One Planet – One Tribe: Carbon Nation – the Movie

One Planet – One Tribe: Carbon Nation – the Movie

The pace at which society is changing and adapting to our surroundings is outstripping the faculties of our governments, institutions and business. Want proof of that? Just check out the movement being created by film maker Peter Byck through his independent film Carbon Nation. Despite the nay saying and doom mongering of climate change campaigners and its necessary onward pressure onto government at a global level, where do people fit into the Kyoto and Copenhagen machinations?

On one level – nowhere. Climate Change and its associated solutions are things that happen to people and from a great height. Does that mean that people are powerless to bring about substantial change and engagement with the real issues at ground and community level? Far from it – and we’re not just talking about sorting the recycling out into the proper containers either (as important as that clearly is!)

Carbon Nation charters the extraordinary story of how many seemingly unconnected people and communities from fur flung towns and rural environments are getting together in the spirit of enterprise and community to take charge of their situation. This is not just activism – not just a reaction of the helpless in the face of overwhelming adversity. This is the development of highly creative, highly engaged and resourceful people from all walks of life who are taking control of a situation that rationally ought to be well out of their sphere of control. Carbon Nation – the Movie, plots several stories from across the US where individuals and communities got together to transform their communities and futures by tackling head on the sustainability and energy issues in the US by DOING SOMETHING CONSTRUCTIVE. Some are making money, some are saving money, some are inventing new technologies, some are influencing decision makers, some are getting unemployed communities back to work. Some are on a personal mission. Why is this happening?

On one level the answer is simple: give the human condition a set of adversities and the room to figure them out and they’ll bring out the best of the situation.

Film maker Peter Byck hopes to cultivate this outbreak of the spirit of social enterprise by promoting its existence to government at local, regional and national level; to big business and to other like-minded optimists. Carbon Nation comes to the UK in the Autumn with a projected theatrical release at independent cinema level. The message Peter is sending is clear: People don’t necessarily need government handouts, tax breaks, subsidies and permission. They are quite capable of making their own futures happen – but just don’t stand in their way and make it even harder. Encourage optimism, innovation, enterprise and community engagement – the rest will take care of itself. Such is the power of tribes.

For big business it makes sense and can save or make you money.

About Carbon Nation-The Movie:

An “optimistic, solutions-based non-partisan (and witty) documentary”, that shows tackling climate change boosts economies, increases national and energy security, and promotes health and a clean environment!
www.carbonnationmovie.com

New Brand Tribalism, The Alternative (www.thealternative.co.uk) and The International Visual Communications Association-The IVCA (Www.ivca.org) hosted an exclusive first UK screening of this film at The Roxy (http://www.roxybarandscreen.com/) in London on July 6, 2011. For more information about future screenings opportunities or how to spread the word. Contact us here at New Brand Tribalism http://www.newbrandtribalism.com/contact-us/.

Innovation, Change and the 21st Century- Why is UK Plc finding it so hard to adjust?

Why are so many businesses struggling to attract loyal talent and customers? Why are truly unique brands so scarce, whilst middle of the road products, services, retail stores, etc dominate the business landscape? Why aren’t companies in the UK performing as well as others?

Facebook , The iPhone, Skype, Twitter, illustrates just how quickly things have changed but have the major corporates in Britain kept up? Do they really understand the climate they now operate in? The future isn’t what we’re used to and it ain’t what it used to be!

Why are the following companies growing at rates most of UK PLC could only dream of? Netflix (31% y/y),Amazon (39%y/y), Ebay( 26% y/y), Alibaba.com (40%y/y), Baidu(76% Y/Y) , Tencent(55% Y/Y), Priceline.com (37%). (Source: Mary Meeker- Morgan Stanley)

Here’s a clue at what might be holding things back a bit: Check out this 5 minute video by the Chair of the MBA program at Havard Business School, Dr Youngme Moon. Dr Moon gives an interesting insight into the problems that stifle things like innovation and differentiation. Warning the video is only likely to be interesting to some who see the destructive forces at play, many will think it’s BS or that they’re exempt from it. http://bit.ly/mDULPq

The high performing companies of the 21st Century are not just doing things differently, but questioning whether we should be doing many of the things we currently believe in, at all. They are writing new rules about the growth potential of companies who embrace the new opportunities this marketplace presents.

