He not busy being born

Is busy dying

-Bob Dylan

            

Dylan’s verse is true of both individuals and organisations. Part of being born is knowing and believing in what is optimum; what is the greatest good?

The opposite of this, of course, is pessimism; someone busy dying, someone waiting for it to rain (to use a line from Leonard Cohen). The pessimist sees no point in trying to achieve the greatest good as we will all die anyway. The great humanitarian Albert Schweitzer described pessimism as a depreciated will-to-live.

The wonder of optimism is that it has a focus on possibility, on what we could do, could achieve. Interestingly there was an movement begun in 1919 in America called Optimist International. It was made up of professional and business people devoted to civic improvement and improvement among all people.

Importance of purpose

Great organisations have embedded in their brand purpose and their stories a strong sense of optimistic meaning. They therefore naturally tend to attract optimistic people who can support and direct their behaviours toward this optimum concept.

It is my experience that the poison that negatively impacts on brands and organisations and which is far more detrimental than the force of competition is pessimistic staff. This manifests as corridor whining and undermining; a cynicism toward and mockery of forward motion. Author Milan Kundera described this phenomenon as the rust that corrodes all it touches.

Implicit in optimism, as Dylan suggests, is a continuing rebirth, innovation, growth and forward momentum. But, too much of what actually happens in organisations is not about visualising and moving forward, but is too much about what can’t be done and a focus on bureaucratic systems that make it challenging for anything to be born and often leaves most ideas still-born. This is what the plethora of meetings actually achieve.

Organisations need to value optimism and all those people who exude this energy. They must establish pessimism-radars to quickly identify muttering sources of can’t be done and sort them or eject them. Pessimism kills, partly because it is so quickly degenerates into cynicism - the energy of which is 'why even bother'.

Ratchet optimism

Protect your organisations, and align your purpose to specific optimistic behaviours. Certainly do allow sceptical questions as they help rebirth, but do make it as impossible as you can, to allow any fertile soil for cynicism, mockery and pessimism.

The other upside for getting this right is that optimistic people are usually happy people and this energy has magnetic attraction and over-rides obstacles and challenges.

One might ask how to ratchet up levels of optimism and this could require revisiting the purpose and values of the organisation and or the leadership and management thereof.

I guess the above also applies to societies and countries.

If anyone wants an example of unfettered optimism, sit and watch children at play in sandpits and on jungle gyms, merry go rounds and swinging as high as they can.

Remembering You

Remembering You...

The Laughing Heart

your life is your life

don't let it be clubbed into dank submission.

be on the watch.

there are ways out.

there is light somewhere.

it may not be much light but

it beats the darkness.

be on the watch.

the gods will offer you chances.

know them.

take them.

you cant beat death but

you can beat death in life, sometimes.

An the more often you learn to do it,

the more light there will be.

your life is your life.

know it while you have it.

you are marvellous

the gods wait to delight

in you.

                                                                         - Charles Bukowski

Within two days two special young people connected to Vega died.

Megan Byrne, 18 years old, was a free spirit challenging her school system; principled, fun loving, full of energy and passion. Her father Tim, a friend of mine, has been a stalwart in the advertising industry and is now managing Brand Communications at Discovery. He was lining up interviews with us at Vega as they felt this environment could further unlock and better structure her restless and creative energy. This was not to be.

She had symptoms of flu on Saturday and died five hours later with a deadly form of meningitis. This was not meant to be.

Ntwanano,Tiny Maluleke was killed in the early hours of Monday morning in his rented house in Soweto. Shot through the chest in the dark by intruders who took two cell phones and a TV.

Tiny was a final year BA student. More than that he was a larger than life renaissance personality - an innovative thinker, fashion connoisseur, a rebirth of Sophiatown, a photographer, writer and music lover. His most recent Facebook status postings were:

I'm living on a cloud.

I'm a simple guy, its sophisticated.

and finally: 

I am inspired. Be inspired.

A tornado of creativity. The life taken. It was not meant to be.

