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Monthly Archives: April 2014

The Dimensions of Desire & The Human Ghost in the Value Chain Machine

22 Tuesday Apr 2014

Posted by Thin Air Factory in Uncategorized

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Consumption, corporate efficiency, Employee activation, Employee rewards & recognition, Green Ips, Hobbes, i-phones, Identity, mammoths, McMansion, Philosophy, prosperity, psychoanalytical motivators, resilience, samsung TV, sonos sound systems, storytelling, Tai-Bo, the American Dream, thriving, Value Chains

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I mentioned recently that I felt that the resiliency of a company’s storytelling: its ability to tell a singular differentiated, robust and authentic story through its value chain, across its social reach and around its stakeholder constituency, is one of the greatest factors in defining that company’s resilience.

The ability to tell a story that fuses the nature of Mutual Desire and Shared Resilience in the company – one that ignites and feeds the Desire of every stakeholder embraced within its parameters – not just some precious few – is critical to capturing and securing value in every link in the chain.

So, having said that, I thought I might just unpack the Satchel of Desire so to speak. Then I shall follow up with a like-minded piece on Resilience.  

Now when I talk about desire at its basest level. I am talking about the ‘core motivator of all human action’  version: the psychoanalytical one, where desires are fundamental to human existence because they are directly attributable to bodily organs and their needs.

Belly empty. Gonads full. Get club. Hit Mammoth. Mammoth dead. Woman eat mammoth. Man eat mammoth. Woman like man. Man like woman. Belly Full. Gonads empty. Repeat as necessary.

This seems terrifying bleak and basic to our terribly self-aggrandising and civilised selves.  Thankfully, things have moved on a little (ish – a night out in your average Harvester or TGIFridays might say otherwise!)

There is also the philosophical nature of the word desire. Hobbes (1588–1679) proposed the concept of psychological hedonism, which asserts that the “fundamental motivation of all human action is actually the desire for pleasure’.

(Some might go further and say that desire at its most basic physiological level is an addiction to the dopamine surges that we interpret as ‘pleasure’ or a pleasurable feeling.)

But dopamine addiction aside – somewhere between the psychoanalytical, physiological and the philosophical lies the basic nature of desire. My particular interest is in regards to the consequence of it on us individually, collectively and communally: especially in context to what motivates out working personas and culture and our concepts of recognition and reward.

As we get further up the civilizing ladder – and the increasing skills/increasing value axis of measurement – the relationship between desire and motivation and emotion and action increase in their levels of sophistication and complexity.

I stated in the previous piece that I had chosen the word DESIRE because it carried within it two profound and powerful dimensions, notably those of IDENTITY and UTILITY.

I believe that developing compound indices around IDENTITY and UTILTY could allow us to set DESIRE up as a rich yet defined enclave within which to further calibrate far more nuanced degrees of relationship between the functional nature of something being desirable and the aspirational nature of its desirability.

I also ventured that to qualify these dimensions with any authenticity we would need to appreciate that there are positive and negative versions of both.

The positive and negative dimensions would help stop us being too over simplistic in our assumptions.

They would allow us to make (and measure) the point that it is possible to choose a Desirable lifestyle that is very heavy on IDENTITY but suffer none or perhaps very few of the negative aspects that we have come to associate with ‘shiny living’ as an assertion of IDENTITY

The usual suspects in our current version of ‘a shiny life’ are traditionally based upon a toxic rendition of the old ‘American Dream’ – a dream of having infinite everything.

The positive/negative axis would allow us to view IDENTITY not only in the terms of the old aspirational underwriters of what constitutes a ‘thriving life’: McMansions, disposable fashion, gas guzzler vehicles, industrial food consumption, endless consumables, palm oil rich beauty regimes, and the accompanying incontinence and profligacy of water and energy use that accompany them. 

(This is where we see Desire as motivator run riot – too many mammoths, overstretched belly, shrunken gonads & Viagra – a delivery system for negative impacts on individuals and society.)

