I was just reading Nicholas Carr’s “The Big Switch”, especially intrigued by the chapter discussing Edison and Insull. As a brief reminder:

Unlike many inventors, Edison didn’t just invent individual products; he created entire systems. This sets him way above lesser inventors who focused on products first before they tackled integrating these new inventions into the overall system. Edison first imagined the whole, then he built the necessary pieces, making sure they all fit together seamlessly. Edison talking about the vision of his electricity system:

“It was not only necessary that the lamps should give light and the dynamos generate current. but the lamps must be adapted to the current of the dynamos, and the dynamos must be constructed to give the character of current required by the lamps, and likewise all parts of the system must be constructed with reference to all other parts, since, in one sense, all the parts form one machine.”

To develop this system, Edison had to pursue technological breakthroughs in every major component of the system. He had to pioneer a way to produce electricity efficiently in large quantities, a way to transmit the current safely to homes and offices, a way to measure each customer’s use of the current, and finally, a way to turn the current into controllable, reliable light suitable for normal living spaces. And he had to make sure that he could sell electric light at the same price as gaslight and still turn a profit.

Despite his visionary genius, Edison couldn’t see beyond his licensing and components business. It took an employee of Edison, Samuel Insull, to perfect the economics of the technological system. What Insull understood was that utility-supplied electricity could serve a far greater range of needs than it had up to then. Electricity could become a true general purpose technology, used by businesses and homeowners to run all kinds of machines and appliances. But, for electricity and electric utilities to fulfill their destiny, the way power was produced, distributed and consumed would need to be transformed. Insull’s biggest challenge would lie in convincing industrial businesses that they should stop producing their own power and instead buy it as a service from central plants.

Which brings me to VRM.

Doc Searls just posted a few blog posts, discussing the state of VRM. Check them out here, here, here and here.

We’re in the early stages of VRM. In Edison terms, we’re about to invent indascent light. We’re still far away from developing systems and even further from integrating these systems for Fortune 500 companies, dramatically changing their business model. That leaves us with some time to think through and discuss what systems need to be developed to make this a smoother transition. Much smoother than the disruption experienced in the music and overall publishing industry.

Advertising/Marketing

According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, global ad revenue will climb to a half trillion dollar business by 2014. That’s a lot of revenue. A lot of jobs. And, even more important, deep integration into the overall fabric of our global society. What will happen to all of that when VRM takes off and becomes the dominant expression of the marketplace? What will advertising transform into? How can advertising support the VRM concept? Doc Searls states that “the amount of advertising that does nothing for customers is usually close to one hundred percent.” (I don’t agree with that statement at all. Good advertising still delivers value to people and creates demand. And always will. Unfortunately, good advertising is rare these days.) How, as a community can we bridge this gap between Doc Searls statement and the advertising industry? I’m concerned that pushing advertisers into a partisan corner might lead to obstruction and pointless territory fights. Instead, we should work collaboratively with advertisers how to make the VRM model work for each stakeholder.

It might be my own bias as a life-long marketer but I don’t believe the attitude “Marketing messes everything up” is productive and won’t get us where we want to be.

Sunk-Cost Fallacy

Rob Knight wrote brilliantly about the challenges of persuading companies happy with the current Status Quo to consider VRM as a viable concept. Larger enterprises have invested billions in CRM systems they expect to improve their ROI for decades to come. Executives have put their career on the line believing in these systems, convincing boards to spend a pretty dime. For VRM to become more than a niche concept, we need to convince Fortune 50 companies to buy into this concept. We can’t just rely on small companies with limited resources for CRM systems to create a groundswell that will force global enterprises to participate. We have to develop systems that help CRM-centric enterprises to transition into the VRM world. For many companies, Social Media was just another Second Life until the big boys (Ford, Best Buy, etc.) showed up. Doc Searls makes a good argument that VRM gives CRM systems more to relate to, and we’re not fighting a religious fight of CRM vs. VRM. Still, as we experienced with the advent of digital marketing and its challenges to be a partner on the marketing table, there are struggles ahead with people staying on the pure CRM side as long as they can. And we should be prepared for it.