Both memorial services broke out of the allotted seats and space. In both instances the application of social media brought together very large numbers of people within a few days - notwithstanding that students were on school holiday. The communities of family, friends, fellow students and staff, representing many of our cultures, were present.

In the case of Tiny, some 30 former Parktown Boys High School students, now 3 years out of matric, squeezed into their school blazers and sung an impassioned, grief-torn war cry.

Megan's school friends gave their emotional tributes and spoke of her mischievous and optimistic nature.

At Vega, Tiny's final year class, the Student Liaison Body and a former graduate arranged the entire service, designed the programme. Fellow students play the piano and sing. This was not meant to be. Children should not have to arrange memorial services for another child. This should not be.

Notwithstanding the untimely taking of life, both Megan and Tiny have left an indelible imprint on all they touched.

A professional golfer, Ken Venturi (1931 - 2013) said: The greatest gift in life is to be remembered. In the case of Tiny, Vega will name a creative studio after him and we are currently consulting as to other ways to remember the talent and life Tiny brought to the corridors of this School.

Whatever we do on an annual basis, it will be called something like - The Tiny Inspired Bursary or The Tiny Inspired Award. I’m sure Megan's School and friends will do something similar.

Both Megan and Tiny indeed had laughing hearts and it is ironic that, whoever chose this poem for Megan, probably her father Tim, was selecting a poet who would have been an outstanding, albeit difficult but brilliant Vega student. Ironic too, because Tiny's trademark was his laugh.

The Hotel School Dilemma

Imagine a Hotel School training staff for Fawlty Towers

Marketing.... is the whole business seen from the point of view of its final result, that is, from the customer's point of view. Concern and responsibility for marketing must, therefore, permeate all areas of the enterprise.

- Peter Drucker

A couple of weeks ago when on a trip to run Brand Building workshops, I stayed in a Hotel School in a sub-Saharan country.

I must stress that this School is part of an institution to set benchmarks for hotel leadership, management and service. Most of the tools of marketing apply to service brands. such as the School. Per the work of Chris Lovelock in his famous book Services Marketing there are 3 specific tools applicable to service organisations. 

The first is the opportunity to add physical evidence or tangibility to the implicitly intangible service. On the upside, the architecture and facility which includes the rooms, dinning hall, kitchen and landscaping were superb.

The wheels fall off at the front desk where you may or may not find anyone and certainly from 5pm there will be no one.

Physical evidence for a service brand also includes uniform, whether a formal or an informal one. It is a benchmark in a decent hotel to have some formal uniform at least on the frontlines and in the dinning hall. This was not the case. There was also no evidence of any management or leadership. The School appears to be run by whoever you find walking about.

Managing the customer experience

The second critical factor to build a service brand is the use of flowcharts to design systems and processes that manage customer journeys and contact points on both the front and back stage.

The first challenge here was no working bathroom light nor reading lights. Obviously no checklists were being applied. The lights were fixed the next day by taking the bulb of another light in the room for the reading lamp and fitting a bulb in the bathroom that vaguely lit the basin but not the shower or toilet.

Returning at the end of the first day the room had not been cleaned and the bed unmade. The one receptionist who always appeared to understand (but I learnt, never did) assured me that all would be sorted the next day. It wasn't. I eventually found a "manager" who then made frantic phone calls to establish that the actual problem was that the previous guest had taken the room key. The receptionist assured me that she was well aware of this but had forgotten to ask me to leave my key on the first day so that another could be made. Apologies were never in order.

Do we laugh or cry?

On being assured that there was room service a call for a drink failed to result in one. The wireless network is promoted as a service but it was quickly evident that a password was needed. Another of the various casual receptionists was perplexed as to how to find a password but after thrashing the computer handed me a hand written code on a scrap piece of paper. Back in the room, the password failed. The response was that we would then have to wait for someone else. The next day a new code was  neatly typed out but instead of handing me the clean sheet of paper, it was torn off just missing one of the critical letters. I did establish that these ladies have been working in the hotel school for a number of years.

