We are living in asymmetric times.

The threats and opportunities that will shape our future, even our immediate future, are likely to seem so small in the present that they are difficult to identify. Their importance now is not equal (or symmetrical) to their size later.

The cover of The Economist's “World in 2017” issue, published in December of 2016, was a collage of all the world figures that the magazine's expert staff believed would shape the coming 12 months. Notably absent was the man who would win the U.S. presidential election and upend the world, Donald Trump. If I'd been designing the cover of that issue (and been able to see the future), I'd also have put the Twitter logo somewhere in the mix of recognizable faces.

Who would've guessed that a former reality TV star and a single social media platform would shape the destiny of hundreds of millions of people? What seemed at first absurd became unthinkable, then merely unlikely, then everybody's new reality.

A quote comes to mind from one of my favorite writers, Julio Cortazar: “Only by living absurdly is it possible to break out of this infinite absurdity.”

Unless we learn to regularly sweep the horizon for threats and opportunities that are still small and refrain from dismissing them for seeming too weird or improbable, then we're likely doomed to be surprised by the future instead of prepared for it.

When I first heard of the concept of asymmetric warfare—the highly strategic way in which the military locates and prepares for unlikely threats that will grow larger over time—I realized how widely applicable the concept is in every aspect of life.

The Department of Defense's Joint Staff defines asymmetric warfare as “attempts to circumvent or undermine an opponent's strengths while exploiting his weaknesses using methods that differ significantly from the opponent's usual mode of operation.”¹

In other words, an asymmetric warrior, or thinker, is not going head‐to‐head with his opponent in the traditional boots‐on‐the‐ground sense. He or she gets creative and wins the war, solves the problem, or seizes the opportunity by resorting to unconventional approaches.

Asymmetric thinking challenges assumptions. I wouldn't call it thinking outside the box. When you think asymmetrically, you are free to ignore or rebuild the box entirely.

The concept has been around for thousands of years. In 500 B.C., Sun Tzu wrote, “If the enemy is superior in strength, evade him. If his forces are united, separate them. Attack him where he is unprepared.”

“Appear where you are not expected.”² We also see the concept play out in the ancient tale of the Trojan Horse from the Iliad, the epic poem that tells the story of the 10‐year war between the citizens of Troy, a walled city, and the Greeks, camped outside the city and attempting to destroy it. After conventional warfare failed them, the Greeks resorted to asymmetrical warfare.

The Greeks, led by Odysseus, the ultimate asymmetric thinker, constructed a huge wooden horse that they gave to the Trojans as a gift—feigning surrender—and then pretended to sail away. We all know that the horse was a trap, concealing a few Greek warriors who emerged from the structure at night and unlocked the city gates, allowing the rest of their army, concealed nearby, to enter Troy and sack it. It wasn't strength that destroyed the Trojans but strategy and surprise.

Throughout history, countless military leaders have sought to leverage the same qualities, and in many cases, abiding by this venerable advice have led the dark horse, as it were, to succeed.

Guerilla warfare is one of the oldest forms of asymmetric warfare. Hebrew tribes used guerrilla tactics against Roman legions in the days before Christ. The Gauls and Celtic tribes also used guerrilla tactics, such as ambushes and deception, against the Romans during the Roman invasion and occupations of Germany and Britain. And the Germanic chieftain Arminius ambushed and destroyed three elite Roman legions in the Teutenburg Forest in 9 A.D.³

A more contemporary example is the 1,000‐day Vietnam War, which proved to be the longest counter‐guerrilla conflict fought by the U.S. military during the twentieth century. It was also the first time a technologically superior U.S. force was defeated, in a strategic sense, asymmetrically.

Beyond war, pervasive asymmetrical challenges are present in every corner of our lives. Cybersecurity experts are threatened by hackers who are finding unprecedented and unforeseen ways to circumvent security systems experts had thought were nearly impenetrable. Hackers are the ultimate asymmetric fighters. They are able to take on enemies far larger than they are by turning a strength—the speed and interconnection that comes with the Internet—and turning it into a vulnerability. While it's possible for states of equal size to compete in cyberspace, the most ROI, so to speak, goes to the smaller ones fighting larger ones. A small collection of brilliant hackers anywhere can target the vital systems of any nation on earth, no matter how far away and no matter how much wealthier or more powerful.

Let's remove asymmetrical thinking from its military context and take a look at how it can be useful to strategic thinkers in business and in communications. The essence of asymmetric thinkers is that they aren't afraid to approach problems that seem much larger than their capabilities to address them. And they also take the unique attributes of each problem and do their best to turn them into advantages.

In the face of our most overwhelming difficulties, when the odds aren't in our favor, it's asymmetrical thinking that saves us. My favorite recent example of asymmetrical thinking is Paperfuge, a low‐cost centrifuge invented by Manu Prakash, an assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford University. The device costs only 20 cents to make, doesn't require electricity and can diagnose malaria, HIV, and other diseases—a groundbreaking invention for people in developing nations, who have little to no access to health care.⁴

Diagnostics in developed countries rely heavily on centrifuges, which are machines that can cost upwards of $1,000. They're essential to the process of using biological samples to diagnose disease.

