It's been a long time since I've recorded an audio podcast but I decided to start a series of reflections on the nature of the corporation in today's world that seemed well-suited to that medium.
I'm very interested in your thoughts about this and look forward to hearing from you.
Here's Part 1 of Mapping The Corporate Genome.
JP Morgan Chase President Jamie Dimon was on Charlie Rose's program the other night. He said that instead of papering the corporate halls with proclamations of values and mission statements, he prefers to think about leading his company to make it "the best."
How? Don't overcomplicate it, Dimon says. Here's his list of what makes a company "the best."
We all carry around mental models of how things happen. Sometimes, those models prevent us from seeing things we need to see.
In particular, there's the matter of "change." I take that up in this video.
Lots of companies are blogging. But I haven't seen one like online shoe store, Zappos.com.
Most corporate blogs are, well, boring. They're more like brochures than blogs.
Zappos is different. Theirs is a hoot.
Watch the first video and tell me that you wouldn't know immediately whether or not you'd want to work at Zappos, or, for that matter, buy shoes from them. It may not be your cup of tea but they're lettin' you know who they are and a lot about their approach to doin' business.
Then, watch the second and imagine your CEO as the video's star. Or, if you're the CEO, ask yourself whether yours is the kind of business that would benefit from you leading in this way? (Remember, these are people in a privately held footwear business. Fashion people. Merchants. Lot of logistics and Web people. Young. Smart. Home office in metro Las Vegas. Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Take a look.)
If anybody asks you about what "authenticity" means in business, refer them to the Zappos blog.
Create, or die.
That's pretty much it today.
Now, I know that sounds dramatic. After all, there are plenty of sleepy businesses doing quite well, thank you very much, in tired markets. But, come the apocalypse, those businesses will be in a world of hurt.
Apocalypse?
Yeah, think about advertising. Was there a more established formula than advertising's? The past 50 years had taught everyone what ads were: messages beamed at eyeballs. Oh, sure, people complained, but we kept buying and buying and buying.
Then, the apocalypse.
The Internet showed advertisers that their customers were sick of being interrupted and spoken to like idiots. So sick, in fact, that we'd do anything in our power to shut off those interruptions.
But that didn't make us unwilling to buy, nor did it make us any less curious about what to buy. It just made us less willing to listen to those blaring, blinking irritants.
So...what's a marketer to do?
Well, how 'bout what Diesel's doing? How about not just affiliating your brand with all things hip, but actually doing hip things? Like sponsoring a competition amongst artists and designers to create something interesting, provocative, beautiful on a very large scale. That's what they did in Diesel Wall.
And then, just to be sure we all understand why they're doing this, they speak to us in a voice that very many of us find very familiar:
In any given moment in our daily lives we are bombarded by messages we didn't ask to see. A never ending stream of mass produced cerebral pollution offering at absolute best nothing more than needless want. Diesel Wall was born out of a need to salvage what precious public space is left and to fill it with something worth saying. We will take your powers of disuasion [sic]; your ability to disrupt; incite; excite; inspire and intrigue; to make comment; to make beautiful; to make real; to make people think again. The ultimate goal of Diesel Wall is to create a fusion between the private space of galleries/institutions and the open space of the city…to drive new direction in urban landscapes and recharge them with creativity.
"Cerebral pollution." Doesn't sound like the kind of thing a brand would want to be associated with today. Is your company, "message green"?
See? That's the difference relentless creativity makes.
Hat tip: The continually excellent IF! from PSFK
Kevin Kelly is one of my intellectual heroes. His thinking is so clear and far-reaching that I always learn something from him.
In this post, Kevin uses controversy concerning the taxonomy of life by biologists to shed light on questions of technology. He writes:
I venture further to suggest the same thing will happen in our classification of technology. At the moment, a phone is a phone is a phone. But already we see phones and cameras melding in the future. We see computers and TVs converging. We see computers and film falling into each other. We see cars becoming entertainment theaters, and shoes becoming health monitors. As technological devices and services become more complex, their boundaries of identity will blur and overlap.
Eventually, the distinction between living species and technological species will also be primarily one of convenience and habit, as genetically engineered organisms accomplish what machines used to do, and machines do what biological organisms used to do. We'll end up identifying a device as a probability index. It is mostly phone we say, with a little bit of photosynthesis bacteria. Or this notebook is kinda of alive. It is para-living, in that 50% neighborhood of life.
