Where No CEO Has Gone Before …

THE BIG IDEA: Courage and boldness are defining characteristics of visionary CEOs committed to customer-centric innovation and redefining their markets.

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Your starship is staffed with competent officers who possess specialized training and knowledge.

Your warp drive is ready. That is, you possess the creative capital, ingenuity, and resolve necessary to enter new, uncharted territory.

You need only give the officer manning the Flight Control the proper coordinates and say, “Make it so.”

The adventure into the unknown takes boldness and courage—one of the Seven Rules of Cult Brands.

Cult Brands are successful because they are willing to be unlike every other competitor in their market. They cut through a sea of doubt, criticism, and opposing market forces, daring to stand strong for what they believe while blazing ahead.

The Courage to Invent, Fail, and Be Patient

Amazon.com’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, has been willing to operate his mega-retail business at a loss for nearly 20 years, staying true to his vision of Amazon being “the earth’s most customer centric company” and “to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.”

Bezos doesn’t only demonstrate the courage to innovate. He shows the courage to experiment continuously and to fail often. And most of all, he demonstrates the courage to be patient.

“I don’t think that you can invent on behalf of customers unless you’re willing to think long-term, because a lot of invention doesn’t work,” Bezos explains. “If you’re going to invent, it means you’re going to experiment, and if you’re going to experiment, you’re going to fail, and if you’re going to fail, you have to think long term.”

One such invention is their Amazon Prime program. An estimated 40 million customers now pay $99 annually to receive free two-day shipping and other perks like free streaming video and music. Prime customers spend more than twice non-Prime members.

A recent study of online shoppers found that less than 1% of Prime shoppers (versus non-Prime) are likely to consider other mass-market retail sites like Target.com and Walmart.com in the same shopping session. Amazon Prime is essentially eliminating the competition from the mind of Amazon Prime customers. A bold innovation.

The Courage to Reinvent Your Organization

For your enterprise to go boldly into the future, you need a high degree of collaboration among your people. The culture and environment of your workplace is a deciding factor in your ability to navigate into uncharted, often precarious market conditions.

Few CEOs appreciate the power of culture as much as Zappos’ Tony Hsieh who built his online retail business around the concept of core values.

Hsieh is once again pushing into uncharted space, eliminating all management positions in his company. Called a holacracy, this management structure moves beyond the traditional top-down hierarchy by providing an open system that supports self-management and self-organization.

Hsieh notes that studies show that when cities double in size, innovation or productivity per resident increase by 15 percent. In businesses, however, innovation or productivity per employee tends to decrease as companies grow.

“In a city, people and businesses are self-organizing,” Hsieh explains. “We’re trying to do the same thing by switching from a normal hierarchical structure to a system called Holacracy, which enables employees to act more like entrepreneurs and self-direct their work instead of reporting to a manager who tells them what to do.”

Can you imagine what would happen if your employees become fully self-directed and self-managed? What kind of innovation, productivity and growth can develop in an organization that forms a fluid, dynamic, and integrated whole, operating at a level far greater than the sum of its parts?

The Courage to Operate with Integrity

As Chipotle Mexican Grill started to grow, founder and co-CEO Steve Ells became aware of how food was produced and processed in the United States.

He discovered a sad state of affairs: animals like pigs and dairy cows were confined in stark pens. Cattle, pigs, dairy cows, and chickens were injected with hormones and antibiotics that injured both the animals and the humans that consumed them.

Chipotle launched the “Food with Integrity” initiative to highlight their commitment to sustainable farming and sourcing livestock and produce from ranchers and farmers who employ humane, chemical-free raising methods.

With over 1,800 locations and a market capitalization of $20 billion, Chipotle has almost single-handedly proven that sustainable food sourcing is profitable, not just an ideal.

And the company continues to find creative ways to educate and inform its customers about their mission.

Where Will You Take Your Enterprise?

Visionary CEOs hold a clear vision in mind. This alone takes courage. Then they inspire their organization to actualize that vision. This takes boldness.

Remembering that the purpose of your business is to create customers and serve them better than anyone else, where are you leading your organization?

What big problems are you going to solve for your customers? Where is no other businesses in your category willing to go? How can you redefine your industry?

April 10, 2015 by

3 Powerful Ways to Use Archetypes in Your Business

3-Powerful-Ways-to-Use-Archetypes-in-Your-Business1

THE BIG IDEA: Archetypes are a powerful and underused tool business leaders can leverage to gain market dominance, improve customer loyalty, and build stronger organizations.

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Archetypes are the secret weapon of an elite group of businesses.

Archetypes operate silently, below the surface, completely out of view of our awareness—until we shine a light on them and begin working with them in conscious and productive ways.