“The fundamental problem with most businesses is that they are governed by mediocre ideas.
Maximizing the return of invested capital is an example of a mediocre idea. Mediocre ideas don’t uplift people. They don’t give them something they can tell their children about. They don’t create much meaning. “ Bill O’Brien (CEO Hanover Insurance)

A couple of thoughts here in the post. What do you think is holding most of UK PLC back?

Culture eats strategy-so says the Merck CEO

“You can have a good strategy but if you don’t have the culture and enabling systems
to implement that strategy, you will fail.”
- Dick Clark, CEO, Merck

What do you think?

What do brands like Harley Davidson, Ryanair and Manchester United have in common?

Apple, Nike, Google, Ryanair, Manchester United, Innocent Drinks,Tesco, Hello Kitty, Brand Beckham, and Harley Davidson,
What do these brands have in common ?

* They are all brands that perform quite well, yes they are

* All of them create a deep emotional impact, yes

and

* All have a connection to customers in the marketplace , agreed

The real key in what these brands have in common is that they polarise opinion they evoke emotion.  Like or Dislike, Too expensive or too cheap, wrong values or right values, say what you like about them at least they stand for something and don’t encourage indifference. There’s  always a danger that one day they will lose their spark it’s not a given that it will always be the same, not in this ever changing world – the challenge for the brands above is to stay relevant, remain as brands people believe in.

Sometimes the killer of brands isn’t a lack of trust, or even a lack of communication. It’s simple indifference.-There are may be no customer complaints, arguments or nasty blog posts, so everything may seem okay on the surface, awareness may even be high according to your traditional insight measure.  Even Trust isn’t an issue when you come to measure that, the thing is though that’s because customers don’t care about earning or having your brand’s trust (or trusting your brand). See the demise of Woolworths in the UK if you want an example of that, awareness wasn’t a problem as we saw when their demise became apparent, trust wasn’t even a problem in the most part once again we saw the emotion return once it was too late, what was a problem was that people didn’t care enough about the brand, Woolworths became a commodity and it couldn’t compete at the bottom of the market.

High performing brands usually polarise opinion. Performance in this markplace is not about every one loving you that’s impossible,it’s about identity, competition and belonging.

Why do you exist?

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.” ~ Elie Wies

Orange, The Industrial Era, Brand and Love

It disturbs me that so many businesses are still so disconnected from the human spirit,  I think it’s the left overs of the industrial era that are primarily to blame for this, as good as it was for our society it’s time to move on. The Industrial era taught us to create systemised and mechanised businesses with little meaning or differentiation. That was then this is now.  It’s now time for brands to stop just doing and start being something for people.

Businesses that stand for something beyond products and services, and that articulate and deliver on their belief are the ones that inspire the high levels of loyalty.  It’s becoming more and more obvious that the best performing organisations of the 21st Century will be those who are able to build strong cultures and surround themselves with communities of customers who have a deep belief in the brand.

The Orange brand now part of the market leading Everything Everywhere business has always shied away from concentrating on it’s product and spent its energy on growing its tribe.  As Justin Billingsley, former brand director at mobile brand Orange, once said: “There is a big difference between ‘like a lot’ and ‘love’ – arguably, a customer in love will never stray. Interesting point, the very notion of love is human, quite unsophisticated and not very rational, it just is.

Check out the following video it was created through our NBT service affiliates The Alternative and features Justin talking about love in Orange.

Another tribal chief sent into the wilderness.

The story of Nokia and a Southern African Tribe illustrates why CEO’s and boards need to embrace new thinking.

Who would be a leader in turbulent times like these? There has been a few notable falls from grace amongst some of our top leaders in recent times Kia, LG, BP and Nokia to name a few.