It allows us to see and recognise that a life of IDENTITY includes positive choices – one constituting a state-of-the-art neutral footprint apartment in a carbon savvy city, punked-up electric super-bike, up-cycled fashions, Tai-Bo regime, smart ‘block’ phone, green IP run on renewables, smart meters, and a diet of locally grown and raised foods and stay-cations. DESIRE, if you are that way inclined, can be rendered wholly positive and regenerative.

Equally you could view UTILITY, through an explicitly negative filter. Utility as a word which, whether it is associated with basic infrastructure supply stuff like water and power or alternately in product and lifestyle terms, delivers an ‘aspirational’ state of Amish-like dour and sparse ‘being and doing’, rooted in plain unadorned functionality.

This stripped down approach to aspiration is very fashionable, especially amongst those who celebrate a caustic weathered and slightly cynical view of the world. Everything other than a withered utility is simply hyperbole, sophistry and myth-making.

UTILITY can be a magnet for those quietly terrified that someone is hiding something from them, and a terror of not being taken seriously – people who prefer a candour sparse and stripped down in manner, emotion and function.

This economy of mysteries is the Naturists Camp of Aspiration. Naked. Unfettered by slogans promises and abstract benefits. Does what it says on the tin. Boxy and ugly but safe. It’s big. It’s red. And it eats rocks.

BUT even in this stripped down space the positive nature of your stripped down, no-bullshit utilitarian view of the world can lead you into the ‘negative’ corners of Desire.

Even if you’re being terribly smug about NOT a having a android friendly Sonos system, Samsung TV, i-phone, Primark bag or Walmart carton in sight, you could still sink the whole carbon offset global metric calculation in one small drive from A-B in your 50 year old breaker-salvaged pick up Bronco truck; especially if A runs on an oil fired generator, and B is an abattoir!

ULTILITY can still house a world of ills to both society and the environment. Some would argue that ‘lowest price’ itself is the purest form of negative UTILITY

A lot of stuff that supplies a need – for greatest functionality/delivery matched with cheapest price – is the greatest blight on society.

Take the humble fast food franchise burger with its industrial and environmentally punitive beef farming and logistics distribution supply chain – or those slinky brightly coloured Primark stretch pants shot with petrodollar synthetics for ten bucks a pop – shipped from Pakistan across increasingly emphysemic oceans by the mega tonne.

So, suffice to say, DESIRE framed by the dimensions of IDENTITY and UTILITY qualified by positive or negative impact seems a reasonably simple yet sympathetic baseline framing to start us off.  

It creates a simple tool within which to look at the tasks, roles or stakeholder groups with a direct ability to impact on the performance of a Value Chain through a more finely calibrated social lenses  – the employees of a company for example – to explore any socially or culturally shaded differences, dissonances or hidden similarities between those who might work in payroll and those in IT and on the production line.

Desire Testing the Links in the Value Chain

It allows us to look at the essential and inextricable Stakeholder Groups – the links of people whose compound performance defines and directs the whole – Supplier Company and Employees, Local Regulatory Bodies, Distribution Partners, market audiences – to see if we can reveal exceptional points of integration and disintegration.

Which all sounds kind of fancy but the journey across the marshlands of consumption as its make-up re-calibrates from a purely functional need to one that is more coloured by more nuanced social and cultural measures of wealth and status comes down to some reasonably simple stuff.

People need stuff to live. That stuff is either still viewed at a basic functional level – and they live a utilitarian life in utilitarian housing with utilitarian diets and jobs. Or they have started to ascend the ladder from Surviving into Thriving – and suddenly the degree of cache around the stuff increases.

Take food: it moves in a circular manner – starting with a move from the sparsely populated bowl or plate to stable consistent access to it, then to the volume of it, then to the quality of it, the badge of it, then the diversity of it, then the provenance of it until everything falls away at the ‘Being’ stage – at which point food deconstructs back to three bean shoots, a mung bean and some agedashi tofu washed down with delicious h2o.

So being able to measure the nature and effect of Desire at a mutual level, across a group of stakeholders along a Value Chain might be quite illustrative. It may reveal flaws in the culture of the Value Chain one would otherwise not have noticed. It may reveal that especially in multi national structures that the subtle shifts in socio cultural concepts of prosperity DO impact on the stability and of the company and its ability to ‘rally the ranks’ around a unified strategy for the business

But more importantly it may well reveal some commonalities inherent in that desire that point to a hidden mutual strength or sense of purpose.