Here are three powerful ways business leaders can use archetypes to grow their business:

#1: Deploy Effective Advertising

Archetypes can be used by savvy business leaders, marketers, brand builders, and advertisers to associate their brands to specific archetypal images that reside in their customer’s mind.

This is unquestionably a powerful use of archetypes that every business looking for a competitive edge should employ.

The use of archetypes generally stops here, but the value of archetypes goes much deeper.

Archetypes have two additional fundamental uses that are more relevant to chief executives than any other leadership role.

#2: Uncover Penetrating Consumer Insights

Archetypes can be used to better understand your customers at a significantly deeper level.

When you know the archetypes that your customers associate to your brand, you can explore the nature of these archetypes through a process psychologists call amplification.

An archetype is amplified through mythological stories, fairy tales, and other associations to bring to life the emotions, drives, aspirations, and tensions your customers are experiencing (on a largely unconscious level).

Let’s say you figure out that one of your business’s archetypes is the Caregiver. When you think of a caregiver, what qualities come to mind? Perhaps altruism, patience, empathy, and compassion.

Which characters personify the caregiver in films? Mary Poppins. Mrs. Doubtfire. What additional qualities or attributes do these characters exhibit?

This process of amplification can provide a depth of customer insights that transcends any form of big data.

These insights can highlight specific actions you can take to move your business closer to the hearts and minds of your customers.

#3: Build a Thriving Corporate Culture

Finally, when you discover your business’s archetypes, you can use them as a homing beacon to attract a certain type of talented employee that resonates with your ethos (the characteristic spirit of your culture).

Archetypes within an organization are most often expressed in a set of core values. These core values establish set patterns of behavior by triggering archetypal images in the employee’s psyche.

Companies with thriving corporate culture like Southwest Airlines, Zappos, Amazon.com, Google, The Container Store, and Netflix have all aligned themselves with specific groups of archetypes that bring core values to life.

When this strategy is used consciously, the effects are usually extraordinary. Arguably, this is the most profound and underutilized application of archetypes in modern management.

March 27, 2015 by

Outperforming Leaders Use Core Values to Win

Core Values
THE BIG IDEA: When executed well, core values provide an unparalleled competitive advantage for leaders because they define a specific set of idealized behaviors they want their people to uphold.

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If you could wave a wand and magically have all of your employees behaving in certain ways, how would you want them to behave?

It’s easy to get frustrated when an employee is behaving in a manner that doesn’t support the organization—arriving late to meetings, speaking over others, or making rash decisions.

When you observe a negative behavior, you can try to correct it by calling the recalcitrant into your office and giving him or her feedback.

For this approach to be effective, the feedback needs to be well-timed (right when the undesirable behavior occurs) and consistent (more than once).

Humans don’t change their behaviors too readily or quickly. Conditioning new behaviors takes time, consistency, and patience.

How to Improve Employee Behavior

While its beneficial to train your leaders to become effective in-house coaches, when you’re heading an organization with thousands of people, the feedback approach alone cannot foster the behavioral changes you seek on a company-wide scale.

The alternative approach, used by a minute number of extraordinary business leaders, is to determine, in advance, the idealized behaviors they want their employees to embody. Then, to encapsulate these behaviors into a set of core values that permeates throughout their organization.

Now, any company can put together a list of values.

Enron, for example, listed core values in their 2000 annual report including “Respect: We treat others as we would like to be treated” and “Integrity: We work with customers and prospects openly, honestly, and sincerely.”

Obviously, listing a set of values isn’t enough.

The Behaviors and Skills Your Organization Values

Core values answers the question, “What does our business stand for?”

More than anything else, what your business stands for is defined by the actions and behaviors of your people.

The actual values of an organization are determined mainly by where it invests its resources and how its employees behave, not what the leader says or what’s posted on a company website.

Businesses that use core values to build extraordinary organizations—like Zappos, Southwest Airlines, and Netflix—take their values very seriously.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings explains, “Actual company values are the behaviors and skills that are valued in fellow employees.”

Businesses that consciously cultivate their culture hire and promote employees who demonstrate their established set of core values. They train and enforce these idealized behaviors at every turn.

Core Values Require Specificity

To be able to hire, train, and promote employees based on a set of values, your core values need to be specific so they can be measurable.

Enron’s lofty value of integrity and its brief description sounds nice, but could a manager easily evaluate if an employee was working with customers “openly, honestly, and sincerely”? (And what about open, honest, and sincere communication within the organization? Clearly, that wasn’t valued at Enron either.)

In contrast, look at Netflix’s core value of honesty, a value similar to integrity. For Hasting’s organization, honesty means:

“You are known for candor and directness.”

“You are non-political when you disagree with others.”

“You only say things about fellow employees you will say to their face.”

