Cultures are created by behaviours becoming the norm.

Safety is at the core of many industries. Significant budgets are allocated to safety training in major corporations. One death is too many. Accidents can be avoided. The cost of time lost due to incidents is considerable. Safety training is needed, but it does not necessarily create a culture of safety. Cultures are created by behaviours becoming the norm. A culture of safety is not one of well-trained (on safety) people but one where safety behaviours are the norm. These two things are not the same. Safety communication and training usually follow a top-down approach where facts are presented, guidelines and procedures exposed, tasks explained, and threats of noncompliance declared. It is a rational and emotional appeal cascaded down across all information channels of the organisation. It suits ‘information’, but it does not suit ‘behaviours’. Behaviours can’t be taught in the same way as a three-step process can be explained. Behaviours spread via imitation of others. Behaviours travel via social copying and emulation, sometimes unconsciously. Training and communications on safety are needed – and major corporations usually have very good educational programmes. But cultures are created outside the classroom and the auditorium, in the day-to-day life of individuals ‘doing things’. Cultures develop – sometimes very fast – by the power of person-to-person influence. “Training and communications are needed. But cultures are created outside the classroom and the auditorium, in the day-to-day life of individuals ‘doing things’.” The most powerful influence in the organisation is not hierarchical; it is peer-to-peer; it is the conscious or unconscious emulation of ‘people like us’. The Health and Safety personnel teach the rules of safety, inspection, safety implementation and improve processes and systems. However, the day-to-day social copying of good safety behaviours in the workplace, plus conversations in the canteen (that is, informal conversations with people one trusts), is what creates a culture of safety in real life. Viral Change™ is a way to create a fast and sustainable culture of safety which does not rely on the rational understanding of hundreds of people attending safety training workshops. In Viral Change™, we identify a relatively small set of ‘non-negotiable behaviours’ which, when spread across the organisation, have the power to create a behavioural fabric, a DNA of safety. We also identify a relatively small number of individuals who have a high level of influence with peers, who are well-connected, and whose behaviours are likely to have an impact on others in a multiplying mode. These people may or may not be in specific management layers but occupy various jobs across the organisation. We organise and put together these components, behaviours and influences, in a well-designed format. We let the spread and social infection go, and we back-stage the management of it. We engineer an internal social epidemic of safety behaviours that can be observable and measured. We do not ask to stop the ‘push’ of training and development! We do, however, orchestrate the ‘pull’ of connected and influential individuals and their role-modelling behaviours who engage with peers in conversations and real-life ‘doing’ and engage others in a viral manner. Viral Change™ is the only way to shape a culture of safety and maximise the potential and the investment of training and communications. Viral Change™ LLP is currently leading programmes focused on the creation of a safety culture in the way described above. For example, using these principles and methodology, a global company – which has state-of-the-art, award-winning top-down training systems – has engaged us to create a culture of safety virally, reaching and engaging 50.000 people across the world.

Learn more about Viral Change™ and its applications here [1]. Reach out to my team to learn more via [email protected].

Spot the difference at the dinner party or barbeque. So, what do you do Joe? [You must start with ‘so’ if you are in some kind of technology role yourself]

‘I am in IT, I work for Techno’ vs. ‘I work for Techno, I work in IT
‘I am a medical doctor, I work in PharmaTer’ vs. ‘I work for PharmaTer as a medical doctor’.
‘I am a hedge fund manager, I work for InvestSmart’ vs. ‘You know InvestSmart? I work there as a hedge fund manager’
‘I am an accountant, I work for GoodsMart’ vs ‘I am work for GoodsMart, in finance, I am an accountant by training’
‘I am a lawyer, I work for BankGlobal’ vs ‘I work for BankGlobal as a corporate lawyer’.

Imagine many other alternatives on any other function. The differences are not simple anecdotal ways of expressing the same. The expressions are not the same. In one type, the dominance is the professional tribe (IT, medic, hedge fund, accountant, lawyer). In the other type, the company (Techno, PharmaTer, InvestSmart, GoodsMart, BankGlobal) is the dominant source of belonging. Both are compatible, for sure. But, if I were the CEO of any of these companies, I’d rather have my people referring to the professional tribe after, not before referring to the company.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the tribal-professional sense of belonging. But when projected upfront as my real persona, it means that its power, significance, and identity is stronger than those of the employer’s itself. Tribe 1, company brand nil.

I have found two types of clients. Those who don’t get this, (‘don’t see the problem’) and those who care about ‘the order of things’. The latter are the ones who also care about culture. Since senior leaders, and therefore CEOs, are curators of their culture, it’s clear which ones ‘see’ the differences and have a preference for the company brand.

‘Seeing’ is the first step to interpreting and then doing something. Do you know what Joe, from your company, says when asked? I wish the Employee Engagement people included this…

Meeting expectations, exceeding expectations and all that jazz! It’s often said that success equals performance minus expectations. Three comments on expectations:

1. “Exceed customer expectations’. This mantra has made it into business jargon. We know what it means, but it sounds a bit tired. It clearly depends on what the expectations were in the first place. It also has a quantitative flavour. I expect a 5, I got a 7, exceeded. Ok. And? I prefer ‘Surprise the customer, who did not expect any surprises, in a way that you will become memorable’. Memorable is one of my favourite words.

