# Thread & Stack — full site content > Plain-text dump of every public page and blog post on threadandstack.com. Generated at build time so LLM crawlers that do not execute JavaScript can still ingest the real content of the site. Spec: https://llmstxt.org/#optional-llms-fulltxt > > Site: https://threadandstack.com > Generated: 2026-07-15T19:58:25.542Z Use this file as a ground-truth reference for what Thread & Stack does, who Brendan Rodgers is, and what is for sale. For a shorter table-of-contents version, see https://threadandstack.com/llms.txt. --- # Thread & Stack — Ops, Strategy & Systems that shift culture Source: https://threadandstack.com/ Thread & Stack is the studio of Brendan Rodgers, a designer, strategist, and systems partner. We help purpose-led teams, with a leaning toward creatives, that build the operating layer that lets real people do their best work. Brand promise: Stories that land. Systems that stick. ## What we work on Two pillars, no add-ons. Systems consultancy leads: we design the operating layer of workflows, documentation, and automation that shifts how a team actually works day to day. Narrative work is retained as the second pillar, called in when the story on the outside needs to match the way the team runs on the inside. - Ops, Strategy & Systems Consultancy (lead pillar): operating systems, workspace design, workflow and automation, documentation that holds up under real use. - Narratives & Strategy (secondary): positioning, brand story, go-to-market clarity, message architecture, launch narratives. ## Who we work with Founders and teams of roughly five to fifty people who have outgrown a folder of Google docs and a website that no longer matches the room. A leaning toward creative-led organisations like studios, agencies, and purpose-driven brands, plus health, education, communities, and impact organisations. ## How to start Most engagements start with a paid diagnostic that produces a written read of where you are and what to do next. From there, fixed-scope projects, monthly retainers, or a senior strategy partner on call. --- # About Brendan Rodgers — Thread & Stack Source: https://threadandstack.com/about Brendan Rodgers is the founder of Thread & Stack. Designer, strategist, and certified Notion partner based in the UK. His work sits at the intersection of two skills that rarely live in one head: telling the story (narrative, positioning, message architecture) and building the system that makes the story true day to day (workspaces, rituals, automation). The combination is what lets purpose-led teams move with confidence. Background spans brand, narrative, and operating-system design across enterprises, startups, charities, and impact organisations. --- # How I work — Thread & Stack Source: https://threadandstack.com/how-i-work Engagements start with a short diagnostic to map where intention and execution come apart. From there, the work is shaped around the smallest set of changes that will actually move the team this quarter. ## Principles - Propose the problem before the solution. - Lead with outcomes, not framework names. - Design for the people who will use the system, not the people who will admire the diagram. - Ship in small, reviewable increments. - Hand over with documentation a new joiner could follow. --- # Services — Thread & Stack Source: https://threadandstack.com/services Two pillars only. Systems consultancy leads; narrative work is retained as the second pillar. No workshops-as-a-service, no clarity sessions, no add-ons. ## Ops, Strategy & Systems Consultancy The lead pillar. Operating systems, workspace design, workflow and automation, documentation that holds up under real use. For teams that have outgrown a folder of Google docs and need an operating layer that scales with them and gives real people back the room to do their best work. ## Narratives & Strategy The second pillar, retained rather than led with. Positioning, brand story, go-to-market clarity, message architecture, launch narratives. Called in when the story on the outside needs to match the way the team runs on the inside. ## Commercial terms 50% upfront, 50% on delivery. 15% late payment charge. Not VAT registered. --- # Work with me — Thread & Stack Source: https://threadandstack.com/work-with-me Engagement options range from a paid diagnostic (a short, structured session that produces a written read of where you are and what to do next), through fixed-scope projects, to monthly retainers and full fractional engagements. The right starting point depends on whether you need a decision, a deliverable, or a thinking partner. --- # Workshops — Thread & Stack Source: https://threadandstack.com/workshops Group workshops for teams on narrative, Notion, and the human side of working with AI. Designed for working teams, not generic audiences. Outcomes are concrete: a finished artefact, a shared vocabulary, or an operating ritual the team can keep using on Monday. --- # Book an intro call — Thread & Stack Source: https://threadandstack.com/intro-call A free 30-minute intro call. Use it to talk through your project, pressure-test the brief, and see if Thread & Stack is the right fit. No deck, no sales script. --- # Knowledge Stack Scorecard — Thread & Stack Source: https://threadandstack.com/scorecard A short self-assessment that scores how your team finds answers, hands things off, and uses AI. Answer a handful of questions and receive a personal read on where to focus next quarter. --- # Momentum Map — Thread & Stack Source: https://threadandstack.com/momentum-map A diagnostic for teams stuck between intention and execution. The map surfaces the one shift that will