“You are quick to admit mistakes.”

Can you see how these definitions make it easy for leaders to evaluate their employees and potential hires?

Core Values are the CEO’s Responsibility (Not HR’s)

Ultimately, businesses that use core values to create a unique corporate culture have leaders who embody the very same values they want their people to emulate.

Humans learn best through observing behavior, not words.

If a leader isn’t conducting herself with integrity, for example, you can be certain that the employees aren’t going to go out of their way to do so either. Research shows that employees are seven times more likely to demonstrate loyalty to leaders they believe have high integrity than to those they do not.

This suggests that chief executives must be clear on two things.

First, they must know what behaviors are necessary to move their organization towards their inspiring vision. Second, they must resolve to live these behaviors, to the best of their ability, each and every day.

This is not a small commitment. Could this explain why so few organizations succeed in creating thriving cultures with engaged employees?

SIDEBAR: Will Your Core Values Hold?

Here’s a quick checklist to test the integrity of your core values:

  1. Does each value speak to at least one desired behavior?
  2. Will each value help you make decisions (especially the difficult ones)?
  3. Are your core values memorable? Will every team member be able to encode them in their minds?
  4. Does each value represent distinct elements of your overall culture?
  5. Will you be willing to uphold these values 50 years from now?
  6. Are your values congruent with the behavior of your leadership team? Are these values BS-tested? Will an employee be able to observe hypocrisy?
  7. Can your organization hold up these values in stressful and difficult situations (like increased competition, product recall, stock devaluation, or downsizing)?
  8. Are you willing to defend these values unequivocally? That is, does each value permeate through the entire organization?

For concise instructions on how to discover your core values, click here.

March 10, 2015 by

Official Volkswagen Beetle Cult Brand Profile

VW brand lovers

Contents

Certified Cult Brand
We have tracked businesses with unprecedented brand loyalty since 2001. A Certified Cult Brand is a designation we hold for brands that fulfill specific market criteria, including upholding the Seven Rules of Cult Brands.

VW Beetle Quick Stats

Dr. Ferdinand Porsche (1875-1951) was the creator of the bettle

With over 21 million manufactured, the Beetle is the longest-running and most-manufactured automobile of a single design platform anywhere in the world.

Henry Ford considers buying VW, but then declined; 24 years later, Beetle would out-sell Ford Model T.

With its sealed floor pans and body, the Beetle could indeed stay afloat for several minutes, as was advertised in the Sixties.

The VW Beetle Herbie has starred in six movies.

VW Beetle Cult Brand Summary

Today the Beetle is regarded as arguably the best-selling car of all time, but back in 1948 it was unknown in the U.S., and many sales types believed no one would ever buy, partly because of its association with Nazi Germany–being dubbed “the people’s car” by Adolph Hitler–still fresh in the public’s mind.

Despite initial failures at introducing the Beetle into America, Volkswagen remained undeterred. They brought twenty Beetles to the U.S. to a private showing in New York City and then to the First U.S. International Trade Fair in Chicago. It wasn’t an overnight success, but it started to get attention from the press and generated word-of-mouth buzz.

Given the opportunity to actually see and drive a Beetle, a significant chunk of the American public soon found themselves in love with the reliable and affordable little, German car. Virtually everything about the Beetle’s design screamed it was a car like no other: its air-cooled engine was mounted in the back, not the front, like every other domestic gas guzzler of the period, a configuration that made it more adept than any U.S.-made car of the time for safe driving in rain, sleet, and snow; it’s exterior design was unique, with its egg-shaped body standing in sharp contrast to the large and sleek, chrome-covered domestic behemoths of the period. The Beetle’s appearance oozed a curious combination of personality and practicality, which quickly helped build strong affection for it among its owners.

In addition to developing a unique design (the look), Volkswagen focused on developing a unique marketing message (the say and the feel) for the Beetle. In contrast to the advertising of the Detroit automakers of the 1950s and 1960s, which was full of slick copy and boastful claims, Volkswagen’s ads for the Beetle were frank, direct, and honest. Some of the more memorable early print ads included “Think small,” “Some shapes are hard to improve on,” and the cult-branding clincher, “Do you earn too much to afford one?”

The combination of unique design elements and honest advertising became a killer combination. By the early 1960s, the Beetle became a magnet for legions of Americans who saw themselves as being different. As Bug Talesauthor Paul Klebahn summed up: “The Beetle tended to appeal to freethinkers. This was the thinking person’s car. Instead of saying, look how much I paid for my car, it was look how much I didn’t pay!”

