We spend so much of our lives trying to fix things, force outcomes, and stay firmly in control. In business and in life, when we make decisions designed to preempt a specific result, we give it a fancy name: strategy.
We like to think we’re steering the ship. Spreadsheets, funnels, target audiences, quarterly plans, all of it built on the comforting idea that if we just get the inputs right, we control the outputs. But in reality, we’re small variables in a vast, interconnected system, constantly nudging it in one direction or another, most of the time without ever seeing where the nudge lands.
As chaos theory suggests, even the smallest flap of a butterfly’s wings can eventually contribute to a hurricane on the other side of the world. It shouldn’t matter. A wingbeat is nothing against the scale of a weather system. And yet, in a system sensitive enough to initial conditions, it does matter. The tiny, seemingly insignificant things we say and do today can create ripples that arrive somewhere else entirely tomorrow: bigger, faster, and further from us than we ever intended.
That’s not just a nice metaphor. It’s a fairly accurate description of what a brand, a business, or a person actually does in the world: send out thousands of small signals and never get to see most of where they land.
Navigating the Soup of Chaos
So, in this swirling soup of chaos, how much change are we actually responsible for?
More than we’d like to admit, and more than shows up on any dashboard.
The truth is, you don’t need a grand master plan to alter the course of someone’s day, or even their life. The micro-moments matter just as much as the grand strategies, arguably more, because there are so many more of them, and because they’re the moments nobody is grading you on.
Think about it at the human scale first, before we even get to business:
- A genuine “thank you” to a waitress working a double shift.
- A warm smile to a passer-by on a gloomy Tuesday.
- An unexpected compliment that catches someone off guard, in the best way.
These aren’t just polite pleasantries. They’re catalysts. The person who felt seen at their lowest moment might go home and finally start the business they’d been putting off. They might be a little gentler with their kids that evening. They might, weeks later and with no memory of exactly why, become your customer, or your fiercest advocate.
None of that shows up as a line item. All of it is real.
The Danger of the Downward Spiral
Of course, the opposite is equally true, and it travels just as far.
Negative energy carries exactly the same momentum as positive energy; it just points the other way. Being dismissive, cynical, or curt costs nothing in the moment and everything downstream. Abandoning a fresh idea before it’s even had a chance to take root creates its own destructive ripple. A single careless piece of criticism can crush someone’s confidence and quietly kill an innovation before it ever gets a name.
We rarely see the end of the chain reactions we start. A throwaway comment, an impulsive decision, or a moment of withheld empathy can set off a domino effect we could never have predicted and will probably never trace back to its source.
In marketing specifically, this plays out in small, forgettable moments that don’t feel like decisions at all:
- The subject line that made someone feel stupid rather than curious.
- The “limited time” pressure tactic that left a faint bad taste, even if it worked.
- The dismissive reply from a brand’s social account, dashed off in thirty seconds.
- The advert that interrupted rather than invited.
- The internal meeting where someone’s half-formed idea got laughed off before lunch, and never mentioned again.
Every one of these ripples outward. The person you annoyed tells a few people, in that particular tone reserved for brands that made them feel small. The person you delighted also tells a few people, but with warmth, with a kind of energy that makes others actually want to listen. Same number of people told. Very different message travelling with it.
Strategy Is a Moral Exercise, Not Just a Technical One
This is where messaging stops being purely technical and becomes something closer to a moral practice. Because a message is a genuinely powerful tool, and like any powerful tool, its effect depends entirely on the hand that wields it. Get it right, and by making people feel good, the results tend to follow. Get it wrong, and so does the opposite, just more slowly, and less visibly.
So what does “getting it right” actually look like in practice?
1. Write like a human talking to a human
Before you hit send on any campaign, read it aloud. Would you say these words to someone’s face? If your copy would sound condescending, pushy, or cold spoken aloud, it will land that way in writing too; writing just gives it longer to sit with someone.
2. Lead with generosity, not extraction
Messages built around “what can we take from this person?” carry a different energy than those built around “what can we give?” People sense the difference even when they can’t articulate it. Give value first: insight, humour, help, recognition, and the commercial results tend to follow, rather than needing to be forced.
3. Never kill a seedling idea carelessly
This applies inside your team as much as to your audience. A fresh idea dismissed before it’s had a chance to seed might have been your next campaign, product, or genuine breakthrough. Worse, the person whose idea you killed may simply never bring you another one. Cultural butterfly effects are real, and they compound in the opposite direction from the ones you want.
4. Small kindnesses scale
A personalised thank-you email. Remembering a customer’s name. Responding graciously to criticism instead of defensively. Congratulating a competitor on a genuine win. None of this shows up on a dashboard this quarter. All of it compounds over years, in the same quiet way resentment or goodwill compounds in any relationship.
5. Audit your ripples
Look back at your last ten pieces of communication: emails, adverts, posts, replies. Ask honestly: did each one make someone’s day better, worse, or neutral? Neutral is fine sometimes; not everything needs to be a grand gesture. But aim for better wherever you reasonably can, because you’re going to send the message either way.
Change the Path You’re On
We are always shaping the universe around us, whether we realise it or not. The message changes the path, not just for the audience, but for everyone connected to it, in ways that fan out well past the point where we can see them. Your brand isn’t just selling; it’s participating in thousands of tiny moments across thousands of lives, most of which you’ll never hear about.
You can’t control where each ripple ends up. Nobody can. But you absolutely control the direction you set it moving in, in the moment it leaves your hands.
We all love to talk about “influence.” Here’s the deeper version of it: influence isn’t manipulation, and it isn’t a funnel metric. It’s stewardship of small moments. You are already changing the trajectory of strangers’ days, with every subject line, every caption, every reply you choose to send or not send. The only real question is whether you’re pushing them toward light or away from it.
The question isn’t whether you’ll impact the world. You already do, constantly, by default. The only real choice is how.
Be open. Make a difference. And make sure it’s the best one possible.
Because somewhere out there, a butterfly is flapping its wings. Make sure yours is saying thank you.
