a conversation about self-exploration with yannis simonides
CG: You've been touring the world, solo-performing Plato's Apology; where to me you nearly channel Socrates; who was spot on 22 centuries ago about the examined life and the virtuous way to be. Yet 22 centuries later, we’re still struggling as a society with living and behaving in right(er) ways.
Where are the clues, the insights we need?
YS: They’re right there in Plato’s text of The Apology. Plato’s and Socrates’ systems of thought, their philosophies, are still fundamental models to study and listen to – and emulate.
CG: Can we achieve a more virtuous culture?
YS: We can, but only to the degree we honestly examine our lives and apply the findings that flow from this self-examination.
Socrates said virtue is knowledge; that the only way to reach knowledge and therefore virtue, is to study, to examine and to have the opportunity to do so.
If we spend the time to have a dialectic, an investigation, a reasoning with ourselves, and not stop until we arrive at the truth – a truth that satisfies us (or satisfies us and whoever we’re engaging with, a boss, a friend, another nation)…we will be greatly rewarded.
We need to be willing to live in a culture of questions not one of ready answers. It’s a more courageous approach. And it takes more time. But it’s worth it. It serves us better in the long run as individuals and as a society, by giving us stronger foundations for our lives and for our world.
When I talk about questioning, and avoiding dogma, and achieving a change for the better in our entire ethos, it’s relevant because success here has to do with listening more versus trying to speak more.
It’s time for us to fall silent and listen. To begin.
CG: I’m reminded of Rainer Maria Rilke’s words from his Letters to a Young Poet, where he said: Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them… the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
YS: Each of us can initiate these kind of conversations, with ourselves and with others – in our families, our workplaces, our social circles; our communities, and our governments.
Socrates was never dogmatic in the way he talked. His approach was always propositions; suggestions; ways to consider being; invitations to question and discuss.
CG: Why do the simple wisdoms of Socrates, as you present the philosopher and his ideas, resonate so strongly today especially among the youth of many different countries? You’ve experienced this firsthand in and after your performances, from Athens to Dubai to Uruguay.
YS: Because it isn’t dogma. Because it engages them in questions and questioning. Because there’s great respect and dignity; a belief in peaceful co-existence; benevolent laws; an unwillingness to harm. Also because there’s no imposition of false gods or one’s own gods or ideas on them. Living to the best and fullest is the aim. These are all great gifts and inspirations for the youth of all cultures.
These are also things, deep inside, as you discover in The Apology, that we all – no matter what our politics or backgrounds – acknowledge as valuable.
The youth of today listen to Socrates because, like them, he’s not afraid to take a piss. He wasn’t afraid, as most of us are, to risk losing a job, a career, a relationship, by opening his mouth to say right and needed things. His philosophy teaches courage; it teaches examining yourself; and learning on your own more about yourself…and about what’s right and wrong – so it all becomes self evident. And in this process you become virtuous.
CG: You see a problem with the popular desire for immediate solutions, especially in dealing with crises or monumental issues personally or on a wider scale.
YS: This is a trap we fall into: looking for easy answers. Stop instead. Take a breath. Take a walk. Consider. Call a friend or colleague and have a conversation. Don’t take pride in being a man or woman ‘of action.’ No one knows enough about life to face a crisis and say they have the absolute answer. Yet this is how so much of society has acted for so long.
CG: As a long-time actor, director, teacher, radio host, you’ve mastered the art of communicating; dramatically, effectively, memorably. What are the ingredients that contributed most crucially to your mastery? What advice would you give about achieving effective communications?
YS: Empathy. Patience. Listening. Humor. Humility. And, a willingness to understand what communication actually is and should be: a two-way street; a full circle: you put something out and wait for a message to come back to you; that tells you your message was received and fully understood, as intended. Then you have communicated.
It’s the difference between the teacher who talks with you, engages you, and the one who gets up and just reads from a text; talks at you.
We can never be presumptuous about our audiences; we can’t label them.
Why? Because there’s so much more to people. Therefore, explore them; test them, as an actor would do. What is this house like, that you have before you? Is every Broadway theatre audience the same? No: the energy and interest and point of view of each group vary greatly. Those who ignore this dynamic are not the best communicators; they cannot communicate effectively.
And, don’t avoid doing something because you assume an audience won’t get it. Conversely, be sure to avoid things you think make sense but, looked at from their point of view, are likely to go right over their heads.
To be a great communicator, consciously play to people’s intelligence; to what you perceive as the best in them; using the best in you.
Anything else is deception, artifice or insensitivity.
And whatever medium you choose to communicate with, it’s your obligation to master it, as any great actor or director masters their craft.
Communication is as basic as breathing. Given our nature as social beings and our one-ness with Nature itself, we’re interdependent; in constant communication with each other and with Nature; in a give and take that happens billions of times a moment, every day, everywhere. Exchanging atoms with our environment is communication. Without all this, we stop breathing.
CG: Why do you feel such a burning personal need to examine and help others examine?
YS: Because I believe the world of our senses is just the tip of the iceberg. And those of us who live only on this level are blind, and make mistakes. If you ignore the rest of the iceberg, you’re another Titanic waiting to happen.
The world’s great difficulties now, like history’s Great Wars and Great Depressions and cataclysms, are signaling an enormous shift; one that’s not just economic. We need to understand what it means, what’s underneath it.
CG: I think despite the dislocations we’re up against, this tectonic shift is inspiring many of us, and forcing others, to re-examine their values; revisit (or re-affirm) what really matters in their lives, question long-held assumptions, and reconsider what right(er) thinking and acting is going forward.
YS: The most essential question we should be asking is should we re-examine the entire ethos we’ve been living by. My view is we should.
In every aspect of our lives and parts of society, from our governments to our faiths to our relationships to our place in the economy as consumers and as workers, we should be asking who are we? And asking what we want our future roles and responsibilities in society to be.
We all have the opportunity to initiate an exploration, in some way, in our own circles. I’m doing it through my performing and discussions around those performances. In order to bring people and organizations together in shared exploration – and discovery.
But assuming we have the answers, and following agendas and dogmas won’t get us there. Only a spirit and desire to examine deeply and freely and honestly will.
This is how we’ll evolve. And while evolution can be painful, because some things die, it can be wonderful because new things are born. This is the way, and Socrates’ way, that we’ll ultimately achieve a ‘culture of rightness,’ of higher values; of virtue.
CG: Yannis, thank you for all these thoughts. I hope some of our readers will find the opportunity to see you perform your stirring version of The Apology that continues touring.
Yannis Simonides has been touring the world as Socrates in solo performances of Plato’s Apology. An Emmy Award-winning documentary producer; actor and director, born in Constantinople and raised in Athens, he’s a former Chairman of New York University’s Tisch Drama Department, and was recently named an Ambassador of Hellenic Culture by the Greek Government. www.ellinikotheatro.org
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Thursday, March 26, 2009
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Getting More Attention
a conversation about powerful writing with tony leighton
CG: With all the chatter around us every day, and the easy or lazy lure of looking at video, how do businesses get people to read their written words and messages?
TL: By following the cardinal but constantly violated or bypassed rule of effective communications: understanding what the audience really wants to know or hear about, then talking to them about those issues, concerns or questions, not trumpeting your capabilities.
CG: Companies that fail to connect with an audience on their desired wavelengths usually lose those people, on the spot or ultimately. But why, after all this time, hasn't every marketer learned this?
TL: It’s all common sense, yet infrequently applied. The temptation is to sit down and laundry list your company’s capabilities; gather your “strengths” or benefits in one place and try to be impressive with them. When what you need to do is be empathetic. The other dynamic marketers miss the boat on is people don't read willingly, so it’s important to do other common sense things with this in mind.
