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“It is always important to know when something has reached its end.  Closing circles, shutting doors, finishing chapters, it doesn’t matter what we call it; what matters is to leave in the past those moments in life that are over.”

Paulo Coelho

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“When you start to suck, stop.”

Kristen Hersh

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So. This is mostly about business <although, I imagine, some aspects bleed into Life>.

In business we create false endings all the time. And I mean ALL the time. Milestones, quarterly objectives, standards, etc. We do this not just because people have a tendency to work better aiming at something but also because we suck at knowing when something has naturally reached its end.

Now. I have written about stopping, or closing down, when you start sucking and how difficult that is.

Back in 2012 I said “sucking is like quicksand.  The harder you work to stop sucking the further you get sucked down into suckedness.”   A fun idea to write about, but that is different than recognizing an ‘end.’ That is simply not recognizing you have given all you can and it is all downhill from there <diminishing returns>. I have written about ‘periods’, the stop punctuation, and the art of knowing when to stop. A fun idea to write about but that is different than recognizing an ‘end’ … that is simply about not recognizing when you should shut up.

This post is about knowing, and I mean really knowing. when something has reached its end. Knowing that it is time to close, close up … and move on.

Uhm. This is hard. Really hard.

And, speaking for myself and how I think philosophically, I know I make it even harder. I once wrote about running through the end of project, I called it “riding to the buzzer.” Riding through things you are working on makes it a little more difficult to recognize whether you ran through a milestone or through its natural end. I say that because here is where a natural end truly becomes sneaky. 99% of the time it doesn’t appear as some brick wall or solid stop.

Sure. ‘The end’ most likely does have a stop sign around if you pay attention. More often than not any sign there is, is most likely covered up by some overgrown bushes which have never been trimmed. It seems a little strange because one would think we business people would be better at seeing ends and when to close up on something and move on. I mean, what the hell, business is strewn with milestones, objectives, deadlines and a slew of ‘people created’ ending points. Yet, most business people suck at the really important ability to know when something has reached its end.

We are not particularly good at it with regard to a company <uhm … companies actually do have life spans>.

We are not particularly good at it with regard to employee initiatives <once in place we have a nasty habit of thinking it should be an ongoing ‘organizational culture tool’ which enables consistent behavior>.

We are not particularly good at it with regard to existing products & services <what happens when there is actually something better to be offered?>.

We are not particularly good at it with regard to sales objectives <what happens when our stated audience is … uh oh … sated?>.

In fact. What we are particularly good at is getting whatever it is that we want done into a “doing” mode and then developing a whole slew of ways to nudge it down the road. I imagine if I stick with that metaphor I could suggest we suck at not seeing any stop signs because we are too focused on nudging and tweaking the engine and replacing shoes so people can keep walking down that road. But ‘being over’?

Whew. We hold on way beyond the sell date. Everyone does <me included>. It is natural.

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Letting go. Everyone talks about it like it’s the easiest thing. Unfurl your fingers one by one until your hand is open. But my hand has been clenched into a fist for three years now; it’s frozen shut.

All of me is frozen shut. And about to shut down completely.

Gayle Forman 

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It is natural because of the dreaded “what’s next?”

Yeah. In order to acknowledge an end, to close up shop and move on, you have to know what’s next. And not only that … you kind of have to already have a plan in place or at least a road to bus everyone over to where they can get off and start walking. Maybe that is where we business folk suck the most. It’s not that we don’t know when to stop we just don’t know how to start again. Start anew.

About the only time we are actually good at it is within a ‘forced end.’ As in … we have no choice.

As I typed that I thought about, well, a different kind of business — the business of having a band and the arrival of the Foo Fighters after the death of Kurt Cobain:

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“There were people that really resented me for starting this band. ‘How dare you start another band?’   They asked me ‘Why did you decide to carry on and make music that sounds like Nirvana?’ and I said well, wait a minute – like, loud rock guitars, and melodies, and cymbals crashing and big-ass drums?

‘Cause that’s what I do. What do you want me to do? Make a reggae record?”

Dave Grohl

<Foo Fighters>

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When viewing the music industry and bands and individual artist you can find a lot of examples of forced ‘doing what needs to be done and moving on’ as well as ‘well, it is time to move on’ type endings <we business people should think about that a little>. When forced, talented business people do what needs to be done.

Unfortunately most of business doesn’t really create this kind of ‘forced decision.’ Most times we simply try and squeeze whatever we can out of whatever we have. And we squeeze until there is nothing left <way beyond the ‘end’>.

Ok. What to do. This is solvable and relatively easy in the scheme of things.

It is a version of ‘planned obsoletion’ <which I have always been a HUGE fan of in business>, but your senior management team needs to sit down on occasion and not do ‘blue sky thinking’, but hunker down like a military plan of action and say “we won this ground and what ground do we attack next.” This includes an attitude which says we will aggressively pursue that plan <so it is not just a plan but a plan of action>.

Far too often we look at the ground we have won and seek to consolidate it and, well, consolidate it. Squeeze and squeeze and squeeze. And, on occasion, we fool ourselves into thinking we are truly exploring ‘what’s next’ by saying ‘let’s take that hill just outside of the area we currently occupy.’ We make it sound like some massive effort that will refresh us. Instead we are investing significant resources on a less than significant objective. I am certainly not suggesting that incrementalism does not have a role in business strategy but rather we far too often use incrementalism to ignore the stop sign we just walked past. I am not a big SWOT analysis guy nor am I a big ‘white space’ business guy. I am more a pragmatic “this is who I am and this is what I am good at and I don’t care who I may compete against or what they may be currently doing I believe ‘these x’ people will like what I have to offer and I am going to go get it” business guy.

In a growth situation <which, by the way, I tend to believe any healthy organization should always be in> you should be seeking to grow. To expand. To think of ‘saturation’ as a swear word. To always be thinking about how to shake-the-etch-a-sketch so that stagnancy <in sales, attitude, behavior, thinking> never sets in.

To be clear. Sure. I believe you should always talk with your innovations/new product pipeline people because they may have some new widget up their sleeve you can go and expand your business with but, more often, you will be successful by looking at what you have now and finding new ground to attack with that. I have found your new widgets just have a tendency to cement the ground you have already won more often than not. Keeping with the military analogy I often tell businesses to think of their business modeling with an ‘occupation force’ team with a separate “attacking army” team mindset. Especially if you are in a growing category you almost have to have a “win this ground and move on” attitude or you can get stuck in a grind-it-out business war.

Regardless. It is important to know when something has reached an end. If only because it permits us business folk to close it off, leave it behind, not invest more energy squeezing something that has really ended <even though we do not want to admit it> and move on to the next chapter of our business life.

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“Do not fear to lose what needs to be lost.”

Sue Monk Kidd

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“To every rule there is an exception—and an idiot ready to demonstrate it. “

Vera Nazarian

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“Any fool can make a rule. And any fool will mind it.”

Henry David Thoreau

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Everyone, and I mean everyone, is tempted to break a rule or two. This includes even a normal <or quasi sensible> person. As I noted in my ‘pirate post’ the sane people in business get frustrated with not getting shit done and is tempted to become a pirate <raise the black flag> and kill <hopefully not literally> conformity, the status quo and those things that may dull the edges in business <and life>.

“Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”

H.L. Mencken

For today let’s call the well intended rule breakers <not the amoral actors> rebels. All businesses need a rebel or two.  Why? Rules encourage compromise and rebels hate compromising.

Rebels cannot.  It is about winning on their terms or losing on their terms – ‘terms’ most typically defined in a simple “do what is right’ mentality.

To be clear.

I am not suggesting cheating.

I am not suggesting lying.

I am not suggesting anything nefarious.

I am simply suggesting that some rules may need to be sacrificed, or adjusted, in order to do what is right. And sometimes it is a truth that there is a better, if not actually best, way of doing something. That said. This is where businesses run into some problems.

Business is a contradiction with regard to rules.

Business loves construct and process and best practices and ‘how people should do things’ and loves defining “how this company plays by the rules” <literally outlining rules> and, yet, they want people to think freely for themselves. Business actually thrives on people who don’t simply follow rules like a sheep, but rather look at rules with a discerning eye of ‘stupid or smart.’

Ah. Smart.

Smart people don’t encourage breaking rules. Smart people encourage breaking stupid rules.

Smart people don’t break rules for the sake of breaking rules. Smart people assess rules and break them when appropriate.

Look.

Being a rebel is tough mainly because there are some wacky rule definitions scattered throughout businesses. I do believe you can encourage individualism <rebellion> in some other way than ‘the world is full of rules. Be the exception.’ No. I KNOW you can encourage individualism and ‘smart behavior choice even in the face of rules.’

Valuing some sense of order thru rules, and personal accountability toward rules, is kind of what makes civilization run. Same with business. Smart rule breakers respect rules because they do offer order, but recognize stupid rules as order for order sake.

Look <part 1>.

Some rules are good. And rules intended to keep people safe <even if it is a stupid rule> and a business from running into a ditch is good. Telling a person that it is good to break the rules, no matter how seemingly small or stupid, is a bad lesson. Rebels need a discerning eye.

Look <part 2>.

Beyond society, in business I know breaking stupid rules is sometimes necessary to get things done. Excellent effective leadership actually seems to come with an unwritten responsibility to cut through rules that act as barriers to achieving what needs to be done <for the overall betterment of the organization>. I could argue that truly great leaders get where they are because they can do exactly that, legally of course, when the rules tell us otherwise.

Some people call this cutting through the red tape. I call it the ability to weave your way thru the organizational bullshit and get shit done. I can guarantee that if you look throughout any successful organization you will always find some ‘smart’ rule breakers who work diligently to overcome or circumvent the rules, regulations, and policies that unintentionally hinder progress and make it difficult to accomplish shit that needs to be done.

Anyway.