Human Nature

One of the pillars of VRM is the ability of individuals to take charge of their data instead of managing them via a platform and exchanging that data for the functionality that the platform might provide. For VRM to succeed, adoption rate has to be huge. And that concerns me. We rely a lot on the willingness of individuals to participate and co-create these new systems. Let’s not forget: intelligent people post their full birth date on Facebook and check frequently on Foursquare into their own homes. My point: We can’t just rely on the individual. We have to take into account human nature which often includes laziness and carelessness. We need to invite anthropologists and behavioral psychologists into the discussion and allow them to help us in the effort. Some of this will happen organically since the VRM discussion starts to flare up more and more. But some organic planning for a more collaborative development wouldn’t hurt.

Warren Bennis once said:

“Innovation – any new idea – by definition will not be accepted at first. It takes repeated attempts, endless demonstrations, monotonous rehearsals before innovation can be accepted and internalized by an organization. This requires courageous patience.”

Right about now, we need the courageous patience of Samuel Insull.

Image: Courtesy of 25.media.tumblr

It’s tragic but true: Seduction is never easy when you’re seducing someone you actually like. When we fall in love with someone, we see them in the light of perfection. When we seduce a person we don’t really like, we put on the seduction mask, and desire to elicit a sense of inferiority.

Over the decades, most companies have shown all of us that they really don’t like people. They try to push them away with phone trees, form letters, and bureaucracy. People perceived to be inferior and felt the need to lie or take on a different persona to deal with companies. A soft-spoken person can turn into a raging tyrant after 20 minutes on hold.

With the advent of social technologies, people feel they regained some of their power back and that makes it harder for brands to seduce. Resulting in an emerging demand for transparency. People want to understand what companies are standing for, they want to share values. Ultimately, they want companies to love them and see them as equals. Not as inferior targets.

Too many brands are still using the seduction formula. Since seduction is a form of acting, brands need to have a concept of the audience’s expectations, understand what people will want to hear. The age-old problem with seduction aka advertising is that brands often don’t know what the audience will actually be touched by. More often than not, we guess why people fall in love with us. And brands are as clueless. It might be time for brands to put away the seduction masks and use the ultimate trick: be yourself.

Image: Courtesy of 13.media.tumblr

Comparing my friends in real life and friends in my Social Graph, I had an interesting revelation: most of my “real friends” are outwardly similar to me. We have common interests, tend not to be very interracial, multicultural or intergenerational. My Social Graph, on the other hand, is a totally different game. I find myself exchanging thoughts and feelings before even acknowledging, even less caring about skin color, gender or age. I have people in my network young enough to be my kids and significantly older than me. I hear from atheists, evangelists, wing-nuts, unemployed, independently wealthy – you get the point.

This is especially true for new platforms. When I first discovered Twitter, I just followed anyone that sounded remotely interesting. Over time, social networks start to develop specialized groups (at the worst, cliques) the longer these platforms are around, and the more time communities had to develop. That might be the reason why networks die over time: communities become stale and too much like our real-life networks.

Fresh networks help me to build relationships I never dreamt of when I grew up in a small in town in Germany with two TV network channels, a few awful radio programs and a fading signal from the Armed Forces Network. (Have you ever listened to the Super Bowl at 3am on the top of your house in 35 degrees because that’s the only place you could get a decent signal? Well, I did.)

Interactive Marketing is too often defined as selling things. The real potential of interactive marketing is relationship building – whether it’s groups of unbelievably loyal consumers sharing information, companies supporting online events and services that people use, making useful information available (not shilling information to sell) or interacting directly with consumers. The goal of each brand in the interactive space should be to give people choices. Nobody wants to be told what they want and what to do. The moment the ‘Mute’ button was added to the remote, people used it to have a conversation during commercials. When DVR’s started to become ubiquitous, people started to skip commercials altogether. And we got even more sophisticated when display ads reared their ugly head: We just became blind to them. No technology needed.

Besides some outliers, most marketers have accepted the rules have changed. But, we still play the outdated demographics game of trying to squeeze people into little boxes and messaging to them with even smaller messages. When traditional media reigned supreme, brands like Lexus targeted affluent professionals in their late 30’s and early 40’s. Print, TV and Radio could deliver that audience on a silver platter.

