Groove Theory #22 - A Narrow Corridor on La Rive Gauche

The brief arrived with two and a half weeks on the clock.

A global agency network of 2000+ employees, their annual gathering in Paris, a keynote slot on AI. The document was thorough - five areas they wanted covered, from what's working now to what it means for their leaders.

"Stimulating, grounded, and provocative," they wrote. "Perspective rather than prescriptions."

Then the kicker: "Actionable - but not tools."

The speaker had a thesis. The client had a corridor. The question was whether one could fit through the other.

The Tension

I never intended for Groove Theory to be about me. But for this edition, I'm making an exception - because the process might be useful.

Yes, that brief came to my inbox at the end of January this year. Two weeks to prep and deliver. On a topic that's slipping and morphing - an octopus of hot takes and cold feet.

I had a strong piece to build from - a blog post I'd written two years before about AI's evolutionary arc. How today's AI is a Nokia 3310 and the iPhones are coming. Frustratingly, it hadn’t traveled far when I published it. This was a chance to give it another go.

But they didn’t just want my thesis - they wanted it shaped for their world.

This is the big question, I think: not necessarily what to say, but how much of yourself goes in when you're sculpting your message for someone else's corridor. Not enough of your own vibes, opinion and personality - then why you? Too much - and it can backfire.

It's a bit like what Seth Godin says: authenticity is overrated. If we were all fully authentic, we'd be arrested for what comes out of our mouths. You don't want your surgeon to be their full authentic self when they get the scalpel out.

Step Into It

You get a call. There's a gig in two weeks - the topic's in your lane, it’s an audience you'd want to reach. The brief arrives: what they want covered, the tone they're after, how it fits into their wider programme.

You've got something on this. Something you made a while back, something you believe in. But their brief isn't asking for your version as-is. It's asking you to fit it to their frame.

How much of yourself do you put in?

Your framing - but theirs is different. Your jokes - but you don't know this room. Your stories - but will a personal anecdote land with people you've never met?

The brief says "provocative." But what does that really mean?

And the clock's ticking.

The Groove: Signal

Distill your message into something that sticks and spreads

Signal isn't just about clarity for its own sake. It's about clarity that works in context. Their context, not just yours.

But there are two kinds of signal at play in a gig like this. There's the substance - the points you're making, the content they've hired you to deliver. And there's the style - your vibe, your voice, the thing that makes it yours rather than a script anyone could read.

The substance had to fit their corridor. My ‘iPhone’ blog post was zoomed out, philosophical, playing the long game. I’d also put together a bunch of high tactical pieces on things like AI Playtesting.

They needed zoomed in - what do leaders actually do on Monday morning? But not so zoomed in that it became prompt cheat sheets and "how to use ChatGPT." A 10,000 feet view rather than 30,000. Starting our descent into Charles De Gaulle (ok, I took the Eurostar, but you get the idea)

The style was where I had to find myself. How much of my humour? Which stories? What tone? Too much personality and it becomes about me. Too little and I'm just a delivery mechanism for a brief.

The process was… messy. I estimate about 60 hours of build time over fifteen days, and none of it was linear:

• Two drafts of a one-pager, trying to bend my thesis toward the client brief. A client call. Feedback that sent me back to the outline. Five iterations of that outline before any slides were touched.
• Into Figma, building slides before the story was finished - because I needed to see the shape of the argument, not just write it. Placeholder visuals that revealed gaps in the logic. Back to the outline. A director's cut emerged that was twice the runtime, which meant half had to go. This is usually the most painful part.
• I knew early on this was five things: intro, conclusion and three key points. Except, point 3 needed surgery. I tried 3 different builds and it didn’t work. Two days before: timing myself for the first time and realising the intro was too long. The night before: adding more images; trimming text that looked fine on screen but felt heavy out loud.

What got cut: some of my jokes - including riffs on Nokia 3310s being used for illicit purposes in my youth. Global audience, no shared reference points, and probably best not to open with drug dealer nostalgia. A section on AI history that I loved but they didn't need. Anecdotes that worked in writing but would've died on stage. Case studies that were cool but burned too much time.

What stayed: The iPhone Moment gave them a frame - a mental model for the beginning and end. But the middle was new: the bets they'd need to make on talent, model, positioning. That part had to be built from scratch for their corridor. Enough of my voice to make it feel like me rather than a recitation of what they already knew - or at least suspected.

And no notes - it can be tough to trust someone reading from them.

Just words on slides as anchors, mostly visuals. The architecture, the little tips and bridges - they have to be visible, because that's the only script I have.

The Release

In the first edition of this newsletter, I asked the question at the heart of Groove Theory:

"How do you show up fully as yourself while meeting your audience where they are?"

The Paris gig gave me a live test.

I spent years touring as an agent, watching artists walk into that moment before the lights come up. Now I'm the one walking on - different side of the curtain.

I find keynotes harder than workshops. They're one-way. Performative by design. No conversation, no read-and-respond. Just you and the room. I can control the story. But there's less improvisation. Less groove.

I felt like I stood completely still. The video shows I moved around. I've only been able to watch it in thirty-second bursts.

Something connected - I think. People came up afterward with questions, not conclusions. Which might be the better signal. Whether the corridor helped or constrained, I'm still not sure. But I found more of myself inside it than I expected.

Here's the talk itself, if you want to see how it came together:

The narrow corridor didn't shrink me. It clarified me.

Their brief forced me to find the signal in my signal - the part that would actually matter to 350 people, most of whom I’d never meet again.

The question isn't whether to accept the corridor. It's whether you can find yourself inside it.

Howard

Extended Mix

• How I got the gig: I pinged their head of transformation on LinkedIn. He said let's have a chat. During the chat he said he thought he knew my name. Turns out, he was in the audience for the talk I did at IBTM World in November 2025.
• The source material: The iPhone Moment thesis - before it got re-shaped for the keynote
• Keynote vs. workshop: I ran a small-group session right after the keynote - same morning, same building, completely different energy. The keynote is broadcast; the workshop is conversation. I think people really do underestimate the difference between these two modes. Signal lives in both, but the modality changes everything. More on that another time.