Business isn’t always a Dilbert scene and business SHOULDN’T always translate into some simplistic perspective. In organizations there is certainly individual responsibility, in behavior & decision making, but there is also a relationship with the greater good & greater organism. A person may actually be one of those professional ‘break stupid rules smartly’ people, but ‘managing’ people takes a different skill.

Uh oh.

I think I just suggested two sets of behavior rules.

Anyway.

Here is what I know about the art of breaking stupid rules: independence.

Independence in terms of viewing rules smartly, independent thinking, independent accountability and, well, a dependence upon others to independently agree that this is one of those situations in which there is a stupid rule creating an obstacle to doing the right thing.

I would suggest that great business leaders who embrace independence as an organizational concept are often like the great frigate captains of the old British navy <who were kind of like rebels within a larger organization>. They showcased an ability to effectively participate in the larger organizational activities when required and an ability to be effective taking off on independent campaigns.

I would say that if you do want Independence, well, you do have to be smart about it. Once again:

Smart people don’t encourage breaking rules. Smart people encourage breaking stupid rules. Smart people don’t break rules for the sake of breaking rules. Smart people assess rules and break them when appropriate

One last thing on the ‘smart’ aspect.

This is not intuition or instincts. This is rational, logically driven behavior. Intuition means different things to different people, but suffice it to say it is a horrible way to consistently manage a business & make business decisions. Intuition reflects biased views <usually based on personal experience>. Balancing logic & experience & speed & instincts is an incredibly tricky balancing act, but that balance is often the formula for success if you want to break a stupid rule with independent thinking.

All that said.

99% of the time rules are in place for a reason. Someone thought it made sense and offered some value. I say that to remind all the rebels out there you need to “step in” to a rule, understand it, untangle the stupid part, identify what guidelines are meaningful and then envision not only what you need to do <in breaking the stupid rule>, but also envision the consequences.

Hey. I didn’t say it is easy being a rebel. Rules, even stupid ones, should take some work before you break them. The best rebels do the work to insure breaking a rule offers real value <in other words, breaking this rule was valuable disobedience to the construct>. Ponder.

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“I lived according to the prevailing myth.  Everyone lives by myths.

Prettied up they are called truths … basic truths, natural truths, self-evident truths. What I knew or thought a year ago is beside the point. The problem is today. Even if the past was a lie, what am I supposed to replace it with? Another lie? All that’s necessary is to pull the old one out and put a new one in like a circuit board?  

Inspector O

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“The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed.”

Robert Heinlein

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“The way we got out of the caves and into modern civilisation is through the process of understanding and thinking. Those things were not done by gut instinct.  Being an expert does not mean that you are someone with a vested interest in something; it means you spend your life studying something.

You’re not necessarily right – but you’re more likely to be right than someone who’s not spent their life studying it.”

Brian Cox

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“… if no one knows anything then why can’t I know something?”

Bruce McTague

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Well. Increasingly we are hearing more and more people publicly questioning the expertise & knowledge of experts. It has come to a point where significant public figures have even stated things like “we have had enough of the experts.”

Uhm. When this occurs, and enough people actually believe it, well .. geez … if no one knows anything than why the hell can’t I know something becomes the overarching perception <if not attitude>.

You know where this belief has always existed? The corner of the neighborhood bar. I am sure we have all experienced it. Sitting around with friends, maybe at the corner of the bar, bitching about the world and talking about what we would do to fix it. At that table … and at that time, well, we can solve everything that the experts, the leaders, the grand decision makers seem to struggle solving.

Most of the time, if we are honest with ourselves, we dumb it down to some simplistic surface conclusion which sometimes is partially right. Often we apply a ‘common sense’ filter which, if we are honest with ourselves about this too, does not really reflect the complexity of reality. If we are honest with ourselves <once again>, more often than not we are wrong. Now. Its not that we aren’t smart. It just may be we are a little intellectually lazy.

Ok. That was harsh. Try this. Maybe we just don’t know enough or have enough experience. Maybe it is because we have not spent a lifetime studying it or we assume our personal professional or whatever experience is indicative of the knowledge necessary to be ‘right.’ And maybe we rely a little too much on what I have called “fortune cookie wisdom” <quasi-intellectual soundbite wisdom>.

But … whew … in the moment … in the discussion and debate and obvious common sense, we could run the world, the country and the biggest business venture out there. It is a fun moment. And we feel smart and even more importantly we feel as if we could do whatever it is as well as the person who is doing it. For a moment, just a moment, we look around at all the Harvard MBAs and all the policy experts and all the high falutin’ experts and we are as good and as smart as they are.

Sigh.

But we are not. It may seem like it. But we are not. Yet, at every bar, at every table, every Steve, Sarah, Sue and Sam thinks that they are.

That is the sad truth.

I actually believe this belief is driven by a version of the 80/20 rule. Assuming you are fairly worldly, fairly well informed and fairly enlightened, you probably get 80% of it right. And, boy, that 80% feels good. It may even feel “right enough.” But, in general, its just, well, 80% right. In general, just 80% on the important stuff just is not good enough. That is the difference between an amateur and a professional or an expert. That 20%. Some would argue it is simply the nuance, but in most of the larger more grand problems and issues we face it is that 20% that makes something go incredibly right or incredibly wrong.

And, uhm, I hate to tell everyone … but … most of us are not capable of that 20%.

That said. Realistically the last time everyone possessed the same skills in a society to participate within a leadership role at 100% equal was maybe several million years ago when all of us humans ran around as hunter/gatherers. Once we evolved into larger social groupings, and inevitably created cities and population clusters where some people had to make decisions for the greater good of the whole some people naturally evolved into governors and governing <leadership> and the expertise needed to assume those responsibilities. And while we can bitch & moan about the ineptness of leadership, in general, leaders lead and others follow. Yet, we everyday schmucks get confused and believe we would be smarter, if not as smart, as people in the positions of leadership.

Part of the problem is the problems themselves. Most problems contain contradictions and truly are complex with lots of moving parts. Heck. Everything is complex, not just the problems.

** note: that last point contributes to corner of the bar wisdom. solutions, or good past decisions, tend to look simple in hindsight and we ignore the complex interconnections which begets the result we are pointing to <while at the corner of the bar>

For example. As we discuss country issues we discuss natural contradictions within a complex world <both domestic & international is important> as well as the fact the American people often embrace contradictory goals <just wander through any PewResearch report to confirm that thought>.

What do I mean? Well. For example. While any citizen of any country wants to be ‘great’ – defining ‘great’ is a complex puzzle. At the corner of the bar more often than not we ignore the contradictory challenges with more simplistic solutions for what would be great <under the guise of common sense actions or ‘seems to make sense on the surface’ attitudes>. Sometimes this ‘common sense’ assumes ‘oh, everyone would agree with that’ when, in reality, the majority of people would debate it <that is actually complexity in a nutshell>.

I would like to note the exceptional corner of the bar pontificators position themselves incredibly well to exploit such contradictory opinions. For example. “Make America Great Again” is a simplistic slogan that embraces some aspects of patriotism or nationalism pride and is broad enough that any individual can define ‘great’ from their own perspective including both a harsh insular ‘past driven’ edge to a much grander ‘future possibilities’ thought.

That said. At the corner of the bar we more often than not rule our thoughts based on passion <fear, individualism, frustration & anger> supported by reason. The experts reverse the equation ignoring passionate response <fear, individualism, anger> and basing ideas & solutions on solid reasoning and rational thought <and things called “principles” & laws>. I will not spend any time on laws, but, while we at the corner of the bar sometimes shake our heads wondering what common sense <or lack thereof> created some laws we accept they are laws because in some way we all know it creates a construct of ethics.

But let’s be honest. The neighborhood bar is in … well … the neighborhood. It is where we kibbitz over non neighborhood things.

In general it is healthy semi-intellectual debate which makes us feel intellectually good.

In general we take a fairly ridiculously narrow view of how the world works.

Anyway.

The experts who have been talking about this stuff. For today’s discussion I am going to lean on two relatively short, but broader insightful reads – Huntington’s “clash of civilizations’ written in 1993 for Foreign Affairs magazine and then Foreign Affairs magazine’s reprise of the article in 2013 with a number of short “here is what I think” articles.

Rereading the well written thoughts makes you not only realize that the intellectual of those of us at the corner of the bar may not be at the level of stupid, but that there are a shitload of really smart people discussing these topics not at the bar.

Basically, most of us struggle with globalization and nationalism. It’s not that we do not want either or reject one over the other it is that we struggle to see, feel and understand the balance. One expert called this uneasiness we feel ‘casual collapse.’ It is the seemingly ongoing blurring of many beliefs, rituals, formal requirements and laws that define specific societies and us.   And we feel a little helpless in stopping this ‘casual collapse’ because of that darn thing called ‘the internet’ <the cross-cultural sharing of information and knowledge> all compounded by all those darn people shouting nonsense on that darn thing called ‘the internet.’

Now. All this is happening without causing any particular larger collapse of anything. It is just a casual collapse of things as they used to be. And it is happening despite any government edicts or programs designed to slow the change <collapse> or older generations tied to some past cultural aspects efforts. It is an inevitable collapse driven by the fact as everyone becomes more knowledgeable about ‘what is happening and what people are thinking’ half way around the world they begin questioning the status quo conventional thinking where they are. It becomes a blending of local cultural thinking and a more global perspective.

And the whole issue is exacerbated by a faster additional natural progression created by the urbanization of emerging countries.

Why does this change anything? There’s an obvious link between the broad spread of more liberal attitudes and increasing urbanization globally <in 1980 Africa 28% lived in cities – today its 40+% – 40+ million people>. As new urbanites find themselves further distanced from traditional social and familial structures, and are exposed to a wider range of alternative goods, services, lifestyles, opinions and experiences, their tolerance to alternative thinking and behavior grows – as does their interest & attitudes. The web simply accelerates what would have been happening naturally.