release the most momentum, then proposes the smallest move that delivers it. --- # The Thread & Stack Collective Source: https://threadandstack.com/collective A small collective of trusted strategists, designers, and Notion specialists. Brought in by name on projects that need more than one head and one set of hands. Each collaborator has been worked with directly before they are invited into a client engagement. --- # Launch Retainer — Thread & Stack Source: https://threadandstack.com/retainer/launch Light-touch monthly retainer for early-stage founders. Senior narrative and systems input on call, without the cost of a full engagement. Best for founders who need someone in the corner of the ring through a launch window or a funding round. --- # Startup Retainer — Thread & Stack Source: https://threadandstack.com/retainer/startup Mid-tier retainer for growing teams. Around one day a week of senior narrative and messaging leadership for early-stage teams launching a new brand. Day rate roughly £700 to £850. Monthly range roughly £3,500 to £4,100. Cadence flexes lighter when things are steady, more intensive around launches and pitches. Additional days can be added at an agreed rate. --- # Scale-Up Retainer — Thread & Stack Source: https://threadandstack.com/retainer/scaleup Senior fractional engagement for scale-ups. Roughly one to two days a week of experienced narrative and messaging direction. Day rate roughly £900 to £1,000+. Monthly range roughly £4,500 to £8,900+. For established organisations scaling a brand or launching a new vertical. --- # Notion Masterclass — Thread & Stack Source: https://threadandstack.com/notion-masterclass A deep-dive masterclass on building Notion workspaces that hold up under real use. Architecture, automation, and the operating rhythms that make a workspace stick beyond the first week. --- # Unleash Your Team — Thread & Stack Source: https://threadandstack.com/unleash-your-team A workshop and engagement that helps teams unblock execution. Pairs clear narrative with the operating systems that make work move. Output is something the team uses, not a slide deck. --- # Become United Blueprint — Thread & Stack Source: https://threadandstack.com/blueprint/become-united A strategy blueprint for purpose-led organisations that want to align story, systems, and team rhythm around a single direction. Produced as a working document the leadership team can act from. --- # Notion Hackathon London — Thread & Stack Source: https://threadandstack.com/notion-hackathon-london A community Notion build day in London. Spend a focused day building real workspaces alongside other Notion makers. Hosted by Thread & Stack. --- # Notion Devotion Brighton — Thread & Stack Source: https://threadandstack.com/notion-devotion-brighton A friendly Notion community meetup in Brighton. Talks, demos, and time with other Notion makers on the south coast. --- # Charity Sector Meetup, April 26 — Thread & Stack Source: https://threadandstack.com/charity-meetup-april26 A meetup for purpose-led operators working in and around the charity sector. Shared problems, practical fixes, and a chance to compare notes across organisations. --- # Creative Portfolio — Thread & Stack Source: https://threadandstack.com/portfolio/creative Selected creative, narrative, and brand work. Full portfolio is available on request, behind a simple password gate for confidentiality. --- # Notion Portfolio — Thread & Stack Source: https://threadandstack.com/portfolio/notion Selected Notion workspace, operating system, and automation builds. --- # Thread & Stack Journal — essays on narrative and systems Source: https://threadandstack.com/blog Essays on narrative, systems, Notion, AI, and the creative tax. Notes from running a small studio that builds operating layers for purpose-led teams. --- # Favourite Fiction — Thread & Stack Source: https://threadandstack.com/favourite-fiction A personal reading list. The novels and short fiction that shape how Brendan thinks about narrative, character, and the systems people build to live inside. --- # Privacy Policy — Thread & Stack Source: https://threadandstack.com/privacy Plain-English summary of how Thread & Stack collects, uses, and protects personal data. GDPR-aligned. Lead capture forms include explicit consent. Cookies require consent before any non-essential tag fires. --- # Data Guarantee — Thread & Stack Source: https://threadandstack.com/data-guarantee The promises Thread & Stack makes on how client data is handled, stored, and never sold. The standards held to on every engagement. --- # Notion & Systems Consultancy — Thread & Stack Source: https://threadandstack.com/notion-systems Notion & Systems Consultancy is one of two service pillars at Thread & Stack. Workspace design, operating systems, automation, and documentation that holds up under real use. Full details, tiers, and pricing live on the services page. --- # Fractional engagement — Thread & Stack Source: https://threadandstack.com/fractional-deep-engagement Senior fractional narrative and systems leadership. Now offered through the Launch, Startup, and Scale-Up retainer tiers under the services page. --- # Sessions & sprints — Thread & Stack Source: https://threadandstack.com/sessions-and-sprints Short engagements and working sessions have been folded into the paid diagnostic and fixed-scope project routes. See the services page for current options. --- # Narratives & Strategy — Thread & Stack Source: https://threadandstack.com/narratives-strategy Narratives & Strategy is one of two service pillars at Thread & Stack. Positioning, brand story, go-to-market clarity, message architecture, and launch narratives. Full