When Volkswagen launched the New Beetle in 1998, they made a conscious decision not to show any drivers in its ads. They wanted their funky-shaped and lovable car to be the center of attention, not an actor or actress. “In the New Beetle’s initial advertising, we never included people in the ads because we didn’t want a person to say, ‘Oh, that’s who drives a Beetle,'” explained Steve Keys, Director of Corporate Communications. “We wanted you to be able to say, ‘I can see myself in that car.'”

It was a good move: everyone from teenagers buying their first car to aging baby boomers hoping to recapture their youth purchased the car. Volkswagen benefited from not shrinking its potential audience of buyers: No one had trouble seeing themselves behind the wheel of a New Beetle.

VW Beetle Timeline

Timeline provided by: http://www.cqql.net/vw.htm

1933 – Dr. Ferdinand Porsche (1875-1951) draws first sketches of a simple little car that even the most common of citizens could own and enjoy on the autobahns.

1934 – Adolf Hitler commissions Porsche to develop the KdF-Wagen (“Kraft durch Freude” or “Strength through joy”), forerunner of what we know today as the Beetle.

1936 – At Berlin Auto Show, Hitler announces that Porsche will design “the People’s Car;” Porsche promises Hitler he will produce three prototypes by year’s end.

1937 – First road test on prototypes

1938 – Thirty prototypes (called Series 30) completed

1939 – May 28: Ceremony commemorates laying of cornerstone of VW factory at Wolfsburg (would later become largest auto factory under one roof)

1940 – KdF-Wagen appears at Berlin Auto Show. Germany goes to war.

1942 – German army vehicles Kubelwagens built; German amphibious army vehicles Schwimmwagens built

1944 – Allied bombs destroy more than 2/3 of Wolfsburg factory
1945 – May: World War II ends. British forces take control of Wolfsburg area. Porsche interrogated by Allied Forces for his alleged connections to Nazis. Porsche is cleared, but then imprisoned in France with son Ferry for two years.

1946 – 1,785 cars constructed, mostly by hand; used as army light transport

1947 – Wolfsburg produces 19,000 cars; exported to Holland. Two hand-made convertibles constructed.

1948 – 20,000th Beetle produced. Beetle modified into convertible.Henry Ford considers buying VW, but then declines; 24 years later, Beetle would out-sell Ford Model T.

1949 – January 17: First Beetle bought in USA by Ben Pon. Max Hoffman becomes first importer.

1950 – 100,000th Beetle produced. 1,000 convertibles produced. Porsche celebrates 75th birthday; finally visits Wolfsburg plant; cries when he sees Beetles on Autobahn… his dream becomes reality.

1951 – January 10: Ferdinand Porsche dies.

1952 – First official gathering of Beetle owners. Canada imports its first Beetle.

1955 – April: VW of America formed. 1,000,000th Beetle produced.

1953 – 500,000th Beetle produced. VW plant opens in Sao Paulo, Brasil.

1957 – 2,000,000th Beetle produced

1959 – 3,000,000th Beetle produced

1960 – 4,000,000th Beetle produced

1961 – 5,000,000th Beetle produced

1962 – VW of America headquarters at Englewood Cliffs, NJ, dedicated. 6,000,000th Beetle produced.

1963 – 7,000,000th Beetle produced

1964 – 8,000,000th and 9,000,000th Beetles produced

1965 – 10,000,000th Beetles produced

1966 – 11,000,000th and 12,000,000th Beetles produced

1970 – Last year convertible Beetle in standard format is available (only convertible Beetles in Super Beetle format are available). Super Beetle produced.

1972 – February 12: 15,007,034th Beetle rolls off assembly line,breaks Ford Model T record for total production.

1974 – June: 11,916,519th Beetle produced at Wolfsburg rolls off assembly line, signaling the end of Beetle production at Wolfsburg plant.

1975 – Last year for Super Beetle production

1977 – Last year for standard Beetle in USA; only Super Beetle convertibles remain.

1978 – At Emden VW plant in Germany, last official German-built Beetle rolls off assembly line

1981 – 20,000,000th Beetle produced (in Puebla, Mexico)

1998 – Production model of New Beetle unveiled at Detroit International Auto Show

1999 – New Beetle turbo available to US dealerships

2003 – July 30: Last Beetle (21,529,464th!) rolls off assembly line (in Puebla, Mexico)

2012 – New VW Beetle design is unveiled at the New York Auto Show.

Images of VW Beetle Brand Lovers

Videos Created By VW Beetle Brand Lover

Presentations About VW Beetle As a Brand

Archetypal Branding: Cult Branding 2.0

Decoding Brand Communities

2010 Volkswagen Beetle Virginia Beach

7 Steps to Customer Loyalty

Article related to VW Beetle

Buggin’ Out: A collection of VW Owners Gather to Share Their Love

VW Beetle Related Web Sites

http://www.sjvwc.net

http://twitter.com/#!/VWbeetles

http://www.theclassicbeetle.com/

Facebook VW Beetle Fan Page
https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=60380013950

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March 1, 2015 by

How to Conduct More Effective Meetings

How-to-Conduct-More-Effective-Meetings
THE BIG IDEA: Considering the staggering amount of time CEOs spend in meetings, investing time in improving meeting effectiveness is prudent for any outperforming leader.