Which made me recall the mythical tale of the Fah-Kow-Wii Tribe.  A very small indigenous tribe of people who once inhabited the savannahs of South West Africa – until they became extinct. The problem with this vertically challenged tribe had been that because they were so small and the grass on the Savannah plains so high: they kept losing each other.  The tribal leader at the time ignored the pressing need to bring fresh blood into the tribe so that better statured people would be able to see above the horizon and help them as a tribe respond to the perpetual call of “Where the Fah-Kow-Wii?” Hence the tribe diminished. The moral of that tale is sometimes for the survival of the tribe you need to introduce new blood and new DNA – it means embracing new attributes to survive.

Unfortunately no-one shared the moral of the tale of the fabled Fah-Kow-Wii tribe to Nokia’s  outgoing CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo.  If they had, he might have better seen the fate of his tribe instead of staunchly sticking to the notion that only Finnish senior managers were equipped to lead the tribe. This exercise in Nordic purity (and we all know where those ideas end up), meant that the board of Nokia for two decades was almost exclusively made up of males of a certain age, all Finnish, all from the same educational and managerial schools of thought.

The issue here is that for any business, particularly one which is (was) a dominant global market leader to sustain the vitality of their tribe, they needed to increase their diversity – not continually reduce their gene pool and stick to the same rigid thinking. Not only is this potentially somewhat colonial and disrespectful to the various territories it serves, but it is also stifling in terms of being in tune with the real world and the customers and markets a brand seeks to engage with.  The failure of Nokia senior management of ignoring the headlong advance of Blackberry, Samsung, Apple and Google Android et al was a serious folly in proportion to that of the Chief of the Fah-Kow-Wii tribe.

However, the good news is that before all hope against extinction was exhausted, Nokia shareholders finally saw sense and have enforced a change of regime at the top of Nokia.  This will undoubtedly herald a fresh influx of new ideas and DNA into the Nokia tribe.  And not before time; the calls of “Where the Fah-Kow-Wii!” were becoming too amplified around the organisation and customer base of Nokia of late.  So, here’s to the next generation of the new Nokia tribe.

Tim Bleszynski

Co-founder New Brand Tribalism

How brand can be a powerful tool in employee engagement and loyalty.

We’re in HR review talking about New Brand Tribalism and considering how a brand can be a powerful tool in employee engagement and loyalty.

http://www.hrreview.co.uk/articles/analysis/analysis-hr-strategy-practice/beyond-engagement-are-you-evoking-or-provoking-your-tribe/10610

Breakthrough Innovation and the status quo

The leaders say: “Let’s be more innovative.”

The staff says: “Bravo. When do we start?”

The mid-level managers say: “Wait a minute, let’s think about that. What about… and …? Have you REALLY thought it through? Does this mean I have to change?”   (Claude Legrand)

Much Rhetoric about change and innovation in the world of big business. There is no doubt most companies today are big believers in the idea of innovation in some shape or form. You only have to look at corporate visions, mission statements and corporate strategies to realise how important it has become. It’s near the top of almost every CEO’s agenda.

So despite technological advances and the vast resources on offer why does Innovation appear to be so difficult and so slow for so many of the biggest corporates?

A legacy of a bygone era perhaps? Many corporate cultures are risk averse and despite the chat aren’t really open to leading the way or breaking the mould. In pursuit of incremental improvement busy stressed out managers focus on doing and simply don’t believe they can make changes unless they have some assurance that a new comfort will result- Hardly the route to breakthrough innovation.

Seth Godin has a very nice list called ” Top ways to defend the status quo”.

One item on the list is “”It’s never been done before”… how many times have you heard that?

Corporate Culture and the Apple Juggernaut

Culture is widely regarded as fundamental to an organisations ability to generate and sustain improvement. It is the ultimate form of ‘capacity to perform’.

Thinking about capacity and performance, what is it that has helped drive the Apple Juggernaut?

It hasn’t always been cool, people forget that Apple struggled through the late 80’s and 90s and came perilously close to oblivion. It’s a remarkable story of change. A company that has built its strength on being brand and culture obsessed, the bottom line benefits have followed.

All of the evidence available about high performing brands like Apple indicates that the power of a premium brand to excite and achieve loyalty and preference with customers demands the engagement of culture internally to drive the ambition and values of the brand externally. Highly successful brands know how to create powerful and compelling brand cultures which breed loyalty, performance, differentiation and sustainability. Culture brings people together and allows them to jointly cope with challenges of business andlife.

