This morning I was remembering a section of Malcomb Gladwell’s The Tipping Point about group dynamics. Honestly, I am not sufficiently motivated to look it up, so I am going from memory here. But I remember that the number seven was very significant.

He talked about the fact that phone numbers were seven digits. Seems that people can memorize up to seven digits (or seven of anything else) without grouping or using mnemonics. Beyond seven, they have to have acronymns, mnemonic devices, visualization tricks, or groupings of sets containing seven or fewer. Seems to be a hardwired thing in our brains. It’s almost universal.

Seems that families with more than five children (plus two parents) tend to break into multiples. For example, a family with nine children will typically have primary group relationships among the eldest five and the two parents, and among the younger four, the parents, and one of the older children (often remembered as a “second mom”). Sets of seven.

Quaker meetings (or was it shaker…or was it mennonite?…or was it Amish?) are permitted to grow to fifty people (seven times seven, plus one), before splitting and forming two meetings. Very organic! Works like this…seven primary groups…the “leaders” of each forming a group of seven…with one extra (they probably don’t really like the extra that much, but who wants to be legalistic?).

Gore Corporation (the people who brought us Goretex, and a bunch of other cool stuff) was famous for dividing itself into autonomous, entrepreneurial groups of fifty or less. Each group had access to all of the technology the company owned (including new technologies the company was developing). Each group was responsible for using that technology to develop products and create strategies for those products. Each group was expected to “live” on the proceeds from the products it developed.

We have seven days in a week. Always have as far as I know. This is ancient, and consistent across cultures. The first six, God worked. The seventh He rested. It’s the number of perfection.

We started the adventure with shots of a group of ladies grading Bible correspondence courses from inmates at prisons around North Carolina. They were in a room with windows on three sides, around a folding table, which was covered with test booklets, paper, pens, and, of course, Bibles. One lady was fresh off the mission field (after something like 60 years). They had Bibles with the covers worn thin…pages softened and grayed with use…margins covered with notes…Bibles that looked like they were older than I am. They moved through the pages like a gardener moves through his garden…fluid from plant to plant.

Their conversation was light, sweet, and soft. A little giggle over an answer that was almost right…a shared smile at an insight from an inmate as his hard life was softened by his new-found savior…a word of genuine concern over a response that indicated that “this one isn’t there…this one needs prayer.”

Later, we photographed a blind man as he worked his vegetable garden, feeling his way along. He harvested two cucumbers for us to take home. “I garden because I enjoy it, and I like to give away my harvest,” he said. Then, we took his dog, Gabby, over to visit the care home, where the residents enjoyed the company and affection.

We got a photograph of three generations of women…mother, daughter, granddaughter…sitting in the sun in the courtyard—a little picture of faithfulness. And we finished a long day with a romantic shot of a couple, married for 60 years, holding hands in candle light beside the pool in the magic light just past sunset.

The photographer wrote us a really nice note afterward. He said that he had a hard time keeping his emotions in check as he went back through the pictures…and that the experience had changed him. I know it changed me.

Back in the last century, when I moved here, I was under the impression that South Carolina was made up of the 60 sophisticates that worked with me at Henderson Advertising, and about 1.1 million toothless bubbas. But the longer I stayed, the more I realized that much of South Carolina was sophisticated (and perhaps that I was the bubba). Out of this learning came the concept I call, “The Easley Syndrome”.

For some reason, Easley, South Carolina is a watershed of world-class wonderfulness, sometimes disguised as ordinary folks (maybe even a little bit country). Easley is the birthplace of the world’s most successful kayak manufacturer. Easley is the home of one of Southern Gospel Music’s finest pianists. Easley has a world-class web printer. Easley is the hometown of one of the biggest club acts of the late 70s and early 80s (second only to Leon Russel), a CCM band called The Rob Cassels Band. At one time, the strongest woman in the world was a 16-year-old girl from Easley. Easley has more Congressional Medal of Honor winners per capita than any other town or city in America. Also, Easley is the home of one of the best kept secrets in the healthcare industry (nuff said).

