You know when you stop paying attention to something, how it just starts to fall apart?
Not dramatically, but quietly.
It could be the garden you stopped watering. The inbox that you stopped clearing. The relationship that you stopped tending to. Maybe it’s the CRM you opened once after six months and it was just an address book now. No notes, no last contact date. No... well... nothing.
You didn’t make a wrong decision. That’s the thing, you didn’t make a decision at all.
And nature, well, as it does, it just took its course.
I watched this happen in real time.
It was an insurance company, of all things. (sorry in advance). I was working for a student based advertising company. Business would work with us to create a multi-touch marketing campaign across campuses in the UK.
A team leader had left this company to rot. No one was paying attention to it anymore. No one was nurturing it. Relationships had drifted. Systems had gone quiet. The whole thing was slipping toward chaos, fast.
It wasn’t because anyone in particular had done anything malicious. It was because nobody had done anything at all.
Entropy. It was entropy. Pure, observable, predictable entropy.
When I went back to it after the team leader left and the account was given to me, I didn’t have any sort of grand strategy. But I did have a presence. I showed up. I paid attention. I asked questions. I nurtured what was there.
Then slowly, out of the chaos, order began to emerge. New opportunities appeared.
The key is that I never tried to control the outcome. The opportunities came because I showed up and tended the soil.
Here’s the thing.
Entropy is not a metaphor. Entropy is physics. A law. The second law of thermodynamics. Leave something alone, and it will decay. A relationship, a system, a garden, a company. Without attention or nurturing, things move towards chaos.
By design, not by any moral failing, you have something built into the fabric of reality.
However, as humans, especially in western society, we act like we don’t believe it. We assume things will stay the same. We assume the relationship will hold. We assume that CRM will sort itself out. We assume the donor will remember us.
Absolute rubbish.
Nature doesn’t do neutral. It only does decay.
The design is clear: what you don’t nurture, you lose. Every. Single. Time.
The Dark Mirror: Three Lopsided Views of Influence
Most of the persuasion advice I hear doesn’t account for any of this. It falls into one of three camps. And all three are wrong.
Camp one: Control Everything. “Master the close.” “Use the right script.” “Apply the pressure point.” “If you didn’t get the result, you didn’t do it right.”
This is the American guru register. The countdown timer. The “DM me NOW.”
I’ve seen this version up close. I’ve got the scars. The business owner con-man who knew exactly which buttons of mine to push. (for another day) The reverend who threatened hell on me then passed the collection box. It was the same pattern, just in a different costume. Both of them believed the outcome was theirs to command.
Camp two: Neglect Everything. “Just be yourself. The business will come.” “Don’t worry about the systems. Don’t worry about the follow-up. It’ll sort itself out.”
People who believe this don’t have a CRM. Or, well, they do, but they haven’t opened it in six months. And when they finally do, they just see names. Addresses. Maybe a phone number from 2023. But there isn’t a prospect there anymore. There isn’t an opportunity or relationship. They just have a graveyard. And you’re lying to yourself saying “I’m sure I spoke to them last month.”
You didn’t mate, you didn’t and you know it.
Camp three: The End Justifies The Means. “Anything that gets the result is fair game. Manipulation, pressure, fake scarcity.”
The feature reciting salesperson the customer can’t wait to escape. They interrupt as soon as you start talking about a problem and start reciting those features about random products they have to sell. The system that tells you to shut up and comply. This is the camp that makes people flinch at the word “SELL.” Because they’ve only ever seen it done wrong.
Here is what all of those three camps share. None of them account for any design in the world.
Camp one ignores entropy by pretending you can force the outcome.
Camp two ignores entropy by pretending it doesn’t exist.
Camp three ignores the mystery of growth entirely, because it just doesn’t care how the seed grows as long as you get the harvest.
They’re all lopsided. The lopsided views of influence warps everything.
The Farmer Who Sows and Does Not Know How
There is a strange little parable most people get wrong, or skip. It’s in Mark’s gospel, chapter 4. Jesus is talking to a crowd, and he tells this story:
“The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.”
“HE KNOWS NOT HOW”
I just want to pause there.
