to a length of time you can do consistently — ideally every single day.

 Deciding on a time and doing your meditation at the same time each day makes it much more likely you’ll do it consistently.

 While each session of meditation does produce benefits on its own, the real magic of meditation comes from consistent practice, and compounds over time.

 There are so many ways to support your practice. One of the most accessible supports is a meditation app. While using an app may not seem like “traditional” meditation, it can be incredibly helpful, especially when you’re starting out.

Building on the point above, time alone with your journal is time alone in stillness — a chance to get to know yourself on a deeper level, and to understand who you really are.

Journaling allows you to reflect, to plan, to meditate on thoughts and ideas. To always be a better human than you were the day before. This is how you move forward every single day.

You may find it helpful to bookend your day with journaling — having both a morning and evening practice.

The stillness of the morning is the perfect time to reflect on your purpose, to consider your path, and to create a plan for the day.

The end of the day is a great time to reflect on what went well during the day, what you could do differently tomorrow, and where you could be more — more loving, more patient, more valuable. You can reflect on whether you have lived in alignment with your values, and whether you fulfilled your purpose.

Find a journaling template and mode that works for you. Maybe you like the traditional pen and paper. Maybe you prefer a document on your computer. Maybe you’d do best with a phone app. Find something that resonates with you, and stick with this practice.

Therefore, being cognizant of your input in the morning is so important. Do you scroll on social media? Read the news? Read texts from your friends complaining about their life?

Or do you listen to or read something positive and uplifting?

This simple shift can make a huge difference in the trajectory of your day.

The morning is also a great time to bring to mind all that you are grateful for, and to think of the joyful moments in your life. Think about the house you slept in, your friends and family that support you, and the fact that you woke up at all.

We must always remind ourselves of the privilege of being alive, and be grateful for all that we have been given. Remind yourself of this when you wake up. Marcus Aurelius said,

“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive — to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.”

If we view each day as a bonus day — to live, to love, to do the things we love to do — we can’t help but experience gratitude. Viewing each day in this way will ensure that you live your day mindfully.

Be cognizant of your input beyond just the morning; throughout your entire day, it’s good to be aware of what you’re allowing into your mind.

This is key to moving forward every single day — you can’t expect to improve and grow if you are constantly being held back by negative input.

Similarly, regularly reminding yourself of everything you already have and cultivating a sense of gratitude will allow you to continue striving and growing, knowing that you already have enough and you are enough. You will always be enough.

And walking may be the most important way to move our bodies. Think of how our ancestors lived — constantly foraging, hunting, and walking everywhere. This is how we have evolved to live.

If we want to move forward, we need to take care of our bodies.

But more than that, movement allows deep access into who we are; what it’s like to be in this body, right now. It’s a powerful form of meditation. You can’t help but feel the breath going in and out of your lungs. The sun on your skin. The grass beneath your feet. Movement forces you to be present in this moment, within yourself.

“Through exercise and movement, you breathe deeply and unblock the body’s channels…. It gives you energy, mental clarity, passion, and a general enthusiasm for life…. When you breathe deeply, you connect your heart and your brain instantly…. Conscious exercise puts your daily problems on the back burner and enlivens the heart and mind.… While it’s tempting to think of exercise solely as a means to fitness or weight loss, it’s really much more about making you feel alive in your body.”

Movement is therefore a tool to help you grow and move forward every single day.

Your body will stay healthy, your mind will remain clear, you will have deeper access into who you are and improved clarity on where it is you want to go.

We can’t expect to continue growing and moving forward if we don’t take care of our body and mind. Move every single day.

Being in nature is connecting to the universe — the force greater than ourselves.

Nature has been here far longer than us and will remain long after we’re gone. The trees you see have experienced far more than you. They have lived through some of the greatest hardships the world has faced. Nature has the capacity to connect us to all of history.

Connecting to nature in this way reminds us of our tiny place in the universe and how little we really know. It puts things in perspective. It humbles us. We must respect nature, for these trees were here first, and they know much more than we do.

I think we’ve all felt it, the sense of calm and contentment that comes from being among nature. Science even shows that looking at 

nature can instantly quieten our fight-or-flight response

. We inherently know that being in nature is good for us.

But nature is also crucial for our health. 

“Contact with nature is an integral part of our well-being as humans…. While we evolved outdoors and amongst nature for most of the last two million years of our species’ existence, the movement to a largely indoor environment has been a recent development for humans. Much like our diet, our physical environment has changed drastically in a comparatively short amount of time…. 

Our relationship with nature is a vital component of our wellbeing, and one often neglected due to the concerns of modern life. In order to more fully address our health and wellness as humans, we must consider the biological appropriateness of our environment to be just as important as that of our diet and exercise choices.