One is to make it simple. People prefer to “speed graze.” They don't want to be forced to think much. Things that aren't simple force them, and that’s a turnoff to ‘reluctant’ readers…and the fact is most readers fall into this category.
CG: So you've gotten my attention as a reader, and achieving that is of course important. Now what else will keep me actively engaged in your story beyond this?
TL: It’s vital to apply a combination of neuroscience and zeitgeist. By understanding where we are now in the evolution of the human brain and how it handles words in a busy environment. We must feed people information they way they want to digest it, and in the way their brains process it.
You have to give them the following: a good reason to pay attention; a context for the message that’s relevant and meaningful to them; and a story – which could be a single line – but with a plot, a twist and some suspense. Using the devices of novelists and great [literary] journalists to help sustain readers’ interest.
CG: Is there always a bona fide story to work with?
TL: When it’s something short, something more informational, like a series of facts, there may be no story per se. Then your obligation is to write it as cleanly, clearly and fluidly as you can.
But you can often squeeze a decent story from almost anything. How? By empathizing with the audience, and by asking bold questions or making bold statements at the beginning. You might state, for example: we have no time. Which puts forth a promise that something is going to follow, something that might suggest you're offering a solution to the issue.
People also appreciate the unexpected. Even in business writing, creativity is about ‘turning’ the story in a direction the reader doesn't expect. It’s removing their sense of the predictable, and giving them something more seductive. It’s saying things that have a ring of the profound.
CG: Speaking boldly, probingly, profoundly, but always with a basis for doing so, with a reality and relevancy and authenticity, yes?
TL: Absolutely. That’s a given.
CG: What about creating and/or sustaining a lasting relationship, marketer to customer. Beyond the written message being read and received. How do you best achieve this? So your audience connects with you again and again with equal attention, interest and enthusiasm?
TL: A clear, friendly, warm, informative and empathetic voice is always well appreciated, by anybody reading anything. If a company can consistently speak with this kind of voice, people come to expect it and to look for it; listen to it. A voice like this that people seek out is a tremendous asset.
CG: You appreciate companies that take their messaging cues from advertising agencies.
TL: Yes, because the best ad agencies have mastered the ever-evolving art of getting attention and leaving impressions. They know their audience. They speak clearly and conversationally. They appeal on an emotional level, with warmth, friendliness, flavor and wit. And they stay focused on one idea, and substantiate it – with compelling evidence.
CG: What companies out there are do you see as the most effective?
TL: The big tech companies have been the leaders with this approach. I'd point to Apple, I always point to Apple. They almost invented clarity and simplicity and cool thinking in corporate marketing. Google does it quite well; Cisco, too and others. They speak to their customers the wiser way I'm advocating.
Companies that communicate effectively are often innovators in other areas. Like GE. Car companies tend to do it. Look at most industry leaders; look at their web sites or marketing material. It’s all generally clear, conversational and empathetic.
CG: And the companies that don't get it?
TL: It’s interesting how many other companies don't get it, or aren't practicing it. They still hide in corporate-speak and jargon, which used to be called “business writing.” Well there’s no such thing. There’s just effective or ineffective writing, and degrees in between.
CG: You see a gap in the creative agency landscape? Talk to us about this.
TL: There’s an interesting gap between ad agencies and design / communications firms. Design firms almost never have writers on staff. Ad agencies do: they have and pay copywriters, the best ones, large salaries. These [agency] writers are remarkable thinkers, and have a great command of the language.
This ad agency model is one I have always felt missing from the mix. Which is why you and I are called upon to serve as these specialists, to do this thinking work, to strategize with our design counterparts on behalf of clients and serve as the storytellers, the story writers.
CG: The reality is most of the design groups can't swing having someone on staff full time. Or if they can, they can't afford, in-house, someone exceptionally capable and versatile enough. What would you suggest to these firms?
TL: That it’s essential to work with a writer who has ideas. Good, smooth writing is just the price of entry. What’s invaluable is a collaborator who understands businesses and audiences, who knows what to leave out as well as what to include. A savvy thinker who has a sense of strategic momentum; who can see the next step in the chess game and reflect that in a company’s messaging.
CG: That brings up the question of classic pitfalls companies and creative groups and writers make.
TL: There are big pitfalls, big tiger traps to avoid, including the dangerous, often fatal assumption that people are actually interested in reading whatever you want to communicate. They aren't. Or assuming you don't have to woo them You do. Or believing that useful writing is stringing words together pleasantly. It isn't. Effective writing is conveying ideas well dressed in language. The ideas are 90% of it.
CG: Is there any need to evolve the language marketers use? Would that help people engage versus glaze over which they do when they see and feel the same tired old style or approaches being used to reach them?
TL: That’s a good question. I'd say there’s no new language, there’s just plain English, without fat; presented in a way that’s easily absorbed; that tells a story and brings concrete images to the mind of the reader.
There is a language trap, though: using abstract language. It’s far less effective than concrete language.
So, instead of writing we have multiple strategic concerns going forward, it’s better to say this could be more challenging in the future. Instead of writing consumer reaction is regionally skewed, just say people like this product in Oregon.
Jargon is non-specific, flabby, and fails to shape ideas. It’s a hiding place, a refuge for people who haven't learned to write with clarity and simplicity and strategic thinking; where you shape an idea and make it memorable and edifying.
Writing simply and thoughtfully is difficult. It takes a long time to master this art.
CG: What startling questions should marketers and/or creative groups that help them market be asking right now?
TL: Do you still know how to reach people? Are you sure? How do you know? And what more can you be doing?
CG: As an exceptional and exceptionally well-seasoned writer/strategist, who has been on the front lines of business for decades, Tony, what’s the most essential advice you can offer?
TL: Learn what good writing and messaging is and settle for nothing less.
The two easy ways to do it: do some research and write down 10 rules of messaging that can never be broken; to serve as your guide and filter and litmus test. For example, 1) make it easy to read, 2) speak conversationally, 3) address the audience’s concerns etc. Rules that, when followed, result in a much stronger piece of communication. Rules that, when broken, weaken your piece.
Second, study how the very best companies communicate. Then emulate them. Anything Apple has ever written is a great starting point. I doubt most internal communications people actually do this. If any of your readers have, maybe they could share their experience.
Hold up, for example, some Apple writing alongside some internal writing being proposed for the annual report or a brochure or given communication. And see and understand the differences.
CG: Tony, a great deal of insight and practical advice to consider. I hope you'll come back and do another interview sometime, thank you.
Tony Leighton is a nimble thinker, strategist, writer and mentor, whose career spans decades of journalism, and high-level storytelling for leading Canadian and U.S. companies and institutions. tonyleighton@fix.ca
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TL: By following the cardinal but constantly violated or bypassed rule of effective communications: understanding what the audience really wants to know or hear about, then talking to them about those issues, concerns or questions, not trumpeting your capabilities.
CG: Companies that fail to connect with an audience on their desired wavelengths usually lose those people, on the spot or ultimately. But why, after all this time, hasn't every marketer learned this?
TL: It’s all common sense, yet infrequently applied. The temptation is to sit down and laundry list your company’s capabilities; gather your “strengths” or benefits in one place and try to be impressive with them. When what you need to do is be empathetic. The other dynamic marketers miss the boat on is people don't read willingly, so it’s important to do other common sense things with this in mind.
One is to make it simple. People prefer to “speed graze.” They don't want to be forced to think much. Things that aren't simple force them, and that’s a turnoff to ‘reluctant’ readers…and the fact is most readers fall into this category.
