Monthly Archive for April, 2010

Another passage from Nietzsche that sheds light on what brand strategy can do:

Artist’s ambition. – The Greek artists, the tragedians for example, poetized in order to conquer; their whole art cannot be thought of apart from contest: Hesiod’s good Eris, ambition, gave their genius its wings. Now this ambition demands above all that their work should preserve the highest excellence in their own eyes, as they understand excellence, that is to say, without reference to a dominating taste or the general opinion as to what constitutes excellence in a work of art; and thus Aeschylus and Euripides were for a long time unsuccessful until they had finally educated judges of art who assessed their work according to the standards they themselves laid down. It is thus they aspire to victory over their competitors as they understand victory, a victory before their own seat of judgment, they want actually to be more excellent; then they exact agreement from others as to their own assessment of themselves and confirmation of their own judgment. To aspire to honor here means: “to make oneself superior and to wish this superiority to be publicly acknowledged.” If the former is lacking and the latter nonetheless still demanded, one speaks of vanity. If the latter is lacking and its absence not regretted, one speaks of pride.

Most companies act like ordinary people and just brainlessly pursue the common ideal and make themselves into commodities. They miss the opportunity to look at who they are as a culture, what they have at their disposal to create unique, sustainable competitive advantage. They make themselves and their offerings generic up to the point where they present themselves to the public, at which point they look for ways to pain themselves as unique and attractive.

Living brands are not invented. A living brand cannot be assembled like a machine.

Living brands are discovered and cultivated.

It is like discovering the enthusiasms and talents of a child and cultivating them toward an integrated adult personality.

It is like gathering plants, arranging them in a garden where they can flourish individually and create a pleasing effect as a whole, then caring for them.

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Living brand means…

…discovering inherent unity within a diverse organization — perhaps latent, but perhaps pervasive to the point of invisibility…

…then identifying and articulating the virtues and values that constitute this already-existent unity as its living parts, as the organs of the organization, as its anatomy…

…then conversing with the participants of the organization — within it and outside it — to discover the meaning and value of this unity and its anatomy…

…then cultivating that unity in whole and part (holistically) toward ever-increasing value to all participants, toward the organization’s greatest health…

…and finally, intentionally manifesting the organization’s virtues in the qualities of its interactions and its service…

…and intentionally reflecting the organization’s values in the qualities of its self-presentation and its products.

At first, the brand is a discipline, something that must be practiced relentlessly despite initial unnaturalness. Gradually, stilted awkwardness melts into gracefulness. Eventually brand becomes second nature. Then brand is simply the organization being most faithful to itself, to its purpose and to those it serves.

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Branding is like practicing the piano, working on one’s golf swing, learning the counts and steps of a dance, learning to think logically, learning to obey the law of the land.

The goal of these activities is to cultivate a second nature.

We are trying to come to the point were we simply are in the music, in the game, in the dance, in the thought, in the life of the culture . The activity does itself through us, but paradoxically, somehow, this is when we are most ourselves.

This second nature we acquire is the fulfillment of the discipline, and that fulfillment is intrinsically good. There is no external, rational justification for them, because justification means tracing a thing back to some intrinsic goodness.

To put it as simply as possible: Disciplined practice is justified through fulfillment in second nature.

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We love brands because they are the radiance of a fulfilled organization which simply does what it is, and lives through natural individual participation.

A person who wishes to understand the pragmatic convergence of cognition, action and affect — who wishes not only to conceive and explore possibilities but to systematically research and test these possibilities — is facing a situation beyond the scope of individual efforts. He will need to find collaborators and sponsors: people invested in understanding the interrelations between how a person, or a particular kind of person perceives, understands, values and behaves.

When we cannot get a grip on a problem, the problem grips us, and then we are perplexed.

We cannot even say what the problem is. We talk around the problem, and we talk about the problem, but we cannot state the problem.

Perplexities suck.

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A perplexity is not resolved by an answer.

An answer resolves a question.

Only a question can resolve a perplexity.

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A perplexity is a problem without a question.

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A perplexity is deeply unsettling. Its effect tends to bleed beyond the problematic domain, into the rest of one’s life.