details live on the services page. --- # Clarity sessions — Thread & Stack Source: https://threadandstack.com/clarity-sessions Clarity sessions have been replaced by the paid diagnostic. See the services page for the current entry point. --- # Mentorship sprint — Thread & Stack Source: https://threadandstack.com/mentorship-sprint Mentorship sprints have been folded into the Launch and Startup retainer tiers. See the services page. --- # Fractional strategy — Thread & Stack Source: https://threadandstack.com/fractional-strategy Fractional strategy is offered through the Scale-Up retainer tier. See the services page. --- # Deep engagement — Thread & Stack Source: https://threadandstack.com/deep-engagement Long-form embedded engagements are offered through the Scale-Up retainer tier. See the services page. --- # Thread & Stack Journal 5 essays follow. Source list: https://threadandstack.com/blog --- # Storytelling with a Soul Source: https://threadandstack.com/blog/storytelling-with-a-soul Reading time: 6 min 📖A generic voice is the path of least resistance. It feels safe because it sounds like everyone else. But safe is invisible. The Pit of Despair Most brand guidelines read like they were written by committee. Professional. Approachable. Trustworthy. Innovative. Inhuman. Tasteless. Soul destroying. A generic voice is the path of least resistance, not the path to being heard. We need to be creatively courageous, and avoid the "safety" of proven ground. Generic voices feel safe because it sounds like everyone else. Safe is invisible. We should fear "safe". It is the pit of despair, where creativity dies and reader's interest dies on the front porch. It's also a total waste of your real value. Neil Gaiman once wrote: "The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. - Neil Gaiman, Make Good Art He was talking about art. Any art. Marketers and founders will recognise that this applies to your business, it's messaging, branding and content too. The thing that differentiates you from your competitor isn't your colour scheme, or your website. It's the way you see the world, and how you show up for it. It's the product you release. It's the things you choose to say. The real reason people don't like AI generated content, is because it lacks connection. It lacks you! My opinion here is that AI writing itself, isn't the root issue. It's the safety it produces. The repetition of generic, safe tone! It is actually possible to create a really representative "AI clone" of yourself, but it takes loads of effort. No LLM will do it right out of the box. Without proper training, the words might read OK, but they'll convey no emotional weight. When that happens we learn nothing about who you are. They often could apply to a bank, a wellness app, or a dog food company. This is the trap of the generic voice. It's what happens when nobody makes an active choice to express themselves. Problem: Authenticity became a buzzword. When we talk about brand identity, it's usually shorthand for logos, colours, typography – the visual layer - and yes, visuals matter because they're often the first thing people notice, they make people feel like they've landed in the right place. But voice keeps them in the room. This is why an authentic voice, with a clear offer matters. The temptation might be to roll your eyes, and think "here goes the another marketing guru" - but Clarity is tied directly to the strength of your offer / product. Authenticity is tied directly to the strength of your voice. Don't let words like "Clarity" and "Authenticity" be dismissed. Smart people may have heard these words alot, and buzzwords can be rendered meaningless - but the point is important. When you are able to voice the story of how your product became what it is, customers feel the journey you've been on, and that breeds real affinity. Affinity, creates demand and intent. Matthew Dicks, who has spent decades studying what makes stories land, puts it this way: "The best stories feel inevitable. Every detail serves the whole." - Storyworthy, Matthew Dicks Brand voice works the same way. When it's working, every touchpoint feels like it belongs to the same story – whether that's a homepage headline, a customer service email, or a social media post. That customer journey begins to feel inevitable, undeniable, and simple. This forms your narrative thread, and roots it in your own voice - which becomes foundational, and impossible to fake. Even if I employed the best AI tools in the land, when your voice is done right - it is too unpredictable to replicate reliably. That's because you are unique, and so am I. Finding my own thread Within Thread and Stack, this idea sits at the centre of everything I think about. The timeless art of storytelling, and the very modern challenge of cutting through noise fuelled by bots. That tension is deliberate. The work I do sits between old craft - humanity, thought, literature, narrative - and new tools - AI workflows, databases, agents, models. Human psychology and digital systems. The visual identity of Thread & Stack signals this: a woven, serif font, illustrations that evoke books, art, galleries, human creativity. MY VOICE. My interests, I quote the authors I like, I take inspiration from my own life, hobbies, colleagues and sources of inspiration. The Stories that Bind Us Yuval Noah Harari argues that humans conquered the world through our ability to tell stories. From cave paintings, to the earliest form of writings - we created stories, increasingly sophisticated - to warn of danger, missteps, and to encourage success. "Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths." Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens A throughline he draws is that when cave-era humans invented a lion-headed god figure to make sense of the world and bind a community together around a shared belief, that became so powerful that modern humans turned that same symbol into the Peugot brand. Harari contends that the behaviour hasn't gone away, we still do the exact same thing - but over the years, where we once called ideas gods, we increasingly bind ideas around groups of people and intent - which we call a brand. Peugeot the company, like the lion-man, is a fiction comprised of complex structures - and a narrative thread that everyone agrees to believe in, and that collective belief is what gives it real-world power. If we all stopped believing that Peugeot was a company worth respecting, it would soon lose power, just like a god or myth. My point is, that your voice is how you tell that story. It contains more than you might expect: an emotional temperature that runs through everything (are you warm or cool, urgent or patient?), a rhythm and pacing that shapes how ideas land, word choices that carry different weights. Perhaps most importantly, it's about what you leave out – the clichés you refuse, the jargon you avoid, the restraint that says as much as the words themselves. Soulful Stories Pay Off. Finding your real voice takes archaeological excavation. It's this logic that lies behind Simon Sinek's focus on "Start with Why" because when applied on an individual level it roots you in yourself. It requires you to know what you actually believe before you can be consistent about expressing it. Once you arrive there though, when your story is told by the voice that lived it - you come from a place of earned authority. It creates connection that proves to be powerful, and engaging. You can't generate it with a template, though people may try. It gives your customers, communities and audiences a clear reason to choose you, and remember you. People start to recognise you. They read your work and think, "this could only be them." --- # The Death of Notion Mail Source: https://threadandstack.com/blog/the-death-of-notion-mail Reading time: 6 min Notion Mail has been officially discontinued , and with it the email→database sync pipeline is made agentic. This blog dives into what this means for Notion CRM users. The Death of Notion Mail On June 26, Notion announced that Notion Mail is (in their words:) "going away". September 22 is the death-date. The inbox UI disappears across web, desktop, and iOS. Notion say: “As Notion agents have gotten more capable, we’ve seen more users hand off email workflows to them. Today, more than half of Notion Mail users manage emails without ever opening their inbox.” If you've been using Notion as your CRM, or treating it as a genuine hub for your business, this matters. Not because Notion Mail was irreplaceable (it wasn't, and plenty of people never fully got to grips with it) but because of what it signals about where Notion is going, and what that means for the workflows you've built around it. The public framing from Notion's own announcement puts it plainly: "We're going all in on using agents to run your inbox." And the sign-off - "More to come!" - signals this is a purposeful direction shift, whether we like it or not. Practicalities first - What's actually changing? Your emails live in Gmail or Outlook. Well.. they always did. What’s changed is that now Notion is saying that’s where they belong. Notion Mail as an email client was always two-way synced, so nothing ever left your Gmail/Outlook inbox. What you DO need to do: Export before September 21 are any drafts, scheduled emails, snippets, and auto-label instructions that only exist inside Notion Mail. Microsoft Outlook AI Connector – Notion Help Center Gmail AI Connector – Notion Help Center What have we lost? Good News: Mail Blocks in Notion are staying. If you've added Notion Mail’s “Mail Blocks” to Notion pages, they won't be removed. New replies will keep syncing to them too. Bad News: The synced Inbox ↔ Database pipeline is ending After September 22, new emails will no longer auto-ingest into a synced Notion database. Your existing data stays put. But the live feed stops. Agent-Led email management is the replacement. Notion's Custom Agents, connected to Gmail or Outlook (the latter coming soon), are now the infrastructure for email operations inside Notion. Auto-labelling via an agent is described as lightweight -- often costing zero credits. Richer workflows -- summaries, reply drafts, database writes -- will use more. What this actually means for your Notion CRM How much you feel this depends on how much of your CRM relied on “email in your CRM database”. If your workflow was: Email arrives → Sync to a database → Creates a contact record …That pipeline needs to be rebuilt, or replaced. A Notion Custom Agent can approximate it, but it's a different architecture. You're moving from something deterministic to something that depends on an AI making the right call. As a Solopreneur, you might also find yourself sensibly asking if ChatGPT Agents or Claude CoWork similar - that can use Notion’s MCP and run that flow on a schedule for you to avoid Notion Credits entirely. If your workflow was: Manually track relationships → Log Notes in Notion → Do Email Elsewhere You honestly aren’t going to feel this too badly. The organisational layer stays intact - and the message is that Notion is optimising for you to be able to automate this further, if you want to. A CRM lives or dies on communication capture. Not on beautiful database views or smart filters -- on whether the record