CG: So you've gotten my attention as a reader, and achieving that is of course important. Now what else will keep me actively engaged in your story beyond this?
TL: It’s vital to apply a combination of neuroscience and zeitgeist. By understanding where we are now in the evolution of the human brain and how it handles words in a busy environment. We must feed people information they way they want to digest it, and in the way their brains process it.
You have to give them the following: a good reason to pay attention; a context for the message that’s relevant and meaningful to them; and a story – which could be a single line – but with a plot, a twist and some suspense. Using the devices of novelists and great [literary] journalists to help sustain readers’ interest.
CG: Is there always a bona fide story to work with?
TL: When it’s something short, something more informational, like a series of facts, there may be no story per se. Then your obligation is to write it as cleanly, clearly and fluidly as you can.
But you can often squeeze a decent story from almost anything. How? By empathizing with the audience, and by asking bold questions or making bold statements at the beginning. You might state, for example: we have no time. Which puts forth a promise that something is going to follow, something that might suggest you're offering a solution to the issue.
People also appreciate the unexpected. Even in business writing, creativity is about ‘turning’ the story in a direction the reader doesn't expect. It’s removing their sense of the predictable, and giving them something more seductive. It’s saying things that have a ring of the profound.
CG: Speaking boldly, probingly, profoundly, but always with a basis for doing so, with a reality and relevancy and authenticity, yes?
TL: Absolutely. That’s a given.
CG: What about creating and/or sustaining a lasting relationship, marketer to customer. Beyond the written message being read and received. How do you best achieve this? So your audience connects with you again and again with equal attention, interest and enthusiasm?
TL: A clear, friendly, warm, informative and empathetic voice is always well appreciated, by anybody reading anything. If a company can consistently speak with this kind of voice, people come to expect it and to look for it; listen to it. A voice like this that people seek out is a tremendous asset.
CG: You appreciate companies that take their messaging cues from advertising agencies.
TL: Yes, because the best ad agencies have mastered the ever-evolving art of getting attention and leaving impressions. They know their audience. They speak clearly and conversationally. They appeal on an emotional level, with warmth, friendliness, flavor and wit. And they stay focused on one idea, and substantiate it – with compelling evidence.
CG: What companies out there are do you see as the most effective?
TL: The big tech companies have been the leaders with this approach. I'd point to Apple, I always point to Apple. They almost invented clarity and simplicity and cool thinking in corporate marketing. Google does it quite well; Cisco, too and others. They speak to their customers the wiser way I'm advocating.
Companies that communicate effectively are often innovators in other areas. Like GE. Car companies tend to do it. Look at most industry leaders; look at their web sites or marketing material. It’s all generally clear, conversational and empathetic.
CG: And the companies that don't get it?
TL: It’s interesting how many other companies don't get it, or aren't practicing it. They still hide in corporate-speak and jargon, which used to be called “business writing.” Well there’s no such thing. There’s just effective or ineffective writing, and degrees in between.
CG: You see a gap in the creative agency landscape? Talk to us about this.
TL: There’s an interesting gap between ad agencies and design / communications firms. Design firms almost never have writers on staff. Ad agencies do: they have and pay copywriters, the best ones, large salaries. These [agency] writers are remarkable thinkers, and have a great command of the language.
This ad agency model is one I have always felt missing from the mix. Which is why you and I are called upon to serve as these specialists, to do this thinking work, to strategize with our design counterparts on behalf of clients and serve as the storytellers, the story writers.
CG: The reality is most of the design groups can't swing having someone on staff full time. Or if they can, they can't afford, in-house, someone exceptionally capable and versatile enough. What would you suggest to these firms?
TL: That it’s essential to work with a writer who has ideas. Good, smooth writing is just the price of entry. What’s invaluable is a collaborator who understands businesses and audiences, who knows what to leave out as well as what to include. A savvy thinker who has a sense of strategic momentum; who can see the next step in the chess game and reflect that in a company’s messaging.
CG: That brings up the question of classic pitfalls companies and creative groups and writers make.
TL: There are big pitfalls, big tiger traps to avoid, including the dangerous, often fatal assumption that people are actually interested in reading whatever you want to communicate. They aren't. Or assuming you don't have to woo them You do. Or believing that useful writing is stringing words together pleasantly. It isn't. Effective writing is conveying ideas well dressed in language. The ideas are 90% of it.
CG: Is there any need to evolve the language marketers use? Would that help people engage versus glaze over which they do when they see and feel the same tired old style or approaches being used to reach them?
TL: That’s a good question. I'd say there’s no new language, there’s just plain English, without fat; presented in a way that’s easily absorbed; that tells a story and brings concrete images to the mind of the reader.
There is a language trap, though: using abstract language. It’s far less effective than concrete language.
So, instead of writing we have multiple strategic concerns going forward, it’s better to say this could be more challenging in the future. Instead of writing consumer reaction is regionally skewed, just say people like this product in Oregon.
Jargon is non-specific, flabby, and fails to shape ideas. It’s a hiding place, a refuge for people who haven't learned to write with clarity and simplicity and strategic thinking; where you shape an idea and make it memorable and edifying.
Writing simply and thoughtfully is difficult. It takes a long time to master this art.
CG: What startling questions should marketers and/or creative groups that help them market be asking right now?
TL: Do you still know how to reach people? Are you sure? How do you know? And what more can you be doing?
CG: As an exceptional and exceptionally well-seasoned writer/strategist, who has been on the front lines of business for decades, Tony, what’s the most essential advice you can offer?
TL: Learn what good writing and messaging is and settle for nothing less.
The two easy ways to do it: do some research and write down 10 rules of messaging that can never be broken; to serve as your guide and filter and litmus test. For example, 1) make it easy to read, 2) speak conversationally, 3) address the audience’s concerns etc. Rules that, when followed, result in a much stronger piece of communication. Rules that, when broken, weaken your piece.
Second, study how the very best companies communicate. Then emulate them. Anything Apple has ever written is a great starting point. I doubt most internal communications people actually do this. If any of your readers have, maybe they could share their experience.
Hold up, for example, some Apple writing alongside some internal writing being proposed for the annual report or a brochure or given communication. And see and understand the differences.
CG: Tony, a great deal of insight and practical advice to consider. I hope you'll come back and do another interview sometime, thank you.
Tony Leighton is a nimble thinker, strategist, writer and mentor, whose career spans decades of journalism, and high-level storytelling for leading Canadian and U.S. companies and institutions. tonyleighton@fix.ca
share this conversation with a colleague or friend
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strategic messaging & story development
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Saturday, March 7, 2009
Searching for the Giant Squid
a conversation about curiosity with steve burnett
CG: What is curiosity for you?
SB: It’s the world’s greatest gift to us. It transcends race, religion, time and culture and the biases that divide us. It causes us to look beyond the hill and intrigues us to go there. And once we're there it allows us to see highly original things.
The new truths we discover out of curiosity can be so powerful, and brought back and shared as stories or science. They help us and our communities and educational institutions evolve and thrive.
CG: How do we know if a company is being curious in productive ways? Is there a litmus test?
SB: See if it’s part of a company’s strategic plan. The simplest way is to follow the money. Do they have a healthy R&D budget? Also, do they support management and employee training, and interactions that further the conversation about new things? And is there a culture of exploration and discovery, and a real acceptance of new ideas?
CG: What about the creative groups that work with those companies, groups like yours?
CG: What is curiosity for you?
SB: It’s the world’s greatest gift to us. It transcends race, religion, time and culture and the biases that divide us. It causes us to look beyond the hill and intrigues us to go there. And once we're there it allows us to see highly original things.