2. Corporate citizens with a Business Plan, forecast below possibilities so that they can always exceed. The ones who are truly honest often get caught in that honesty and get penalised for not achieving what was a very stretched, perhaps unreasonable budget. They learn the lesson and they promise less next time. The game is a game only if ‘gaming’ is the way to play corporate politics. If the atmosphere is one of true openness and honesty, then there is no game. My second favourite word here is honesty, and shared possibilities. OK, maths are not my forte.

3. Uniformity in the reward system is far from fair, as many people claim and justify. If a division in a very difficult environment achieves 85% of targets, it may deserve more reward than another division in a very easy environment achieving 100%. Expectations need a big qualification to make sense. I don’t believe in a uniform system of expectations. My third favourite word here is fairness is not equality. OK, four words

On the whole, I am always back to my number one favourite: memorable. Given our shorter and shorter memory capacity, with a world of information and communication competing for space 24/7, ‘memorable’ becomes a truly beautiful word.

As Mark Twain said himself, ‘The death of the charismatic leader has been grossly exaggerated’. The problem is that ‘charisma’ has changed its face. Many years ago, charismatic leadership sounded loud. A charismatic leader was supposed to mesmerize, exhibit exuberant passion (stereotype of the American leader?), be extraordinarily persuasive and be able to command an almost unconditional following. Of course I am in caricature mode here.  It took a lot of time to realise that many exceptional leaders, according to this profile, were not charismatic at all.

Perhaps charismatic leadership today has a different profile. His or her inspiration comes from being emotionally and socially brilliant. The new charismatic leader sees and feels the social environment around them, they ‘get’ the people and the dynamics of the organization. He or she is a master at giving the stage to others, something that I describe as Backstage Leadership ^[2]™. Above all, the new charismatic leaders have less of a ‘push’ style (messaging) and are more able to ‘pull behaviours’ around him. They would be firm and visible but also far more humble.

I have a little rule of thumb about trust and charismatic leadership. The old type sometimes used to trigger feelings such as: ‘he is brilliant, great charisma, I am not sure I trust him, though’. The new type produces first a ‘I trust this guy’, and then other traits follow. Don’t look for any science behind my rule.

Perhaps new forms of charisma have been evolving all the time, but the death of charisma itself has been grossly exaggerated.

It reminds me of when I started medical school. Students used to repeat (and shout) the mantra; ‘we don’t want magisterial lectures’ – the ones given by chair professors in front of hundreds of people for sixty minutes or so, non-stop, in huge amphitheatres, as was the norm.  I always thought that the main reason for disliking them, was because we did not have good ‘magisters’. Had we had good ones, I personally would not have minded at all. I wonder whether the fall from grace of the charismatic leader (as has been the case in recent years) has to do with the scarcity of them. Just a thought.

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We have a close relationship with the Center for the Future of Organization at the Drucker School of Management and thought you might be interested in this upcoming free virtual round table event on “Building Innovation Capability”, taking place on 4th December. Organized by their partner ECLF, it features three thought and practice leaders from the worlds of Academia, Business, and Consulting. For more details click here ^[3] .

Some organizations that are very good at (external) marketing, are terrible at internal. Grand market(ing) plans, but can’t sell a thing internally: ideas, buy in, reasons for new investment.

Some functions that have Corporate Reputation as the job or part of the job, have terrible internal reputation.

Some companies that have proper multi Brand management, manage the internal (employee) branding poorly.

Some enterprises with strong External/Investor Communications function, are very weak in Internal communications.

The Internal-External disconnect is a big problem, very often overlooked. Branding, for example, is behavioural branding, or it isn’t. It’s not about logos and colours but behaviours with and within the market. Those behaviours should be reflected in internal behaviours, in the behavioural DNA of the organization. And the other way around.

An organization run in a schizophrenic, internal-external mismatch mode, is dysfunctional.

Since ‘behaviours’ or ‘culture’ are now owned by a particular function (certainly not HR), all those constituencies need to talk and agree on a set of non-negotiable behaviours.

Leadership need to be brokers and gluers.

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MOBILIZING MASTERCLASS!
A blueprint for social movements inside the organization and society
Trailer and Introduction freeview ^[4]

If you love KPIs, here is one. The attractiveness of your (corporate) function is defined by the number of people who want to join you. No queue, bad news. ‘Place to be’, excellent news. There is no other way.

You need to make the ‘place to be’ accessible to people who want to join you but who can’t simply abandon everything else. Provide short secondments, shadow work, job swapping, anything that can open your work to others. And yes, of course, job openings if you have them.

Make a rotation to your function very attractive. To learn new things, upskill quickly, see the world from other angles. The stay does not have to be long. You may even declare quotas. Three places for Marketing people, four for Sales, five for R&D, etc.

