Community – Page 14 – Discipline makes Daring possible.

February 21, 2020

The Law of Attraction

I’ve never seen Anthropologie, the retail chain, advertise. They don’t waste their time, money or energy putting themselves in front of people who aren’t interested in what they have to offer.

Instead they have identified very clearly who it is they want to attract into their stores, then created stores that are magnetic to that kind of person. You either walk past an Anthropologie store, or you walk in. And if you walk in, it’s very likely that you’ll buy something.

It goes even deeper though. Anthropologie’s promise is to send their clients out of the store looking and feeling fabulous. And they are prepared to forego short-term sales to achieve this.

When I was at business school we were told the story of one store that sacked their ‘best’ salesperson. The salesperson was great at selling, but at the expense of sending the customer home with clothing that didn’t make them look and feel great.

For the people Anthropologie serves, Anthropologie’s aim is become part of who they are. Nothing less will do. They wait patiently for the right people to find them, then keep their promise to them religiously. The result is a growing community of enthusiasts.

That’s not magic, that’s dedication.

February 17, 2020

Measuring doughnuts

In an earlier post, I asked why it’s deemed important to report on the FTSE 100 index at every news on the radio, and what relevance that index has for most ordinary people.

There are alternative things to measure, that matter more to most people, and I think Kate Raworth’s doughnut pretty much captures them all.

What if instead of the FTSE, we had a daily snapshot of our impact as a nation on overshooting the ecological ceiling, or undershooting the social foundation? What if we could see every day how well we are doing at keeping within “the safe and just space for humanity”.

Like the FTSE and other indices, this snapshot would be made up of data from millions of enterprises large and small across the country, and that means that each enterprise would need to measure it’s own impact too.

That’s completely doable, if we set our mind to it, with the help and support of our accountants.

Why wait? Let’s start now.

February 7, 2020

Externalities

Wikipedia tells me that “an externality is a cost or benefit that affects a third party who did not choose to incur that cost or benefit.”

If I have a flu jab, to protect myself from flu. I decrease the chances of the people around me catching flu. That’s a benefit.

If I go to work full of cold, I increase the chances of my colleagues getting a cold, that’s a cost. If I stay at home, that’s a benefit.

The point about externalities is that they aren’t measured. They are literally not accounted for in a business. We metaphorically shrug our shoulders and say “Not my problem. I’m just trying to make a profit.”

Yet the consequences don’t go away, just because we ignore them. If I go to work with a cold, and my colleagues catch it, everyone’s productivity is lowered.

We live in a series of systems, and ultimately a closed system – planet Earth, and sooner or later the consequences will come back to bite us.

Time then to take responsibility for all the results of our actions, not just those we choose to see.

Climate change needs to be on the balance sheet.

January 22, 2020

Practical optimism

Last Monday was ‘blue’. This week is supposed to be the gloomiest week of the year (for those of is in the northern hemisphere at least). All that’s left of Christmas and New Year are the debts and broken resolutions. Easter and Spring Bank holidays are a long way off (even though the Easter eggs have been in the shops since Boxing Day).

I don’t buy it.

For me, the days are getting longer. Snow can’t lie for long if we get it now. Spring is on its way. People and businesses are up and about again, getting stuck in with new plans for making the world a better place.

But here’s a practical idea for next year:

Take one of the too many get-togethers that happen in the run-up to Christmas and move it to the beginning of 2021. The best works Christmas party I ever went to took place in February.

Celebrate each other outside the prescribed calendar of feelings.

December 6, 2019

Dissecting the Promise, part 4: with the status you seek.

We humans don’t just want community, we want to have our own place in that community.

We like to know where we stand relative to our fellows. Which means that everything we do isn’t only about becoming the person we want to be, it’s also about being seen to become that person by the people we see as our peers, the people like us.

What can you do to deliver this as part of your Promise of Value?

Here’s a brilliant example of one way to do it. Here’s a different way, equally brilliant.

I’m sure you’ll think of others, now you know.

December 5, 2019

Dissecting the Promise, Part 3: so that you can join the tribe that feels like home for you

What’s the point of becoming the person you want to be, if nobody else sees it? Or cares about it?

We all want to belong to a community, a tribe. At least one. A group of like-minded people. People like us.

The way we dress, the way we work, what we eat and how we spend our leisure time often signals which tribe(s) we feel we are part of, and those we don’t. Everyone I know would be astounded if I suddenly took up golf.

So in formulating your promise of value, it pays to understand what communities the people you serve are part of, and which they seek to join.

You may even want to consider creating a new community just for them.

November 28, 2019

Zebras

We’ve all heard of unicorns. Businesses that disrupt entire markets, even create entirely new ones, often with a view to create a monopoly.

You may not have heard about zebras. I hadn’t until this week, but I recognise the species. I’ve met and worked with many of them over the years.

Zebras are businesses that balance profit and purpose, that aim to solve real problems and make the world better. Zebras aim to be systematically better, not just bigger. They look out for their people and their community as well as their shareholders. They are in it for the long term.

The great thing about zebras is they are real. And they are more numerous than we think.

Time to dazzle.

October 21, 2019

Three strangers walked into a bar

On Friday I went to a meetup with total strangers.

Even though we had never met each other before, online or off, I knew it was worth the risk, because we are all alumni of at least one Seth Godin course, and I knew that would mean attendees would be curious about others, open to sharing ideas and information, willing to help each other and have a very interesting story behind them.

I was right. We left the bar feeling like friends. We took selfies, swapped podcasts and arranged to do it again for Christmas, and encourage others to come along too.

All we had in common was that we are customers of a particular brand, living in a particular location.

Can your brand do this?

October 16, 2019

It doesn’t have to be like this.

We are told all the time (in words and deeds) that ‘there is no alternative’ to the way our current global economic model works. Communism was a disaster, anarchy would be chaos, revolution would be tragic.

And yet as families, villages, schools, clubs, friends – as ordinary people we happily operate all those alternative models, all the time, without even thinking about it. We even do it inside the ultimate capitalist entity, a business. In fact, capitalism depends on us operating like this.

As David Graeber points out: “we’re all already communists when working on a common projects, all already anarchists when we solve problems without recourse to lawyers or police, all revolutionaries when we make something genuinely new.”

We’ve worked like this for at least forty thousand years, getting on for two hundred thousand years. Which begs the question. Which model is the exception?

Discipline makes Daring possible.

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

Category: Community