actually reflects what happened in the conversation. When email and CRM live in the same system, that's easier to guarantee. When they don't, someone has to bridge the gap -- and that someone is usually you, at the end of a long day, trying to remember what was agreed. What Notion is actually choosing Notion is making a clear choice: it wants to be the place that reads your inbox and pulls what matters into your workspace, not the place where you live in your inbox. The trade-off: more intentional workflow design, a clearer definition of what actually needs to be logged, and a bit more trust in agents to extract the right signal from the noise. Let’s also take them at their word: The "More to come" in Notion's announcement isn't marketing boilerplate after a product shutdown. There's a direction forming here, and it's worth watching before making permanent decisions about your tech stack going forward. Notion hasn't walked away from being useful for relationship management. But the shape of that usefulness is changing. The teams who adapt well will be the ones who design around it deliberately, rather than assuming the old plumbing still works. Four things to do before September for Notion CRMs: Check what you need to export before September 21 Drafts, scheduled sends, snippets, auto-label rules, check what you want to keep. Notion Mail users need to choose a new Email Client I’m currently testing out Spark Email, Google’s Gmail controls have evolved with Gemini, and there are many more. Decide whether your synced email database was genuinely load-bearing or a nice-to-have. If it was the former, start designing the agent-based replacement now. Watch what Notion ships next. Expect it to be agent-based. Expect Mail controls to evolve. --- # Welcome to Thread & Stack’s Journal Source: https://threadandstack.com/blog/welcome-to-thread-stack-s-journal Reading time: 6 min We don’t talk enough about how strategies layer to create compound effects – and the opportunities for businesses, and the impact on us as consumers. I call these Stacked Behaviours, and that’s what this newsletter is about. We live dual lives, don’t you agree? As consumers, we’re constantly nudged, targeted, and persuaded. As creators, founders, and marketers, we’re the ones doing the nudging. Osmosis of our own making As consumers, we need to understand the tactics and technologies being used on us every day, or we slowly lose our agency. As founders, creators and marketers, we’re on the other side of that equation, trying to reach people in ways that cut through the thousands of messages they’re hit with daily — and it’s only getting harder. Let me set the scene. In 2007, a study found that Americans consume up to 5000 marketing messages a day (New York Times, 2007). Ten years later in 2017 - a new study- cited numbers between 4000-10,000 marketing messages per day (Forbes, 2017). Fast forward almost a decade (well, eight years at the time of writing), and we’ve entered the ultra-specific world of AI-powered ad tailoring, content generation and the degradation of trust in online content. The deluge of content is only increasing. From habits to hooks You may have heard of “habit stacking,” popularised by James Clear in Atomic Habits. The idea traces back to BJ Fogg’s “Tiny Habits” framework, where new routines are anchored to existing ones. In personal development, it might look like: “After I pour my morning coffee [habit one], I’ll meditate for one minute [habit two].” Stacked Behaviours are the same. They rarely happen in isolation. The same way we might choose to stack habits, strategists and marketers stack nudges against consumers. They pile up to define our actions. Here’s how a single morning can look: Association: “I want to eat more healthily, because I find healthy people more attractive.” Ritual: “It’s early, so I’ll grab my usual coffee from my favourite place on the way to work.” Contextual Nudge: “I only meant to buy coffee, but the vegan pastries were right there at the checkout, health [association], routine [ritual], and convenience [nudge]… I suppose it can’t hurt.” Each of these on its own feels harmless. Together they create momentum. A stack of behaviours that shifts your decision without you ever really “deciding.” You’ve betrayed yourself by buying a pastry you didn’t intend to, but your associations, rituals, and context have all been shaped for you. "People will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think." – Aldous Huxley, Brave New World This is how autonomy erodes: one nudge blends into the next, and soon you’re being carried by invisible currents into choices you didn’t plan to make. While much of this is harmless (sometimes even helpful), some marketers weaponise these tactics, and that results in lowered trust. 💡Nudges aren't neutral. Every design choice is a vote for how you want your user to behave. The question is whether you're voting for their interest or yours. “Somebody poisoned the waterhole!” The dark side of stacked behaviours isn’t hypothetical. It’s happening in plain sight – and the most extreme examples are merciless. The $122m checkbox In 2020, during Trump’s fundraising campaign Supporters were unknowingly signed up for recurring donations by default unless they spotted and unchecked a small pre-ticked box. In 2020, Trump’s fundraising campaign pre-ticked recurring donation boxes by default – a dark UX trick that drained supporters’ accounts. The backlash was so severe that over $122 million had to be refunded (NYT, 2021). By comparison, Biden’s campaign initially experimented with the same tactic but pulled back, refunding just 2% of online donations (WRAL,2021). Making