A gentle dose of internal competition does not hurt.

Make no apologies for the fact that you want your area to be a magnetic place. If others are envious or uncomfortable, ask them to do the same.

Create your own internal alumni and treat them like that, with appropriate reunions for example.

If you are uncomfortable with this internal marketing, I have a suggestion for you:  get over it.

These rules apply whether you are an external partner or an internal one.

Rule number 1. Resistance is never universal. There are always pockets of power or pockets of discomfort. How you move them forward is simply an art. There is no such a thing as an entire organization resistant to change. Thinking  that way is a trap. See rule number 10 (but not yet, keep reading)

Rule number 2. The system will always protect itself against solving the problems that it creates. Don’t expect sudden conversions. Turkeys don’t like Christmas. Start where there may be less antibodies. Usually in the edges of the organization, not the core-core

Rule number 3. Don’t overwhelm people with incredibly well-crafted and complex plans. Spend the energy helping them to visualize an attractive outcome that ‘can’t be refused’.

Rule number 4. People who ask for examples of where else something has been done before successfully, don’t really mean that. They mean ‘I need comfort’. If there is a deep discomfort, no number of examples will move them. Comfort can be given in many ways, not just case studies.

Rule number 5. Talk about the cost of not doing something much more than the cost of doing it.

Rule number 6. Your fans may not be your buyers (whether a consultant or an internal partner). Your readers may not be your clients. Your faithful and grateful audience may have no power (both internally in an organization or as external partner)

Rule number 7. This is for external consultants and partners. Be prepared to say ‘you are not a good fit for us, we can’t help you. (Possibly with an added, ‘but we can give you the phone number of our competitors’)

Rule number 8. Whether external or internal partners, never, ever, ever  present a full plan to the entire Leadership Team or Board without having gained previously individual buy-in at least in 2/3 of the members.

Rule number 9.  If you get a super-excited and super-enthusiastic group of people who say ‘this is so good that it should be done across the board, not just us, let’s involve other higher or broader levels’, this is really bad news. Chances are it will never be done.

Rule number 10. ‘Readiness’ is a red herring. Nobody is ever ready. Don’t aim at full rational and emotional convincing of all. That the powers let you start, even if not fully convinced, is 100 times better than waiting for total enlightenment. People become ‘ready’ ( and that includes leadership teams) when they see good things already happening. Readiness is most a post-hoc state of mind.

Bonus rule: Consider this line by Robert A Heinlein (1973): ‘A fool cannot be protected from his folly. If you attempt to do so, you will not only arouse his animosity but also you will be attempting to deprive him of whatever benefit he is capable of deriving from experience. Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig’. Sometimes singing is just impossible, get over it.

 

The insurgent strategy may be called. It is applicable to politics and also to business.

The insurgent does not play by the rules. The incumbent things this is unfair.
The insurgent controls the conversation, the incumbent things that only his conversation is the legitimate one.
The insurgent surprises.
The incumbents are not particular fond of change, why would they? The insurgents love change.
Insurgents play offense, incumbents defense.
Insurgents often seem to come from nowhere, unpredictable, disruptive. But in hindsight they were not that unpredictable and they were there all the time. Perhaps not taken seriously.

These simple political/social/market principles are incredible powerful. There are insurgent ideas in their own right. I wish they were mine! But they are from Scott Miller and David Morey (The Underdog Advantage ( 2014), The Leadership Campaign (2016)

Moving into an insurgent mentality may be the best business idea you may have. At least think of this possibility: how could you stop playing incumbent? And probably you are one somewhere.

Not surprisingly, Miller and Morey have played this script to the Donal Trump saga with no problem. And they predicted the winning of an insurgent as far as 2014 (‘Its Candidate Smith by a Landslide’ (Huffington post 2014). Clinton was the (establishment) incumbent. She was not against another incumbent but an insurgent. It was not a (proper) candidate vs a candidate. Not fair! Fair? What’s that?

The insurgent won. Miller and Morey go as far as saying that Trump should have won by a huge landslide,  and the only reason why he didn’t was because he was/is so… so.. Trump.

Back to our yard. Just imagine your life as insurgent in the market, in your leadership, as consultant, as organization, as new product producer, as idea generator, as social changer.

Seriously. Remember. The insurgent wins

Brand (identity), whether big brand or small brand, is a behavioural powerhouse. Strictly speaking I would say a Pull-House, because it should pull behaviours and multiply them at a scale.

The sense of belonging to a tribe, a brand, a concept, a ‘place in the world’ is today not merely emotionally or aesthetical, it is full blown behavioural. We, the tribe, the inhabitants of that space in the world, the ones hosted by the brand, do things in a particular way, have a particular DNA, have borders (even porous) and a particular way of understanding relationships.

How the (corporate) brand projects itself outside, to the market, should be a mirror of how it does internally (employees). Very often there is a disconnect. The funky external look is not that funky inside; a fabulous external marketing machinery has a very poor internal marketing of ideas; what people see outside and what happens inside is often night and day.