And there the real resilience lies: because it is rooted in something more profound and far beyond the analysts strategists and planners segment frameworks.

storytellers, trust & the power of simple sincerities.

02 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by Thin Air Factory in Uncategorized

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Tags

Caring about what people care about, changing the language of sustainability, Commercial & Civic Alignment, Copenhagen Film Company, Corporate Integrity, Credentials, Emotion vs. Reason, Intellect worn lightly, Mads Ovlisen, Maya Angelou, people Powered Change, Setting the Agenda, Stakeholder power, storytelling, Sustainability Pillars, Tone Of Voice, Trust. Sustainable Strategy, UNGC

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I watched a film today. A discrete film. An understated film. A short film.

No popcorn. No slash cut dash glut editing. No highly confected verite cutaways. No corporate schlock horror probe. No desperately arch atavistic activist paddling in their own propaganda.

The film, by the Copenhagen Film Company, focused all of its attention on one man.

The camera is unwavering. A set up shot. A few discernible cuts. One push in. Otherwise, clean, clinical and respectful of the subject.

Sitting in a sparse elevated office, we see incidentally through the window behind the subject that life relentlessly trammels on behind and below, regardless of us and our elevated conversations.

The man, Mads Ovlisen, a Senior Advisor at the United Nations Global Compact, speaks of running sustainable businesses. He speaks of the UNGC, committed to setting the agenda and aligning policy around sustainability issues – Energy, Water, Agriculture, Renewables, Food, Transportation, Building and Pharmaceuticals: most every pillar and issue one might ever imagine turning up on a company’s sustainability strategy slide.

He speaks of a discrete yet powerful stakeholder group who collectively make astonishing impacts in the world through their brands and businesses. He speaks of how much fortitude it takes to merge civil and corporate interests.

The man speaks of things that still fall far from the ears or the offices of the average Brand Jonny or Jane (and probably far from their frame of reference or, to be blunt, self interest). Though, to be fair, they would I hope understand the emotion that the film evoked in me.

Maya Angelou’s exposition on the transformative power of emotion versus reason – “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel”-  is a powerful philosophical sound bite for an ad man or woman looking to do more creative and insightful storytelling.

It is one I respect, as I do spend most of my time seeking to make very complex things simple through creative story telling.

But the storytelling here is not some confected theme or hashtag slogan mantra being played out. The storytelling here is in the nature of the Storyteller.

It is not the dry content of his words that I particularly remember: though there is one axial moment in his discourse that did fix itself in my memory.

“This is about how a company makes its money, not about how it spends it”

The scintillating simplicity of the statement enables one to view a company’s resilience strategy with a powerful philosophical clarity.

If a company finds that its focus resides in the first part of the phrase – the pursuit of a more sustainable business becomes seemingly infused with a richer seam of intentions – of purpose beyond profit, ethical perspectives and corporate morality – and it gives a clear measure of the degree of humanity that might be enshrined within that company.

If the focus is on the second part, then the company errs on the side of rational efficiencies and economies and smart procurement – potent and very very necessary but a far less compelling and more importantly far less desirable mantra in attracting the right people towards that company.

The reason why this subtle difference is or should be so important to companies is rooted in the part of their resilience strategy that demands best possible future talent be attracted in to the business.

I sense that the leadership and purpose at play in the first shading is vastly more attractive to Millennials than the second, which suddenly feels quite ’90s Business School in comparison.

Its not about which one is right or wrong. It is about which one is more powerful and compelling: and fit for the purpose. And though the ability to sustain itself financially is paramount and primary to any business’s success, its ability to relentlessly and profitably attract best in class new and enlightened talent has to be the only strategy for purposeful future growth and stability.

As I have said, for me, though powerful, it is not ultimately this axiom that made me ‘feel’ something to remember beyond the words. It was the man that I found more compelling. He was the story. The storyteller as the living embodiment of the story he tells.

It was not what he was saying so much as how he said it: his demeanour in the telling.