How did Prakash come up with Paperfuge, which functions the same way a regular centrifuge does? He credits his upbringing in India, where he lacked access to tools he needed to do scientific research. He's also always had a fascination with toys, he told CNN, and thought he could replicate the speed of a yo‐yo to create Paperfuge. For many months, he and his students analyzed all kinds of spinning toys, from tops to gyroscopes to whirligigs. Through a marathon of experiments and studies, the team was able to develop a human‐powered centrifuge made of two synthetic polymer paper discs, braided fishing line, wood or PVC pipe for handles, drinking straws sealed with epoxy, and shatterproof plastic capillary tubes to hold the blood samples, according to CNN. The invention can separate pure plasma from blood in 90 seconds and isolate malaria parasites in just 15 minutes. The work also inspired a makeshift paper optical microscope he calls Foldscope that can be constructed for 50 cents and uses a piece of paper and a simple lens. He's in the process of testing both inventions in developing countries such as Madagascar with the goal of perfecting it for global distribution one day.

Determined to help democratize medicine, it was Prakash's asymmetrical approach—influenced by the fact that he never had a vast pool of resources growing up—that allowed him to invent such things. A few scraps of common supplies and some asymmetrical thinking might end up saving billions of dollars and countless lives.

Over the course of history, this is exactly how inventors who have few resources and a strong vision have operated. In the mid‐1980s, British inventor Josh Silver developed low‐cost eyeglasses in which the wearer can easily adjust the prescription, after a chance conversation with a colleague, according to The Guardian.⁵ The glasses are unbelievably simple, relying on the basic principle that the thicker the lens is, the more powerful it becomes. Here's how his invention works: Inside the device's tough plastic lenses are two clear circular sacs filled with fluid, each of which is connected to a small syringe attached to either arm of the spectacles. The wearer adjusts a dial on the syringe to add or reduce the amount of fluid in the membrane, thereby changing the power of the lens. The implications of such a simple invention are huge. In developing nations, access to eye care is almost a pipe dream—in sub‐Saharan Africa the ratio of optometrists to people is 1:1,000,000. Allowing people in poor countries the ability to be their own optometrists will afford them the ability to learn to read, work more effectively (even retire later in life), take care of everyday tasks with ease, and ultimately live better lives.

Asymmetrical discovery and invention has been driving innovation for thousands of years. In the second century A.D., the Greek thinker Eratosthenes correctly deduced the circumference of the earth by measuring the angle of shadows cast by the sun at high noon in two places. Centuries later, European scientists using much more advanced tools confirmed that Eratosthenes was more or less right in his calculations, proof that no problem is too daunting when you make creative use of the tools at hand.

These are the stories we need to draw inspiration from in our nebulous line of work. Content marketing is relatively unchartered territory in the grand scheme of the communications and media industry. In each of our projects, it can feel like we're solving for X—aiming to conceptualize the best creative that will blow the competition out of the water and position our clients as thought leaders. We do this while operating with very limited resources and a series of hurdles, such as a small but talented staff, limited funding for big projects, or issues with different personalities and working styles that arise within our teams. The most important thing to remember is that we aren't actually solving for X. There is no X. There is no one right way of doing any of this, rather there is a realm of untapped possibilities that we need to constantly explore. In spite of the challenges—tight deadlines, a lack of budget, you name it—we've just got to figure it out by any means necessary.

At the companies I've co‐founded, SJR, Truffle Pig, and Colloquial, our teams try to think asymmetrically all the time. In strategic communications, there are never ideal circumstances—you're constantly running into challenges—and the expectations are always very high. We are always called to do more with less—and most of the time, it enhances our creativity.

Asymmetric thinking is remarkably versatile. It can be applied to every challenge you face, big and small: finding new talent, pitching prospective clients, creating work that you can be proud of, growing the business, and creating new working methods.

Of the many challenges we encounter, the most important is having the right talent on board. Because at the end of the day, your strategies are born from people.

We have a tendency to group people into buckets. It's human instinct. We assess people based on what they've done rather than considering the vast untapped potential of what they can do. But how can you grow unless you let your people grow?

Especially if you're aiming to create truly original content that's going to drive clients' business outcomes—the kind of work that gets you contract renewals year after year and makes you an indispensable part of brands' marketing efforts.

At SJR, Truffle Pig, Colloquial, and Hill+Knowlton Strategies, hiring asymmetrically for us means hiring generalists not specialists. Unlike other consulting firms and many other agencies that have practice areas, we want our teams to have (or develop) truly eclectic skill sets and backgrounds so they bring fresh thinking to content programs. We're building teams that flourish in our asymmetric world, which demands velocity and novel approaches to the most complicated problems.

So we'll hire fine artists who might not have ever done commercial work before and part‐time poets to infuse our new business pitches with truly original thinking. We'll have our engineers work in illustration and our account leads double as producers on set.

We do this because our people are more than their titles. Truth be told, I would do away with titles altogether if I could. Because titles are reductionist and never capture the incredible range of abilities that our people have. Our best work comes from the people you'd least expect it from. And we'll continue to encourage our people to tinker and explore new accounts and ways of doing things. It's better for our people, and it's better for our business—it is this approach that allows us to win contracts away from agencies 20 times our size and to see threats and opportunities while they are still on the horizon.

At SJR, we call our most versatile talent “zebra talent” for two reasons. The first is that they have stripes and aren't just limited to one color. In other words, they can do more than one kind of job. The second reason is that we believe there are no unicorns, no perfect fits for the job openings you have. There are only zebras, people who will surprise you with the many things they can do, if you are open to the possibilities.