Brand strategists should be behavioural strategists. No focus on behaviours, no brand work worth the label.

Behavioural strategists are natural brand shapers.

The brand is the people magnet and the behavioural trigger and multiplier. Everything else, from logo to ‘brand guidelines’ are artifacts.

Show me how you behave and I will tell you about your brand.

Uniqueness is a tough concept. I’ve got countless examples of clients pushing back  over the years. ‘Come on, this is a manufacturing line, we don’t reinvent the wheel, this is how plastic bottles, or drug capsules, are made, everywhere. I don’t need creativity’. That one has been very common!

But the argument is almost always flawed. We are mixing uniqueness (maximum differentiation) with creativity (alternative ways, but not necessarily unique) with innovation (different, not tried application of ideas).

The robots… will take care of many repetitive, mechanical, unique or not, processes.  That we know. They will also take care, via Artificial Intelligence, of a lot of thinking. And if the idiot machines can learn, and master the master of all algorithms, then, well, Mars is probably a good option.

Seriously, I am obsessed with uniqueness of product or services as an aspiration, not always reachable. If in my company we did not aspire to uniqueness, I would perhaps not be here, writing my Daily Thoughts.

For me, there is no limit as to how unique you want to be, whether it’s possible or not. It is the Michelangelo aspiration quoted a million times: ‘The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark’.

Besides, should we really dismiss uniqueness as aspiration when we are each of us a live representation of the concept of ‘unique’? There is no other like you, not even your twin brother.

Here are five areas of uniqueness to explore:

• Making unique the otherwise repetitive
• Aspiring  to be unique in an particular area/topic/expertise
• Creating truly unique experiences (with customers, colleagues, stakeholders)
• Making your personal contribution unique
• Interviewing new people in a unique way

To me, the magic question is ‘what would it take to achieve it?’ It may not be obvious. It may be hard. It may be easy to dismiss. But the question is one of the strongest one can ask in the professional world.

How can I/we be unique on X,Y.Z?

What would it take?

In my job as an organization architect, I travel quite a lot and therefore I stay in lots of hotels which food I tend to accept, reluctantly or not. I have come across a lot of well-intentioned food that intends to convert plain fish into a Thai extravaganza. Just recently.

I know of well-intentioned front desks that have called maintenance several times for me and that consider the number of times they have called their index of service as opposed to considering why they had to call maintenance in the first place.

I know of well-intentioned client team members who intended to read the brief but did not have time and expect that their intentions count as comprehension of the substance matter.

I know of well-intentioned leaders who wait and wait and wait to call out bad performance perhaps expecting a sudden conversion and miracle.

I know of lots of well-intentioned people who do their best; just happen that their best is below the threshold of making a difference.

I myself am well intentioned, many times. I am sure.

The question is whether we want a well-intentioned world or a world that works, that changes lives and that enhances the individual.

And I was wondering about this recently, God knows why, in front of that pseudo Thai extravaganza that killed the dish but was well intentionally done by a well intentioned chef.

I supposed we should be grateful for the well intentioned world, considering the alternative. But, no matter what, well intentioned leaders, as well intentioned chefs and front desk people, are playing the game with a level of ambition that does not resonate with me well.

And I mean well, not to offend anybody. I am really well intentioned here.

An unexpected ‘revelation’ by Facebook (also known as the mother of all algorithms) gives us an important insight about the digital-human marriage, with implications beyond social media.

The digital transformation world tells us that massive digitalization is as certain as death (unless you are Ray Kurzweil ) and that the robots will win the battle. It’s not science fiction because it’s not fiction. Amazon and Facebook in particular know you very well. You are somewhere in the Algorithm, perhaps a minuscule bip, or bit, but there you are. In fact, you are the product, not Amazon goodies or Facebook friends. Yes, may the Algorithm be with you.

Algorithms (and in some cases the whole Artificial Intelligence) are present everywhere, from doctors protocols in hospitals, terrorism risk assessment or the adds coming in front of you on screen that suddenly know that you may want to buy a shirt, since yesterday you were browsing for some. (Unless you use add blockers as I do)

The Facebook storm-in-a-cup-revelation is not related to what you may call Facebook’s major interaction features, but its news trending box. That trending box on the right is, for all purposes, a news feed. Conservative commentators in the USA have complained that this trending news feed is completely left wing biased, and only FOX news (bastion of the conservative flame) is seriously represented. In contrast, The Guardian and the BBC ( assumed left wing organizations in US conservative view) ) are over represented. Surely, somebody is manipulating those algorithms, they say. And that is not fair, the rather angry conservative media says.

Mark Zuckerberg has denied this and called them bluff, inviting conservative media for a chat. I don’t think it has happened yet. But, on that context, something was revealed. There was not a left wing conspiracy algorithm, but human beings making decisions. Do you mean left wing human beings? Not quite. Apparently those Facebookies in the payroll decided to exercise some judgement. Inundated by the volcanic output of the Algorithm, they decided that even when something was trendy in Texas or Alaska, and it was perhaps good for Texas or Alaska, humans needed to decide.