you feel better about war Now consider the recent Stagwell/Mark Penn reputation survey for the Israeli government. A leaked report (Dropsite News, 2025) revealed that the agency advised framing the conflict through the lens of “radical Jihadism” – messaging they claimed would be “universally effective” for conservative audiences (Marketing-Interactive, 2025). This wasn’t neutral research; it was bias confirmation, engineered to activate fear and justify violence at a geopolitical scale. Politics often exposes the most ruthless edges of persuasion. But the same tactics appear in business every day – and that’s what we’ll be unpacking in future issues. “Dark patterns” in design, marketing or strategy don’t pay off. They erode consumer experience, break down trust, and hurt your business. In both these examples, the brands in question suffered (or are experiencing) significant losses. When people smell a rat? They leave. The wins you make in short-term gains, you pay in audience connection. So again, welcome to Stacked Behaviours. This is what Stacked Behaviours is about: exposing tactics, unpacking their impact, and helping founders, creators, and marketers build strategies that don’t poison the waterhole. If that’s the path you want to walk, stick around… there’s more to come. Let’s build a better path! If we can recognise and resist these tactics, we can design marketing that wins trust rather than loses it. Thanks for reading, until next time. --- # What is Marketing Chaos? Source: https://threadandstack.com/blog/what-is-marketing-chaos Reading time: 6 min 🧶Marketing Chaos is what happens when pressure gets loud enough that your calendar starts making decisions for you. You know what’s brutal? When marketing doesn’t feel like it’s working. For leaders it turns into a kind of slow panic. A never-ending black hole of effort. And half the time, the blame lands on the first and most visible victims of the problem, the marketing team, not the actual instigators. When Sales is chasing one story, Marketing is telling another, and leadership is stuck refereeing instead of steering, the leader ends up with an unenviable choice. Do we keep investing in this, and hope it starts working? Or do we bypass it, and go more direct? Here’s the bit I wish more people understood: your marketers aren’t the problem. They’re the canaries in the coalmine. If it’s breaking there, it’s breaking elsewhere too. You just haven’t felt it yet. When the only team doing social listening, customer engagement, performance tracking, and strategy work isn’t being listened to, the whole company starts operating without a shared steering wheel. The operating system goes fuzzy. Direction becomes vibes. Everyone keeps shipping, but nobody’s aligned. And because founders need growth, Sales often sits closer to the founder’s heart. Nine times out of ten, Marketing and Business Development end up siloed, working out of different systems, building different approaches to the same problem. That can work when it’s founder-led and you’re the constantly re-unifying voice. But the second you want to grow, it stops being a “comms issue”. It becomes broken infrastructure. I’ve watched it happen in rooms with proper budgets and in tiny teams running on fumes. It usually starts with a sentence that sounds ambitious but is actually a warning. “We need to be everywhere.” Nobody says it to be reckless. They say it because the numbers are staring back at them, because the board deck is due, because someone’s competitor has just had a good month and it’s hard not to flinch. And then the question becomes: “What can we ship by Friday?” That question is the sound of marketing chaos. Three Paths to Recovery Most messy marketing is made of the same three things, just in different ratios. 1) Unintentional publishing Content goes out because the rhythm says it should, not because there’s something worth saying. You start filling slots rather than building connection. The calendar gets fed. The audience gets crumbs. 2) Unclear ownership Nobody knows who owns the narrative, so everyone touches it. Strategy lives in one doc. Execution lives in a tool. Approvals live in Slack. The result is content that sounds like a committee trying to impersonate a person. 3) Misaligned effort vs impact The work taking the most time isn’t the work creating the most value. Teams pour hours into low-leverage formats because they’re visible, measurable, and socially safe. Meanwhile the hard stuff, the stuff that would actually make the next six months easier, stays unfunded. Chaos is often just “safety” in a different costume. Where it really comes from If you want the root cause, it’s usually not a lack of talent. It’s not even laziness. It’s pressure without patience. When results are demanded instantly, long-term brand building starts to look like indulgence. Trust becomes a “nice to have”. You get pulled into short-term tactics that can be reported on next week, even if they’re undermining you next quarter. And then best practice arrives with its warm blanket. Someone says: “LinkedIn carousels are working.” “We should do a podcast.” “We need a lead magnet.” The problem with best practice is that it’s average practice. It’s what everybody else is already doing. Which means it might be technically competent while still being strategically invisible. The human cost (the bit nobody budgets for) The most useful marker of Marketing Chaos isn’t your engagement rate. It’s the emotional temperature inside the team. When marketing is chaotic, people start living inside a permanent context switch. They’re asked to be strategic while firefighting. Creative while being