I am certainly not suggesting this will happen overnight. As trendwatching suggests “compared to much trend thinking, casual collapse moves at a glacial pace.” Basically, whether we like it or not, globalization has forced the world to be at odds with itself. We are not a world of countries and states living in solitude, but rather one in which we overlap linked, and delinked, by varying degrees of history, culture, religion, language, location and institutions.

This causes a natural reaction against a sense of uniformity. We naturally chafe at the thought of “being the same as everyone else” <while still viewing aspects we like & want>. And therein lies the greater conflict – while economic life takes place on a global platform human identity remains national & local.

Yeah.

The identification of local <and nationalism> will always continue and will always create the same angst we feel at the corner of the bar as we watch the zillion TV’s typically sitting in the bar suggesting globalization is infringing upon our corner of the bar.

Even global economic growth infringes upon our national identification.

What do I mean? Economics depends on education and communication which leads directly to conflicts over language and comparisons over education levels. All the while … a global economic view encourages everyone to believe the world is their oyster – anyone can aspire to any economic position. The reality is that everyone does not have an equal likelihood of upward economic mobility <locally, nationally or globally> and not simply because individuals have different innate capabilities <but that is a different post>.

At the corner of the bar we need not worry nor address the balance we focus on what we need and what we want – not necessarily the greater good.

And then there is the scary factor we local experts face over a beer.

Terrorism.

There is clearly a relationship between globalization and violence. Unfortunately, this stage of globalization <its current stage of maturity> doesn’t necessarily spread peace & understanding. Instead it tends to foster conflicts and resentments <global media makes it possible for the most deprived or oppressed to compare their fate with that of the free and well-off as well as showing one nation what another nation is achieving>. In today’s world globalization tends to provoke revolt and dissatisfaction.

All that said. The one thing we common everyday schmucks can certainly do at the corner of the bar is to analyze the present, embrace some of the past, but we cannot predict the future.

The future is yet to be written by a world that is anything but simple. It is a world where society is often uneven, always complex and often local societies overlap with a global society all the while burdened by public institutions seemingly incapable of navigating local and international needs. This often leads us to simply divide the issue into a solvable part versus unite the complexity into one seemingly unsolvable issue <because it is easier to solve a part rather than a complex whole when you are at the corner of the bar>.

And that is where most of us at the corner of the bar truly fall short. Enriching people, minds, bodies and spirit, is the ultimate objective of any problem & issue and the most difficult task in the world.

It is a complex task.

It requires the best of everyone, the best of civilizations and the best of leadership & thinking all not emphasizing the differences, but reinforcing the common objective.

A country, a culture, a civilization … is a messy creature.

A country can be kind & generous as well as cruel & coldblooded as they pick their way through the natural chaotic world.

Me, and American, believes the United States clearly has the capacity to influence which future is most likely. However, for anyone to predict the future confidently would be naive <or outright lying>. But globalization is not a simplistic concept. But nationalism is not a simplistic concept. Being a president, or any leader of a significant organization, is not a simplistic concept.

Inevitably leading is not just about hope or promising something better, it is a pragmatic pushing of  opportunity to the people who need it the most and want it the most <thereby maximizing what opportunities do exist>. And opportunities abound … in fact … there may actually be more opportunity in the world than problems <but you would never know it by listening to conversations at the corner of the bar … or on TV>.

Look. In a world where I have no idea how my mobile phone or the internet work <or my car, television, or microwave, or … whatever> and, yet, they consistently work, everything seems so unknowable that amateurish expert wisdom actually seems … well … attainable.

In other words. If no one knows anything then why can’t I know something?

C’mon, let’s be honest, corner of the bar discussions typically devolve into the simplistic and our solutions skate on the superficial surface of reality. We should not, and cannot, devolve into a world where there are no experts or believe that experts don’t know more than we do.

Simply being an expert doesn’t mean ‘perfection’ – not making mistakes or being wrong <because that would predicate they could actually tell the future>. But let’s be honest, we want people smarter than us – the people sitting at the corner of the bar – making the really important decisions.

Well.

I certainly do.

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originally posted July 2016

Uh oh. Your company has slid down the slippery slope of brilliant irrelevance. Your business is in trouble.

This sucks because in the not too distant past you were standing at the top of the mountain looking down on everyone — head in the clouds blinded by bright success. Unfortunately, being at the top is heady business and companies easily, and often, step a little too far. Actually, you probably stepped nowhere, but instead the edge of the mountain eroded under your feet because you were looking up too much <or at the gobs of money you were making> and … oops … you just slid down the slope.

Here’s the good news. You have a chance. Albeit it is a small chance. But you do have a chance to get the hell off the slope and resurrect that frickin’ mountain you were standing on before. It’s a small chance because a whole bunch of things need to be done and need to be done right AND need to go right … but it can be done.

Some branding expert once wrote about this topic and cranked out the eight P’s <purpose, promise, people, product, place, price, promotion and performance> as “the way” to resurrect your company.

Uhm.

First. There is no ‘the way.’

Second. It’s a nice trick using all that assonance <all the P stuff>, but before anything else would happen I imagine most people would tell him to ‘piss off’ <that may be the 8^th P> rather than try and do all those things.

Third. Resurrection is hard. It is pushing that boulder back up the mountain.

So while many things need to go right I would say success in business resurrection resides in doing a few things well, with focus, and lots of resilience and determination. Of course, I am not as smart as that branding expert … so you may want to take these thoughts with a grain of salt: 

–          Refocus.

This is about focusing the entire organization. This can be resetting, it can be redefining, or it can simply be realizing that you have lost your focus. Personally, I am never quite on board with the people who say you need to redefine because that assumes you had a crappy definition in the first place which seems unlikely if you actually made it to the top (or close). More likely this is simply refocusing on what got you to the mountain top in the first place.
Refocusing the organization begins with clearly defining the brand and business vision and goals. I know where I mostly get aggravated with ‘rebranding experts’ is that they always seem to suggest a company needs something ‘new’  or recreate or, well, they seem focused on something new and glittery.

Here is a business truth. Brands and companies win not on glitter, but on the grind. And the grind is, well, not glittery. I say that because while you are grinding away and making gobs of money there will always be a bunch of people showing you shiny glittery objects suggesting now that you have had some success in the grind, you should be more, well, fabulous. They whisper “you are better than a ‘grind brand and company.’” Within that tempting glittery ‘I want to be fabulous’ gauntlet many a good company grinding away has been lured away from its focus. In fact. I would suggest the more success <or ongoing failure> a company has the easier it is to lose ‘grind focus‘. It is only when you aren’t entirely resoundingly successful or resoundingly a failure that you keep your nose to the grindstone. I imagine my point is that focus, in and of itself, isn’t glittery. To get off the slippery slope of irrelevance you often need to shed the glitter and refind the grindstone. And, yes, I purposefully chose this metaphor on my first point to reemphasize … this is work. This is hard.

And there is not a lot of glitter in refocusing <and resurrection> a business.

–          Relevance
This is about refinding the company’s true relevance. Because first & foremost the company has to have the perception <internally and externally> it is better at something. That almost sounds silly to point out, but if a company is in a resurrection crisis mode 99% of the time that ‘lack of focus’ that got them here has led to what I refer to as ‘fragmented relevance.’ What I mean is that success often breeds ‘following additional sales’ rather than ‘leading to additional sales.’ Let me explain. At some point things were going well and it became really really easy to begin to make niche or small business exceptions under the guise of ‘the customer wants it’ and it gave some signs of incremental sales <maybe not profit>. Your balance sheet is becoming strewn with these little exceptions which inflate your revenue and sales, but you aren’t making shit for profit from them. You are doing a lot but not getting a lot of return out of what you are doing.

This leads back to relevance. A company fools themselves into believing they are offering something relevant because they are responding to a customer, but it isn’t better or distinct, you are simply attempting to meet a customer need/desire.

In branding words you are flooding your brand with indistinct commodity like features. While each little thing looks … well, little, when viewed as a whole it becomes confusing to the outside world. What are you really good at? What is your best product? All that kind of stuff. You’ve lost perception relevance in people’s minds.

Ah. You have simply slipped down the slippery slope of irrelevance.

Many times a company will have to shed product/service offerings to resurrect. Uh oh. I told you this was difficult. If it helps, think of these things as little rocks weighing you down pulling you further down the slope <as well as making it an increased burden as you try and pull your company back up the slope>. Make sure that ‘better’ <the promise you are offering to anyone who wants to be associated with you> is relevant — to them, not to you.

** note: assessing what you need to shed can be very easy, shedding is often very difficult. I often ask businesses “how far would you go to survive” and “be prepared to abandon everything it does to survive.”

This means defining where you want the brand to be and then deciding how to get there.

This means making sure you are selling people ONLY the things that make you better. This sometimes means moving one foot forward to follow your customer as they have also become older and yet keep one foot solidly in a growing customer base.

Does this mean the company has to mean everything to everyone? Absolutely not. It is just all about remaining relevant to enough people so that you have a meaningful place in the world of business. 

–          Align 

This is always the tricky part. Whatever you have decided the focus is, you need to align everyone internally <without diminishing autonomy> and you need to reinforce this externally <consistent attitude & behavior>. A company has to be mercilessly disciplined and yet maintain the flexibility to accommodate the true fact that ‘a great plan never lives beyond first contact with the enemy.’ I imagine using the P methodology could help because this is what the five of the P’s are all about: people, product, place, price and promotion.

People.

You have to be disciplined on the focus anchor of the business pendulum. The pendulum will swing. You just want to insure that everyone’s pendulum is swinging off the same axis. There has to be employee commitment and confidence. In fact, in resurrection mode, they need to be ‘reinspired.’ This is very difficult during resurrection because you have most likely decreased the number of offerings <which implies they will have less to satisfy the customer with> and you may have laid some people off.

The organization has to believe that there is a <planned> future, the future will happen and that they can help.