As far as those Facebookies, they would check with the front page of the BBC or The Guardian to see if that was worth the effort. A task, I am sure, that another algorithms could have done. So Facebook has plainly disclosed a secret weapon: human judgement (translation: does the British BBC think this is a trend?). I am not arguing about whether this is a good or bad human judgement ( a terrible one as far as FOX is concerned) but the existence of the judgement itself.

So there is 99.5% algorithmic, automatic, news digitalization that could become a trend, and, then, that 0.5% of a Facebookie with a late and a Mac checking manually whether the BBC or the Guardian agrees. Wonderful.

Yes, it is a wonderful anecdote, but, don’t you think it should make us reflect that the human is still ‘needed’? With a late, of course.

I know, I know, I am stating the obvious. Well, I am not sure, I did check with the Robots and they think I am nuts.

May the Algorithm be with you, and may Fox with with you as well, if the BBC says so. Which, as far as I am concerned, the reality check it’s a relief.

Ah, the customer is back, some people in management and consulting say, as if the customer had been in a Sabbatical in the Bahamas or Mars. Some of the renewed music on customer-centrism is plain desperation from people who have had a relatively easy time just playing lip services.

Why is it that every time that a management ‘next thing’ appears is usually a bit behind already.

Customer centrism 2016 version includes the 2015 version and the 2014 and… But it also must include the global, digitalized, borderless, ruthless, scary, often dangerous, certainly powerful population of netroots. The term is used mainly as for ‘activism in the net’. It has taken the word from the model of ‘grassroots’. The grass is nor green anymore but clouded. In the net.

(If everything is now in the cloud, isn’t it funny that the expression ‘having the head in the clouds’ means not having a clue of what is going on? )

Many so called digital strategies in corporations of some size are still a website strategy, plus a chat, plus a mother of all portals, plus we will tell you what is good for you. Many of those are still mistakenly ‘building an audience’ as opposed to building a community. They swap the traditional bombardment channels (TV, print, for example) for social media, digital presence and ‘digital real state’. Many of those digital strategists sitting in 11^th floor of headquarters, perhaps next to, or, dare I say ‘integrated’ into the marketing department, may have not even heard of the word ‘netroots’. Well, I suggest you drop the Harvard MBA marketing module and learn political/social/net/cloud activism, because this is where the power of large scale adoption, large scale love, large scale trust or large scale war resides.

So, yes, customer centrism renewal without understanding how netizens organise netroots will be again a catching up that does not quite catches anything. We need to unbundle customer-centrism in 2016 to perhaps repackage it in different words. Suddenly, the new market may be ‘the cloud’. And then what?

I believe that whether you are a leader in a vaccine business, or transportation, local government or multinational all things operations, to say ‘I know my costumers’ (you know the ones to be costumer centric) is a risky statement. There are the obvious, the less obvious, the invisible influencers and then the ones in the cloud (potentially) organised in netroots. You customer next door, even the one that pays the bill, my love you, congratulations. Your reputation however may be hanging in the cloud. For once, sticking your head there, may make a lot of sense.

By the way, hire somebody with digital activism/cloud/netroots organizer/campaigner experience who knows nothing about your business and a lot about digital-enabled social movements.

When travelling today, I found myself, unexpectedly, a few minutes from a little known restaurant, part of a low key, two start hotel, in a peripheral Spanish village, sleepy cold and silent this time of the year. What attracted me to this place, and prompted me to give them a call to book a table, was curiosity. I learnt a while ago that, just three months before, this little restaurant inside a two star provincial hotel had been awarded one Michelin star, the world recognition of being somebody different in the gastronomic universe.

The place was indeed unpretentious, small, ten tables, entrance by the main door of the hotel. Inside, by the door, a table with a family picture with a few chefs, more pictures of people, and a proud copy of the red Michelin book.

The food was not only delicious but unexpected. Flavours and taste did not seem to correlate with the look of things. Service was good, but not theatrical. Most food was sourced locally, including a prologue of four different olive oils brought to the table with care and slow pace as if in reverence to the soil of origin, of course accompanied by abundant ‘real bread’.

Let me stop  the gastronomic report here. I engaged in conversation with the waiters, they looked like brothers, and congratulate them. I was curious to know how they felt last November when they got a call from the Michelin secret visitors. I asked about their elaborate kitchen and cooks and, surprise surprise, about the business and how it was run.

I specifically asked about what was the proudest thing of all, the highlight above the rest, the real reward. Somewhere in my mind I was expecting some narrative about quality, or uniqueness, or how a two star hotel that wins a one start Michelin in a zero star place beats the competition, I don’t know, how naïve, perhaps something about sustainable competitive advantage , shareholder value and winning the war on food. That kind of business stuff that is usually in my consulting background.

Straight to my eye, and just very slightly emotional, with just slightly changed voice, one of the brothers said: ‘nothing compares with giving the news to our very old grandparents, whose parents built this place fifty years ago; that they could see it’. And he continued: ‘it has been hard work for them, lots of ups and downs, fifty years always wanting to produce something new’.