The splitters will be the last to acknowledge artificial life, or AI. While the lumpers think that both are already here, but lumped into a group we don't yet have a name for.
The problem? The either/or mindset. I've written about either/or thinking here before. The need for clarity and simplicity drives our desire to achieve "The Answer." Efficiency rules; effectiveness be damned. Bathing babies, prepare to be tossed. Parsimonium uber alles!
Particularly in times of crisis (no, this is not a regurgitation of the faulty "crisis = danger + opportunity" meme) the seduction of parsimonious choices is practically irresistible.
Resist it.
One way to do so is to read Roger Martin's recently published book, The Opposable Mind, which illustrates ways that successful business leaders transcend this lose/lose mindset through what he calls "integrative thinking." Simply put, Martin found that leaders like Procter and Gamble's A.G. Lafley and Red Hat Software founder Bob Young consider more problem features to be salient, resist the temptation to ascribe simplistic causality to systemic effects, approach decisions holistically, and creatively resolve tension among opposing ideas. And, they use this mindset relentlessly, because, as Lafley put it when asked about a P&G plan that achieved both cost cutting and innovation:
We weren't going to win if it were an 'or.' Everybody can do 'or.'
Another way? Give us a call...we can help.
Want to succeed in the workplace today? Success requires proficiency in three areas: IQ: technical competence in your field of expertise; EQ: interpersonal relationships guided by sensitivity to your own, and others', emotions; and, NQ: innovative intelligence, or openness and keen curiosity about ways of making novel ideas useful. Enjoy.
Losing the ability to experience shame is one of the telltale signs that an individual lacks some of the fundamental emotional mechanisms that define us as human.
My question is: how many of us feel shame today as a result of the revelations that the Blackwater contractors murdered 14 Iraqi civilians with nothing approaching commensurate provocation?
If we do not feel shame in the face of these actions, who are we as a people?
And, please, spare me the legalisms and rhetoric. These people are agents of the United States, despite their IRS Form 1099 status.
I attended a terrific event at the New York Stock Exchange last evening, the 360 Summit, sponsored by Susan Bird's wf360. Thanks to wf360 founder Susan Bird and Corante's Francois Goisseaux for the invitation. Here are some thoughts on what I heard.
After four-plus years of almost-daily blog reading, I can confidently say this: Seth Godin continues to be my single most thought-provoking blogger (with Grant McCracken a close second).
Today, Seth comments on Radiohead's recent announcement that it would release its next CD on the 'net on a pay-what-you-want basis. Seth then asks why it is that Radiohead was preceded by Prince and Madonna in using this new approach to music pricing. His answer is right on:
Most industries innovate from both ends:
- The outsiders go first because they have nothing to lose.
- The winners go next because they can afford to and they want to stay winners.
- It's the mediocre middle that sits and waits and watches.
Sharp insight. Of course the outsiders go first, as they are storming the walls of the citadel. The winners going next, however, is a bit counterintuitive, as, unlike outsiders, they have the most to lose. But, being winners, they have the resources to back up their guts.
Then we have the mediocre middle. Most business treatises denigrate the mediocre middle. It is the least sexy of all market positions and approaches. No striving, no disquiet; only watchful waiting.
The middle's mantra: When the market settles down and speaks, loudly and unambiguously, follow it.
This can be a highly seductive approach. After all, in these turbulent times, how many market innovators quickly surface and just as quickly disappear from view? Better to sit and wait while others sort out the risks, right? Think of the hundreds of businesses that live in that zone.
Seth's final word on this phenomenon is illustrative:
So, in every industry, the middle waits. And watches. And then, once they realize they can survive the switch (or once they're persuaded that their current model is truly fading away), they jump in.
The irony, of course, is that by jumping in last, they're condemning themselves to more mediocrity.
This, of course, is the voice of the innovator, looking at the mediocre middle-player as a lesser life form; a loser.
But, the fact is that many, many businesses love their mediocrity. It is their badge of honor; their central source of comfort. Living within the herd reduces the risk of being eaten by the predators, after all.
Once, while consulting with a firm that fit this description, I was pushing for an innovative approach. The client, an exasperated executive, said to me: "hey, that's what everybody in this industry does; so it can't be so bad."
To which I replied, "there's a great theme for an ad campaign: buy from us, we're no worse than the other guys!"
Years later, I see that this was exactly what this company was aiming for: the comfortably mediocre middle.
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