The new truths we discover out of curiosity can be so powerful, and brought back and shared as stories or science. They help us and our communities and educational institutions evolve and thrive.
CG: How do we know if a company is being curious in productive ways? Is there a litmus test?
SB: See if it’s part of a company’s strategic plan. The simplest way is to follow the money. Do they have a healthy R&D budget? Also, do they support management and employee training, and interactions that further the conversation about new things? And is there a culture of exploration and discovery, and a real acceptance of new ideas?
CG: What about the creative groups that work with those companies, groups like yours?
SB: We designers and others like us are in the curiosity business. Because we're constantly engaged in questioning, exploring and creating things. It’s wonderful how we invariably get to a point we think we have it all figured out…only to find we're turning a corner to a next universe. In the 19th century the engineering community thought it had invented everything there was to invent. They were the greatest curiosity engines on the planet. In fact, the patent office nearly closed down back then because there wasn't anything new to invent: the engineers of the day had done such an extraordinary job translating their curiosity into a vast universe of mechanical things.
CG: Is inquisitiveness an essential ingredient, something that can mean the difference between make-or-break?
SB: In any industry, curiosity plays a vital role when you're starting or re-building a business. If a company doesn't reinvent itself regularly it will wither and die. And without a way to reinvent, without giving curiosity enough rein and continually supporting it, a company can't survive in any good way.
CG: Is curiosity a natural or a learned quality?
SB: You look at a child. A three-year old on the beach. How, when they bend over as the tide recedes and see their reflection in the water, we see in their eyes how magical and wonderful the world is to them. Well, everyone is born looking at the world without preconceptions. All children are full of pure wonder. This is where our wisdom begins…in a state of wonder.
CG: I believe this is a place, a state of being we can re-find, that we can return to as people and as businesses. Yet why does it stop, or get arrested? And how do you rekindle it?
SB: It stops because people get programmed not to wonder, but to operate in an acceptable way. I think some people as they get older also get tired and fall into ruts.
But there are many ways to re-ignite our sense of curiosity and imagining. You need to step off the well-worn path into the unfamiliar, and taste the hidden or forbidden fruit. How far you step depends on how much risk you're willing to take, and what floats your boat – to explore anew. It’s an extremely personal and individual conversation.
Men particularly, at a certain point in their lives, go through a phase where things have gone along well enough but they are no longer satisfied. They feel something meaningful is missing. Reevaluating the meaning of life is part of the natural process of development, of looking at who we are in the great scheme of the human condition.
CG: How do organizations inspire or excite curiosity, both inside, among their own tribe, and outside, among their customers, clients, stakeholders, communities?
But there are many ways to re-ignite our sense of curiosity and imagining. You need to step off the well-worn path into the unfamiliar, and taste the hidden or forbidden fruit. How far you step depends on how much risk you're willing to take, and what floats your boat – to explore anew. It’s an extremely personal and individual conversation.
Men particularly, at a certain point in their lives, go through a phase where things have gone along well enough but they are no longer satisfied. They feel something meaningful is missing. Reevaluating the meaning of life is part of the natural process of development, of looking at who we are in the great scheme of the human condition.
CG: How do organizations inspire or excite curiosity, both inside, among their own tribe, and outside, among their customers, clients, stakeholders, communities?
SB: It’s not about doing things with a Six Sigma approach, even though there’s some discovery in that. An organization needs to have people around whose job is mainly or solely to look for category changes, game changes, quantum leaps in opportunity, competitiveness, efficiency.
Some corporations see these ‘curious’ individuals that are hired as an invasive species, and will effectively kill their input or discount their value as soon as they enter a corporate culture. Other companies – the wiser ones -- offer these probers, inquirers, explorers a place in the garden, where their unique species of flora and fauna can flourish, can be deeply curious and greatly benefit the business.
CG: Do you know some of these exotic species, these curiosity seekers?
SB: I think this work is far too important to be left to so-called experts: it’s in all of us; inside me, inside you.
CG: That I'll second. I'd also like to raise a hand for poets present and past, who wonder and inspire wonder about nearly everything we can think of, from lightning to loving to language. Including motive poets like David Whyte, who has been a bright spark for many businesses and individuals, moving them to a rich place of re-imagining.
CG: What about others you could point to that the readers might know, or would like to know more about, as models or inspirations?
SB: I know some in the corporate world, who have been able to turn things upside down and do the impossible, because they're intensely curious about the way things work and have been willing to take calculated risks. Fred Parnon of Jnana Technologies, Alisa Zamir, designer and professor at Pratt, Bill Dunk, a social engineer, provocateur, and eminence gris to corporate chieftains – and his curiosity-satisfying site The Global Province, and Michael Grisham, an inventor, are some creative investigators that spring to mind.
CG: So tell us about your search for the giant squid. Why has your curiosity about it taken you all over the world, and thousands of leagues under the sea?
SB: It’s the largest fish on the planet. It has been written about and documented, yet no humans have really been eye-to-eye with it, in its native habitat; and studied it close up. It’s just marvelous that on a planet where we think we know so much, we can't be together with something this magnificent right where it lives.
CG: Should we allow ourselves to be much more curious, immensely curious? Using the giant squid as a metaphor.
SB: One of the reasons the giant squid has never been seen, is because (less out of curiosity and more out of man’s hubris) for years people went down into the depths in umbilical rovers, robot submersibles with big lights, to search for it. But they never put two-and-two together: the giant squid has the largest and most sensitive eyeball in the animal kingdom and here the ‘unenlightened’ seekers go down with the brightest light ever made then are puzzled why they can't find any.
You see, what goes along with good, curious exploration is empathy: you need to enter another world and see and feel it the way its inhabitants see it. Deep down, the giant squid gathers light with its large eye: the bioluminescent light of flashing dinoflagellates.
If you're engaged in any pursuit, being true to it will open up myriad and often marvelous angles of thinking and approach. This is where we can touch places of great wondering and pondering and innovation and realization.
CG: Steve, what else in the landscape are you insatiably curious about these days?
SB: Getting to know more about the chef you introduced me to, Cyril Renaud, at Bar Breton.
And variations-on-themes, ones that have been worked forever keep me curious. How to remake what everyone has become bored with. Adding new energy to old clichés.
CG: What one or two companies for you have a rich and productive sense of curiosity? That capacity that leads to breakthroughs and competitive advantages.
SB: One was Alltel, and a fellow named Frank O’Mara, the marketing director there. He took a niche player and turned it into a national one, through some extremely innovative positioning work.
The line between curiosity and competitiveness is very thin. If you asked O’Mara if he was curious, he might not understand the word but he would understand the competitive part big time, and immediately. Motivation in his case came from the competitive side but his deep curiosity led him to figure out how to jump ahead differently as a business.
CG: There’s something pure and innocent about curiosity, and it seems the world could do with a lot more of that right now.
SB: Sometimes it’s not all that innocent. Einstein was a curious man, and did a lot of musing around interesting scientific possibilities, but some of that was applied quickly and critically to making an atomic weapon.
CG: How do social networks play a role?
SB: Quite often the only frame of reference a company has about whether it’s doing something right or wrong is to put it in front of other people. Social networks are perfect this way, because they're a mirror that quickly and clearly reflects whether there’s a receptive ear or eye or mindset for what a business is offering publicly, or how it’s thinking.
CG: How do companies get their audiences to have a sense of curiosity and wonder about things they, as a business, are doing in the world; in the marketplace? So that communities of interest they interact with become genuinely intrigued, meaning in a wholly un-persuaded way.