Apple has built a strong corporate culture, one that drives out those who do not “fit in” or believe. There’s been much news around in recent days about the departure of former senior vice president of Devices Hardware, Mark Papermaster, many journalists and commentators have suggested it’s because he didn’t fit into the unique Apple culture. The question is, Will Papermaster’s departure leave a stronger and more unified group? Or is this along with the hoo ha around the Iphone 4  a crack in the armoury, A signal of cultural dissent, a sign that perhaps the Apple culture may not be fit for purpose moving forward?

The Apple culture is not for everyone that bit is clear, nor is it always about being the nicest cuddliest place to work.  Apple does a good job at polarising people they have also been good at successfully engaging people inside on what matters to the business.

Check this out from Justin Maxwell: Ex Apple Employee:

“It wasn’t just the rules, it was the job itself, the measures that Apple takes to protect its creative and intellectual environment is unparalleled in the valley, and it’s been a disappointing experience since leaving there.”

“If I was still at Apple, I would not be responding to this question, nor would I feel wronged for not being able to… The general idea is this: You are part of something much bigger than you. The ideas you talk about in the hall, the neat tricks you figured out in CSS, the unibody machining technique, that’s part of your job, something you are paid to do for Apple’s success, not something you need to blog about to satisfy your ego.”

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/07/07/former_employees_shed_light_on_apples_internal_corporate_culture.html

Whilst strong culture binds people, it can also bind people so tight they cannot know, or see what they are doing. And how would they without exposure to other ideas?  Apple have been accused by many of arrogance is this a sign of a culture that may be a bit out of touch?

Every organisation has a distinct culture the question is whether that culture is fit for the purpose of the business or not?  Apple are ahead of many organisations in that they can point to a strong culture that breeds real tribal like engagement.

Not the  notions of super-annuated marital bliss that many in the employee and customer engagement fields espouse and justify through satisfaction and survey scores, but engagement where people are actually willingly participating in the brand and the things that are deemed important to the businesses performance.

Like everything else in business and in life your culture must evolve too,people feed off change and respond to the ideas and imagination of others in those times of change. Are you building the right culture to drive your brand forward?

It driven the Apple juggernaut thus far, but is every aspect of Apple’s culture fit for purpose? Only time will tell.

The Market, The Analyst and The CEO

“The Idea that business is just a numbers affair has always struck me as preposterous. For one thing I’ve never been particularly good at numbers, but I think I’ve done a reasonable job with feelings. And I’m convinced that it is the feelings- and feelings alone- that account for the success of the Virgin brand in all of its myriad forms.”

Richard Branson- Virgin Group

Here are NBT we have been beating the drum for an evolution in the management practices of the past since the beginning. The traditional models of management  just don’t work too well for creating adaptive, innovative and engaged organisations. The management practices that are firmly grounded in the Industrial Era focus on the content of the business, not on the message or the effects – of that content on people.  People are the key to successfully performing today and into the future.

A well placed and connected contact of ours, recently asked us to firstly forget the rhetoric of big business, then they questioned us  ”what do you think CEO’s are most concerned about really?”  We said the changing business environment, business models and things to that effect. Our contact said yes true…in part but in reality the main thing keeping CEO’s up at night is analysts. They bend over backwards to ensure that they are kept sweet, Leading analysts can get through to the CEO in super quick time and CEO’s these days spend alot of time selling their numbers or why the numbers will eventually stack up.  As our friend suggested many CEO’s appear dominated by the power of the analysts, apparently that’s what’s keeping many CEO’s awake at night.

An interesting insight for us and it’s interesting that so many businesses still focus all strategy purely on the numbers, even when a situation can arise where better than forecast profits doesn’t even guarantee upwards share movement, actually, if a few influential analysts believe that the balance sheet doesn’t signal the future then strong profits could even be a catalyst for a slight drop in shares. The market is based on emotion and feeling- despite it seeming completely rational it’s actually very human in nature.