In the new marketing reality, I would rather build lexusbook.com or mylexusspace.com (I was never good at naming things) and connect with the fanatics of my brand. Develop relationships. Develop a community. Develop the brand through people.

Rather than lamenting the demise of traditional marketing and decline of performance metrics, brands need to grab this opportunity by the horns. The glass might be half-empty for selling things through marketing. But it’s overflowing for building relationships.

Image: Courtesy of 13.media.tumblr

People don’t care about “CRM” or “Social CRM”. Sales, Marketing and Customer Support departments do. People care about great customer experiences. Since Social CRM is just an extension of CRM, I’m not sure this model will be able to answer the desire of customers for better experiences.

Clearly, Social CRM is a dramatic improvement from current CRM models, adding new features, functions and characteristics to the mix. Social CRM understands the communication revolution we’re all living each and every day, and its effect on peer trust. Social CRM helps businesses also to move their sole focus away from transactions, and incorporate initiatives that improve interactions between businesses and people. At best, Social CRM will change value metrics from Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) to Customer Referral Value (CRV) – measuring how valuable people are when they tell others about their experiences with a company.

This is all nice and dandy but most of the Social CRM discussions revolve (once again) around technology implementations. Call it E2.0, Social Business, Social Business Design, Social CRM – most of these monikers describe integration of new technologies and not how the core needs of all stakeholders can be satisfied and, thereby, improving the overall performance of the enterprise.

Enterprises have to align their whole organizational model around helping people to achieve their goals.

Let’s face it, whatever you call it, all CRM systems are based on a company’s perspective of reality. You can add social as a spice or main ingredient, everything still revolves around the company. Relationships are still managed by the company, to benefit the company. We see encouraging signs where enterprises let people in to co-create and collaborate: on product development, improving company processes, solving customer service issues. It’s a good step from the old CRM model that tracked what a company assumed the customer wanted to the Social CRM model that focuses on what customers are saying they want.

The problem with Social CRM: It’s still a crapshoot

The ability of companies to do something useful with social intelligence still lags light years behind their ability to gather it. We have great technology how to gather social intelligence but no scalable processes to utilize this intelligence. And, let’s just say, we suddenly lived in a perfect world and had access to actionable insights, we tend to forget that human beings are social primates, not rational decision-making machines. The rational actor assumption is so hard to give up, and many still argue this idea to death. Humans are ruled by motivated and unmotivated biases. We apply what we want and expect to see, ignoring what we don’t expect or want to perceive. In addition, humans are motivated by effort justification. The more effort and resource humans have spent on a situation, the more likely we continue our spending, despite losses or harm. Motivated/unmotivated biases and effort justification influence how we first perceive information. There are several more factors which affect how we process our already tainted information, thus altering the way we frame situations even further. Meaning: We all make short cuts in the way we process information. We use “rules of thumb” (heuristics) to focus on necessary information to make decisions. There’s the representative heuristic, where we make a judgement call based upon how much something resembles a situation, and the availability heuristic where we base everything upon how easily we can come up with a similar example. Last but not least, we have to take into account the risky shift (the tendency of a group to be more risk acceptant than an individual) and group think, where a group’s collective voice masks and oppresses the ideas of the individual. Looking at all these factors influencing decision-making, how can we expect an incremental improvement aka Social CRM to tap into all these motivations and be anything more than a sophisticated Magic 8-ball?

The need for revolutionary change

Most of us agree: We live in revolutionary times. Consumers transformed into producers. People can easily produce and distribute content. If the story is worth telling, it will be heard. Creating large communities is no more limited to big institutions, each one of us can create communities. Some of them large, some of them small. Institutions can’t control anymore what they want us see, read or listen to; each one of us has control over our own destiny.

History should tell us that revolutionary times call for revolutionary changes, not evolutionary improvements. Case in point: East Germany. In 1989, people were fed up. They were fed up with travel restrictions and limitations in communicating with the outside world. People were out on the street demanding drastic changes. And the East German government responded incrementally: Ok, you can travel to Hungary whenever you want. But not to France. Ok, we’ll replace Honecker with another blockhead, Egon Krenz. But not with a new way of governing. A few weeks later, the Wall came down and the whole idea of East Germany disappeared forever.