SB: An exciting thing that happens at certain times in human history is the hive or herd mentality. Where suddenly everyone is turned on to exploring the same thing at the same time. Where there’s pervasive curiosity with affirmation around an idea. Especially in times of stress. Unfortunately war and poverty are great motivators here. You have other cases, in more recent history, where curiosity led to suddenly huge inventions, like fossil fuel and its potential, that completely changed the landscape, changed the world’s industrial and social fabric.
We're on a similar path of searching right now, especially driven by the stress of the global economic meltdown. The landscape is changing and the people in it will need to adapt and invent new things to survive. And they will.
CG: Many of us have been fascinated by people and businesses using curiosity and creativity to do truly incredible things, that make life and work significantly smarter, better, more rewarding. Is this happening enough, or visibly enough? You also had something you wanted to say about Google.
SB: In the not too recent past, you had to go to a University or church or company for knowledge. And they protected that “library” of knowledge, and if you wanted access to it you had to pay tuition or tithe or buy a product. In the academic world, they opened the library to you while you were a student, then closed the doors to you after you left. The curious experiment is: what if you took the walls down – and made all the knowledge transparent, and accessible to any one, any where, any time. What would happen to the world, and its curiosity?
In building this kind of resource, Google is making a lot of money. But are they engaged in one of the greatest experiments of civilized man right now? It could go massively to the good or to the detrimental side, depending on how people use it.
You can go onto Google and look at the nuclear footprint of Iran through Google Earth, or find the plans for Marine One, or see a satellite picture of your neighbor sunbathing naked. There are so many curious things being made available. What are you, what are we going to do with it all, or about it all?
Fast forward 10 years, to a stone tablet. Will someone be chiseling into a rock that the end of man arrived because the genie got out of the bottle; because there was unlimited and unwise use of information?
CG: We need to wonder about all this, seriously wonder; about where we are heading and why, in business and society. I hope we find the right insights and answers. And that the only genie we uncork is a genie of deep curiosity inside us, our communities, our companies and the minds of the big thinkers that help keep the world turning and evolving.
Thanks for all the rich and roving thoughts, Steve.
Steve Burnett is a mercurial thinker, artist, adventurer and long-time principal of The Burnett Group in New York.
share this conversation with a colleague or friend
Some corporations see these ‘curious’ individuals that are hired as an invasive species, and will effectively kill their input or discount their value as soon as they enter a corporate culture. Other companies – the wiser ones -- offer these probers, inquirers, explorers a place in the garden, where their unique species of flora and fauna can flourish, can be deeply curious and greatly benefit the business.
CG: Do you know some of these exotic species, these curiosity seekers?
SB: I think this work is far too important to be left to so-called experts: it’s in all of us; inside me, inside you.
CG: That I'll second. I'd also like to raise a hand for poets present and past, who wonder and inspire wonder about nearly everything we can think of, from lightning to loving to language. Including motive poets like David Whyte, who has been a bright spark for many businesses and individuals, moving them to a rich place of re-imagining.
CG: What about others you could point to that the readers might know, or would like to know more about, as models or inspirations?
SB: I know some in the corporate world, who have been able to turn things upside down and do the impossible, because they're intensely curious about the way things work and have been willing to take calculated risks. Fred Parnon of Jnana Technologies, Alisa Zamir, designer and professor at Pratt, Bill Dunk, a social engineer, provocateur, and eminence gris to corporate chieftains – and his curiosity-satisfying site The Global Province, and Michael Grisham, an inventor, are some creative investigators that spring to mind.
CG: So tell us about your search for the giant squid. Why has your curiosity about it taken you all over the world, and thousands of leagues under the sea?
SB: It’s the largest fish on the planet. It has been written about and documented, yet no humans have really been eye-to-eye with it, in its native habitat; and studied it close up. It’s just marvelous that on a planet where we think we know so much, we can't be together with something this magnificent right where it lives.
CG: Should we allow ourselves to be much more curious, immensely curious? Using the giant squid as a metaphor.
SB: One of the reasons the giant squid has never been seen, is because (less out of curiosity and more out of man’s hubris) for years people went down into the depths in umbilical rovers, robot submersibles with big lights, to search for it. But they never put two-and-two together: the giant squid has the largest and most sensitive eyeball in the animal kingdom and here the ‘unenlightened’ seekers go down with the brightest light ever made then are puzzled why they can't find any.
You see, what goes along with good, curious exploration is empathy: you need to enter another world and see and feel it the way its inhabitants see it. Deep down, the giant squid gathers light with its large eye: the bioluminescent light of flashing dinoflagellates.
If you're engaged in any pursuit, being true to it will open up myriad and often marvelous angles of thinking and approach. This is where we can touch places of great wondering and pondering and innovation and realization.
CG: Steve, what else in the landscape are you insatiably curious about these days?
SB: Getting to know more about the chef you introduced me to, Cyril Renaud, at Bar Breton.
And variations-on-themes, ones that have been worked forever keep me curious. How to remake what everyone has become bored with. Adding new energy to old clichés.
CG: What one or two companies for you have a rich and productive sense of curiosity? That capacity that leads to breakthroughs and competitive advantages.
SB: One was Alltel, and a fellow named Frank O’Mara, the marketing director there. He took a niche player and turned it into a national one, through some extremely innovative positioning work.
The line between curiosity and competitiveness is very thin. If you asked O’Mara if he was curious, he might not understand the word but he would understand the competitive part big time, and immediately. Motivation in his case came from the competitive side but his deep curiosity led him to figure out how to jump ahead differently as a business.
CG: There’s something pure and innocent about curiosity, and it seems the world could do with a lot more of that right now.
SB: Sometimes it’s not all that innocent. Einstein was a curious man, and did a lot of musing around interesting scientific possibilities, but some of that was applied quickly and critically to making an atomic weapon.
CG: How do social networks play a role?
SB: Quite often the only frame of reference a company has about whether it’s doing something right or wrong is to put it in front of other people. Social networks are perfect this way, because they're a mirror that quickly and clearly reflects whether there’s a receptive ear or eye or mindset for what a business is offering publicly, or how it’s thinking.
CG: How do companies get their audiences to have a sense of curiosity and wonder about things they, as a business, are doing in the world; in the marketplace? So that communities of interest they interact with become genuinely intrigued, meaning in a wholly un-persuaded way.
SB: An exciting thing that happens at certain times in human history is the hive or herd mentality. Where suddenly everyone is turned on to exploring the same thing at the same time. Where there’s pervasive curiosity with affirmation around an idea. Especially in times of stress. Unfortunately war and poverty are great motivators here. You have other cases, in more recent history, where curiosity led to suddenly huge inventions, like fossil fuel and its potential, that completely changed the landscape, changed the world’s industrial and social fabric.
We're on a similar path of searching right now, especially driven by the stress of the global economic meltdown. The landscape is changing and the people in it will need to adapt and invent new things to survive. And they will.
CG: Many of us have been fascinated by people and businesses using curiosity and creativity to do truly incredible things, that make life and work significantly smarter, better, more rewarding. Is this happening enough, or visibly enough? You also had something you wanted to say about Google.
SB: In the not too recent past, you had to go to a University or church or company for knowledge. And they protected that “library” of knowledge, and if you wanted access to it you had to pay tuition or tithe or buy a product. In the academic world, they opened the library to you while you were a student, then closed the doors to you after you left. The curious experiment is: what if you took the walls down – and made all the knowledge transparent, and accessible to any one, any where, any time. What would happen to the world, and its curiosity?
In building this kind of resource, Google is making a lot of money. But are they engaged in one of the greatest experiments of civilized man right now? It could go massively to the good or to the detrimental side, depending on how people use it.