. Prioritize time in nature. It will keep things in perspective while also boosting your wellbeing, allowing you to keep moving forward.

“Ordinary people seek entertainment. Extraordinary people seek education and learning…. It is common for the world’s most successful people to read at least one book per week. They are constantly learning.” — Benjamin Hardy, 

How to Consciously Design Your Ideal Future

Hopefully, you make time to read every single day. Even if it’s just one page.

Reading may be the most accessible tool available to us to help us grow. We can learn from anyone in the world, living or not. We can learn from those who have already achieved what we want to achieve. We can learn from others’ successes and mistakes.

Being a perpetual student is key to moving forward. If you’re not constantly learning, how will you grow?

Make reading a priority in your day. Spend 15 minutes in the morning reading a book. Download an audiobook for your commute. Read an article online during your lunch break. Just find the time to read.

We must always be reflecting on our lives and measuring the important metrics.

With reflection, we can achieve anything. You try something, reflect on it, do more of what worked and less of what didn’t.

A great way to do this is through bookending the day with journaling, as illustrated above. In the morning, write your plan for the day. In the evening, reflect on what worked and what you will do differently tomorrow. In just a few minutes each day, you can massively change your life for the better.

Do this at the end of each week, month, quarter, and year. Growth will become inevitable.

“End your week holding a five-minute meeting with yourself and review what’s working and everything making you miserable. And do more of what works.” — 

Similarly, keep track of the most important metrics of your life — how much weight you’re squatting, how many dates you went on with your partner each month, how many times you called your mom, how many days in a row you meditated. Identify what is most important to you, and keep track of it. You may be more off-course than you realize:

“If you’re not tracking the key areas of your life, than you’re probably more off-course than you think.” — Benjamin Hardy, 

Without a body, we can not achieve anything. Your health must always come first. Running yourself into the ground will achieve nothing.

Make sure you make the time to eat nourishing foods, and make sure you’re eating enough. Our bodies need fuel — good quality fuel:

Eat loads of plants — vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds

 — it’s full of antioxidants (drink decaf if you don’t like caffeine, or black or green teas which have a smaller amount of caffeine)

Only eat what our cavemen ancestors would recognize

If you want to become stronger and more resilient, you need to stress your body.

And the best way to do this is through hormetic stressors.

A hormetic stressor is something that, in a small dose makes you stronger, but in a big dose will kill you. Think cold, heat, fasting, and exercise.

You can learn a lot simply by paying attention.

When people speak, really listen. They likely know at least a few things that you don’t, and the simple act of listening is a great way to learn and to improve yourself.

I work with an older woman from Burundi, and until recently, I never really listened deeply to what she was saying. But the other day, I got myself into the present moment and really listened. And I learned that she has had a life like I could never imagine, and she holds so much wisdom and perspective.

She told me, “My dad was killed in front of me when I was 15. Every day you have with your parents is a gift from God. Celebrate every day with them and never forget how lucky you are.”

This was a great dose of perspective at 8am on a Wednesday morning.

Furthermore, paying attention is one of the greatest gifts you can give someone. All anyone wants is to be listened to and understood. You have the power to change your own life, as well as the lives of those around you.

This is how you will move forward every single day.

10 Simple Practices That Will Help You Get 1% Better Every Day

“What’s the meaning of life?” is a cliche philosophical question, but it touches on something fundamental about how humans relate to the world around them. People want to know that there’s significance to their lives, but not necessarily in any grandiose sense. Most of us just want to feel that there’s value in getting up and being active each day. We search for signs that our existence is a net good in the world, even if only on a minuscule scale in the grander scheme of the universe.

In the past, researchers have identified 

 underlying “meaning in life”. The first is 

, which refers to an ability to make sense of what’s happening in our lives as we build a personal story. The second is 

, which is the feeling that we’re working toward important life goals. The third is 

, which is the belief that our lives matter in the wider context of the world around us.

However, new evidence is revealing an overlooked construct, and it may be the most crucial one of all. Researchers are calling it “experiential appreciation”, and it refers to enjoying and appreciating sensations as you experience them — a concept that you may already recognize if you’re familiar with mindfulness.

 (February 2022), researchers probed what it means to experience meaning in life. In their first study, they analyzed past survey data from over 11,000 people across 30 countries. These surveys were originally designed to assess coping strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the researchers plucked out individual questions linked to meaning-in-life constructs. Here’s an example for each construct; participants had to rate their agreement with each statement or question below:

Coherence: “I’ve been looking for something good in what is happening”

Purpose: “I do something productive every day”

Mattering: “I’m doing what is good for our society”

Experiential appreciation: “I appreciate my life as it is right now regardless of the circumstances”

Meaning in life: “In general, to what extent do you feel that what you do in your life is valuable and worthwhile?”