Sure, nobody is protesting on the street, asking companies to let go of their stranglehold of data and customer relations. This is a much more subtle revolution. YouTube video by Facebook update, tweet by message board activity; people are building their own world, relieved from the stranglehold of MSM, people are creating their own reality. Social CRM feels like a catch-up strategy, not anything remotely revolutionary, game-changing enough.

What to do

Don’t regard Social CRM as a panacea, rather consider it as a bridge to VRM. Since VRM tools are still in development, use Social CRM for three purposes:

1. Support: Tap into the power of social networks to improve your customer support program. Develop tools and platforms to enable people to help each other, tap into existing networks to add your expertise and syndicate your knowledge throughout the Social Web.
2. Communities: Use current communities (especially the ones out of your brand control) to gather feedback for each division of your enterprise. Use a mix of branded communities (Passenger, Communispace, etc.) and organic communities.
3. Listen: Create a Voice of Customer program, understanding the desires and needs of your customer base. Don’t just listen, listen actively. Be part of the conversation to fend off small issues that can turn into major fires very quickly.

Tired already? Better get an energy drink, because the real work is ahead of us.

The road to CRM

1. Give up control already: Give people tools to manage their relationships with institutions. Don’t try to own the tools, the data, the relationship. Nobody owns a relationship. Give people as much control over the relationship as you have and personalize these tools for the needs of the individual.
2. It’s my data: Help people to control their own data. When they want their personal information deleted, allow them to do it. Without any opt-outs or other fancy road blocks to continue a dismal relationship. Develop tools that let people selective share their own data, determine their own “Terms of Service” and ensure that the privacy debate of now turns into a people data control story.
3. Let’s stop the guesswork: Instead wasting millions of dollars on useless advertising, help people express their demand. Lunch on my mind? Why bother firing up the Yelp application and looking for appropriate places?Instead, let people express their desire and allow brands to answer in time. No BT or CRM segmentation needed. I share with brands what I think is needed to get a good response. Period.

It’s now. Or too late.

These VRM tools are in the making. My company is working on it. Many others are developing solutions. Once they’re implemented, they will change everything: the way people deal with institutions, the way marketing and sales works, the way company spend their budgets – basically everything enterprises do.

While companies pay a lot of lip-service to customer-centricity, they still focus on themselves first and foremost. Institutions have to take off their divisional hat first, then the brand hat. Move closer to customers and understand where they are coming from. And together build tools that improve markets and add value to each stakeholders balance sheet.

“Revolution is not the uprising against preexisting order, but the setting up of a new order contradictory to the traditional one.”

Jose Ortega y Gasset.

Throughout the World Cup, I received many emails and tweets congratulating “my team”, Deutschland, for their great tournament and playing really exciting soccer (Fussball, as I call it.). Reading German newspapers and magazines, I experienced a lot of self-congratulation for the new, exciting German soccer game, how suddenly the world loves Germans and the multi-cultural faces that played on the team. Oh yes, and 3rd place was lovely.

Enough already.

We’re talking German soccer here. We’re supposed to win each time. Sure, we won’t, but any tournament we don’t win is a loss. Period. Did you ever see the Lakers or Yankees fans celebrate a second place? Or a good loss in the Division Final? Of course not. On paper, Germany’s performance in the last 3 tournaments looks outstanding: Third place World Cup 2006, 2nd place Euro 2008 and 3rd place World Cup 2010. Great. But, where’s the trophy?

Match it up with all that nonsense talk when the US tied England in a group game and people started to celebrate it as a victory. That kind of talk will get you nowhere. Very, very quickly.

Winning organizations are like “A” students: They expect to get an “A” each time they perform. Whenever they get a “B” or worse, they’re disappointed and work hard to get back to the “A” level. Mediocre organizations are like “C” students: They get a “B-” and high-five each person they encounter. They are still not as good as the slip-up of the “A” organization but they’re ecstatic because for once they’re out of the “C” cellar. Just to slip back into it again very, very soon.