Next. The products and services are the tangible evidence of the focus and relevance.

A company’s ONLY chance of resurrection is to be ruthless in assessing their product portfolio. Absolutely frickin’ ruthless. I will outline in price how I would go about figuring this out.

The next P is ‘place.’ Personally I think this is a forced P. This is about the experience or however and whenever and wherever a potential customer interacts and has an experience with your product portfolio and people.  Some people call this the face of the brand.

I don’t really care what you call it. The experience must be consistent everywhere. No ifs, ands or buts.

Ah. Then there is price. Whew. Resurrection almost always falls apart here. I almost always suggest a company do an audit of all their sales and define two main things:

–          How many sales did you make at full price <no customer discounts or exceptions or whatever>

–          How many sales did you make with an acceptable profit.

I almost always begin here because not enough companies do this. In addition it shines a spotlight on where they make money and how they make money.

I am not opposed to discounting <because there are some psychological aspects of selling it appeals to>, but I am opposed to not having an everyday price perception. Too often customer research will come back and say something like “well, that isn’t their real price.”

That’s bad.

People need to know your price or at least your pricing strategy. A good place to always start <part one> is simply decrease an emphasis on discounting.  An overemphasis on deals and discounts builds deal loyalty rather real loyalty <note: discounting is scary to eliminate>.

A good place to start <part 2> is clearly define your pricing strategy. Despite what you may believe. a company does not have to be low price every day.

Yes. Building value perceptions is really difficult. But you know what? So is resurrecting your company. Resurrection doesn’t even get off the ground if you screw up your pricing <value proposition>. As hard as it is to accept, resurrection is really not about sales, it is about value perceptions <sales will follow>.

Chew on that one for a while.

Promotion <or how and what you communicate>. Theme, slogan, visuals, sounds, it doesn’t matter.

Too often someone comes dancing in from the outside suggesting that “how exciting … you are rebranding! … we need to build some excitement!! … some flash & sizzle!!!” <and, yes, the number of exclamation points increase as the conversation continues>. To use Tolkien: “not all that glitters is gold.” Go back to my first point, companies and brands win by grinding. All communications, first and foremost, must be reflective of ‘the alignment grind.’ A consistent reflection of that promise. Disconnected messages and tactics destroy alignment, destroy inspiration internally, and destroy brands externally.

Ok.

Here is your bottom line on business resurrection. You want to, and have to, produce the right results, but you need to do it the right way.

Resurrection is relentlessly unforgiving.

Truth — you are honestly already on your way to death if you need to be resurrected. It drives me a little crazy that more companies don’t take on a ‘do this or die’ attitude in resurrection mode. Of course they are nervous <if not scared> so they inevitably discuss easing changes and gradually shifting … its crazy.

Resurrection is about shaking the etch a sketch or you slide down to the bottom of the slippery slope of irrelevance and die.

=======

Originally published November 2013

============================

“Incrementalism is how we slide into participation by imperceptible degrees so that there is never the sense of a frontier being crossed.” 

—-

Jonathan Glover 

============

“Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.”

—-

Kahlil Gibran 

====================

Well. Incrementalism is a virus. And once you catch it is a sonuvabitch to cure.

I, personally, believe the entire business world, including new business incubators, has this virus. Incrementalism has seeped its way not only into mainstream business but also mainstream ‘innovation’ pipelines.

Yeah. Innovations too.

I dare any of you to walk the halls of your local business incubation center and find a real, “break the etch-a-sketch” idea in there. If you are lucky, you will find one. The majority of innovation ideas these days, incubators as well as established companies, is all about incrementally leveraging from something existing.

Sure. They may claim its “unique” and “a whole new way of doing things”, but the majority of the time, lets say 98% of the time, it is a derivative of something that exists. That is how far the incrementalism virus has reached into the business world.

But this post today isn’t about innovation. This is about how incrementalism just makes us sad. It makes us sad because if you embrace incrementalism that means you have given up on, well, something that is not incremental. You have given up on being able to do something big and risky and game changing. And, worst, you’ve given up on making any substantial decisions <because incrementalism is simply an excuse for not making a clear cut decision>.

Now.

You may not believe you have given it up because we, in the business world, actually cleverly use incrementalism to convince ourselves we are actually achieving big changes.

….. incrementalism dance ………

We do the dance of ‘small steps to achieve big change’ which is kind of some odd waltz in which we make the same moves over and over again and point to change as “we improved how we dance” <but we are still in the same place dancing with the same person dancing to the same music>.

To be clear.

Even I, someone who loves change and “shaking the etch-a-sketch” in business, have been sucked into the black hole of incrementalism.

We do an incredibly good job of convincing ourselves that big change is hard, shit, that any change is hard and almost impossible to do because ‘it is difficult to do’ (note: which is mostly a bullshit thought). Given that, we do an incredibly good job of convincing ourselves that the only way to effectively successfully implement change is through smaller thoughtful steps. All leading to … we do an incredibly good job of convincing ourselves of all that, in fact, so much so that’s all we do.

Look.

Big change is possible. You just need to be smart, thoughtful and choose the ‘big’ wisely and with open eyes. But nowadays we view ‘big’ as some place we need to work our way towards and not just something we do. Unfortunately, as soon as we step onto the incrementalism slippery slope it, more often than not, causes everyone to slide, unintentionally, into unchanging behavior <or microscopic change increments>. This means everyone does small thing after small thing which make everyone feel like they are changing and that shit is changing … uhm … all the while the world itself is changing faster.

This means in our incrementalism we are moving forward and, yet, falling behind. It’s like walking on a moving sidewalk in the wrong direction.

Maybe the worst part?

We do not even see the backwards effect of our supposed forward movement. This happens mostly because most of us suck at not only changing, but perceiving change. We easily lose sight of any change as we focus on the incremental activity we have wholly embraced as ‘progress’ <because we say in our minds: “big change is impossible and this is the way to do it!”>.

The other very real danger of incrementalism is that while you have your head down focused on the incremental task at hand not only may the rest of the world be moving faster than you – it may even turn. So you will keep plugging away plodding down your incrementalism path and all the while the rest of the world is now trundling away in a completely different direction.

By the way. In business this is bad.

Anyway.

I will absolutely admit that most of the business world absolutely recognizes the importance of seeking to continuously reinvent and innovation, yet, sadly mostly we are actually just going through the motions. The motions may look incredibly sensible but they really aren’t achieving any change of any significance.

===============

the term Incrementalism is also used as a synonym for Gradualism. Incrementalism is a method of working by adding to a project using many small incremental changes instead of a few (extensively planned) large jumps.

Logical incrementalism implies that the steps in the process are sensible.

============

I fully admit that convincing people that change is not hard <and overcoming ‘it pays to be sensible’> is hard. And I fully admit that the “big version” of this is even harder AND I admit that any non-incremental change is even more risky <which makes overcoming “it pays to be sensible” even harder>.

But that isn’t my point.

My point is that it seems like we have convinced ourselves in the business world that change is ALWAYS best achieved gradually and incrementally. We should always find the easy small steps and do them.

So what <you may be asking>?

This means we begin measuring the success of the business not by any real change, but rather defining our usefulness and worthiness by measuring it in increments versus the past. Incrementalism more often than not doesn’t get measured by how much closer to the ‘big change’ you are but rather by how far you have gone from what you were.

Uhm.

That is nuts. And while it is nuts that is almost exactly how over 90% of business conduct business <and their change>. Worse? This incremental behavior decision making actually bleeds into incremental decision making in general. Everyone starts believing that a bold decision just isnt worth it when you know everyone feels comfortable with an incremental decision.

Look.

While I always advocate timely good big change, I certainly would advocate embracing incrementalism on occasion. Business change is, and as always been, about choice. You look around and choose where incrementalism may be most effective and where ‘big change’ is actually needed. In other words, for doing smart change you do both within your business.

** note: this is exactly the same for strategy – deterministic & emergent. Emergent is simply another word for ‘unplanned for opportunity’ or opportunistic and typically is an opportunity for a non-incremental result.

Yeah.

I can do both at the same time. This has two benefits:

• Organization: all businesses need to be reinvented in some way. I cannot remember one business I have seen or been involved in that hadn’t established some routine that didn’t need to be changed significantly. Incrementalism steadies the organization by not destroying something, but rather fine tuning it. Conversely when you can tie big change to the organization situationally it energizes the organization that it is being smart <to not change everything>, but bold <in that it is willing to make selective smart big changes>. Showing both is the best of both worlds.
• The employee/individual: incrementalism is a virus almost like mononucleosis. It encourages employees to almost sleepwalk through the day. When you inject big change and encourage everyone to believe it can be done and develop a plan to show it can be done and activate people to start getting it done, individual employees are reminded that there IS something more than either the status quo or ‘incremental and gradual change’ <which they were struggling to discern from the everyday grind anyway>.

In the end. My concern.

My concern is that our love of incrementalism is killing meaningful change. Its killing meaningful decisions. Its killing believing meaningful (bigger) things can actually happen.

I don’t want to kill incrementalism, but I certainly want to breathe new life into “big” and meaningful.

Just know this about incrementalism: the problem is that incrementalism is seductively sleepy. It’s the Prozac of business strategy. All I can really suggest is that every business should stop taking Prozac on occasion and watch how the pulse of the company picks up. They may find that Life off of Prozac just isn’t that bad. More importantly, they may find they can shrug off the sadness of incrementalism and have a happier organization. And that is a good thing in business.

================

“Be Impeccable With Your Word. Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others.

Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.”

=

Miguel Angel Ruiz

———

Ok. I have been think about plagiarism a lot lately. In fact this is actually a followup to my ‘black, white and gray of plagiarism‘ piece.

Today this version of plagiarism is ‘similarities’ to things other people have written. Let me refer to one of my favorite thinker/writers, Fareed Zakaria, who was skewered for plagiarism.