Leaving in the morning to go about my business there would be no one at reception. On arriving first at the start of dinner one would need to pop into the bar to encourage the crew to hit the floor. It should be mentioned that the stay was not for free and the rates are apparently not significantly discounted when compared to a hotel or guest house. I should also say that the quality of the cooking was very good.

The people issue

The third tool mentioned by Lovelock is the quantity and quality of people working for the service brand. Aside from general scarcity of service people the earnest intent and passion was less than that of underpaid and abused waitrons. The people element also includes the extent of visible management and leadership. At least Fawlty Towers had a clown leader and the place is full of colourful and dysfunctional enthusiasm.

As John Kotter has remarked: The increasingly fast-moving and competitive environment we will face in the 21st century demands more leadership from more people to make enterprises prosper.

Based on my experiences, it was, therefore, not surprising to learn that the tertiary institution behind the Hotel School was anxious about financial sustainability. This of course underscores the fundamental truth that well led and managed brands are the precursor for sustainable businesses.

Perhaps most remarkable was to see the institution's leadership having regular lunch and dinner meetings in the Hotel School but clearly neither hearing nor seeing much.

While we all understand that it is difficult to maintain a consistently strong service brand  there can surely be even less of a margin for error in a School teaching people how to run hotels.

As a customer we probably do have some responsibility to inform management of poor service experiences and I undertake to my readers that I will do so.

Let us encourage Brand Activism

How decent, healthy and authentic are our brands? Are we sufficiently activist about those which are dishonest or even harmful? This debate applies, of course, to the quality and integrity of the brand internally as well as externally.


A misalignment between the two is already a target for activism.
 

In this debate we need to see a brand as an open system, the complete supply chain including suppliers, distributors and retailers. This includes all out-sourced services. Ignoring a more holistic brand approach has already landed many brands in a reputation crisis; for example, when some brands claimed separateness from their manufacturers who were using child labour, harmful glues and unacceptable working conditions. Whatever the recent platinum mine strikes were about, they are ultimately a manifestation of brand failings.

Passive consumerism makes us complicit. For example, it is my personal view, that the on-growing growth of cigarette brands is an indictment of weak to non-existent brand activism. You may ask on what criteria we should become activists.

We can consider a continuum, at the one end of which are authentic value adding and sustainable brands and, on the other end, are brands with flawed products and or deceitful marketing and communication campaigns.

On the extreme end of this side of the continuum are terminally sick brands whose plug should be pulled. I would include tobacco brands in this last category and the argument is not about people's right to smoke. Let me briefly also debate the free-market argument. Unfortunately, brands and businesses cannot be left to their own devices and require a regulatory environment. After all, companies are not closed systems. Thank goodness for the public sector - consider imposed age restrictions, health warnings and packaging disclosures. All these are a result of government intervention to better protect consumers.

Brand activism can take many forms. It starts by us asking critical questions of brands such as those posed by brand thinkers like Neumeier and Olins:

Who are you?

What do you do?

Why are you here?

Why do you matter?

Other platforms for activism include demanding a full disclosure of product content, the supply chain and all testing procedures. It includes scientific assessment of side effects (think of some of the damage caused by hair products and skin lighteners) and also evidence to support claims such as free-range chickens and meat; amazingly, there is still no agreed upon standard as to what we mean by this in South Africa.

Brand activism should agitate for the banning of brand products causing irrevocable harm and should demand action to improve those capable of being fixed. We must also challenge communication trickery like Kentucky taking the Fried out of its name but not out of the product. We must also question bizarre associations like alcohol brands with sports events and sports stars.

We have entered what brand guru Wally Olins calls the New Zeitgeist. Think of the old short and long term insurance brands with products that added little or no value whatsoever; brands that over promised and under delivered.

Brands on the wrong side of the continuum are aware that the writing is on the wall and are scrambling to diversify. Tobacco brands are spending fortunes on developing and launching e-cigarettes (electronic cigarettes); fizzy sugar drink brands are buying water, diet and sports drink brands.