We all worked with “A” people before. They might fail, maybe even often, but they always give everything they have. They believe something can be done when others think it can’t. They can solve problems others consider unsolvable. They don’t believe in expectation of others, they have their own expectations. And, we all worked with “C” people. They might talk a big game but their actual work is sloppy. Mistakes. Not failures. Laziness. No high standards. No inner push.

If your organization does things that everyone arounds you thinks you can achieve, then your organization is just a “B” student, not pushing everyone hard enough. I’m not talking about pipe dreams, I’m talking about Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals. Rationally, you will achieve your goals when you meet certain metrics. But, that’s not fulfilling, organizational achievement. Real accomplishment and achievement comes from pushing everyone, including yourself, to the limit. Beyond the place where everybody else thinks you could ever go. As a “C” organization, you need to push for constant “A” scores. It might take a while,  a lot of “B” scores, but as long you keep up an air of excellence, deeply rooted in your organization, you are on the way to become an “A” organization.

An interesting thing happens on the way: The people that didn’t believe in you and your organization in the beginning, will be starting to believe in you. And these people will do everything they can to make you even more successful. Nothing in your balance sheet might have changed, you still employ the same people, deal with the same stakeholders – a mindset of excellence will change everything.

My kid’s Karate teacher said to the class a few days ago: ” When you want to tear a piece of paper with your hand, you don’t aim for the paper. You don’t aim for a small space behind the paper. You aim for a place 2,000 miles beyond the paper.”

Shoot for the stars.

My daughter is five years old. She’s a very agreeable person, easy to get along with. Unless she wants some ice cream. She tells me about her friend Jenna who just had an ice cream. She points out people eating ice cream. She comes up with health benefits of ice cream. And, if I’m lucky, she hugs me and exclaims: “I love you, papa.” In short, she knows what she has to do to make me do what she wants. That’s strategy.

We are strategists. It’s in our blood. A book is a strategy. I can buy one for my wife to cheer her up. To show my thoughtfulness because I didn’t forget when she mentioned the title a while ago. Or to make a point. There’s no deep thinking involved, it comes natural.

The biggest mistake brands make is to believe information is equivalent to strategy. Telling people is not enough. Using the information in the most powerful way possible is the ultimate goal. Car safety ratings are meaningless unless you couple them with the message that aggressive driving just became safe. A hotel room sale is nice but this message is more powerful: “even you can live like the rich and famous.”

Typical marketing objectives are “Drive incremental sales.” or “Increase qualified leads”. We nod our heads when those slides come up, not reflecting if these are objectives we should try to achieve. I would argue, your objective is NOT to increase sales. Your objective is to understand why people are not buying your product/service and changing that behavior. Sales and all other important metrics will take care of themselves. Any advertising campaign or Social Media initiative should have the objective of influencing perceptions that will people drive to buy, become loyalists and influencers.

Imagine a campaign for couches. Normally, what you get is a shot of a couch warehouse and screaming announcers annoying us with a sale message. Sure, it works. Kind of. It’s boring. It’s expected. It comes and goes. Instead, if I had to sell couches, I would talk about the little moments we all have on couches: the moments of joy when our football team wins, the little naps with the kid, the book that kept us awake all night on the couch. Creating emotional connections between people and my couches.

The perfect advertising strategy identifies the most compelling thing you can say, owns it and, at the same time, undermines any effort of the competition. You’re earning attention, winning the battle of mindshare. Great marketing/advertising strategy feels like a good meal or a good movie. It just feels right; it’s hard to define a gut feeling. But, there are some markers:

- Explain the strategy to your non-marketing partner. If they get it, the world will get it.

- It works as a video and on a napkin. Basically, it has to be so simple that one sentence can explain your strategy.

- The competition will hire a new agency because your idea was game-changing.

- Your co-workers will hate you. “I wish I thought of that”-syndrome.

- Make sure it passes the “AM-after-2-espressos” test. After a long night in the office, a mediocre idea might look like a Clio to you. Sleep, drink 2 espressos and look at it again.

A few days ago, my daughter crawled into my bed and told me about her nightmare: “There were monsters and then I ate ice cream and they were gone.” She’s a natural.