Now. In his situation we are not talking about plagiarizing ideas or thinking, but rather background to support his points/ideas. 

===

Several blogs, such as conservative media watchdog Newsbusters and the National Review online, spotted similarities between parts of Zakaria’s column and a piece on the same topic in an April issue of the The New Yorker. The paragraphs in question largely involved descriptions of historical events and context about gun control in America and do not seem anywhere near as serious as other famed plagiarists – such as Jayson Blair at the New York Times and Stephen Glass at the New Republic who made up entire quotes, people and incidents. But as media websites picked up the story and asked Time for an official comment, Zakaria issued a statement and confessed to his error: 

“Media reporters have pointed out that paragraphs in my Time column this week bear close similarities to paragraphs in Jill Lepore’s essay in the April 23rd issue of The New Yorker.

They are right. I made a terrible mistake. It is a serious lapse and one that is entirely my fault.

 I apologize unreservedly to her, to my editors at Time, and to my readers.” 

————–

Ok. Here is the deal. The harsh Truth as it were.

If you write a lot and share thinking, it is extremely difficult to not plagiarize.

Let me say again. Extremely difficult to not plagiarize.

Now. I am not talking about copying someone’s ideas or thinking. And I am not talking about not sourcing a huge gob of research or writing done by someone else.

I am talking about the snippet or paragraph.

How does it happen <you may ask>?

When you research a topic you will inevitably review a large number of articles, some research, certainly some other written pieces and maybe even some blog thoughts from people.

Sometimes in building your draft you will copy some of the content into a draft document so you don’t lose the thought.

Sometimes you write a thought down using your own words <although sometimes another writer says something so well it is difficult to say it any better>.

Sometimes the words get used as is. Sometimes you source and sometimes <without thinking about it too much> you think the thoughts, and words, are so common sense they become almost a ‘public domain’ type thought in your mind.

Sometimes in writing your own thoughts in the final piece you know you will publish you lose track of what is your words and what may have been used by someone else not with bad intentions, but simply because the thoughts seem so unoriginal it just seems like ‘shit anyone and everyone would say or know.’

** note: I cannot tell people how often I have seen words I have written, often a decade or so ago, appear in things written today which I do not view as plagiarism – the odds they ever saw my words would be worse than playing in Vegas – but rather common thinking expressed in common words.

I say all this not to justify any sort of plagiarism. I say this simply to say it is sometimes very very difficult to NOT plagiarize <in some form or fashion>.

Here is what I do know for sure.

It is extremely difficult to say something in an original way. Suffice it to say if it is even a semi-smart idea or thought, assume somewhere someone has articulated what you say … in almost the exact same words.

I know that may seem extremely difficult for some writers to accept, or believe, but it is true.

I struggle to think of completely original use of words when someone writes shit like I do on a blog or for thought pieces <or even some semi professional writing if you do a lot of it>.

Well. At least original in a consistent way.

I think anyone who writes a lot stumbles across a unique grouping of words to articulate a thought on occasion.

I also tend to believe other writers take not of that momentary flash of word brilliance … and credit you.

But that’s not what I am talking about.

The common is easily ‘plagiarized.’

That’s it.

I was thinking about it.

I take plagiarism seriously <always have>.

In addition, I personally, studiously avoid plagiarizing.

That said. I am also quite sure that I have at some point <unintentionally>. Hence the reason I wrote and published my caveat on images and words on my site: “I steal words and images“.

There is no excuse for plagiarizing. But. Everyone should note how difficult it can be to NOT plagiarize.

===

“… these appropriations matter. If the poets don’t assert the value of their words, who will?”

–

Sandra Beasley is the author of the poetry collections

===

Well. I have been thinking about plagiarism a lot lately because I have been finding some fabulous sources of inspiration to leverage my own thoughts from. To be clear. I have always been a thought renovator. Okay. What exactly is a thought renovator. I have my own thoughts, have my own ideas, even have crafted my own composition of words, but I have found they are better when framed by either a contrary thought or *leverage* thought.

** note: leverage thought is when you find a paragraph or passage someone has written, or spoken on a podcast, which offers some framing for your own idea or thinking

I pluck a paragraph, passage, phrase and place it within something I am writing – and source it or credit it. That all seems safe and honest. And then there is the creep of what I call ‘the gray of Plagiarism’.

Before I started writing a of of my own things I had a very clear point of view on what plagiarism is.

Today? Whew. There is a lot of gray area. I have always believed that original ideas and original thinking are fleeting at best. And I have always believed that 99% of the time if you were thinking something, someone else in the great big world of ours was thinking it at exactly the same time.

Before the worldwide web that was just a theory. In today’s world it is a truth.

A tough truth for people who have convinced themselves they are original thinkers, entrepreneurs or ‘disruptors’.

Now. Sometimes plagiarism is so glaringly obvious that it sends a shiver down your spine. The poetry world offers the most vivid examples. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You are saying ‘who cares about poetry?’ <answer: an obscure few>

But it permits me to make a point and discuss plagiarism.

In one poetry scandal one bonehead <a guy named Christian Ward> lifted lines and slightly paraphrased another published poet. The accused poet, Ward, defended himself by saying:

“I had no intention of deliberately plagiarizing and suggested he had used the original poem as a model and had submitted a premature draft.”

And another British poet has been lifting lines <actually entire poems> from numerous poets in the U.S.: 

Publishers and magazines have been working to take down poems and suspend sales of collections by David R Morgan after the American poet Charles O Hartman realised Morgan’s poem “Dead Wife Singing” was almost identical to his own, three-decades-old “A Little Song”. Assiduous digging by the online poetry community, led by the poet and academic Ira Lightman, then discovered that Morgan, a British poet and teacher, had lifted lines and phrases from a host of different writer.

Those examples are clearly plagiarism. This example helped me because I have always felt like I have had a pretty firm grasp on what constitutes plagiarism.

Well. That is until I began writing a lot and publicly on enlightened conflict.

Writing is easy, but writing skirting other people’s ideas and words is difficult. I know I have a method to avoid <or slow down> plagiarism.

I write down my basic thoughts and thinking before I even go online to do any research.

Always.

Do not pass ‘Go” before doing this basic writing.

It also helps in that I find myself in a somewhat enviable position in that I have never faced the seemingly oft-discussed strain of coming up with new material <called ‘writer’s block’>.

I may write about bad ideas or silly things or inconsequential things, but I have never, never once, not had something I didn’t want to write about. What this really means is that I am in the enviable position of not having, never in fact, to cruise the web seeking inspiration for writing ideas.

Now.

That said.

I do seek inspiration <and additional knowledge> on thoughts I have.

Uhm. And, well, correspondingly, who hasn’t wanted to steal words from a better writer? Even a somewhat clever mind and clever writer can give into the temptation to be a cheating plagiarist <borrow some words>.

Sometimes this plagiarism is simply a sentence.

Sometimes this plagiarism is stringing together quotes from other writers.

Sometimes this plagiarism is just laziness because you cannot envision ever being able to write the thought any better than it was written.

As one writer <I am stealing from> suggested:

‘Until very recently, most scholars have been happy to simply chalk these up as “allusions” to the work of other authors. For a long time, it was regarded as something poets just did, as a way of honoring their influences.’

This is a slippery slope.

And even slipperier <that is not a word> because even if you do what I do <write before research or the search for additional inspiration> you can still find your own words in what someone else has already written.

I cannot tell you how many times I have thought I was brilliant only to find that my own words, the words I salivated over with sheer joy over their taste, had already been used by someone else on some obscure blog in Europe or in some obscure town in North Dakota.

I recognized this was going to be an ongoing slope I would find myself slipping on all the time and I even published a post clearly stating “I steal images” because I realized that with at least that one component <images> I was going to be constantly at the fringe of straight robbery.

But words? Here is exactly what I wrote in my ‘steal images’ post:

—-

Words I use.

I seriously doubt I have consciously plagiarized anyone’s thoughts or words.  I have seen some well articulated thoughts that are components of what I write about and while trying to avoid using the same words … a well articulated thought is a well articulated thought and, frankly, it’s difficult to find better words if something is well articulated. I have found things that I have written appear somewhere else (even though I know they have never seen what I wrote).

That is the way of the world.

If people have the same idea and they know how to articulate it, it will often look very similar in verbiage. When I do actually use something that someone else wrote I either italicize or credit it.

—-

So. I also know <going back to poetry> that when I write my own bad poetry it is littered with small phrases I have scribbled down that inevitably were coined by someone else. Similarly my blog writing is littered with wonderful two or three word phrases and words, in general, I have picked up here and there.

Were they used in the same context as what I write? Nope <99% of the time>.

Is that still plagiarism? Well. I assume it is.

It certainly constitutes some level of ‘not an original work’ and serious professional writers refer to this as ‘textual rape.’

I am certainly not rewriting whole documents. And I have found inserting copied words <citing the source> helpful to provide context for my own thoughts. And I try and be generous with regard to admitting I did not create a thought or actual words <even if I am horrible at sourcing and citing>.

All that said.

Plagiarism is tricky <when it is not clearly black & white>.

Now. There is plagiarism technology out there.  And technology can help but inevitably it really <mostly> comes down to human analysis. It is a judgement call. In addition <to be philosophical> … if a tree falls in the wood and no one is there to hear it does it make a sound.

Huh? If I write something on enlightened conflict and no one reads it, but someone else 6 months from now writes the same thing are they plagiarizing?

And … trust me that kind of stuff happens all the time. ALL the time. People have the same ideas & thoughts at the same time … all the time.

We don’t like to believe that, but it is so. In fact. I would suggest it is a Life truth. Well. It is certainly a writing truth.

Here is an additional fact. No one knows everything, and I must research in order to write on a topic I know nothing, or little, about. I have opinions and points of view on just about anything, but not supporting it is lazy, therefore, I need to do some research on what other people think (and know) when I write. And, once again, I absolutely suck at formally citing sources if I use them.