It makes people feel generally uneasy, unsettled, irritable. A group gripped by a perplexity is prone to frustration, anxiety, conflict and sometimes even despair. A perplexed individual cannot make up his mind, and finds himself “torn” or “split” or “of two minds”. People find themselves thinking, seeing and talking at cross-purposes, and disagreeing on what is relevant and irrelevant, disagreeing even with themselves from moment to moment, or holding self-contradictory positions. We don’t know what to do with it, or how to talk about it. Things are just wrong.

Obviously we want to settle a perplexity as quickly as possible, and make it go away.

We want things to settle down. We want to settle down.

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Perplexities occur when we apprehend the existence of a problem, but we cannot comprehend what the problem is.

Apprehension — (ad- ‘toward’ + prehendere ‘lay hold of’).

Comprehension — (com- ‘together’ + prehendere ‘lay hold of’).

Think about the difference between feeling apprehensive and possessing comprehensive knowledge.

Human beings hate feeling apprehensive, anxious and perplexed. We like to feel comprehensive, stable and clear.

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My view on perplexity is this: despite the painful nature of perplexity, it is a natural and inevitable part of life, not something to regret, but to embrace and master.

But this kind of mastery is very different from most forms of practical, theoretical or technical mastery. We haven’t even identified the need for it, despite the fact that many of the more unpleasant experiences we have in life are caused by it.

The problem of perplexity itself is perplexing us.

It is dogging us in politics, and in education, and most of all in business.

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It is very easy to confuse a perplexity with a question, especially when you think about things in terms of having an answer versus not having an answer.

We need answers before we can take action. We do not want to sit idly. We are action-oriented. (Doesn’t that have a positive ring to it?) We want to act.

So — where we lack answers, we decide on an answer and go with it.

But when we try to answer a perplexity as if it were a question, the perplexity lives on in the answers. We keep discovering deep flaws in our solutions, and those flaws perplex us. We patch them over, and move on until the next flaw festers to the surface. The process of developing a solution turns into a long series of hacks, tweaks and adjustments.

The work is also shot through with controversy, strife, cynicism, compromise and coercion. An answer can only be judged in reference to a question. A perplexity lacks the clarity of a question, so the judgment of solutions is largely a “political” one (in the worst sense). It’s a matter of of arbitrary (arbiter ‘judge, supreme ruler,’) taste or opinion.  Whose taste or opinion matters most? The person or group with the most power.

Without a guiding question, “hard calls”, “executive decisions”, and forced “buy in” replace true dialogue and deliberation.

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To summarize:

When a perplexity is confused with a question and answered, things do not fall into place. Rather, things are forced into place — and often people are forced to force things into place.

The matter is settled, but settled artificially.

The answer does not resolve the problem; the answer conceals the problem.

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Regarding business:

Some service organizations offer solutions to known problems. The client knows the solution to the problem, and just needs a vendor to provide that solution.

Some service organizations solve problems their clients ask them to solve. The client knows what their problem is, and needs a vendor to develop a solution to that problem.

Some service organizations help their clients resolve perplexities. The client senses something is wrong, and… wants someone just to provide a solution or just to develop a solution to a problem. They don’t know any other response. If the vendor just obeys, and provides the solution the client wants, or just solves the problem as the client presents it, the vendor fails the client, and often loses the business.

Or alternatively they defy the client and “follow our process” (“isn’t that what we were hired for?”), without the involvement of the client.

The very best service organizations listen and lead and deconstruct their clients wishes into perplexities, clarify the perplexities into clearly defined problems and resolve the problems with solutions.

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“A philosophical problem has the form: I don’t know my way about.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein

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What most companies are missing and do not realize they are missing is the role of philosopher.

A business philosopher is a consultant who specializes in resolving perplexities by asking the right productive questions.

I would argue that philosophy is the cornerstone of business innovation. Philosophy is basically the practice of thinking about things people have not yet figured out how to think about, of working out approaches to problems people have not yet learned to approach, seeing problems that haven’t even been seen or recognized as problems, much less soluble problems.

I realize most MBAs will hear the world “philosopher” reject it out of hand. It’s a ludicrous word.

But my prediction is that soon “philosophy” will have more buzz power than “dialogue”, or “story”, or “community.”