Some places are just like that, I guess. Jackson, Mississippi has more than its share of great writers, for example. And Pittsburgh turns out more than its share of NFL quarterbacks. But Easley, SC ought to be a wide spot next to a railroad track. And somehow…it’s a full fledged syndrome. Who would have thought it?

The amazing thing to me is that they’re diving into dark water, yet, they come up with fish more than half the time. How does that work? Amazing.

I’ve been feeling sort of that way on the new business front. Point your beak at something, get up insane amount of speed. Crash into the dark, when it’s too late to pull up. Hope a fish sticks to the beak. I gotta say, those birds are much better at it than I am. But maybe this time, I’ll get the fish. Sure hope so. This water crashing is starting to give me a headache.

So, what do you call those fish again?

Do you treat the people who work for you the same as you treat the people you work for?

Try it out. It always works.

I first noticed it when I was a waiter. Business people would bring clients, customers, or prospects to our restaurant to entertain them. The really good, honest, hard-working, intelligent ones (the ones with long-term solid reputations) were very polite to their guests; but surprisingly, they were equally polite to their waiter…and their bus boy! But the ones who were known around town to be sort of shady would be overly polite, downright solicitous to their guests, be totally patronizing and sarcastic to the waiter, and totally dismissive (and sometimes cruel) to the bus boy.

Or, Mr. BMOC would bring a date into the restaurant. He would be all sucking up to the date, while being a jerk to the servers…as if he were trying to establish a pecking order or something. But other guys, guys who had confidence and balance, would be courteous to the date (as interested in her good time as in his)…and would be professional and polite to the wait staff as well.

Or you’d get two couples out together. A boss and spouse, and an employee and spouse. The employee would be all smoochy on the boss and his wife…while treating his own wife like something the cat dragged in. And don’t even ask about how he treated the wait staff.

Then you’d get the two couples who really seemed to enjoy being together. The ladies had rapport. The guys had rapport. Ladies participated with the guys in a four-way conversation. Everyone talked to the wait staff…asked questions…ordered things…made comments…asked for reccos…. And here’s the coolest part: sometimes you couldn’t tell which one was the boss and which was the employee. You really couldn’t tell.

Try the test in your neighborhood…office…relationships. It always works. Very informative.

P.S. Here’s some free advice. When you’re out on a date, be nice to the server. He/She has the power to ruin your date…or to make it really wonderful. Did you think the rolls were hard by accident? Just sayin’.

Back when I was in college, one of my roommates was from Cincinnati. His little brother was a tackle for Cincinnati Princeton (or one of those elite Cincinnati football high schools you always read about in Sports Illustrated). Big Du was like 6’5” and 250, mostly muscle, as a 17-year-old. He was massive!

There was also this girl who hung out at our apartment. Can’t remember her name…we called her “Rabbit.” She was about 4’10” and skinny. So she couldn’t have weighed more than like 85 pounds.

Anyhow, Rabbit got it into her mind that Big Du was so big and strong that he couldn’t be hurt. So, whenever she saw him, she would run up to him and punch him in the arm as hard as she could. He would protest, “ouch, that hurts; stop it!” And she would cackle. And do it again.

Eventually, he would get so frustrated he would tear up…bless his heart…and look over at his older brother for direction. What could he do? If he lifted even a finger to defend himself, he knew that he would look like a bully who pushed girls around (Du could have squashed the Rabbit with one finger). But…it hurt. Really.

Nobody took it all that seriously, until Du came over to the apartment one day in a muscle shirt. His entire left upper arm was one big bruise.

His brother said, “What happened to your arm?”

Du, exasperated, replied with one word, “Rabbit!”

I don’t remember any more of the story. I do recall that Rabbit stopped hitting Du. So somebody must have said something.

I’ve been thinking about the special challenge of being tough. People think they can say and do whatever they want. Like it will just bounce off. We need tough people…to do hard things…to tell us what we don’t want to hear…to look at the numbers and come up with the right answer…to make things happen. We should remember that they have feelings too.