And my Daily Thought took this shape of simple, almost banal reflection. How wonderful to see in action a piece of reverence to the elders, a proud family who is probably not making an enormous amount of money, a little veneration to the legacy created day by day by others before you, by your parents or grandparents.

And I thought that I had not been in such anti-bullshit situation for a long time. I smelled the authenticity of the earned recognition that the young members did not attribute to themselves but their elders. I felt the envy of the plain language that cut through any possible ‘business achievement’ to talk about pride of the ones who were the real builders. I was glad I had that chat.

How many people go about their business, perhaps small, perhaps away from any possible newspaper headline, with care and pride of what they build, the legacy that is constructed daily, the sense of achievement that does not translate into any heroic story. How different from other people who are not so lucky, that can’t see the fruits of their imagination or their efforts in general, who are trapped into a mechanical business life dictated miles away from their minds.

Just a thought, a Daily Thought.

1. Customer: buys your product, once, or twice, pays, that’s it. Thanks
2. User: buys your product, once, or twice, pays, uses, you know about it, you learn, you have a conversation.
3. Audience: You push a message, they listen, they like it, or not, go, maybe you get a review.
4. Community: An audience in which people pull each other. They listen, they like it, or not, go, stay, maybe you get a review as well, but eventually it creates a sense of belonging, an identity. It grows. It creates something in common (as in common-unity) with you.
5. Advocates: endorse you, say you are good. Thanks.
6. Ambassadors: endorse you, say you are good, thanks, willing to represent you, take care of your things, big or small. On behalf of you. Your Personal Diplomatic Service.
7. Activists: endorse you, your advocates, and your ambassadors, represent you, do something, again and again, engage with others in a community; above all, they act ( as in act-ivism).
8. Fans: they think you are cool. They don’t have to do anything else other than thinking you are cool. The coolest of them also tell you that you are cool. It’s so cool!
9. Clicktivists: they click ‘I like’ (you, your page)
10. Facebook friends: names in Facebook.

To clarify once more: activists act, advocates talk, ambassadors represent, fans like you, audiences listen, communities manage a ‘commons’, costumers buy, users know you and you know them, clicktivists like you, and Facebook friends also like you but tell you which cereals they have eaten this morning.

The Fundamental Social Attribution Errors (TM pending) are of the type:

You expect advocates to actually do something for you
You expect clicktivists who like you to put money down
You expect fans to come to your rescue
You expect customers to spontaneously create a community of love
You expect audiences to represent you the day after.

Etc.

Of course, of course, of course, how could I forget? There are combinations!

But if you start in the hope of combinations, you may be ready for a shock.

Liking you is not buying you, or giving you money or represent you. Get your social taxonomy right.

If you are in the jungle and you can’t distinguish a lion from a bush, you won’t get your money back from that bad Botanic course.

 

 

Volkswagen has declared that the Diesel fiasco and the massive installation of software, built in to deceive outputs and pass tests, is due to a ‘small number of employees’. I don’t think Volkswagen is lying.

Some of the past problems in banking (admittedly so many of them, that it’s easy to say ‘pick one’) have been attributed to a few individuals, to a particular ‘trading desk’ or a small subgroup. Often one single person has been singled out and initially prosecuted. I don’t think these banks were lying when they said that.

In fact the Libor (London Interbank Offered Rate) manipulation that started many years ago had one ringmaster, Tom Hayes, now sentenced to 14 years. An excellent artcicle in Bloomberg Businessweek, Was Tom Hayes Running the Biggest Financial Conspiracy in History? Or just taking the fall for one? explains how the whole thing started and how the Libor system was handled by 12 individuals across all banks.

Back to the Enron times, surely you could not blame the entire work force of 20000 people at the time, as the originators of the scandal and further downfall.

It all seems to support the Theory of the Small Number of Bad Apples.

However, the Bad Apples are together with the Good Apples and the Apple Managers and Leaders. So, we blame the culture.

But what is that we blame exactly when we blame ‘a culture’? If we treat that culture as an onion, we would find different layers: those who got away with it, those who knew but did not say anything, those who did not know, those who suspected, those who managed those who knew, etc.

If anything, for sure, the ‘culture’ allowed the coexistence of those layers. If anything, the failure is one of leadership, not the entire culture. A leadership that allows the shelter of small groups, or individuals, or ‘desks’, mostly because they are doing very well, thank you. Like the untouchable sales rep who creates organisational and team havoc but delivers extraordinary sales and gets rewarded. Tom Hayes was one of those who did very well, and that when he was headhunted was given a 3 million dollars just for joining.

Small groups, individuals, ‘trader desks’ and other Bad Apples are like those slow growth cancers that are undetectable for a long time, but that could be detected with a good screening, There is no excuse for leadership not to dig into the realities of sheltered or protected, sometimes high performing groups or individuals. There is sometimes a conspiracy that is bigger than any other. It is the conspiracy of omission.