measured. Calm while being rushed. I’ve seen the quiet version of this too. The content lead who stops bringing ideas to the Monday meeting because it feels pointless. The founder who says “we just need to post more” while clearly dreading the act of showing up. Oliver Burkeman has a line in Four Thousand Weeks that I come back to more than I’d like: “The more you try to manage your time with the goal of achieving a feeling of total control, the more stressful your life becomes.” Marketing Chaos is that same impulse, expressed as a content plan. The way out is subtraction, not addition The instinct, when things feel chaotic, is to add tools, add meetings, add frameworks, add content. But the opposite move tends to work better. Start with the simplest possible clarity Not a 40-slide positioning deck. A few sentences you can actually repeat. Who are we for? What do we want them to believe? What are we refusing to do, even if it “works” for others? If you can’t answer those, no calendar will save you. Give yourself permission to stop things Stopping feels like failure because it’s visible. Continuing is failure with better optics. Cut the series nobody reads. Pause the platform you’re only on out of guilt. Kill the format that takes five hours to produce and five seconds to scroll past. Build reflection into the system Chaos thrives in constant output. Reflection is what turns output into learning, and learning into leverage. Even a 30-minute monthly review can shift you from “What did we publish?” to “What did we learn about what people actually care about?” A strategy is a set of exclusions you can defend. A different definition of control The opposite of Marketing Chaos isn’t rigid control. It’s intentional flexibility. Knowing what matters enough to protect. Knowing what can adapt. Knowing what you are not going to do. And, maybe most importantly, having the courage to be boring in the right places so you can be interesting in the ones that count. I’m still not convinced there’s a perfect system for avoiding chaos. Businesses are messy, people are messy, the world is noisy. But I do think there’s a reliable tell. If your marketing plan makes you feel relieved because it’s full, you’re probably in trouble. If it makes you feel clearer because it’s lighter, you’re probably closer to something real. If you’ve been in this state recently, what was the first sign you noticed? --- # Cognitive Overload & You Source: https://threadandstack.com/blog/cognitive-overload-you Reading time: 6 min I caught myself the other morning standing in the kitchen, coffee in hand, paralysed by three different notifications that had come in before I’d even fully woken up. It wasn't that the decisions were hard. It was just that there were so many of them, already, and the sun wasn't even properly up. Our brains seem to be having a bad day. Pretty much all the time. Right now, yours is likely juggling half a dozen micro-decisions while you try to read this. Should you grab another coffee? Is that Slack notification urgent? Do you really have time for this article? From SMS to push notifications, emails to social posts, our phones have about a million different ways to let us know there’s a new "limited time offer" that expires in 3 hours. That's ignoring the forty-seven browser tabs open in your mind, and the project deadline looming like a storm cloud. And that's before you even get to the real stuff - concerns about the world, your family, people you actually know. 💡We act like mental bandwidth is a renewable resource that refills instantly. But every notification you ignore is still tax; it costs you something just to look away. I want to talk about cognitive overload. Not just as a business metric to optimise, but as a reality we all live with. The battery we can't see "The world is increasingly designed to depress us. Happiness isn’t very good for the economy." – Matt Haig, Notes on a Nervous Planet In the last Stacked Behaviours essay, I mentioned that Forbes had highlighted research indicating that we receive an estimated 10,000 messages a day. In this context, self-care begins to feel more like self-defence. It seems like every little task now comes with a marketing message. Even when all you want to do is buy a new toothbrush. We can't defend against messages coming from all around us. We can try to restrict our attention to those that deserve it - who deserve our energy. Paying attention to that battery doesn’t just help you receive better quality signals from the world. It makes for a more empathetic way to live. When your task is to buy a new electric toothbrush, you naturally lean towards the brands that make it easier for you. You choose those that simplify what they're offering, and you might even accept a little more cost for a more straightforward proposition. That overwhelm has a direct relationship to the value of a founder's offering. But here's the thing: often the smartest, most well-meaning people are the ones creating this complexity. When intelligence becomes the problem A friend was telling me about their struggles with their climate action organisation recently. Despite having important work and clear messaging, people couldn't remember how their different projects connected. The newsletter, the deep-dive reports, the action campaigns - none of it stuck together in people's minds. "It's like each piece exists in isolation," they said. "People care about what we're doing, but they can't seem to remember how our stuff connects." This friend is brilliant. They understand climate science, systems thinking, and stakeholder engagement. But their intelligence was working against them. They wanted to show the full complexity of their work, prove their expertise, provide comprehensive value. 