A 600-Year-Old Lesson on Advertising.

Dan Jones is an historian. A major historian. And in my unqualified opinion, one of the most important historians writing today.

His great book, "Power and Thrones," is a must read. 

If you want to know how the world works, if you want to feel the sweep of history, if you want to understand how little things can have have thousands of years' of impact, and if you want to finally read about the effects of climate on our planet, pick up "Powers." Yes, it's almost 700-pages long. But each page is important and riveting. (I'm not sure how many crappy TV shows you can watch in the time it takes you to read 700 pages, but my guess is you'd be better served here.)

Right now, I'm 93-percent of the way through Jones' latest book, a 500-pager called "Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England's Greatest Warrior King." It might be the best book on how to run an ad agency that I've ever read.

That's right.

A book about a 15th-century king can tell us how to run a 21st-century business. Even a pseudo-business like an ad agency.

If you're educated in the old school like I was, you might have some nickel-knowledge of Henry V based on various plays by Shakespeare. His characters, Falstaff. Hotspur. Hal. Richard II, and Shakespeare's Henry plays all gave us a picture. And an interesting one.

Shakespeare indexed heavily on the wayward youth, Prince Hal, growing into a staunch and solid hero of a king, Henry V. What's more, his "St. Crispin's" speech should be listened to at least once a year. In fact, I wish kamala harris knew it, used it and understood it as our country writhes through its trumpian torment.

But, for all that. 

Why is the Jones' story of a king from 600-years-past a lesson for today?

Let me start with something big and small.

During my last five years at Ogilvy, I never once saw a senior suit on the creative floor. Just walking around. Seeing how people are doing. Looking at their desks and seeing pictures of their kids. Seeing the be-head-phoned creatives working to create. Watching hundreds working through lunch or through weekends, trying to create something fun, smart, human. Walking about, getting to know, support, show love for the people doing the work.

Just once in my 40 years in advertising, did I meet a holding company head. And the wall-eyed-dweezil lied to my face while condescending to me.

Henry was different.

Though at just 16-years an arrow shot six-inches into his skull nearly piercing his brain, he fought alongside his people. Alongside his people. With them, scarred cheek by jowl.

Artist's interpretation.

Today, in most societies and industries and communities, there are masses of people who get little more than the equivalent of processed cheese food. There are the few--the anointed, the to the manor-born, the mega-wealthy, the c-suiters, who never come down from their perch.

You see them hustling to their black cars at five, while you're finally getting lunch.

Some call it capitalism for the poor (that's you and I) who have to fight molar and nail for every scrap, and socialism for the rich (they're fed by the state.) It's another version of the old saw, "the rich get richer and the poor pay taxes."

The holding company executives never see, acknowledge or thank those who have made them rich. They're so removed from actual work and life, they believe their shit don't stink. 

Shit stinks. No matter whose it is.

As Jones writes about Henry V:

"it becomes clear that this has been an astonishing victory for Henry. For a king to have put himself in the face of such peril for so long speaks to his physical aptitude for fighting and his willingness to gamble everything if he detects the faintest scent of victory. That Henry has inspired his small and weak army to overcome the larger, fresher, more confident, and more glamorous French one is not just the basis for a dramatic legend: it is a military fact."

If you're a client, think about this.

You never see the people you spend the bulk of your agency money on. The rich people you pay for never put themselves at peril for your success. 

They aren't there for the creating. Only the accounting.

It's convenient to believe, or to convince yourself to believe, that the systemic sides of business operate machine-like. 

But no social organization, government, team, or company doesn't run on people.

It's the people, stupid.

It's people.

You know.

Those things we ignore.