Volkswagen has wonderful mission, vision and value system in their walls and digital Real Estate. All the banks have the same. Enron had ‘Respect, Integrity, Communication and Excellence’ in their value system. All bad Apples are in a basket together with Good Apples. The basket-culture has leaders. The leaders hold the basket. To focus on the Bad Apples is a waste. But, it is technically true, there are Bad Apples, and Volkswagen says they have found them.

It’s the basket, stupid!

I wrote yesterday that magnetism should be incorporated to the category of Prize Winner in corporate cultures: ‘I want to be there, part of it, work here’. It probably does not get better than this as a value selling proposition. It is for sure a feature of the Remarkable Organization ^[5].

My clients and people following me, or attending my speaking engagements, know that I am a bit of a parrot when it gets to social imitation. In particular, how much we underestimate the power of social copying inside the organization, once bypassed the trivial levels of ‘understanding peer pressure’ often seen as an anecdote. We pull people to us, or we push them away. That’s it. End of Corporate Physics lesson.

The Raul Castro reaction did not surprise me a bit.

Raul Castro, President of Cuba and First Secretary of its Communist Party (‘the Party’) visited Pope Francis in the Vatican in the context of Francis personal facilitation of a new healthier relationship between Cuba and the USA. The visit took place early May and from the many headlines – cum-photo of the historical visit, one made the highest rankings. More or less it read like this: ‘Cuba’s Raul Castro meets Pope Francis, says he might return to the Church’. Another said, he might start praying as well.

Commentators were ready to scrutinize the statement and some even tried to assess the possibilities and the seriousness. That was missing the point. The point was that, the fact that Raul Castro, President of a one-party-system were, to say the least, Religion is not ‘a feature’, could even articulate this as a more or less casual comment, meant that he had found in front of him a level of authenticity and attractiveness, strong enough to provoke it.

For some of us following from the distance the developments and the journey of Francis Disruptive Leadership, the reaction was not a surprise. But I must confess that I had a big, big smile.

Imagine for a second that somebody visits you. That this somebody is not necessarily you best friend. Imagine that, as a result of the visit, he says: ‘I am thinking of joining you’. Whatever happened in that human interface, perhaps a short one, is priceless. It is a sign of that magnetism that cannot be priced and that perhaps is not even encapsulated in any hard core, asset corporate parameters. Magnet? What kind of KPI is that?

If Castro could even contemplate (the articulation of) going back to the Catholic Church, good leaders attracting people to their good companies, is a piece of cake.

So, there is a leadership test here… Isn’t it?

When Uber, the ride-on-demand business growing across the world, had a problem, didn’t call management consultants, but a political campaigner/social movement creator/grassroots manager.

Traditional management consulting needs rebooting. Particularly in the organizational and people area, the traditional management consulting mode is exhausted. It needs serious rebooting . Today, 2015, the answer to many organizational issues, employee engagements, large scale people mobilization, cultural change etc. lies outside the traditional management disciplines, the old HR frameworks and the standard HR industry.

I have relentlessly pointed out (and will continue to do so) and applied in my own company in the way  we work with clients, that business executives will learn more form political marketing, political campaigning and social  movements than Harvard-like approaches.  Community Organizing 1, Harvard nil. Sorry.

Uber had problems last summer: Reputation in bad shape, upsetting taxi driver companies in multiple cities across the world, disrupting urban transportation like hell, being banned in many cities. CEO Travis Kalanick’s ‘style’ did not help. And the company was a Goldman Sachs-backed. Market value equal to USD 40 billion.

So who did they call? McKinsey? No, let me guess, PWC, or perhaps Bain.  Wrong. They called David Plouffe, the Obama campaign architect and then 2 year adviser in the White House.

(And one of the things he did in month one was to launch UberMilitary, ‘a commitment to turn 50,000 members of the military community into Uber drivers’)

This ‘Daily Thought’ is not about Uber – the story is explained here very well. ^[6] It is about the change in direction for the call. You may think that David Plouffe was called to deal with the PR and reputation aspects. Indeed he took that. But his role is much broader, the entire strategy, branding and ‘management’ of the company.  He is treating the situation, and Uber corporate development, as a social movement, a political campaign, not an MBA case study. Porter’s Five Forces? Not really. The force of large scale change and mobilization.

We are going to see more of this.

The answers to organizational problems in large and medium size companies lie outside the standard management framework.  I started this ‘officially’ in 2006 with Viral Change™ ( and ‘unofficially’ in 2001) and the approach is now reaching some maturity in industries such as pharmaceuticals, transportation, oil and gas, financial services and public services.

Social movement/political mobilization/Viral Change 1, Harvard MBA/Traditional management nil.

The series continue.

The pursue of happiness as a business goal and/or cultural goal, encounters all spectrum of emotions. For some, a naïve goal. For others, a legitimate one. For some, a fluffy and fuzzy semi ‘New Age thing’ that no serious business would have in its mission statement. For others, a true goal, and the glue for the entire company.

