Brands – Page 4 – Discipline makes Daring possible.

April 30, 2020

Community (and status)

Humans are tribal. We know that.

We like to hang around with other people like us. Who share our beliefs, values and ideally, our sense of purpose.

We can belong to many different, overlapping ‘tribes’ – when I was a student in Manchester, I could take you to more pubs than anyone else I knew, because I belonged to several separate tribes, who each had their own hangouts.

We also like to know where we fit within our tribes, our status.

Status doesn’t necesarily mean being at the top. We might indeed be a ‘leader’, but we could equally be an ‘elder’, a ‘wise one’ or a ‘poet’. We might be the ‘one everyone goes to for information or advice’. We might even be ‘the weirdo’. Status simply means knowing our position in the tribe, and knowing that everyone else knows it too.

Of course, our tribalism isn’t always a good thing. And like our other motivations, if we don’t find it at work, we look elsewhere.

So maybe we should offer it at work?

And not just for the team, for customers, suppliers and associates too?

April 22, 2020

Take stock

Once you’ve accepted what is, it’s time to take stock of the resources you have available to you.

Obviously, the physical resources – cash; credit; working capital; stock; work in progress, the available working hours of your team.

Also the intangibles – your Promise of Value, your ‘way we do things round here’; your know-how and expertise; the willingness/ability of your team, clients and suppliers to support you through changes.

Less obviously perhaps, its time to take stock of what matters. Because that will almost certainly have changed, for you, your clients and your team. And that may open up whole new futures, and close some you thought you had available.

Possible futures are resources too. It’s worth taking stock of them before you decide which ones to explore.

April 17, 2020

Model interactions

When, towards the end of last year, I decided to publish a book, I had an idea in my mind, a mental picture if you like, of what it would be like.

I envisaged something like a Ladybird book. A small format, portrait, made up of double-page spreads, with text on the left hand page, and an accompanying photograph on the facing page. Simple, easy to read, slightly nostalgic (for people of a certain age), and perhaps slightly tongue-in-cheek.

I knew I couldn’t put this together myself, so I asked Rob Key at Studio Change to help.

Rob had a different mental model. Still small, still two-page spreads, still text plus illustration, but completely different.

He showed me what my book would look like according to his model and I was blown away.

The thing about models, is that they are all approximations, they are all wrong.

But some models are much more useful than others. And you’re unlikely to come up with all of them yourself. So you need to share your models, be open to new ones and be willing to improve your own.

Model interactions is how we learn to do better.

March 5, 2020

Be more mushroom

A mushroom is a metaphor for a short-lived momentary thing, that springs up quickly and dies just as quickly.

Yet this mushroom behaviour is deceptive, because the mushroom is founded on something much bigger and more durable. A mycelium.

A mycelium is a wonderful thing. It connects each and every mushroom within its network to every other, across space and time. They share a common genesis, even through they may pop up in very different habitats.

What’s more, each mushroom (if not picked early) throws out spores, also invisible, that spreads the network even further, until you have something like the mycelium in Nevada that covers over 800 hectares of ground, and is over 2,000 years old.

Not a bad model for a movement, or for a business that aspires to become a movement.

Be more mycelium.

It’s easier to do than you think.

Huge thanks to the open food network UK for letting me borrow their metaphor.

February 13, 2020

Extending the franchise

Enfranchisement: verb (used with object), en·fran·chised, en·fran·chis·ing.

to grant a franchise to; admit to citizenship, especially to the right of voting.
to endow (a city, constituency, etc.) with municipal or parliamentary rights.
to set free; liberate, as from slavery.

Franchising creates a business within a business, where the management of a branch of the original business is outsourced to a third party, who pays for the privilege.

Franchising works because it balances autonomy with responsibility. If I buy a franchise, I own that business, I get to keep most of the profit, I manage my branch as I see fit. At the same time I have a responsibility to the parent business and my fellow-franchisees to maintain and even enhance the brand.