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Management guru Henry Mintzberg was one of the first researchers to provide a glimpse into the daily lives of CEOs.

Mintzberg followed a handful of business leaders around the office for his Ph.D. thesis at MIT Sloan. His primary observation appears obvious: CEOs go to a lot of meetings. Roughly 80 percent of their work hours are spent in meetings.

That was over four decades ago. A more recent study by Oriana Bandiera of London School of Economics and colleagues had the personal assistants of 94 CEOs provide detailed time sheets over a pre-specified week.

The results were similar to Mintzberg’s observations: 85 percent of the CEO’s time was spent working with other people through meetings, phone calls, and public appearances.

Why CEOs Need Meetings

Meetings dominate a CEO’s day because personal interactions provide valuable information critical to effectively running an organization.

Harvard Business School professors Michael Porter and Nitin Nohria argue that the ability to extract critical details needed to inform big decisions from employees is partly what defines the most effective CEOs.

Meetings also provide CEOs with an opportunity to communicate what they think is vital for their teams to know.

The Dark Side of Meetings

Another management guru, Peter Drucker, had strong views about meetings. He wrote, “Meetings are by definition a concession to a deficient organization. For one either meets or one works. One cannot do both at the same time.”

Or, as economist John Kenneth Galbraith said, meetings are “indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.”

The problem is two fold. First, we have too many meetings. Second, too many of them are unproductive.

12 Tips on Conducting Effective Meetings

Your goal, of course, isn’t to eliminate meetings, but to optimize their effectiveness as well as reduce their duration and frequency whenever possible.

Here’s a list of 12 ways to help you master the art of conducting effective meetings:

  1. Clarify the purpose of the meeting when it’s scheduled. Request that participants come to the meeting prepared in advanced.
  2. Clarify the objective of the meeting at its start. Every meeting should have purposeful direction.
  3. Be mindful of meeting duration. Many 60-minute meetings can be done in 30 minutes. Many 30-minute meetings require only 15 minutes.
  4. Start meetings on time regardless of who is late.
  5. Reward the behavior you seek: Don’t invest time in reviewing meeting content with latecomers. Doing so rewards tardiness and penalizes timeliness.
  6. Evaluate who really needs to attend each meeting. The more people, the more challenging it is be productive.
  7. Avoid holding meetings for informational purposes; that’s the proper function of digital communication.
  8. Elect a meeting moderator responsible for guiding the discussion toward the desired end goal. Don’t let specific participants dominate the meeting with endless conversation.
  9. Whenever possible, end meetings early. The extra time can create a positive experience for participants.
  10. Reduce distractions by closing the door and requesting that members do not use their phones during meetings.
  11. Ask participants distracted with things unrelated to the meeting to leave. A meeting should be an active dialogue with all members involved.
  12. End every meeting with a committed action plan.

Each of the above suggestions can greatly improve the quality, effectiveness, and results of your meetings.

A Bold Experiment: Cut All Meetings in Half

If you’re intrigued and brave enough, commit to cutting the duration of every meeting in half. Try this experiment over the course of the next two weeks and observe the results.

If you’re like many of our clients, you’ll find that you accomplish just as much. More importantly, you’ll discover a reservoir of free time that can be invested in more important matters.

If you have a clear objective, the shorter the meeting, the more focused the attention and the better the outcome.

Conducting more effective meetings will give you more time to focus on what matters most: leading with vision, cultivating a thriving organization, and better serving your customers.

February 23, 2015 by

A Purpose-Driven Business

A Purpose Driven Business
THE BIG IDEA: Today’s article asks executive leaders to take a step back and evaluate their business with some big questions that underlie the foundation of their enterprise.

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If you were asked by someone to define your business, how would you answer?

  • Would you explain what services you provide?
  • What products you manufacture or sell?
  • What makes you different from your competitors?

Management guru Peter Drucker suggests that there is only one true way to define a business: by the want the customer satisfies when she buys a product or a service from you.

Satisfying the customer’s want is the purpose of every business.

What Business Are You In?

How, then, do you answer the question: “What is our business?”

You look at your business from the outside; you take the customer’s and the market’s viewpoint.

Drucker explains: “What the customer sees, thinks, believes, and wants, at any given time, must be accepted by management as an objective fact and must be taken as seriously as the reports of the salesperson, the tests of the engineer, or the figures of the accountant.