On the latter space, and amongst the ‘new companies’ that make headlines for their innovation or their uniqueness, is, of course Zappos, now part of Amazon, and in particular his 41 year old CEO, Tony Hsieh, who in 2010 wrote a book entitled ‘Delivering Happiness’.  Happiness is a serous business in Zappos, as much as its business as online retailer of shoes and apparel. For some, worth a pilgrimage to visit them in their downtown Las Vegas HQ. For others, simple nonsense.

There is also a particular approach to ‘happiness’ in organizations which is part of the Employee Engagement equation: happy people will deliver better results. This is the ‘Happy Cow’ model, one of the six models of employee engagement ^[7]that I have described.

That is the trouble with happiness. It’s only a word which has very different significance depending on the organization that uses it. The Zappos’ happiness (intrinsic value, clear focus goal of the type that prompts people to ask the question: ‘are they really serious?’; yes, that kind of question) and the average Employee Engagement happiness, that sees it as a lever, a mechanism, a vehicle, the oil for a productive business (run by happy cows), are not the same happiness.

People tend to forget that happiness as a fundamental goal has not been invented by the Zappos of this world, but has been on and off in the business arena before. The primary example is the UK based John Lewis Partnership, today a £10 billion conglomerate of upmarket department stores  and supermarkets, where employees are ‘partners’ ( and they are called like that even in the signs at their entrance to their facilities) and every employee is an owner of the firm. For their 38000 ‘partners’, their salaries are not particularly above the market, but their annual bonuses of profit distribution clearly distinguishes them well.

This is how John Spedan Lewis (1885-1963) described the firm:

The Partnership’s ultimate purpose is the happiness off all its members, through their worthwhile and satisfying employment in a successful business. Because tithe Partnership is owned in trust for its members, they share the responsibilities of ownership as well as its rewards – profit, knowledge and power.

John Lewis was certainly not a kind of Tony Hsieh of his time, but he had his own version of social responsibility, and a view to the answer to the question that Charles Handy would pose many years later: what is a company for? ^[8]

‘Happiness’ is worth revisiting with serious critical thinking. I really think that the new generations (of employees and customers) don’t see this question as naïve or business-irrelevant. To dismiss it today with the old ‘you must be joking, we are here to make money’ would be very unwise, to say the least.

 

We need a (happy) meeting point for both sceptical and converted, to exchange ideas on what happiness as a goal or culture may mean for a business in 2015. Both sides should leave preconceived ideological positions at the door and be prepared to exchange ideas and experiences. That would be a very, very happy meeting I would be very happy to attend.

A few months ago, I was in the lobby of a global pharma company waiting for my appointment. I sat in front of several big flashing screens of the type one see in the reception area of many companies. I was curious to see what was displayed. The content was constantly moving, pretty fast, with smiling pictures of people and other things like buildings that looked like scientific labs and manufacturing plants.

The gentle bombardment was constant and very rich in data. There you had the names of the medicines they sold, market share, number of countries in which they operated, number of people dedicated to R&D, so many nationalities of people in the workforce, an award for employee engagement, and a few lines of what it seemed to me their mission statement.

My curiosity grew when I felt something was missing. Since I was looking from some distance, it might be, I thought, that I was not looking properly. I got closer to the panels but the panorama only changed a bit. Now I could see a Stock Market ticker showing the stock price of the company, proudly exhibiting an arrow point upwards and a plus sign followed by ne number 0.5.

There was no mention of number of people treated (which is not the same as number of medicine units sold) or how the medicines were affecting people’s lives. One of the medicines in their portfolio is simply life saving. For a life saving drug, you would have thought that it would be just natural to say how many lives have been saved. Nope.

I felt embarrassed. Unfortunately, this is not uncommon. We see far more display, whether in LCD screens or in a less digitalised world, of operational performance than of purpose. By purpose I don’t even mean ‘high purpose’. There may be other not so dramatic purposes in many industries, but there is always one.  But for a pharma company to forget the number of lives they have saved it’s pretty bad.

The very few times I have discussed this kind of things with other people, I find myself in a strange minority. What? – I am told – you don’t like saying that people are making money? Or do you have a problem with profits? Or what’s wrong with making money? Which are kind of strange reactions because last time I checked I saw that I was not going around dressing like, or posing as, Saint Francis of Assisi.

The purpose of a company is to make many, people say. More people than you think. Is that it?  The following human activities make money: a grocery, arms trade, a casino, an insurance company, a supermarket, illegal human traffic, the mafia, a bank. Should I carry on?  These commonality does not make them equal.

It seems that we are still apologetic, or embarrassed, with the word purpose. Perhaps we have grown so sceptical of ‘mission and vision statements’ that anything that smells slightly ‘soft’ (as some people still say) is simply suspicious.

What a shame that we sometimes cannot  articulate, clear and loud, the purpose of the organization, its space in the social world.

Incidentally, the real pharma example that I have shared is still stuck in my mind, but anybody can extrapolate the argument to any other company and sector. High purpose, purpose, small purpose? Please tell us, clearly, not whispering, why you exist.