The researchers analyzed the survey data, testing how each construct predicted people’s scores in the overall meaning-in-life measure. Consistent with previous research, the three traditional constructs (coherence, purpose, and mattering) all individually predicted meaning in life to some extent. The interesting part was that after accounting for those three constructs, the new fourth construct of experiential appreciation explained another significant portion of people’s meaning in life. In other words, a major ingredient in the meaning-in-life formula had been missed by previous researchers.

In a second study, the researchers developed their own way to measure experiential appreciation. For the three older constructs, they pulled specialized survey questions from previously published studies. But since experiential appreciation was a newcomer, they had to formalize its meaning and how to measure it. After some careful analysis, they ended up with five survey items. Anyone who scores highly on these items is high in experiential appreciation:

“I have great appreciation for the beauty of life.”

“I take great interest in my daily activities.”

“I appreciate a wide variety of experiences.”

“I appreciate the little things in life.”

“I tend to find myself deeply engaged in conversations with other people.”

Using these new measures together with the standard measures for the other three constructs, the researchers sent surveys to over 1500 people in the US and China. Instead of relying on indirect questions as they did in the previous COVID survey analysis, they collected dedicated data using well-tested measures for each construct.

Once again, higher purpose, higher mattering, and higher experiential appreciation all consistently predicted higher meaning in life. The effects of coherence were a little weaker, showing significant predictive power in the Chinese sample but not the American sample. While coherence was a little shaky, experiential appreciation certainly wasn’t.

So at least when analyzing the connections between all of these concepts, experiential appreciation wins a deserving place in the fight for meaning in life. But could you actually boost meaning in life by boosting experiential appreciation?

To answer this, the researchers came up with a way to stimulate people’s experiential appreciation: they showed everyone an awe-inspiring 2-min video from the nature documentary, “Planet Earth”. Few things in life give us a deeper connection to the present moment than sights of hypnotic oceans, lush forests, and David Attenborough documentaries.

The nature manipulation worked. Following the video, people reported higher levels of experiential appreciation. More importantly, by boosting their experiential appreciation, the video also indirectly raised how much people reported feeling a sense of meaning in their life. The researchers now had evidence of a causal connection between appreciating the moment and feeling that life is valuable.

 Here’s a simple wheel I’ve made to visualize the four elements associated with meaning in life according to the latest evidence. Think about how each of them applies to your own life. Feelings like “meaning in life” are incredibly subjective, but model-based thinking makes them less abstract and more practical. At difficult moments, work out where your problems might lie on this wheel. Where are your strengths and where are your weaknesses?

 The studies above show that experiential awareness is an important component of meaning in life. Here are two ways to practice it in your own life:

 Whether it’s a short walk through your local park or a bigger trip out into the wilderness, make regular time for interacting with nature. And when you can’t get out of the house, nature documentaries are a great fallback! Although the mechanisms are still unclear, there are several ways nature might benefit emotional wellbeing. For example, observing nature’s breathtaking beauty is like visiting the best art gallery on Earth. There’s a reason so many paintings represent natural scenes and landscapes. Since we evolved in the natural world, our psychology reacts to it in a profoundly positive way. Nature’s immensity also makes you feel connected to something bigger outside yourself. When you’re immersed in nature, you realize the grand world that you’re a part of. This puts some of your smaller daily problems into perspective. Finally, in nature, you’re exposed to calm and natural sensory stimulation. For city dwellers, this is a refreshing experience because the sensory stimulation you experience in a city is hectic and exhausting. Glaring ads grab your attention from the left, a pushy pedestrian grabs your attention from the right, and car horns grab your attention from everywhere else. Nature allows you to be more voluntary and relaxed about how your attention is drifting

 Experiential appreciation is all about living in the moment and focusing your attention on enjoying sensations as they happen. You can practice this ability with mindfulness techniques. If you’re interested in a good meditation guide, I enjoy the 

 meditation app. If you’re looking for a short read or listen, here’s a 

 — a pioneer in science-based mindfulness. Here’s a great quote from the piece: “The real meditation practice is the 24 hours itself — it’s life itself. It’s not sitting on a cushion in the cross-legged posture or lying in a yoga pose called the corpse pose or anything like that… we’re cultivating 

 so that we get more comfortable with living out 

 our moments as if they really mattered and therefore being there for them — the good ones, the bad ones, the ugly ones, the stressful ones, the difficult ones, the painful ones.”

Personal Growth

Every Next Level of Your Life Will Demand a Different You

3 Meaningful Ways to Practice Self-Care as an Introvert

The Rise of Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humans

10 Simple Practices That Will Help You Get 1% Better Every Day

Four Ways to Find Meaning in Life