Although, once again, I freely, informally, give credit where credit is due.

It’s an interesting challenge I face every day in detecting and slowing/stopping plagiarism when I write.

When your work is posted and reposted online and the simple publishing of a blog post enters into a global community I imagine <hope> all writers struggle with a somewhat flexible definition of intellectual property.

Regardless. It comes down to 3 things for me.

–          1. The obvious steal

This one is easy. I began with the poetry example because that is plagiarism at its worst. Worst? Because it is not simply copying words … it is copying thinking & creativity.

It is the full alignment of plagiarism at it’s worst.

Copying words simply to get some words down on paper is bad. And it is the obvious steal. Thoughts & creativity may be slightly more difficult to assess, but, an obvious steal is an obvious steal.

–          2. Simultaneous originality

Sometimes I get really lucky in distilling an insight, or something relatively smart, into nicely crafted gathering of words <rare … but it happens>.

Sometimes I am simply early in the sharing of an idea and thought <I cannot tell you how many times I have seen one of my post ideas published in a viable credible publication maybe 2 weeks to 2 months after I wrote mine … please note … typically written better than how I wrote it>.

Sometimes, actually most often,  what I consider a quasi-original thought on my part is simultaneously <or close> not only being thought by someone else, but actually being shared somewhere on the world wide web. Here is where working for a while in a creative industry helps me mentally.

What do I mean? We all are accessing the same stimulus. With the world wide web even more people are being stimulated with the same information and background and news than ever before. If you put the same material through the same filters inevitably similar thoughts/things are going to be generated. In the advertising world everyone realizes in new business pitches that the final creative ideas presented will be very very similar throughout four disparate agencies simply because the initial strategy and research <the input to the development> is very similar.

Ideas and thoughts on the web are the same. We are all absorbing the same stimulus inevitably a number of us will generate similar responses. Ponder that.

–          3. The inspiration

There are gobs of beautifully talented writers out there and even the quasi talented can craft a beautiful thought on occasion. All these beautiful words serve as inspiration.

But inspiration ‘borrowing’ doesn’t have to happen on the web.

John Fogerty says about Proud Mary.

In 1967 he sat in his apartment in San Francisco and says “I began playing a song intro I had been working on which was based on the opening of Beethoven’s 5^th symphony. I didn’t like how Beethoven had composed it and preferred hitting the 1^st chord hard for emphasis and not the 4^th. “

Margaret Mitchell took the title of “Gone with the Wind” from a beautiful lyrical poem called “Cynara” written Ernest Dowson:

== 

Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head:

I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

All night upon mine heart I felt her warm heart beat,

Night-long within mine arms in love and sleep she lay;

Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet;

But I was desolate and sick of an old passion, 

When I awoke and found the dawn was gray:

I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,

Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,

Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;

But I was desolate and sick of an old passion, 

Yea, all the time, because the dance was long:

I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,

But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,

Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;

And I am desolate and sick of an old passion, 

Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:

I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion 

==

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm … is that plagiarism or is it simply inspiration?

Words I see inspire me to think all the time. Sometimes someone’s words inspire me to write. Sometimes their words become the cornerstone with which I build my thoughts and words around.

My larger point is that the internet has made the random beautifully crafted thought more accessible than ever. It’s not just published literature anymore, Beethoven or poetry, but now it can be a blog in the Philippines with a readership of less than 50, a tween on tumblr or some obscure thesis from a graduating student.

We have access to more thoughts and thinking and words than ever be for and all of it can be used for inspiration not to be plagiarized.

Ok. Those are my three. Experts & professional writers <of which I am not> have others.

In the end?

While some people suggest ‘it has become common on the web to ignore the basic courtesy of giving others credit for their idea’, I don’t agree.

Original ideas are few and far between.

Original words, and wording, probably even rarer.

That certainly doesn’t absolve anyone from citing or providing sources or even sometimes sharing credit for inspiration but originality of thought is a myth.

Anyway.

All I know is that plagiarism has entered into a big massive humungous gray area. I struggle with it every day when I write. To me, its kind of like trying to make sure the taste of words is palatable:

“With every draft I read aloud, I tasted the words in my mouth. Salty, sweet, fatty, lean, velvet, metallic, mean. Mine. What does it feel like, tasting words you’ve stolen? Like sand, I suspect. Sand that a man dying of dehydration drinks in the desert, never slaking his thirst.”

Sandra Beasley is the author of poetry collections

Sandra is 100% correct.

My own words taste like the most indescribably good taste in the world. The perfectly cooked steak, the sip of a cool drink on a hot day, the robust blossoming of a super Tuscan red wine on your palate or the hamburger straight off the grill, you can savor each word as you read them.

Others words can taste great also, but they don’t taste as good.

Why? I didn’t cook them up. And words that I am tempted to plagiarize? Taste like sand.

I spit ‘em out.

That’s how I keep myself out of the gray. That said. There are times I look back on things I have written and sense a taste of grit in my mouth and that’s when I wonder – “did I plagiarize something by mistake?” I believe anyone who writes is uncomfortable in the gray and wonders on occasion if that gray is black or white.

=========

“In the course of your education you’ve always been taught to look for the right answer but you must also know that in life sometimes the right answer is that there isn’t one.”

–

Mr. Feeny <Boy Meets World>

===

So. I almost called this “when there is no right answer.” Here is what I know for sure about ‘right answers’ having been in the business world for too many years to count — there is rarely one answer to the question, or challenge, or whatever. There are multiple “right” answers to just about everything. Shit. Sometimes they can even all be wrong answers (or degrees of wrong), but you still have to pick one.

That said. If I want to get philosophical, that makes me wonder if anything is certain or concrete anymore.

I will say that, well, maybe I really am getting old, but black & white seemed clearer to me years ago. In fact, some of my past team members may remember the “McTague good – bad scale.” I would often simply sum up something by saying “well, on the McTague good – bad scale, well, that would be good.”

<or bad when appropriate>

Maybe that was simply the delusional less experienced youth speaking.

These days I would shift the scale to a rating instead of an unequivocal good or bad.

Is there truly an unequivocal non debatable good and bad?

Or a right and wrong?

How about truth or lies? <where omission can be deemed a ‘lie’>

Or is it all just mixed together and upon us to decide for ourselves?

And how about this. Let’s say we decide for ourselves, judge our own actions, but another person, or people around you, has a different judging scale.

Uh oh. What happens then? Who is right or wrong?

<thought: maybe there is a new business idea here where everyone carries a little card they can hand someone before speaking which outlines the boundaries of their ‘personal right & wrong’ scale>

Anyway. Does the end really justify the means when it comes to good or bad or right or wrong? Is it your end or ‘their end’ that really matters in your own black or white judgment?

It all certainly makes you discard almost any thought of ‘is everything either black and white’, but possibly worse is that you sit back & think: ‘is anything black or white’? Or is everything somewhere in the middle, in the gray?

Wow.

My head hurts.

While I believe we all know some things, or something, is black and white it certainly starts making you understand the world is built in shades of gray. That in the world everything becomes negotiable, flexible or left to interpretation – including knowledge, truth & facts.

Maybe that is life. Because the reality in day to day life is sometimes we are forced to bend the truth or sometimes transform it because we’re faced with things that we did not choose to happen, but are demanded to deal with it. We attempt to bend what we know to fit into whatever new context we are in. Unfortunately, the past, nor knowledge, doesn’t bend very well.

Therefore, sometimes, ‘bending the truth’ simply catches up to us – we see that it isn’t black & white and we are faced with a gray not of our own choice.

So.

If we face ‘ethical’ in our day, where is the line drawn? Is it simply, if what we feel is right … well … then it really is?

And if we are forced to do what we think is wrong, should we do it anyway or reap the consequences that come with refusal to go along with the way life pushes us?

Ok.

All of that makes my head hurt.

I know one thing for sure. I would like to be certain of one thing. That somewhere there really is an absolute truth.

Somewhere.

Tricky to find, but there.

Maybe that is the truth.

That it is a journey for truth.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm … I like that <although that is a gray answer isn’t it?>.

Maybe the best way to think about black, white and gray is this way:

—

“Dawn and sunset are the times when Nature herself is unstable and in flux.

The nocturnal world and the daytime world are meeting, and for a brief time coexisting.

It’s not a neat hard cut, but a blurred, irregular dissolve.

These moments are the seams in existence through which we can get a glimpse of the deeper, fundamentally random, chance workings of a system in which we are only a small, insignificant player.”

Bill Viola

—

Is it possible we can find solace in this question through some poetic thought like this?

Shit. I don’t know. Most of us would seek to find some more clarity then this. But maybe he is right. Maybe truth coexists in day and night. Blurred by the edges of right and wrong.

Look. I do know no one will ever get “black & white” right all the time. But I imagine that is not a reason I shouldn’t try for the absolute at all times by constantly seeking ‘truth’ whatever that may be.

Make the attempt to find the black or the white.

Avoid accepting the grey even though you know all you will end up ‘buying’ is some version of gray (or some version of black or white).

And maybe this is the best reason of all:

===

“There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.”

–

Ayn Rand

===

Maybe that is what we have to learn with – gray is evil and we are simply choosing the least evil possible.

==============

“The only thing that has ever made me feel old is those few times where I allow myself to be predictable.”

Carlos Santana

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General Mark Milley:

“disobedience, when done, must be done with trust and integrity, and you must be morally and ethically correct.”(Disciplined Disobedience)

===================

Well. There is no lack of articles on generational gaps in business and, yet, almost every one of them focuses on simplistic “generational characteristics”, “old versus young” and “what millennials want” and shit like that. Sure. Useful but I would argue all young people have always wanted a version of the same thing “do good meaningful shit without all the old people bullshit.”

Anyway.

What no one seems to talk about is the core frictional axis in today’s business generational issue: business philosophy<embodied in how ideas are created & implemented>.