You can go onto Google and look at the nuclear footprint of Iran through Google Earth, or find the plans for Marine One, or see a satellite picture of your neighbor sunbathing naked. There are so many curious things being made available. What are you, what are we going to do with it all, or about it all?
Fast forward 10 years, to a stone tablet. Will someone be chiseling into a rock that the end of man arrived because the genie got out of the bottle; because there was unlimited and unwise use of information?
CG: We need to wonder about all this, seriously wonder; about where we are heading and why, in business and society. I hope we find the right insights and answers. And that the only genie we uncork is a genie of deep curiosity inside us, our communities, our companies and the minds of the big thinkers that help keep the world turning and evolving.
Thanks for all the rich and roving thoughts, Steve.
Steve Burnett is a mercurial thinker, artist, adventurer and long-time principal of The Burnett Group in New York.
share this conversation with a colleague or friend
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Are you evolving?
a conversation about enlightening companies' stories
with salvatore rasa
CG: How should companies be telling their stories differently today?
SR: It’s more a question of understanding that their stories are being told differently by others, by other groups of people.
And it’s not as much about using new business language, as about understanding, beyond the intellectual meaning, the change that’s meant by language like ‘communities of interest.’ I think the better term here, that isn't used enough, is ‘communities of need.’
Forget the rhetoric of ‘dynamic market space’ etcetera. The reality is we're in a state of emergency, of urgency, where financial institutions and other underpinnings are disintegrating and disappearing. We are all part of this reality, all members of one or more communities of need; sharing in both the opportunities and the stresses.
CG: You're saying that these stories take on lives of their own, by other 'carriers,' outside of companies’ control. What’s important to think about here?
SR: Companies’ stories are being carried around in all kinds of places. The view of the future of Twitter’s CEO is a perfect example of this fact. Many companies would be surprised if they investigated Twitter and saw all the things being said about them.
I worked on recent projects with Isocurve where several clients said they wanted to enter the social networking area for their advertising and brand awareness. We told them they were already in it, and gave them each a set of things said about their company in the prior 24 hours alone.
And look at glassdoor.com, a community where people tell candid stories about the places they work; that give potential employees on the outside a free and detailed inside-look at those companies, pros and cons; including actual salaries. So they can make better choices about what business to work for.
But this network is just as useful to potential investors who go there, to help them evaluate if a company is worth investing in. For both groups these workplace stories provide ratings, and concrete ways to measure otherwise intangible or hard-to-gauge value.
CG: How, in this increasingly socially-networked world, does a business get a clear – and more complete -- picture of its issues and opportunities?
SR: Significant measurement tools are out there, proven ones like Organization Network Analysis (ONA) and Value Network Analysis (VNA). They map out actual patterns of information and task-sharing in organizations. There’s also a new one called ORA (Organization Risk Analysis).
There are other ways as well to create, encourage and collaborate. Like Base Camp that allows for shared on-line workspaces. These frameworks cross boundaries and include people in the conversation who were previously left out of it; which is the best way to leverage formal and informal networks.
From where I sit, though, I still don't see enough significant change occurring at major organizations – despite the availability of all these valuable forms of information-gathering and sharing.
Even when compelling evidence, that’s scientifically-supported and visually mapped, reveals a company’s serious misunderstanding about knowledge-sharing and communication, they still resist acting; understanding. Why? Maybe these new methods that push you to ask challenging questions are too difficult for companies to accept, or too threatening for them to confront. I'd be interested to hear your readers’ thoughts on this.
Attitude is also an issue: many companies still have a paternalistic one about social networking, and this is not productive.
CG: You believe formal and informal social networks are not just useful but vital to companies. And not just to their communications, but to their ROI. Why?
SR: One of the most under-realized influences on return on investment (ROI) is self-expression. It’s an under-appreciated influence and an under-leveraged asset.
We tend to think of a business as having a brand identity and guidelines. And while these are good and expected things, they're like buoys in the ocean now: they no longer control the way the social ocean currents move, they just serve as demarcation points.
A corporation has two kinds of self-expression. One is its ‘collective expression,’ which includes people inside its walls with interesting knowledge; who can share ideas on innovation. Tapping directly into this expression is invaluable, versus getting information and insight from outside consultants or market research. The other is individual expression; but large organizational structures tend to inhibit instead of encouraging this.
Many companies pride themselves on hiring creative people who bring rich and different points of view to the table. But when you examine things rigorously, does their human resource process really do this? Or, do they really only single out people who are a fit. What’s the real story?
CG: This ties into your view that there’s ‘dangerous language’ out there.
SR: Among the dangerous terms in business is someone is ‘not a fit.’ Much the way radio host Don Imus was fired from his job. It was immensely hypocritical; an extreme reaction to seemingly prejudicial statements, made by a station that like many news agencies didn't have enough deep diversity to respond or work it out honestly.
The issue here is companies’ inability to react or respond the way any normal person would. Which brings us to another dangerous word, to me the most treacherous one in our society: the word they. Because using it reveals people’s bias.
When you hear ‘they’ under too many circumstances in business and social networks and social conversations then it’s already minimizing someone else. It’s a form of prejudice. In the recent Presidential election, it was employed by radio and t.v. pundits as both a positive and a negative reference. They, for example, was used to refer to ‘voters we were told had no interest in voting previously.’
CG: In other conversations we've had, you talk about the need to allow a story to evolve. Why does this matter, and evolve to where?
SR: Every large organization in the world feels it needs to live in a state of continuous improvement. Yet this process often becomes management-consultantized and misses the deeper dynamic that needs to happen. Real continuous improvement is high risk. But it’s risk with relevance, and high reward. Because you learn to work differently and with different business models that meet, serve and support the changing demands of the [business and social] marketplace.
Sometimes, as you evolve a business model in order to continuously improve it, you have to move away from what you do well. And that’s where the risk and the resistance to change lies.
CG: Therefore, to evolve, a company has to be willing to stop resisting and take these risks? Risks that are somewhat counter-intuitive.
SR: When a company is fixated on one way of thinking and working, or wedded to one belief system, it’s less open and able to innovate.
The automobile industry is a good example. Toyota realized they had to look to other dimensions; they saw building a hybrid as a way of doing something they didn't do well then, but needed to learn to do. It worked for them.
This is all related to your original question. Because a story may not always be true at heart or root. It has to be evaluated for its truth. A company’s collective expression is the best way of evaluating that truth.
At the time, all the American car makers were saying the hybrid was nonsense, that no one was going to buy it, that it was a waste of their time; we'll sell more SUVs. They were locked into one way of thinking. Well, we all know what happened.
Toyota swam upstream against these stories, against these prevailing currents of perceived wisdom, none of which were true. They went ahead and tried something they had never done before; they put their innovation out in the world, and a new story began; then that story began to tell itself.
This is widely known now. And, like other breakthrough stories, it became part of ‘best practices.’ But what’s missing from the discussion is a far more critical change management issue, that lies underneath the surface product innovation issue.
A familiar reference like Toyota’s, that becomes so constant, puts all the emphasis on others, on what others did or are doing. However, this can be detrimental, counterproductive. Why? Because it removes our own accountability: to take action within our own organizations; to provoke real change, seismic change and innovation in the places we work.
CG: What’s fundamental in all this? To achieving a transformation.
SR: All business transformations, small or large, involve a transformation in understanding and language. If you only speak from your place of current expertise, you can't move from where you are…to where you need to be.
Only when you begin to allow your story to have ‘disruptive’ elements; when you challenge accepted behavior and question [institutional] assumptions, will you move into dimensions that enable you to grow -- healthily grow -- your business.