While everyone seems to agree, at this point, that branding is necessary for a bank. It’s still tricky. Because a bank’s brand still has to be an authentic representation of the bank itself—it has to be the bank’s personality, with the bank’s vocabulary, and the bank’s own clothes (trade dress). A bank still has to be calm, low-profile, trustworthy, dependable. It just has to be branded so that those qualities SCREAM! Kidding.

A bank brand has to take into account the community it lives in. The people it serves. The history and vision of the bank. And, especially in times like these, a bank needs to be seen as humble, hard working, sound…anything but flashy. Probably, a bank brand needs to take into account the times when a bank should be invisible.

In the past two decades, we’ve seen some bank branding that has backfired in the past few months. Nobody really wants a fun bank these days. Or an opulent bank. Or a high-flying bank. People want banks that WON’T WASTE MY MONEY.

We’re excited about the opportunities for banks as the economy starts to lift a bit. I predict we’ll be seeing the role of community banks become much more important across the country. As people start to get back to business, will they want to be in business with Wall Street…or Bank of America? Or will they want to do business with Andy, John, Cindy, Dean, Shields, Diana, Mays, George…you know…people who are from here.

It’ll be fun to see what happens. Well, maybe fun is a little too strong a word. It will certainly be interesting.

About the time we were back in the house, ensconced in the den with Anne Shirley and her adopted family, wind started whipping, buckets of rain started falling, lights flickered, and the power backup started clicking. It was pretty nasty for about 15-20 minutes and then calmed down. We wrapped up our marathon around 11:00. Didn’t think much more about it.

Saturday, I went on a walk over toward Faris Road, about a half mile from the house. There, I saw the tops of trees that had been twisted off about twenty feet up the trunk. A swath of downed trees about fifty feet wide and several hundred feet long. Full-grown evergreens uprooted. A merge sign lifted out of the ground and laid flat where it had stood. Miraculously, I did not see a single building damaged by a tree.

In the midst of all this, I found a stick—a bruised reed. It was about an inch thick and about 30 inches long. It had been snapped out of the middle of a larger branch, evidenced by the clean breaks at both ends. It had apparently been struck by lightning, loosening the bark, and then stripped cleanly of its bark from top to bottom (leaving just a little bit of bark on a twig that forked off). I found it laying in green-green grass, among the rubble.

There was no report of a tornado, by the way. Zufall, our resident weather geek says it was probably a microburst—sort of down-firing wind thing. I don’t know. But what an amazing picture of condensed, sovereign, creatorial power—in reverse!

First, the site/ap/service was created during times that were (for most people) pretty solid economically. Making the rent wasn’t a worry. Buying groceries certainly wasn’t. We were, as a culture, all up in the “self actualization” zone. So, connecting with old friends, making new friends, and hi-by drive-bys were the order of the day. But things are a little different. Not that long ago, clients started canceling projects that were not “directly revenue generating.” So, we’re back to transactions. And so is everyone else. It’s all about getting done what needs to get done to put food on the table. Does this leave time for chit-chat? If not, does this render a brand entirely built on chit-chat a little less relevant? Just a thought.

Secondly, Facebook’s demo has been inching older. When we first got into it, we were exceptional—40 somethings (at the time)—in a medium overwhelmingly dominated by 20 somethings. Well, guess what. When times are good, the baby boom will not be left out. So, Facebook has become what prime time tv used to be—25-54! Well, now that the fat demo for Facebook is the same folks who were sunami-smacked by the stock market collapse…what must this be doing to Facebook’s advertising model?

Now, the problem with being forward thinking is that you think you see stuff on the horizon that is really a piece of lint on your glasses. In other words, I’m probably wrong on this whole Facebook thing. I hope so, because — other than lame chat — I got nothin’ but love for Facebook. I don’t know. What do you think?

I mean, it sure enough is more relevant than twitter. But so are tin cans with strings. Just sayin’.