However, we are also seeing CSI being used to balance wrongs. This is another debate. While there is at least an implicit link between fizzy drinks and obesity, we are now seeing more proactive brand management. For example, Coke has recently launched a TV advert addressing obesity. Another one of their ads features activities that add up to burning off the "140 happy calories" in a can of coke.

I concur with Olins's hunch that "if the mood of the times is towards authenticity, then Coca-Cola and other brands are going to try and offer it. They well move into it in a big way. But it’s a bit late".

"... a huge group of brands... have lost touch with what’s going on in the world." My point is that activism must remind brand owners of what is really going down.

Complicit in much of the blindsiding by unhealthy brands has been clever communication campaigns and CSI diversions.

I submit that we need far more robust professional codes of practice for communication agencies and CSI practitioners. This is another debate!

Be a brand activist!

Some brand lessons from the World Cup

Some brand lessons from the World Cup

Aside from witnessing some remarkable soccer we are also seeing a complex portfolio of brands playing out.

These brands include FIFA, the World Cup, Brazil the host country, South America, the stadium cities, the country team brands and the individual super-stars. We then have the different networks of association such as the official sponsors.

It is as a result of this portfolio of emotionally-charged brands within the soccer category, that we have substantial revenue streams flooding into Brazil, FIFA and the national teams and players. This is perhaps the first lesson: brands cause business. If a brand has no magnetic attraction, and no consistent and expected standard of delivery, fans won’t support, corporates won’t sponsor and without revenue, there can be no profit.

Perhaps the second lesson is that brands are made up of many parts and it is debatable whether the more visible and audible components are even the most important. Perhaps they are indeed, just the tip of an iceberg. Making up this tip then are the iconic country flags, jerseys, the national anthems and merchandise worn by the fan tribes.

The third lesson is that the real substance of a brand is in its purpose, its values, its distinctiveness, its history and stories. Ultimately a brand is about its expected behaviour and performance.

As Shakespeare suggested, life is but a stage and we all have our entrances and exits (Spain). On stage we are required to give a compelling performance and every actor must know their part. In a great production there is a brilliant theatre director / conductor and some star actors. If the performance clicks, and goes per the script, there is a standing ovation.

We have witnessed remarkable brand leadership and management in some of the teams like Germany. On the other end of the spectrum, we have seen dysfunctional brand behaviour and an absence of disciplined performance. The best example of this, must be in the 4 - 0 loss by Cameroon when playing Croatia. Aside from the red card for punching an opponent, Cameroon team mates got into a brawl and had to be separated from a punch up and head-butt. Maybe the most important lesson for a great brand is how its team behaves when servicing consumers.

The question is whether the delivered service aligns with the expected traditions and meets the expectation of its consumers or fans. Is the performance even adding something innovative and distinctive which then provides a memorable WOW factor? This is what great brands do.

Finally, all decent brands should have some sense of class and behave within the rules and norms of the game category. We have seen this displayed by some teams who played their heart out but, even in losing, showed respect for the winners at the end of the game. Some teams just sulked and sobbed.

We will pick up more lessons as the tournament unfolds. Perhaps you would like to share some of the brand lessons you have learnt from the World Cup?

Celebrating activism.

1916 - 2014 -  MaMbeki - A Life of Activism

This topic is inspired by the life of MaMbeki and my re-listening of the Bob Dylan song: Only a Hobo. It is also informed by recent media coverage on Tuberculosis in South Africa.

We work hard at Vega to immerse our students in the different ways of imagining and thinking. We then encourage them to do. To implement.

In a broader sense, we emphasise the importance of considered and relevant activism within a social context.

I believe that if we can think, then there is a collateral responsibility to act. Do we think enough? Act enough?

We have the capabilities and resources to resolve most of our worlds wicked problems and issues. TB in South Africa is an example. The experts say we can get rid of it like we did with polio. But we don't.