I subscribe to the New York Times. Why am I willing to pay money for content that’s available for free on their site? (Until the paywalls go up.) Because their Times Reader makes it convenient for me to find all articles and read anything of interest very quickly. And they prepare the content for Sunday Times print edition so well, that I’m willing to spend around $20 monthly for that convenience. Why do I use iTunes even though the Amazon download is $3 cheaper? Because iTunes is so much better for my needs and gadgets.

Publishers are fighting the wrong fight. They are trying to protect their content because they see themselves as content providers. People are not willing to pay for content anymore. But they are more than willing to pay a pretty dime for a convenient service.

If publishers regarded themselves as service providers, would we have to deal with these awful slideshows and articles cut up into gazillion pieces to boost page views/impressions? Of course not. Would we have to wade through obnoxious display ads, advertorials and pop-ups? Absolutely not.

Publishers must provide people with new, unique and innovative services they’re willing to pay for, revolving around content people love. Protecting your content is a losing battle. Developing services surrounding content is the game-changer.

Image: Courtesy of Coralie Bickford-Smith

I took this journey of 13 blog posts to better define the model of Human Business Design. It was necessary to walk through the ideas of systemic thinking, introduce various systems, introduce the idea of interactive management, planning for the apocalypse, pie in the sky models, gap and assets, how to develop a community enterprise based on market principles, design a multidimensional organization, stay away from quick fixes and develop leadership for organizational evolution.

The model of Human Business Design is based on above foundation and rooted in the belief that all human interactions inside and outside of your organization matter now. They way human beings are motivated to connect and realize value has fundamentally changed. We’re seeing a fundamental reset in the nature of work due to drastic changes all of us are experiencing in how people communicate, coordinate and collaborate. And the Enterprise 2.0 “movement” tries to capture this changed behavior by applying Web 2.0 principles to the “command-and-control” needs of the enterprise. In addition, we see a mere obsession with tools for tools sake without much understanding of the socio-business context. The old problem of throwing software solutions at organizational problems is just being re-invented in the social networking arena.

Instead, we need to focus our attention on the shifting nature of work itself and how enterprises need to evolve in a rapidly changing world, Organizations need to dig deeper, define new principles around which work itself can be reworked. Forward thinking companies will develop their own constitution, a bill of rights and a social contract for all stakeholders to have a common purpose everybody involved can rally around. In short: enterprises need to socialize their business.

Technology is the critical enable to implement Human Business Design within your organization but technology is not a sufficient agent for change. We have to focus our work on humans, the limitations of extrinsic motivators (external reward or punishment) and the need for intrinsic motivators (finding meaning in work):

- Developing a foundation of trust
- Motivating and educating the stakeholders to become more active participants
- Providing access to stakeholder knowledge and skills
- Facilitating individual freedom and control
- Encouraging emotional/aspirational co-creativity and participation.

Successful evolution of the organization to a Human Business Design Enterprise requires them to find the appropriate locus of learning, between both market and non-market sources of ideas and knowledge. Most established firms are still trying to access these autonomous idea pools using industrial age logic and rational economic arguments, and, in most cases, tired and outdated marketing efforts where the emphasis is on surface-level tinkering of the customer engagement model, not a complete realignment and reorientation.

Enterprises have to understand that each business, with money and investment in structures, is no more than its people within and its people outside (all stakeholders). Enterprises need to rely more on people and bridge their left-brain thinking demands with the desires of people to focus more on their right-brain capabilities.

More than 10 years ago, the Cluetrain Manifesto exclaimed “Business is fundamentally human”. We need to stop treating stakeholders as “resources” and regard each stakeholders as clients with their own interests, desires and drivers.

If you want to learn more about Human Business Design and how we can help you implementing these principles into your organization, feel free to contact me at uwe@bateshook.com

And, all previous installments for this series, can be found here:

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12

Development is not something that is done to an individual or group; it is something they do to themselves. It is an increase in the ability and desire to satisfy one’s needs and legitimate desires and those of others. It is a matter of learning, not earning. No one can learn for another, but one can encourage and facilitate the learning of another. Development is not a matter of how much one has, but how much one can do with whatever one has and what resources can create out of what is available.