That said. While I will certainly piss some people off by suggesting 50somethings are slowing us all down <impeding progress> I will do so by hopefully using some rational arguments rather than simply ranting.

The foundation for my belief will center on 2 things:

• Compensating
• Compensation

Of course this is, in reality, about ‘letting go holding on’ <with a dose of ‘please move on’>. That said. 50somethings are the biggest impediment AND catalyst for progress.

Let me explain.

Impediment. They cannot let go. They are holding on with a stranglehold sense of fear to what they ‘know.’ I recognize that this is actually a topic on some elder generational life truths:

• No one can do it better than I can.
• It was always better when I was younger.
• It is always worse now than it was before.

Every generation as they get older believes this. Every generation of businesses has a bunch of people sitting in their corner offices looking askance as the young skip down the hallways tapping their proverbial fingers on their desks wondering how to corral all those young whippersnappers to do it the way they did it.

And it can get worse.

The old folk think they are living in the present <their perception> by implementing what is comfortable <the past> therefore their behavior is incredibly difficult to impact because their mind is telling them what they are doing is actually different than what they are actually doing.

Ok. Now that I have blasted 50somethings as being stubborn bitter curmudgeons and the biggest impediment to change, I will take a minute and also note, given the right attitude, 50somethngs can be the biggest enhancer/catalyst of progress. There is a relatively small percentage of 50somethings who have the ability to straddle generations <attitudinally> and have the ability to insert themselves into the younger generation’s minds and desires to strengthen the engine of progress rather than stall the engine.

Please note … I am not suggesting these 50somethings have to be as good as the young at technology or whatever new innovative techniques out there yet to be discovered, in fact, it may benefit them to not be or even try. Their value is in their heads and experience and the nudging of ‘what can be’ using selected knowledge from ‘what was.’

Let’s call it ‘selective best practice learnings.’ Topmodels suggested it was the happy few who could explain things. I have to tell you. I think the market place needs more of these “happy few” 50 year old+ employees than ever before (and I am gonna tell you why). Now. I am not suggesting all 50+ people are the same. And this generalization may be translatable to other age groups but let me suggest there are three groups:

• Over 50 and all they know and believe in is what they were taught when they were in their 20’s.
• Over 50 and they have all the knowledge they need to be on their own and like being on their own (I call these builders)
• Over 50 and have accumulated iterative learning over the years and have a unique combination of old and new (and like renovating)

(note: I wrote a post about Builders versus Renovators)

The first group is lost in the past. They will struggle because their thinking and ideas and even their vocabulary can be out of date. They will suck at transformation or renovation. Their hope is finding someone who needs to work on their internal construct of how to get shit done. But mostly these are the people when we were young we thought were ‘out-of-touch’ from the real world (or chuckled to ourselves because they would throw out up to date buzzwords acting like they knew what was going on).

The second group has accumulated enough knowledge and expertise and confidence where mentally they have flipped from ‘working for someone’ to ‘working for myself.’ They have recognized their ability to build. And they like building (which is different than transforming). They would suck at transforming because they want to run the place and not simply be an enabler for the organization to shift. (Ralph also talks about this within his newsletter as “fear of flying” and learning about yourself). They could possibly be out of touch or they could be leading edge entrepreneurs. But it doesn’t matter because they are now going forward as their own boss.

The third group? They are renovators. Companies should be fighting over these people. They are old but not old. They are experienced but still learning. They have a solid thinking construct but flexible in application. They may have their quirks (because I believe all of us older people start feeling more comfortable in our own skin and therefore are a little less worried about ‘fitting in’) but also tend to be more interested in the result than worrying about step by step how they get there. They can actually make the current buzzword understandable by using past functional learnings to explain them.

So. When I say “fighting for these people” I don’t mean to suggest that companies should be stockpiling these people at the expense of young energetic fresh thinkers and doers. I am simply suggesting that companies need a good tier of these boomer types to transform themselves when, frankly, a lot of companies need to be ‘transforming.’ (and my definition of transformation is leveraging from solid good older characteristics an injecting some new characteristics). I am also not going to suggest there should be a direct correlation between % of boomers in population and % of boomers in the makeup of business organizations. That would seem kind of silly to me.

But the numbers are pretty compelling that organizations should seek that third group of over 50ers (let’s be nice and call them boomers). In 2009 The PEW Center released a study outlining the current generation gap is the largest in the almost 50 year history of the study. Today, an astounding 79% of Americans believe that there is a generation gap in the ways young and old think and believe. Truly the only way to bridge that gap within an organization and eliminate generational divisiveness is to have boomers who can effectively communicate with and motivate all age groups.

There are not many of these 50somethings out there.

—————–

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

L.P. Hartley

—————————-

I equate it to the fabulous few who can travel to a different country and seamlessly blend into the attitudes & behaviors of the new country.

Generations are, in general, slow to change and adapt in a normal every day situation. Today’s 50somethings are exponentially challenged with change and are not dealing with it very well <i.e., not letting go very well>. I believe it was a French sociologist, Emile Durkheim, who developed a psychographic method to establish different socio-cultural groupings <I believe it is called the Sinus Milieu>.  Anyway. Basically it is a model that challenges us to think about behavior, preferences and cultural practices. The main premise behind the model is called ‘the lock-in principle.’ The principle simply states that if we get used to something we do not want to change our habits <or attitudes an beliefs> even if we are presented with something new or different that might be better. Simplistically it consistently shows <to a point that it is almost an unequivocal behavioral truth> that habit is stronger than the desire for improvement.

This thought partially explains that while 50somethings actually share the same desires as young people they are reluctant to let go of what they “know.” this gets compounded by two things:

1. With the advent of data & technology, the working business model has transformed from a “idea construction” model to a “idea destruction/reconstruction model“.
2. With the internet the gap between older experienced based knowledge and younger theoretical based knowledge has become sliver thin.

JEREMY SCRIVENS

“Over the past ten years, businesses have used Lean, Six Sigma, business process engineering and other techniques to drive costs out of a business. They have also succeeded in driving people nuts. Something really important happened two years ago. The percentage of people who loathe their jobs has been rising and the number of people who love their jobs has been falling. Two years ago these lines crossed. If we don’t find a way to reverse that trend then we are truly stuffed.”

Sliver thin? This is the compensation and compensating thoughts I shared upfront. 

• compensation

While this is about management style as well as purpose ultimately this is about money … not only how we personally get paid <earnings & wealth> but also how the company gets paid <profits, revenue, growth, etc.>. The current 50something management generation is literally and figuratively the generation that got squeezed. This was the generation who had to learn how to do more with less. This was the generation who was also demanded to generate more profits and sales increases … with less.

If there is anything this generation understands better, it is the concept of the squeezed dollar.

Now.  Let me explain. As business evolves and the economic environment surrounding industry evolves the needs of the business leader changes. It is natural to adapt to what the economic environment demands <or be killed if you don’t>. The burden of this business generation? The squeezed dollar <versus the bloated dollar of the previous generation>.

The current generation of business leaders has had to thrive in a ‘squeezed dollar’ environment.

• The squeezed dollar is the unfortunate fact that because of the boomer generation leaders’ wonderful success … the financial community demanded the same results … but the consumer demanded transparency.

Therefore in order to maintain continuous sales growth <which is actually a relatively ludicrous concept> and continuous profitability the current business leader had to find ways to squeeze the same profit/growth out of less dollars <cutting staff while cutting prices while cutting … and cutting … and … well … cutting>. I say all this because this economic pressure creates a certain type of management style in order to be successful. 50somethings learned on the job and actually were quite successful maintaining the boomer ‘earn as much as I can’ attitude <a version of extravagant desire for more> as well as working leaner … on the edge of what an organization is actually capable of.

Compounding this is the next challenge.

• Compensating

There is always a fragile relationship between generations … old holding on to what they know and have while the young are trying to pry things from the old … trying to get them to let go <of ideas, responsibility, things, etc.>.

From a ‘wisdom’ perspective the current generation gap is different, and more challenged, at the moment <although it has been this way in the past … just not within our experienced past>. While this wisdom gap between adults and the youth <in Life and in business> has always existed I will call this unique current gap challenge ‘the war on the adult advantage’ <or false knowledge versus real knowledge> for the sake of my discussion.

False knowledge. This is harsh <and an over generalization> but adults have always made shit up. We pass our opinions and beliefs along as facts … as real knowledge based on real life experience. Let’s call this the ‘years advantage.’ Most likely it is a ‘focus group of one’ knowledge but in the past adults could own this advantage the majority of the time. And at its worst … it is simply a defense mechanism to deflect youth energy away from something we would prefer them not to be focused on or thinking.

Real knowledge. Adults almost always had a real practical technical ‘how to do it’ advantage … mostly because in this case we had seen & done it. And done it many times so that it was almost with true expertise <or at minimum we had the process understood and efficient>. Nothing beats practical hands on experience <remember that old folk>.

The internet has squeezed both.  Today false knowledge can be challenged immediately.

And real knowledge?  Well. With some professional proficiency an adult will always maintain an advantage but with the advent of the computer and technology … many adults have actually LOST the advantage. Ultimately … the internet has squeezed this entire advantage perspective <actual wisdom as well as the learning process itself> to the head of a pin.

Only those adults truly agile and adept at thinking are maintaining this advantage.

But, in general, the 50something response?

We are threatened. The two main pillars of advantage have become toothpicks. So we hunker down. We take an increasingly bunker mentality and batten down the hatches <ok … no more tired metaphors>.

What do the 50somethings inevitably have to hold on to <and put a death grip to never let go of>? Whatever slim margin of advantage we can own, the unassailable portion, is ‘how we learned to do it’ — the process and the mentality and the ‘work’ on HOW we learned what we learned that got us to where we are.

Heck.  We got here this way … so any other way is a short cut <or not the right way>. Uh oh. Why is this an issue? Well. My good friends at topmodels.com helped me out again. They refer to it as “why faith is replacing knowledge.”