CG: And I would add, grow your business consciousness.
CG: Innovation in your view is not well enough understood or engaged.
SR: Innovation isn't about an event or a clever premise. Those are just ways of trying to understand it. In business, we understand a subject, but often fail to understand its deeper significance.
What’s needed for true innovation is a cultural catalyst, that affects, enlightens and alters the fundamental ways we think and work – alters them for the better.
Let’s be clear: a real culture of innovation is very different than an organization that prides itself on a small group of innovators. An innovative business culture is highly responsive and proactive across-the-board, not one that glimpses innovation and gets lucky.
Lou Gerstner, former CEO of IBM, said I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn't just one aspect of the game – it is the game.
CG: Given the nature of the corporate beast, its structure and bureaucracy, is achieving an innovative culture unrealistic?
SR: No, in fact it’s the most natural form in the world of people working together. Everything we do tends to support this premise. Every person working with another person innately understands it. But it’s very hard for it to happen, let alone thrive inside organizations as they exist and operate today.
A deep belief of my mentor Cicely Berry, O.B.E., Voice Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company – who I produced a PBS documentary about – a belief I share profoundly, is that everything we do we do out of a need to survive. ‘Survival’ is a loaded word for most people. But it isn't negative, or desperate: survival is a natural state of growth and development. It’s the way we're constructed, and motivated.
CG: What’s antithetical to companies’ survival, in the natural – and positive – way you define survival? And can you give us an example?
SR: When companies understand survival, at a root level, as a positive force, it can transform the landscape. It allows good, even great things to happen, and less-than-good things to stop happening. The fact is some companies have a business model or tradition(s) built on a doubtful premise or promise; and this puts them in peril whether they realize it or not.
You don't destroy these models or traditions, that’s not the goal. You change them, evolve them to ensure the right kind of survival and growth.
CG: What one or two startling questions should companies be asking themselves right now?
SR: One question is: what’s one unhealthy tradition in your company that you avoid talking about, or tell the public you've left behind (but haven't). Now is the time to look at it again, in this society; with a clear and honest eye. Because that’s the first step to improving things.
I could make a case that there were troubled traditions that led to the collapse of certain companies, and even entire industries like our banking sector, in part because those traditions excluded human beings or de-valued their well being. Or as Swarthmore psychologist Barry Schwartz talked about in a post-TED 2009 interview…People who work in financial services don't have one shred of concern about the well-being of the people they serve. They're only interested in themselves. And why are they that way? Part of our argument is that when you incentivize everything, you de-moralize it, you take the moral dimensions out of it.
The other question a company should ask itself, on the other side, is: what’s an outstanding tradition you have from your recent or distant past? And, if you contemporized it, if you progressed it, what would it look like today?
Robert Wood Johnson wrote the first Johnson & Johnson credo in 1943. J&S still lives by that credo today. What most people don't know is that during the Great Depression he also wrote he wrote a manifesto to industrialists, brilliantly called ‘Try Reality.’ Basically what he was saying to businesspeople was the world is changing. We’re in a modern industrial age; and how do we find the language for that and the right way to be and the best way to treat our workers safely and ethically?
He wrote in his 1930s ‘reality check’ industry only has the right to succeed where it performs a real economic service and is a true social asset.
Well, what if he was sending that manifesto out today? What would your response as a company be to it? How would it impact your story? And how would others tell your story differently among themselves?
In my view and experience, paramount to everything is the need to include not exclude people from being part of the critical conversations that drive business and society ethically and economically.
Paramount, too, is following and encouraging the natural instinct we have to survive, which is the ultimate pathway to personal and professional growth; and to both business and society’s growth.
In this Information-with-Understanding Age, companies have to shift gears from unnecessary competition to collaboration. Collaboration that involves all the other important conversations going on -- and all the other ‘conversationalists.’
I invite those businesses that have made the paradigm shift to this place to share their stories; to share their experiences and enlightenments with all their communities of interest and need. And I encourage other companies out there to take the opportunities they have in front of and around them to evolve.
CG: Sal, provoking as always -- in ways our thoughts and actions need to be provoked. Thank you.
CG: How should companies be telling their stories differently today?
SR: It’s more a question of understanding that their stories are being told differently by others, by other groups of people.
And it’s not as much about using new business language, as about understanding, beyond the intellectual meaning, the change that’s meant by language like ‘communities of interest.’ I think the better term here, that isn't used enough, is ‘communities of need.’
Forget the rhetoric of ‘dynamic market space’ etcetera. The reality is we're in a state of emergency, of urgency, where financial institutions and other underpinnings are disintegrating and disappearing. We are all part of this reality, all members of one or more communities of need; sharing in both the opportunities and the stresses.
CG: You're saying that these stories take on lives of their own, by other 'carriers,' outside of companies’ control. What’s important to think about here?
SR: Companies’ stories are being carried around in all kinds of places. The view of the future of Twitter’s CEO is a perfect example of this fact. Many companies would be surprised if they investigated Twitter and saw all the things being said about them.
I worked on recent projects with Isocurve where several clients said they wanted to enter the social networking area for their advertising and brand awareness. We told them they were already in it, and gave them each a set of things said about their company in the prior 24 hours alone.
And look at glassdoor.com, a community where people tell candid stories about the places they work; that give potential employees on the outside a free and detailed inside-look at those companies, pros and cons; including actual salaries. So they can make better choices about what business to work for.
But this network is just as useful to potential investors who go there, to help them evaluate if a company is worth investing in. For both groups these workplace stories provide ratings, and concrete ways to measure otherwise intangible or hard-to-gauge value.
CG: How, in this increasingly socially-networked world, does a business get a clear – and more complete -- picture of its issues and opportunities?
SR: Significant measurement tools are out there, proven ones like Organization Network Analysis (ONA) and Value Network Analysis (VNA). They map out actual patterns of information and task-sharing in organizations. There’s also a new one called ORA (Organization Risk Analysis).
There are other ways as well to create, encourage and collaborate. Like Base Camp that allows for shared on-line workspaces. These frameworks cross boundaries and include people in the conversation who were previously left out of it; which is the best way to leverage formal and informal networks.
From where I sit, though, I still don't see enough significant change occurring at major organizations – despite the availability of all these valuable forms of information-gathering and sharing.
Even when compelling evidence, that’s scientifically-supported and visually mapped, reveals a company’s serious misunderstanding about knowledge-sharing and communication, they still resist acting; understanding. Why? Maybe these new methods that push you to ask challenging questions are too difficult for companies to accept, or too threatening for them to confront. I'd be interested to hear your readers’ thoughts on this.
Attitude is also an issue: many companies still have a paternalistic one about social networking, and this is not productive.
CG: You believe formal and informal social networks are not just useful but vital to companies. And not just to their communications, but to their ROI. Why?
SR: One of the most under-realized influences on return on investment (ROI) is self-expression. It’s an under-appreciated influence and an under-leveraged asset.
We tend to think of a business as having a brand identity and guidelines. And while these are good and expected things, they're like buoys in the ocean now: they no longer control the way the social ocean currents move, they just serve as demarcation points.
A corporation has two kinds of self-expression. One is its ‘collective expression,’ which includes people inside its walls with interesting knowledge; who can share ideas on innovation. Tapping directly into this expression is invaluable, versus getting information and insight from outside consultants or market research. The other is individual expression; but large organizational structures tend to inhibit instead of encouraging this.
Many companies pride themselves on hiring creative people who bring rich and different points of view to the table. But when you examine things rigorously, does their human resource process really do this? Or, do they really only single out people who are a fit. What’s the real story?