Simply put, his easy intelligence held lightly, the fixedness and the quiet purpose of his delivery were what drew me in. His eyes and his voice where in some ways hypnotic. A ruse perhaps the cynics might say. Or is he just another modulated technocrat? Maybe.

But the simple fact for me is that his demeanour, delivery and my sense of the integrity of his intention created license for me to find his arguments both authentic and trustworthy.

I would go and listen to him speak again. I WANT to find out more of what’s in his head and heart. And therein lies the emotional killer insight.

Why is this so compelling to me?

Having spent a large amount of time around the professional cabal of the sustainability world and the consultancies that advise them, I find the thing this man seemed to hold within him all too often surprisingly lacking in the room.

I realize now that the sustainability scene is populated with the same kind of politicking sociopaths and psychopaths as the financial and advertising worlds that the sustainability crowd so often deride. A realisation which to be fair simply throws a sharp light on my naivety.

The messianic fervor of righteousness is never far away. One need only scratch a little to find it. This should at best be a powerful driver towards a success. But all to often it can equally become blinded and corrupted by its own sense of righteousness and lose sight of all that it has consistently fought for

I said once that I was stunned by the amount of self interest I found in what is vaunted as a shared interest space. In the 3 years between that observation and today that feeling has only strengthened. (As someone who has spent near on 30 years in the Ad world that’s starting from a fairly low expectation base and heavily tinged with black, kettles and pots but bear with me.)

BUT the sudden clarity the film gave me around the simple human levers and pulleys: of a voice and eyes that I trust. And the sudden realization that when imparting a world view, it really does matter if the storyteller’s smile seems to barely penetrate past the retina, or simply fixes like a grimace slung under cold eyes. It really does matter whether I find the storyteller sympatico or antipatico because if I don’t trust the messenger or the storyteller, the message is utterly lost to me both rationally and more importantly emotionally.

Playing ones intellect and credentials before you into very carefully prepared rooms like a buttered juggernaut full of Bona Fides to ensure the room is won before it is entered takes us nowhere – other than to the next room.

Does that mean I think we should all grin like an idiot or play the touchy feely ‘down with the people’ card? Or not deploy fierce intellects when they are needed for fear of intellectual bullying?

Not at all. I would be the first to say that the way in which intellect is wielded, whether in arch seriousness or as playful banter is more a matter of style, circumstance and empathy than a measure of integrity.

I am the first to admit that my own flippancy and ‘lightness of touch’ brings the veracity of my deeper values and beliefs in this space into question amongst people who do not see levity as even faintly endearing.

I am certain it annoys the crap out of some of the more esteemed minds of the sector, especially if they feel people such as I are seeking only to trivialize their cause.

BUT I am on a populist agenda: I want us to find the language, the demeanour and the presence that makes more people turn towards us, listen and find what we impart desirable and accommodating of the real life they lead.

So for me there needs to be creative storytelling based upon what people care about to illuminate sustainability truths. And there needs to be humanity. But mostly there needs to be trust. Trust that is human and effortless; not something we demand via an attrition of rationality and polemics.

It’s a simple human mechanism: Do I trust the person imparting the ‘wisdom’ to me. Do they make me feel bad and stupid? Or good and smart? If its good and smart: Great. Thanks. Two of those please.

Who knows. Perhaps I am far too one dimensional for all of this and I miss the complexities and subtleties inherent in the thrust and parry of the polemicists.

All I do know is that the average man or woman trying to get to the end of the month and have a nice life without bankrupting themselves and the planet need some Trust in there to even begin to listen and change tack.

Degrees, conferences, credentialing, linked in profiles or executive steering committee positions are great to set the agenda but not to democratise it. They just don’t cut it with the 85+% of the people out there. That’s your dinner party conversation. Not their life.

So I return to the film. And the man who speaks discretely. Sets out his stall: his beliefs, and the benefits of what he does.

At the end of it he gets my vote. I’d put him in a pub with a load of people I was trying to bring round to the cause.

He might not be their cup of tea. They might even find him boring.

But I think they’d trust him.

The film can be found at http://thisistouch.com/this-is/the-news/

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