“… our world is getting more complicated all the time. Black and white, good and bad, right and wrong have been replaced with complicated constructs that leave most people in the dark.

As the world around us becomes increasingly fast paced and complex, the amount we REALLY know – what we can really grasp and understands – decreases all the time. Today it is more or less taken for granted that we do not understand many of the things that surround us, such as mobile phones and ipads. And even if somebody tried to explain the DNA code to us, we would probably be out of our depth.

We are increasingly surrounded by ‘black boxes’ … complex constructs that we do not understand even if they are explained to us. We cannot comprehend the inner processes of a black box but nonetheless we integrate their inputs and outputs into our decision making. The amount that we simply HAVE to believe, without understanding it, is increasing all the time. As a result we are tending to assign more importance to those who can explain something than to their actual explanation.” <The Decision book: 50 models for strategic thinking

Krogerus & Tschappeler>

Well. That thought scares the shit out of 50somethings. It stands against everything we were taught.

Faith versus actual knowledge? How can you truly understand if you don’t understand <all the innards and stuff>? The young are replacing <some> knowledge with faith … and the old are not letting go of ‘stop and learn the knowledge.’ There is certainly a balance … but 50somethings are not interested in balance … they are interested in having ‘no faith’ because they perceive it as having ‘too much risk’ or ‘not the way we did it.’

<insert ‘get over it’ here>

There is a massive opportunity for 50somethings if they can get their shit together and quit ‘compensating.’ If they simply quit cocooning simply to maintain their adult dignity <their wisdom factor> and seeking to simply maintain whatever slim perceived advantage they can have over the youth <not actually increasing the gap but simply strengthening the fine thin line between the two>.

Today? It is a more hardened thinner gap than in past generations.

The future is always ‘now’ to the young because the future exists in their ideas. Whenever the future ‘happens’ it becomes the present and then immediately the past <kind of my explanation for the excessive restlessness the youth in business have>.  50somethings need to learn to let go and hold on for the ride <as a conductor>.

Ultimately … the old have lost their traditional grip over the young and are holding on harder than ever before. They are over-compensating to maintain control <or their advantage>.

Bottom line on this topic. It really comes down to two things … attitude and respect.

Attitude.

The right attitude <combined with some respect> is the requirement for adapting to change and generations.

With the passing of time each of us changes … experientially and psychologically. In certain situations, younger people do not like accommodating themselves to traditional experiences and in others older people are reluctant to accept the new. In order for a person to change themselves, it is necessary that they not only be convinced of the appropriateness of this change but they also have to have the right attitude. The attitude matters because … well … this shit doesn’t happen overnight <despite the fact everyone seems to think if you don’t make changes immediately you will get crushed>. In order for everyone to adapt organizationally everyone, both generations, need time.  Time to assimilate the new and the old and create the necessary experience as well as process it to make … well … progress.

Respect.

Oddly, I will suggest it isn’t that the young should respect the old, but rather the opposite. I believe the 50somethings need to get their proverbial heads out of their asses and develop some respect for the young and what they can do <that we cannot>. Show them respect and I imagine they will show us respect <if we have the ability to deserve it along with the right attitude>.

In the end.

There is a lot of talk amongst older folk on “changing” and “adding purpose to businesses” but my prediction?  Existing leadership <and middle management> will screw this up mainly because they will only see the short term as an opportunity to get an older, more mature, cheaper employee and not recognize the longer term issues that will arise. They will screw it up because they will focus on ROI & not ROY:

• Lack of ROY <return on youth>: youth and young people are the cheapest innovation engine in any organization. While typically overlooked in an innovation model their innate ability to provide a fresh perspective through fresh eyes is invaluable. Organizations may not recognize their current loss with the ‘lack of youth’ within their organizations but it is having an impact. It has a domino effect within an organization. Without the ‘hidden youth engine’ more pressure will fall on older employees for innovative ideas … and these employees are more focused on ‘safe behavior to maintain employment’ and … well … you can see where this ends up.

Focusing on what we perceive as ‘generational differences and ‘youth attitudes’ <and not the organizational issues> I believe we older folk will not manage this issue well. Mainly I believe this because we will tend to focus on numbers & jobs and not some key psychological aspects <some Maslow stuff>.

There is truly no generation gap with desire to what we want <purpose, meaning, joy of task, being better, hope>, but the real gap exists in the minds of HOW things should be done.

As noted in my construction versus deconstruction posts, it is a new business world out there today and navigating the transition is where the best minds of the older generation should be focused. I could argue we are currently in the business world’s liminal space <uncomfortable, uneasy transition space> and if you agree, well, then we are simply on our way to someplace new & better. I could also argue we need a new business model for a new business world and fortunately for everyone the young are more capable of implementing this new model than any existing generation.

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“We laughed and laughed, together and separately, out loud and silently, we were determined to ignore whatever needed to be ignored, to build a new world from nothing if nothing in our world could be salvaged, it was one of the best days of my life, a day during which I lived my life and didn’t think about my life at all.”

―

Jonathan Safran Foer

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Someone (Gerad Petherbridge) recently asked what makes a great advertising agency culture. I flippantly answered “an uncompromising vision to do great, smart, work.” And you know what? I stand by that. And I stand by that not just for advertising but for pretty much any business. To me, that is the core of a principled culture. I’d wrap two other principles around that:

• Progress (better today than I was yesterday).
• Integrity (no ethical shortcuts).

Note I have not used the word “values” yet. I will not in this frame of reference <but I will in a different frame later>.

A culture, or community of people working together, or maybe better said, the things that create a well-connected, group of people tend to be bonded in a more nebulous vision. Shangri-La, values, principles, attitudes, whatever labels you want to attach (and there are gobs of people and books and coaches who will) that we always want to identify, evaluate and ‘formula-ize’ even though it is actually something that’s actually more magic in a bottle. Yeah. Shangri la as it were.

I would suggest all those labels are just stupid shit.

That doesn’t mean there are into underlying practices that can facilitate a consistent desired output, but it means you really cannot create it; you simply create scenarios in which it can occur/emerge.

I will say my opening one sentence paragraph may be my definition for togetherness & my definition of the best business culture one could imagine. It captures the essence of what togetherness should be for everyone perfectly. It embodies culture. This is what a well aligned business focused on a similar vision & purpose should feel like. I find it interesting because I believe we now this in our youth and the as we forge our way thru the business world we get stripped of this, what I would call the substance, in our pursuit of ‘getting shit done’ & ROI & results.

“People are energy sources to be activated, not depleted, to maximize businesses. We flippantly discuss jobs as mundane and boring which only makes the people doing them feel meaningless and mundane.”

Bruce McTague

Many people smarter than I have discussed meaning of work and the fact people want to work toward something, not just for something (like money).

To me this is about a vision which everyone gathers around. I call it a campfire.

The odd thing to me with the campfire concept is that it implies a bit of “thoughtful gathering of fuel to build a campfire” (some purposeful planning & thinking) and, I will admit, as a leader I never really thought much about purposefully sharing any real substantive value to the people who elected to follow me nor do I purposefully share any substantive value to people I wanted to join whatever merry band gathered around that campfire. I never thought about trying to create some compelling message or try and be compelling. I solely focused on my convictions, my attitude & beliefs and I imagine I thought of it as “I have a campfire, come sit down … and I hope you stay <if you want>.”

Ok. This leads me to Values.

My POV: a business does not have values, they have principles. People have values, individual to themselves, and tey bring them to work every day and a business places principles at the front door so the people can coalesce their behavior around those principles.

Beyond the fact Values statements do not define behavior tossing around values in a flippant fashion seeds an organization with cynicism.

But here is most possibly the toughest challenge developing a business Principle ‘campfire’ — it takes a leader group with real guts. Why? The thing is that Principles have the uncomfortable task of encouraging personal & organizational success all the while fettering how success is achieved. Let’s call Principles the reins you tug and release on the organization.

Why does that matter? Well. As Napoleon said: “Success is the most convincing talker in the world.”

Success, in and of itself, is the one thread wish holds together almost every organization. We can discuss purpose and we can discuss integrity but, in the end, the function of an organization is to be successful.

And success is a cat’s cradle clash of personal versus the organization.

This is where I bring in ‘empathy’ and ‘mirroring.’

Empathy is a connection between feelings. Its strongest connection is when one’s feelings toward another mirror what the other is actually feeling. Let’s call it empathy alignment.

But.

——-

“Mirroring alone does not lead to empathy. We still have to choose to believe another person’s feelings matter.”

The Anatomy of Empathy

——–

If someone’s personal employee identity is defined by the culture, the principles of the culture need to be aligned not only with the personal values, but also the success value or it all gets negated, wiped out, and makes the employee feel lost, maybe isolated and, at its worst, feel less worthy as a person <questioning not only hier abilities but also how they are going about using their abilities>.

Then there is the organization itself. Success and identity <values> clash in a fear of being cast out from the collective <either by being fired or by not fitting in>.

Humans are tribal by nature and organizational culture feeds into that <and principles are maybe the key aspect of foundational culture aspects>. Obeying principled behavior, even if you have differing individual values, is the price to pay for staying in the tribe. In exchange you get to enjoy the perks, protection and personal actualization found within the organization.

Lastly. In the end.

Here is the most powerful aspect of culture.

Employees are greatest advocates for what they believe in. And. The holy grail of the ‘future of work’ is having employees (people) believe in themselves & believe they offer value every day. Brands <what you sell or just simply the company you work for> reside in minds of customers. Employees just show people what they can believe in. In other words. Productivity increases in tandem with greater brand/business value <a version of the Halo Effect>. So if the employees produce great work imbued with integrity and people like it and find value in it you have created a loop of highest value.

I admit I worry about wording it this way because inevitably some business person will think “how do I measure that and motivate that” when the power in this is only measured in the looped feedback mechanism. Ponder.