“And management,” Drucker continues, “must make a conscious effort to get answers from the customer herself rather than attempt to read her mind.”

Drucker wrote this in Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practice, originally published in 1973. Over four decades later, his words are just as relevant—and just as often ignored.

How to Define Your Business

To more precisely define your business, Drucker offers two powerful questions:

  1. Who is the customer?
  2. What is value to the customer?

The first question is a master work in itself. How deep you go in defining your customer is an indication of your commitment to serving your customers. Last month, we offered seven customers insights we feel every CEO should investigate.

The second question is very important too. Most business leaders may be certain they know the answer, but, Drucker points out, they are almost always incorrect.

Why? Because business executives tend to define value based on what they perceive as value.

What Do Your Customers Value?

“The customer never buys a product,” Drucker writes. “By definition the customer buys the satisfaction of a want. He buys value.”

For a teenage boy who buys a pair of Vans shoes, that value might be identification with a subculture.

For a 35-year-old mother shopping at Target, that value might be fashion and convenience.

For a 55-year-old executive ordering on Zappos, that value might be breadth of selection.

Different customers value different things. Drucker points out that the question of value is so complicated that management shouldn’t even try to guess the answer.

You have to go directly to your customers.

February 18, 2015 by

3 Steps to Changing Any Behavior

THE BIG IDEA: Supporting behavioral change in employees and customers becomes possible when you understand what motivates human beings to change and why change usually doesn’t happen.

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Tom is a highly talented employee with an impressive CV. He had the precise skills and past experiences you were looking for when you brought him on board. His management position is key for your organization’s strategic direction.

But Tom, you later discovered, has trouble managing his emotions. He has a bad temper and has been known to yell in meetings. He has a persistent habit of aggravating his team members.

The recruiting process was long and costly to hire Tom. You don’t want to start that process over, but something’s gotta give. What do you do?

How Do You Inspire Positive Change?

One of the greatest challenges chief executives face is the management of large numbers of people.

Humans are complex creatures. While we seek organizational order, the reality errs toward chaos. As such, managing conflict among key team members is invariably a prominent, consistent, and challenging task for chief executives.

How do you attempt to persuade others to change? We often try to change people’s behavior by appealing to reason and logic. We provide a sound argument why a desired change is beneficial.

Does it work?

All physicians know that being overweight is bad for their health. Yet, aren’t there many overweight physicians?

You can try telling Tom that if he doesn’t change his behavior and get his emotions under control, that you will have to let him go.

Even if Tom wants to stop his poor behavior, however, this argument isn’t likely to lead to change. Why not?

The Secret to Creating Change

Rational arguments and logic appeal to our prefrontal cortex, our thinking brains. But before logic and reason can influence us, the limbic system—our emotional brain—must first be engaged.

The overweight physician knows that being overweight is harmful to his health. His thinking brain has all of the information he needs to make a rational decision to change.

But where’s the emotional drive? If he’s able to associate being overweight with not being alive to see his granddaughter grow up, for example, he may become sad or angry. These emotions can potentially help motivate him to change his behavior.

Tom is likely aware of the damaging effects of his poor emotional management. That is, his thinking brain knows there’s a problem. The key is to find a way to trigger an emotional response associated with the desired change.

Change is made possible when we evoke our emotional center first. We change when change is meaningful. Meaning is rooted in feelings, not thoughts.

Three Steps to Creating Change

So how can you inspire Tom to change his behavior?

You can paint a picture that highlights the cost of his continued behavior in his performance, his work relationships, and his uncertain future in the company.

In short, you can agitate him. Agitation can lead to action.

You can also inspire him to a new view of his potential: How would it feel to have better control over his emotional reactions? When he triumphs over this behavioral problem, what will it give him? How much more energy and enjoyment might he discover in his work and personal life?

Having awoken his emotional center, you can now give his thinking brain specific instructions. Perhaps he can take steps to improve his emotional intelligence through specific mind training exercises or breathwork.

Finally, what changes can be made to his environment to help make the change stick? Perhaps he can commit to a 3-minute breathing exercise before going into every meeting. Maybe everyone in the meeting can do the exercise together.

To recap, if you want to inspire behavioral change:

Step 1: Tap into the emotional center. Help the person feel the cost of not changing and the benefits to changing.

Step 2: Provide specific actions on the path to change.

Step 3: Set up the conditions in the environment necessary to support the change.

These Same Steps Apply for Your Customers Too

Your customers don’t make decisions based on reason alone. Customers, like all humans, have a healthy dose of irrationality. We are emotional creatures.

Remember: feelings come first; reasons come second.

It is because of this fact that aesthetics, design, storytelling, images, and other facets of branding are so critical for attracting customers.

Our emotional center is moved by beauty, not words; feelings, not logic.