He does not know how. Not “he’s got a rough idea.” Not “he’s 80% sure.” Not “he’s read a few books on agriculture and he’s fairly confident.” He knows not how. The mechanism that turns a seed into a plant is hidden from him. Completely.
And... yet... somehow that isn’t the problem.
Somehow, that is the design.
You know how when you’ve done everything you can and it still isn’t working?
You’ve asked the right questions. You’ve built the relationship. You’ve been consistent. You’ve shown up.
Yet still, nothing.
The donor doesn’t give. The client doesn’t sign. Heck, even for you trainers out there, the team member doesn’t engage!
You wonder if it’s you. If you’re doing something wrong. If there is a secret you are missing.
Well. Yes, sometimes, if you haven’t watered correctly.
But most of the time, there isn’t.
See, the mechanism of growth is hidden from you, the same way it’s hidden from the farmer. You can plant the seed. You can tend and water it. You can protect it from frost. But you cannot “make” it grow. The transformation is beyond your control, written in the DNA of the seed.
And that’s not a weakness in your approach. It’s design.
The control merchants don’t want you to know this. Because if you can’t control the outcome, they can’t sell you the script.
They can’t sell you the pressure point. They can’t sell you the guarantee. The whole industry is built on the lie that the result is yours to command.
It isn’t. Sorry bud.
And the farmer knew it two thousand years ago.
The farmer sows, and does not know how. Neither do you. And that’s the best news you’ll hear all week.
What This Changes About Influence.
“Alright Joby, so if entropy is real, and growth is mysterious, what does that do to how we think about influence... you saying don’t try?”
You’ve been told influence is about control. The close. The script. The outcome. But if the design of the world is entropy, plus mysterious growth, can you see how the whole framework collapses from that point?
Ethical influence cannot be about control.
It HAS to be about nurturing.
Here’s what you can control: the soil.
The presence. The consistency. The quality of your attention. Whether you show up with something real to offer. Whether you remember who someone is and what they care about. Whether you follow up, not because you’re chasing a close, but because you’re tending a relationship.
If you take one thing away from this... let it be this next sentence.
The nurture step is the whole thing.
The opposite of this is that pitch that lands and then you pray they’ll say yes. The CRM that is just an address book. The relationship that gets attention only when you want to ask for money.
psst. I’ve got news for you. That’s not stewardship. You are mining. People can tell the difference.
Remember, you are not responsible for the growth. You are responsible for the soil.
The farmer doesn’t stare at the ground demanding it to sprout. He sows and he sleeps. He wakes up and he does it again.
The consistent tending to the soil, and adapting based on the weather, is the most disciplined form of influence there is.
Sadly, it took me far too long to realise it.
The Humility at the Centre.
Here’s the humility at the centre of it all. And I really mean this.
If you believe you control the outcome, you’ll manipulate. You’ll pressure. You’ll push. Because if the result is on you, then anything that gets the result is justified.
I’ve seen this up close. It was me, for a long time. It was some of my worst managers ever.
I’ve even been on the receiving end of it.
There was an advertising con-man. There was a reverend with a legalistic manner and then a collection box. Both were the same pattern in a different costume.
If you believe nothing matters, you’ll neglect. You’ll drift. You’ll let relationships go cold because you stopped believing your presence made a difference. The CRM slowly decays from neglect. The prospect will fall through the cracks. And you’ll tell yourself it’s fine.
It’s not fine.
Entropy is real and it’s working against you every single day.
But, the design gives you a third way. Work with the grain. Sow. Nurture. Trust the design. The farmer sows and does not know how. He doesn’t need to know how. He just needs to sow, and nurture.
This is the foundation of ethical influence. And it was there, hidden in an ancient farming parable, the whole time.
That’s one law. But there are more. Patterns in the design of how we connect that are hiding in plain sight.
In philosophy, theology and science. In a text that’s been sitting on shelves for two thousand years.
How dare we understand any of this and keep it to ourselves?
This is what I want to explore here. Because, I’ve been doing it as a hobby to help myself grow for a long time.
If you’d like to come with me, I’m going to write more about it here.