Is it because we don't think enough, or if we do, do we lose our resolve when we face down the work needed to fix things? We then then divert our gaze onto - it must be someone else's problem? Or is the issue that we, who can think and consider broader issues, are too satisfied with, and caught up in, ourselves?

Satisfaction, is in my view, the soporific that anesthetises and paralyses action.

It is my experience that chronic dissatisfaction is what leads us to action. Consider the following:

asleep                                                  awake
static                                                   dynamic
answer                                                question
comfort                                               discomfort
satisfied                                              dissatisfied
passive                                                active
dying                                                   living
dead                                                     alive

Activism is about embracing the right column. The upside, is that while this is challenging, it does make us feel more alive.

Activism means we do not accept the so-called current reality because, in human terms, our reality is often too narrow, too exclusive and too selfish.

Increasingly we must break out of these reality bubbles and rather engage from a human-centric position. The driver or fuel to help us achieve this is, I submit, chronic dissatisfaction. While this is not an easy space to live in, it affords us the correct perspective and demands that we ask better questions and to push ourselves to find answers.

In the last poem written by contemporary American poet Raymond Carver, just before he died of cancer, he asked himself whether he got what he wanted from his life. He answered:

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.

Can any of us be satisfied in our lives while the majority of us do not feel beloved? Or is our immediate response that this is not our problem. It is their problem. I suggest we must re-contextualise and consider this a human issue and therefore we are inextricably part of it.

The reward is that engagement with others, beyond our immediate circle, makes us feel more alive. It has taken me a long time to realise that without this, we have our heads buried in the sand pretending, denying and dying as human beings.

May you escalate your dissatisfaction. As the great Welsh poet Dylan Thomas implored us:

Do not go gentle into that good night

Rage rage against the dying of the light.

With acknowledgement to the photographer

...the half-brained, half-baked, maths and science debate

We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t exist, using technologies that haven’t yet been invented, in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet - Karl Fisch, educator

Maths and Science is the clarion call for our schools to heed. We are wringing our hands about South Africa’s low global ranking in Maths and Science performance.

It seems this focus is because we believe that better ratings will make us more competitive and better prepare our youth for the workplace.This is barking up the wrong tree on a number of levels.

Firstly, Maths and Science does not maketh man or woman. If we study history we learn that most of our greatest leaders have been neither mathematicians nor scientists. As Sir Ken Robinson argues, there is a much richer conception of intelligence and ability available to us than is promoted by conventional education.

Secondly, we must re-calibrate our thinking in school education to focus on graduating whole-brain thinkers, whole-people performers. Es'kia Mphahlele correctly proposed that education should be seen as a process of self-discovery, a search for self.

Thirdly, schools should not be preparing people for careers. That comes much later.The great educationist Piaget argued that the principle goal of education is to develop people who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done; people who are creative, inventive and discoverers.

What we require is a fully rounded education in our schools. We need the humanities as much as we need maths and science. We must unleash the ability within our learners to think both creatively and critically. 

Most importantly, we should unlock the confidence to pose questions and to moot different possible answers. A fixation on the right answer is damaging (because this is a world without absolutes). 

Ultimately we should enable our learners to marshall and present an argument. To be able to absorb and have some grasp of the fundamental issues facing us both as a species and within the context of our society and continent.

In short, I believe we need schools to graduate well rounded and confident thinkers. An education that fosters respect for the human imagination and the vital need to innovate and experiment so we can improve our condition.

We can select more career directed programmes in tertiary institutions but even here, I would argue that all university programmes need to consider a mix of analytical subjects and the humanities.

I recently heard that some South African schools are dropping history as a subject and on the playgrounds the message is, if you are not cutting maths and science, you then do art and drama - the sub-text being - shame, at least we can keep you busy.

Unless we make dramatic changes in our approach to giving a full education, I would have to agree with Dr. Stephen Heppell who said it would not be the end of the world if schools don’t make it. It would be, if learning doesn't make it.