When we first move people through emotions and then lead them with specific directions, positive change is always afoot.

February 13, 2015 by

The Unlikely Key to Inspiring Your People

The Unlikely Key to Inspiring Your People
THE BIG IDEA: Inspiring others doesn’t require charisma; it asks us to relate to our fellow human beings. To become more effective at moving people, improve your ability to take another person’s perspective.

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Robert was appointed CEO of a regional chain of banks three years ago.

As an executive of this financial institution for over a decade, he knew the strengths and weaknesses of his organization when he took the helm.

He was excited about his company’s potential, passionate about improving his organization’s culture, and saw ways of capitalizing on market opportunities.

Now, after three years at the helm, without seeing any measurable improvements in his company’s performance, his enthusiasm is fading. (And his board is questioning their decision.)

Robert wonders: Am I not the change agent—the inspiring leader—I saw myself to be? He can’t help feeling like he’s letting himself, his team, and his board down.

Thankfully, all is not lost for Robert.

Inspiration Starts with Vision

First and foremost, Robert must make sure he has established a compelling vision for the future.

Without this image of what his banking business can become, he has little chance to bring his organization together and collectively move it in a positive direction. He has no way of getting his people excited about the future possibilities.

As it says in Proverbs, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”

A compelling vision starts with a big idea. If you need help clarifying your big idea, read this.

The Key to Moving People

A primary role of the leader is to move people, to inspire positive action in a desired direction.

This is where Robert needs help. He needs to get his vision to stick, to sell the vision to his organization so that they are inspired to realize it through consistent action.

The key to moving people is not through overt persuasion or coercive means; those methods have deleterious long-term effects.

Instead, the secret to moving people is to be able to take their perspective.

Perspective taking allows you to see the world from another person’s point of view and to speak to them from their viewpoint.

The idea is simple enough, however, in practice, most people don’t do it often enough. Our egos are conditions to see the world through our own lens.

Three Vital Perspectives

Right now, as you read this, you can be aware of multiple perspectives.

Notice your own thoughts and feelings as you’re reading. This is your first-person perspective.

As you read these words, you’re also interpreting what we’re trying to communicate. This is the second-person perspective.

Where are you right now? Become aware of your environment: other people, lighting, temperature, sounds, and so on. This is the third-person perspective.

We are always experiencing the world from at least these three perspectives.

Perspective taking as a skill requires us to consciously take the second-person perspective in our communications with others.

How to Build Your Perspective-Taking Ability

Here’s a simple practice to help train yourself to take the role of others:

  1. Decide whose perspective you’re going to take. It could be an employee, a board member, a peer, or a customer.
  2. Allow yourself to be curious and let go of wanting to judge this exercise.
  3. Imagine that you are this person. As fully as you can, step into their point of view.
  4. Look out at your environment. What does it look like? What do you notice? What do you see? What do you think? What do you believe? How do you feel?

Maintain this perspective for two minutes. To help integrate what you’ve learned, invest a few minutes reflecting on the experience: What did you learn about the other person? What did you learn about yourself? Did you pick up a new perspective?

Becoming a More Inspiring Leader

Imagine if you practiced this exercise at the start of the day, before an important meeting, or before communicating your vision to a key team member.

Might you discover a superior way of communicating your ideas, of making them more meaningful to the people you’re trying to move?

When you feel like someone understands you, don’t you feel more connected with them? Doesn’t understanding help establish trust? And isn’t trust the foundation for getting people to work well together and move toward shared results?

Follow this procedure at least twice per day until perspective taking becomes effortless.

February 3, 2015 by

A Crash Course in Social Marketing

THE BIG IDEA: The study of Cult Brands reveals a wealth of information about human behavior and the mechanisms behind effective social marketing. Today’s article is a launchpad for chief executives interested in expanding their understanding of this discipline.

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Do you sell products or experiences?

Do you focus exclusively on profits or inclusively as a community?

Do you try to copy your competitors or demonstrate courage and dare to be different?

These are some of the questions that assess if your company is moving closer to your customers or further away.

The topic of social marketing is important to chief executives because it puts a magnifying glass on the companies that most excel at moving toward their customers. This specialized study brings meaning to concepts like “customer loyalty” and “brand loyalty.”

Some of the most successful social marketers are Cult Brands because they draw from the power of humanity. If you’re new to this topic or interested in deepening your knowledge, here are a selection of past articles that will give you the competitive edge:

Social Marketing Fundamentals

A host of defining principles enable businesses to tap into the social and psychological lives of their customers:

What Are Cult Brands

A closer look at what Cult Brands are (and what they are not).

Seven Rules of Cult Brands

All Cult Brands knowingly or unconsciously adhere to these seven powerful principles.