Organizational development requires leadership, which is primarily an aesthetic activity. One who leads development must inspire pursuit of a vision in whose production the leader had a hand. A vision is a picture of a state more desirable than the one that the organization currently is in. Leadership must also faciliate development of the strategy, tactics, and operations by whose means the vision can be pursued. Since the vision is often one of an ideal that can never be attained, though it may be approached continuously, leadership must see to it that the pursuit itself is satisfying, that it is fun as well as meaningful and valuable. Effective pursuit of an ideal requires the leader to extract the best possible effort from those who follow. In a corporation, this requires providing nothing less than a very high quality of work life.

Part of leadership is an appropriate ethical-moral judgement process. The ideal process would encourage leaders to make decisions only by consensus of all stakeholders. And the final decision should never deprive another of the ability or opportunity to develop unless the one affected by the decision would otherwise deprive others of this ability or opportunity.

However, the number of stakeholders of some corporate decisions runs into the millions, and there is just no way of involving all of them in every decision that affects them. For that reason, multi-national enterprises have to use representatives of various stakeholder groups. In a perfect world, any organization would designate individuals who will be responsible for identifying and evaluating the effects, if any, of current decisions on future generations’ choices and the ability and desire to make them.

A vision that involves a radical change in the way an organization is conceptualized is a transforming vision. One who leads the pursuit of such a vision is a transformational leader. Transformations are primarily qualitative, rather than quantitative, and are large discontinuities, not merely reform or incremental improvements.

The transformation to systemic thinking has brought with it a growing awareness of the fact that the effectiveness with which any of our daily activities (work, play, learning, inspiration) can be carried out depends on the extent to which they are integrated. Making it very apparent that a transformational leader must be able to integrate the various aspects of life in order to effectively pursue development. The transformational leader is one who can create an organization that reunifies life, who integrates work, play, learning, and inspiration.

The transformation of an enterprise from one conceptualized as an animate system to a social system is only one kind of transformation that is possible. However, in our current environment – one characterized by an increasing rate of change; increasing complexity; and an increasing rate of production of understanding, knowledge, and information – there is no other type of transformation that can bring about the necessary focus on employees, customers, and the other corporate stakeholders. A corporation that continues to focus more on shareholder value and less on stakeholders will ultimately fail.

In our last installment of the “Transform your business” series, we’ll talk about Human Business Design.

Previous installations can be found here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6 and Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11.

Image: Courtesy of Keep Calm Gallery

Brand identities are too often based on style manuals, branding workshops with overpriced branding specialists and fancy design. Developed in shiny offices with hip furniture and signed off by C-level executives. Imposing static visual standards to our culture. Tragically for these brand experts, our culture is highly dynamic: reinventing itself constantly, mashing it up, and responding to responses of responses. Unpredictable and always evolving. Static branding is only capable of taking a snapshot of the brand at a given moment. The moment the new brand identity launches, it’s already out of date.

Time to stop that practice. And start developing an organic brand.

Organic branding acknowledges the fact that the brand isn’t what the executives say it is. Brand is what everybody else says about the brand. It isn’t about a strategy, it is about actual behavior. The brand doesn’t exist in a branding ivory tower, it lives in this chaotic, messy place we call world. Organic branding doesn’t hide in the Presidential Suite. It lives everywhere, interacts with anybody, lives in the real world. It listens, observes, is curious, interacts, reacts, breathes and experiences.

Organic branding is not about silly fonts or PMS colors. Organic branding develops a brand DNA based on the meaning and purpose of the product/service. The brand DNA determines the personality of the brand: its voice, attitude, ethics and cultural place in the world. While the personality always stays the same, the expression of that personality constantly changes. Through colors. Fonts. Different styles.

Think trees.

A brand is like a tree. The roots of the brand tree symbolize the purpose and meaning of your business, designed to grow over time. The trunk stands for the entire body of cultural references a brand possesses. Branches stand for each part of your brand personality. Leaves represent the expression of your brand personality. Leaves will change colors, disappear, just to grow again. Seasons come, seasons go. Just like fads and bright, shiny objects. Or fonts and website redesigns.

Just like all healthy trees grow, a healthy brand will grow. Proper nourishment from the bottom-up is the key, and companies that root their brands organically will build strong roots with a dense trunk, creating a regenerative and expanding system of branches, twigs and leaves. Happy gardening.