💡It’s easy to mistake thoroughness for value. But when your audience is already drowning, adding more 'value' just feels like adding more weight. The result? Cognitive overload for everyone trying to support them. I see this pattern everywhere. Wonderful founders trying to solve important problems but accidentally complicating the lives of the customers they serve. The desire to prove themselves, to over-provide, to demonstrate sophistication often creates the very friction that prevents people from engaging with their mission. What's actually happening in our minds "The human mind does not run on logic any more than a horse runs on petrol." – Rory Sutherland, Alchemy When we encounter too much complexity, our brains essentially shut down. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman showed us that we operate two mental systems: System 1 (fast, automatic, intuitive) and System 2 (slower, effortful, rational) (Kahneman, 2011). Most of the time, we're running on System 1. It's efficient, effortless, and handles routine decisions without conscious thought. But when something requires effort to understand – when we hit cognitive load – we're forced into System 2 mode. 💡Most marketing demands deep, rational thought for decisions that should be automatic. You're asking for premium mental energy at a discount rate. System 2 is expensive. It drains mental energy quickly, and when people are already overwhelmed, they simply won't make the effort. Research on the Paradox of Choice demonstrates this beautifully. When psychologist Sheena Iyengar offered shoppers 24 jam varieties, 60% stopped to browse but only 3% made a purchase. When she offered just 6 varieties, fewer people stopped (40%) but purchases jumped tenfold to 30% (Iyengar & Lepper, 2000). Choice complexity kills action, even when people care about the outcome. The real cost of good intentions Here's where this becomes particularly painful for climate organisations, nonprofits, and purpose-driven businesses: the importance of your work can justify complexity in your mind. Climate change is complex. Social justice is nuanced. Sustainability involves trade-offs. Even basic ethical marketing is a mine field of “anti-hypocrisy sense checks”. But complexity in your mission doesn't require complexity in your experience. I know a climate nonprofit that was obsessing over donor segmentation. Their donation form asked for income bracket, environmental priorities, communication preferences, volunteer interests, and referral source. Completion rate: 3.2%. They stripped it down to name, email, and amount. Completion jumped to 18.6%. Within three months, they gained £47,000 in additional monthly donations - not by explaining their work better, but by making support effortless. When people's brains are already maxed out from daily digital chaos, every additional bit of complexity you add becomes a competitive disadvantage. You're not just competing with other organisations; you're competing with every notification, every decision, every cognitive demand they've already encountered today. The empathy solution The most successful purpose-driven organisations have learnt this lesson: truly empathetic design always prioritises the customer's cognitive capacity over the creator's need to be comprehensive. Take Patagonia's "Don't Buy This Jacket" campaign. Climate action involves incredibly complex systems thinking, but their message achieved perfect simplicity: consume less. Zero cognitive load, maximum emotional impact. Or consider how the climate tech startup I mentioned earlier grew from 200 to 12,000 newsletter subscribers in eight months. Instead of explaining carbon capture technology, they simply said: "Climate change feels overwhelming. We find the solutions that actually work and explain them in 3 minutes every Tuesday." System 1 simple. System 2 depth available for those who wanted it. The result? 47% of subscribers became monthly supporters, compared to an industry average of 8%. Your cognitive load audit The fix starts with recognising where you're accidentally creating friction. Map every decision point in your supporter journey. Count every form field, menu option, and piece of information you're asking people to process. Ask yourself: Does this serve their goal or my need to appear thorough? Could I eliminate this choice with a smart default? What would happen if I removed this entirely? If someone already cares about my cause, what's the fastest path to meaningful action? Remember: people's mental bandwidth is more precious than their money. When you waste their cognitive energy, they'll find someone who doesn't – often a competitor who understood this principle before you did. Building for overwhelmed minds Our brains are maxed out, and that's not changing anytime soon. The organisations that thrive will be those who become cognitive sanctuaries – places where important decisions feel effortless and meaningful action requires minimal mental effort. This isn't about dumbing down your mission. It's about respecting that the people you serve are already overwhelmed, and your job is to make their path to supporting you as frictionless as possible. When you design for overwhelmed brains, people begin associating ease of engagement with competence and trustworthiness. Cognitive simplicity becomes a competitive advantage that no marketing budget can replicate. Next time, we'll explore how this understanding transforms the way we architect choices, and why the most powerful decision-making experiences feel like no decision at all.