For this reason, good franchisors recognise that they need to communicate ‘how their business works’ to franchisees. Not just technical stuff, such as how to put together a pizza or prescribe a pair of glasses, but the customer experience stuff too. Sometimes, if my potential franchisees are unlikely to be business owners already, even how to monitor business performance. Then they let the franchisee get on with it.

A good franchise takes a lot of effort to set up, but once set up it is relatively straightforward and quick to replicate and expand. Done properly, franchising is a brilliant way to grow a business without killing yourself in the process.

It’s possible to give yourself a head start.

Enfranchise the people inside your business first.

January 28, 2020

More than skin deep

Professor Richard Murphy has sparked controversy (again) this morning with his AccountingWEB article: Do you recognise your own accounts?

In it he suggests that companies of all sizes consider their published accounts as part of their marketing, and own them in the same way they would any other part of their marketing collateral.

I agree. Your promise isn’t just superficial fluff, it’s the essence of who you are and the change you seek to make in the world. It should be reflected in everything you do, even the parts many people don’t see.

How you do one thing is how you do everything. Dissonance undermines trust.

December 3, 2019

Dissecting the Promise, Part 1: become the person you want to be

We all want to be someone else. Someone better. Stronger, fairer, kinder, cleverer, more authoritative, more creative, more exotic – the list goes on.

If you happen to be a cosplay or fancy dress business able to literally do that – lucky you!

The rest of us have to spend some time working out a) who the people we serve are and b) who they want to be. And of course there can be several of either.

Whether you sell a product or service, the challenge is the same. Take electric drills, for example. As someone famously said, when his marketing department insisted on going through features “people don’t buy drills, they buy holes in the wall!”.

They don’t of course. They don’t even buy a bookshelf on the wall, or a picture hung, or a wooden toy mended. What they buy is the ability to become a closer version of the person they want to be.

Putting up a shelf, or hanging a picture or mending the wooden toy might make a father feel he is taking care of his family, as his father did before him. He’s out at work all day, so he misses out on mealtimes and bedtimes, but he can do his bit for the nest they’re all in.

The same thing might make a woman feel like she is independent, capable, self-sufficient, so that when she chooses to settle down its because she wants to, not because she has to.

That’s a lot to pack in to a product or service. As responsible businesses we have a duty to understand who we serve and who they want to be, as fully as we can, and then find the best, most effective way to help them get there, without harming them, other people or the planet in the process.

We never buy just ‘stuff’. Which means we can’t sell just ‘stuff’.

December 2, 2019

What every business offers

The anatomy of a Promise of Value:

“We promise to help you become the person you want to be, in a way that is completely congruent with your values, beliefs and style, so that you can join the tribe that feels like home for you, with the status you seek.”

Every business offers their own unique version of this, whether by accident or design.

Much better to offer it by design.

November 26, 2019

The power of promise

Your Promise of Value drives everything you do, and the way you do everything.

Today, I can’t think of a better way to emphasise this than to share an example:

Hiut Denim Co. makes jeans. They aim to make some of the best jeans in the world, employing some of the best jeans-makers in the world, for creative people around the world.

Everyone in Hiut Denim Co. knows who they are for. They know why they are in business. And that drives how they do everything.

Watch the power it gives them.

Including how they attract shareholders.

October 28, 2019

Purpose

If there is one thing that human beings like better than making their own individual dent in the universe, it’s being part of something that promises to make an even bigger dent.

We crave purpose and meaning in our lives, and if we don’t get it from work, we look elsewhere for it.

‘Work’ becomes merely the means of achieving some of our ‘hygiene factors’ – a roof over our heads, food on the table – the things that enable us to pursue our purpose elsewhere. In which case, ‘work’ probably doesn’t get our full attention, or our best energy.

One response is to starve people into spending more and more time ‘in work’, in order to simply acquire the basics. That’s how you end up with a productivity paradox.

Much better, for everyone, to offer work with purpose.

Discipline makes Daring possible.

Musings from The Disappearing Boss on People, Process and Responsible Autonomy for small-business employers.

Category: Brands