How to Start a Cult

Explores five psychological reasons people join groups and seven steps to creating a cult, tribe, movement—whatever you’d like to call it.

Why Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is Crucial for your Business

Psychologist Abraham Maslow has greatly influenced our understanding of Cult Brands. His categories of human needs help explain both consumer motivation and organizational behavior. Psychologist Clayton Alderfer’s adjustments to Maslow’s theory of motivation are insightful too.

What Social Marketers Do Differently

Customer-centric businesses harness the social forces of their customers in specific ways:

A Big Mistake Most Retailers Make

Cult Brands sell experiences and lifestyles, not products.

How Cult Brands Tap into Higher Values

Cult Brands go beyond just helping customers meet basic human needs to helping them realize higher level needs as well.

How to Draw Power From Your Enemies

Cult Brands sell freedom.

How Cult Brands Create Loyal Customers

Cult Brands give their customers a sense of belonging and more positive self-esteem.

How Cult Brands Create Magical Experiences for Customers

Many Cult Brands set up the conditions for “participation mystique” that enables customers to express a deeper part of themselves and forge strong bonds with each other.

A Masters Degree in Human Nature

In the final analysis, the study of Cult Brands is a study of human beings: their needs, tensions, desires, dreams, motivations, and values.

Reading the above articles won’t win you any business degrees, but it will profoundly alter how you perceive your customers.

It may even alter your organization’s approach to serving your fellow human beings who graciously give you their business (thereby fueling your business).

When this relationship between company and customers is fostered consciously, it forms a symbiotic exchange of value. Both company and customer are elevated. Everyone wins.

Onward!

January 26, 2015 by

The Invisible Force Behind Thriving Organizations

Golden Egg
THE BIG IDEA: Cohesive organizations and customer communities are created by the same mechanism. If you know what’s at the heart of both, you can build a thriving organization that fosters passionate customers.

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Like a hand full of marbles pouring into a bowl, when you put a bunch of people together, there’s chaos.

Egos bump heads like marbles colliding.

But then, a group begins to constellate around the center.

This center can take various forms.

In sports clubs and political groups, the center is a common goal, like winning a championship or an election.

In activist groups, the center is a cause, a slogan, or a set of beliefs.

In religions, the center is a God-image.

In corporate cultures, the center can be an inspiring vision, mission, or set of core values.

In destructive cults, the center is a charismatic leader with narcissistic and messianic qualities.

In Cult Brands, the center is usually an ideal, a set of values, or a theme of interest.

What Draws Groups Together

The group’s center acts as a magnet, attracting members to its core. The more powerful the center, the more cohesive the group.

Here’s the secret to transforming your organization and your customer relationships: the more archetypal the center, the more solid, enduring, and cohesive the group.

Archetypes draw people together. They inspire loyalty and connectedness.

As inherited dispositions in every human being, archetypes cause us to react in typical (instinctive) ways. Archetypes bind us together as members of the human family.

An Illustration of Archetypes in Action

Historically, world religions have kept the largest groups of humans together. The center of these religions (Christ, Buddha, Krishna, Muhammad) is the archetype of the Anthropos, the cosmic man, a collective soul that unites all people.

Destructive cults, too, constellate around this God image. Its members project this powerful archetype—what Jung called the Self—onto the leader.

The Self, as well as God or Nature, has been described by many ancient philosophers as an “infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.” (We can all ponder that on our lunch break today.)

Symbolic images that point to the Self, like the circle, the apple, the star, the tree, and the egg, are found in countless religious narratives, myths, fairy tales, and individual dreams.

The Self, in its masculine expression, often takes the form of the wise old man, the guide, the mentor with supernatural aid. This archetype is expressed by characters like Merlin from the Arthurian legend, Gandalf in the The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit series, and Yoda in the Star Wars franchise.

In its feminine expression, the Self may take the form of an earth mother or love goddess. Southwest Airlines, for example, is aligned with the feminine expression of the Self. Their organization is guided by the principles of relatedness, care, and love—all attributes of the feminine Self.

Putting Archetypes to Work in Your Organization

How do you put archetypes to work?

Start at the center. The center is unique for each organization. Your strengths hint at it. Your organization’s passions point you in the right direction. The forces that drive your customers to do business with you provide invaluable clues.

This center should be expressed in your ultimate vision, your core values, and the language of your corporate culture.

How will you know when you’ve found your center? Your heart will awaken. Your employees will come together as teams. Innovation will increase by virtue of the passions of the men and women guided by archetypal forces deep within them. Your stakeholders will observe it. Your customers will hear the call.

Remember: the more archetypal, the more essential, and the more human your center is, the more cohesive your organization will become. And, the more easily you’ll attract customers who want to join forces with you.

January 20, 2015 by