CG: This ties into your view that there’s ‘dangerous language’ out there.
SR: Among the dangerous terms in business is someone is ‘not a fit.’ Much the way radio host Don Imus was fired from his job. It was immensely hypocritical; an extreme reaction to seemingly prejudicial statements, made by a station that like many news agencies didn't have enough deep diversity to respond or work it out honestly.
The issue here is companies’ inability to react or respond the way any normal person would. Which brings us to another dangerous word, to me the most treacherous one in our society: the word they. Because using it reveals people’s bias.
When you hear ‘they’ under too many circumstances in business and social networks and social conversations then it’s already minimizing someone else. It’s a form of prejudice. In the recent Presidential election, it was employed by radio and t.v. pundits as both a positive and a negative reference. They, for example, was used to refer to ‘voters we were told had no interest in voting previously.’
CG: In other conversations we've had, you talk about the need to allow a story to evolve. Why does this matter, and evolve to where?
SR: Every large organization in the world feels it needs to live in a state of continuous improvement. Yet this process often becomes management-consultantized and misses the deeper dynamic that needs to happen. Real continuous improvement is high risk. But it’s risk with relevance, and high reward. Because you learn to work differently and with different business models that meet, serve and support the changing demands of the [business and social] marketplace.
Sometimes, as you evolve a business model in order to continuously improve it, you have to move away from what you do well. And that’s where the risk and the resistance to change lies.
CG: Therefore, to evolve, a company has to be willing to stop resisting and take these risks? Risks that are somewhat counter-intuitive.
SR: When a company is fixated on one way of thinking and working, or wedded to one belief system, it’s less open and able to innovate.
The automobile industry is a good example. Toyota realized they had to look to other dimensions; they saw building a hybrid as a way of doing something they didn't do well then, but needed to learn to do. It worked for them.
This is all related to your original question. Because a story may not always be true at heart or root. It has to be evaluated for its truth. A company’s collective expression is the best way of evaluating that truth.
At the time, all the American car makers were saying the hybrid was nonsense, that no one was going to buy it, that it was a waste of their time; we'll sell more SUVs. They were locked into one way of thinking. Well, we all know what happened.
Toyota swam upstream against these stories, against these prevailing currents of perceived wisdom, none of which were true. They went ahead and tried something they had never done before; they put their innovation out in the world, and a new story began; then that story began to tell itself.
This is widely known now. And, like other breakthrough stories, it became part of ‘best practices.’ But what’s missing from the discussion is a far more critical change management issue, that lies underneath the surface product innovation issue.
A familiar reference like Toyota’s, that becomes so constant, puts all the emphasis on others, on what others did or are doing. However, this can be detrimental, counterproductive. Why? Because it removes our own accountability: to take action within our own organizations; to provoke real change, seismic change and innovation in the places we work.
CG: What’s fundamental in all this? To achieving a transformation.
SR: All business transformations, small or large, involve a transformation in understanding and language. If you only speak from your place of current expertise, you can't move from where you are…to where you need to be.
Only when you begin to allow your story to have ‘disruptive’ elements; when you challenge accepted behavior and question [institutional] assumptions, will you move into dimensions that enable you to grow -- healthily grow -- your business.
CG: And I would add, grow your business consciousness.
CG: Innovation in your view is not well enough understood or engaged.
SR: Innovation isn't about an event or a clever premise. Those are just ways of trying to understand it. In business, we understand a subject, but often fail to understand its deeper significance.
What’s needed for true innovation is a cultural catalyst, that affects, enlightens and alters the fundamental ways we think and work – alters them for the better.
Let’s be clear: a real culture of innovation is very different than an organization that prides itself on a small group of innovators. An innovative business culture is highly responsive and proactive across-the-board, not one that glimpses innovation and gets lucky.
Lou Gerstner, former CEO of IBM, said I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn't just one aspect of the game – it is the game.
CG: Given the nature of the corporate beast, its structure and bureaucracy, is achieving an innovative culture unrealistic?
SR: No, in fact it’s the most natural form in the world of people working together. Everything we do tends to support this premise. Every person working with another person innately understands it. But it’s very hard for it to happen, let alone thrive inside organizations as they exist and operate today.
A deep belief of my mentor Cicely Berry, O.B.E., Voice Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company – who I produced a PBS documentary about – a belief I share profoundly, is that everything we do we do out of a need to survive. ‘Survival’ is a loaded word for most people. But it isn't negative, or desperate: survival is a natural state of growth and development. It’s the way we're constructed, and motivated.
CG: What’s antithetical to companies’ survival, in the natural – and positive – way you define survival? And can you give us an example?
SR: When companies understand survival, at a root level, as a positive force, it can transform the landscape. It allows good, even great things to happen, and less-than-good things to stop happening. The fact is some companies have a business model or tradition(s) built on a doubtful premise or promise; and this puts them in peril whether they realize it or not.
You don't destroy these models or traditions, that’s not the goal. You change them, evolve them to ensure the right kind of survival and growth.
CG: What one or two startling questions should companies be asking themselves right now?
SR: One question is: what’s one unhealthy tradition in your company that you avoid talking about, or tell the public you've left behind (but haven't). Now is the time to look at it again, in this society; with a clear and honest eye. Because that’s the first step to improving things.
I could make a case that there were troubled traditions that led to the collapse of certain companies, and even entire industries like our banking sector, in part because those traditions excluded human beings or de-valued their well being. Or as Swarthmore psychologist Barry Schwartz talked about in a post-TED 2009 interview…People who work in financial services don't have one shred of concern about the well-being of the people they serve. They're only interested in themselves. And why are they that way? Part of our argument is that when you incentivize everything, you de-moralize it, you take the moral dimensions out of it.
The other question a company should ask itself, on the other side, is: what’s an outstanding tradition you have from your recent or distant past? And, if you contemporized it, if you progressed it, what would it look like today?
Robert Wood Johnson wrote the first Johnson & Johnson credo in 1943. J&S still lives by that credo today. What most people don't know is that during the Great Depression he also wrote he wrote a manifesto to industrialists, brilliantly called ‘Try Reality.’ Basically what he was saying to businesspeople was the world is changing. We’re in a modern industrial age; and how do we find the language for that and the right way to be and the best way to treat our workers safely and ethically?
He wrote in his 1930s ‘reality check’ industry only has the right to succeed where it performs a real economic service and is a true social asset.
Well, what if he was sending that manifesto out today? What would your response as a company be to it? How would it impact your story? And how would others tell your story differently among themselves?
In my view and experience, paramount to everything is the need to include not exclude people from being part of the critical conversations that drive business and society ethically and economically.
Paramount, too, is following and encouraging the natural instinct we have to survive, which is the ultimate pathway to personal and professional growth; and to both business and society’s growth.
In this Information-with-Understanding Age, companies have to shift gears from unnecessary competition to collaboration. Collaboration that involves all the other important conversations going on -- and all the other ‘conversationalists.’
I invite those businesses that have made the paradigm shift to this place to share their stories; to share their experiences and enlightenments with all their communities of interest and need. And I encourage other companies out there to take the opportunities they have in front of and around them to evolve.
CG: Sal, provoking as always -- in ways our thoughts and actions need to be provoked. Thank you.
Colin Goedecke is a strategic story developer and senior-level interviewer, with a 25-year history helping leading and emerging companies worldwide platform and tell their marketing stories. Are You Evolving is the 11th in a series of thought pieces to help us think, act and communicate in wiser ways. Others can be found at www.tenowls.blogspot.com
Salvatore Rasa is a provocative social & organizational change enthusiast & specialist, and a senior partner of im21
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