Stories "R" Us

Elevator pitches, 30-second spots, viral videos, strategic PR, the brand called “you.”
Today’s conventional wisdom is that great brands are great at telling us their interesting stories.
And that may be true.
But it’s a superficial view.
In reality, we use our interaction with brands to construct our own stories.
Ones that we want to tell about ourselves.
To ourselves and to others.
When you’re being interesting, you’re really doing it to enhance other’s stories.
Case in point.
Each morning in the 1950s, noted advertising man David Ogilvy would stroll through Central Park.
One beautiful day, he witnessed a man begging beside a sign.
The sign read, “I am blind.”
By evidence of the man’s near empty cup, he wasn’t doing very well. 
So, Ogilvy removed a marker from his briefcase.
And he changed the sign to read, “It is spring and I am blind.”
After that small change, the money poured in.
Our simplistic way of viewing that story is that Ogilvy changed the message.
Thus making it more persuasive.
In fact, what Ogilvy did was much more subtle.
And much more powerful.
Ogilvy changed the prop.
Which transformed the scene.
By doing so, he enhanced the story creation of every passerby.
Those three simple words—”It is spring”—encouraged empathy in the actors.
And brought life to their stories.
That’s what strategically building a strong brand is all about.
Sure it’s about being unique, and creating value and preference.
But it’s also about evoking compassion, passion and self-worth in others.
The American author and critic Mary McCarthy wrote, “We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story.”
Are you trying to build a world-class brand?
Then ask yourself and your team, “Whose stories have we enhanced lately?
Because a brand isn’t a story told.
It’s someone else’s story brought to life.

Is perfection the enemy?

Many people argue that the pursuit of perfection is akin to paralysis by analysis.
Or increasing effort resulting in diminishing returns.
And what aphorism do they invariably cite to prop up their argument?
“Perfection is the enemy of the good.”
It certainly sounds valid.
Like some sort of universal truth.
But what is that truth?
What’s the real meaning behind those seven, oft-quoted words?
Ironically a Google search attributes the exact phrase to the 19th century French novelist Gustave Flaubert.
A perfectionist known for agonizing over the fine-grain of his writing (he took five years to write Madame Bovary).
The quote is more likely taken from the French “Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.”
Literally translated as “The best is the enemy of good.”
It was written almost a century earlier by Voltaire in his poem, La Bégueule (The Prudes).
Here’s the phrase in context:

In his writings, a wise Italian
Said that the best is the enemy of the good;
No one can grow in prudence,
In goodness of heart, talent, science;
Look for the best of these chapters there;
Elsewhere avoid the chimera.
As it stands, happy that can be pleasing,
Living in his place, and keep what he has!

It appears that all the talk about accepting “good enough” misses the author’s point.
In fact, it inverts it!
Voltaire’s “good” is prudence, the status quo.
His “best” is a pursuit of excellence that threatens that good.
They are enemies intent on snuffing the other out.
People, and by extension society, can not grow by being cautious and judicious.
By being overly concerned with preserving their standing.
Instead, they must remain hostile to the social order.
They must strive for greatness in their hearts and in their work.
Our world is advanced by those who dare to struggle for perfection.
The rebels and provocateurs who help change our lives from what it is to what they believe it should be.
Flaubert did write, “Be regular in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
So when it comes to “living in your place,” avoid the hollow belief that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.
But when it comes to your work and your community, ignore the merely good.
Instead, be an enemy of the ordinary.
And when times get tough, which they invariably will for passionate souls driven to change things, take a deep breathe.
Then close your eyes, smile and recite this childhood mantra:
“Good, better, best, never let it rest,
‘Till your good is better, and your better’s best.”

Be the best.

I’ve sat through countless meetings where business people rationalize with charts and graphs.
Data that “prove” their offerings are “better” than the competition.
And not simply objectively better, based on product and service performance.
Subjectively better according to consumer survey data and third party reviews.
The funny thing is, in most cases the data does not correlate with growth and profitability.
And that’s because the marketplace is flooded with better.
Better is something that can be rationally teased apart and quickly duplicated.
Which makes better a path to lower prices and shrinking margins.
“Best” is the only path to success today.
Best is about being the best for a particular audience.
Being the best for is the only marketplace today that’s not crowded. 
Because the best widen the gap by doing more and more of what their audience desires.
And less and less of everything else.
And that makes them stand out.
It makes them irreplaceable.
Consider visual-effects firm Rhythm & Hues.
They were better than others at landing the film Life of Pi.
And they were, arguably, better than others at the actual work.
The firm won the 2013 Academy Award for Best visual effects.
But they were not the best.
They were not irreplaceable.
And so, less than two weeks before receiving the Oscar, Rythm & Hues went bankrupt.
Because being better is simply not enough any longer.
Not when supply is out of control.
So you have a choice.
Hold on for dear life and wait for supply to get under control.
Or be the best.
The first choice takes nerves (and reserves).
The second takes belief. 

Time to turn a knob.

Years ago I was exposed to a simple idea.
It was referred to as “the three knobs.”
Every project is ultimately controlled by turning knobs.
Up or down.
There’s the time knob, or the duration of a project.
The money knob, otherwise known as the dollar investment.
And the people knob, or the human capital investment.
Once a project is launched, those three knobs are your only way to effect the outcome.
When the project runs into an unexpected challenge, you have a few choices.
You can turn the time knob, extending the duration of the project, while holding the money and people knobs steady.
You can hold the time knob where it is and turn up the money knob, people knob, or both.
Or, you can mix it up.
A little project drift, a little resource add.
Sounds ridiculously obvious, doesn’t it?
I can assure you that it is not.
Take today’s most critical project.
Growth.
No one is willing to adjust the time knob out.
Most organizations want more revenues, and faster.
But they’re also not turning the other two knobs.
They’re reluctant to even pause and think.
To consider new insights and reevaluate their value proposition.
Because that will take time and resources.
And everyone is afraid to turn a knob.
That’s why we’re seeing a surge in companies replacing people.
It’s easy. 
It doesn’t require the difficult decision to turn a knob. 
No one has to do any soul-searching.
Simply shift the pressure to someone else.
And then lull yourself into a false sense of hope.
Like what’s happening in Washington, D.C.
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, “Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the use of mediocre people.
To discourage them from ambitious attempts, and generally console them in their mediocrity.”
Please don’t acquiesce to mediocrity. 
Pause and take a clear-eyed view of the true value of what you offer. 
Bring in quality thinkers to work with you.
To challenge you to bring what you do to life for the benefit of your people and your customers.
Now is the time, while everyone else is numb, to turn up the money and people knobs.
To create something exceptional.
Today’s marketplace demands ambitious attempts.

Perspective is everything.

There’s an old story about two shoe salesmen.
They’re sent by their companies to Africa to scout the market.
One man calls his company and requests the first flight home.
“We can’t sell shoes here,” he explains, dejectedly. “No one wears them.”
The other salesman excitedly calls his home office.
“Awesome opportunity! No one here wears shoes!”
That little tale is typically told to make a motivational point.
That attitude is everything!
Unfortunately, it’s not.
Not in today’s supersaturated, modern marketplace.
Today, perspective is everything.
Here’s why.
100 years ago, awareness was enough to drive success.
People craved anything new.
Modern conveniences, like washing machines and air conditioners.
If you made people aware, they gobbled them up.
50 years later, understanding drove decision-making.
Let people know that your product never breaks down, and sales soared.
And now what, when price and quality are table stakes?
When a Google search for anything returns thousands of options?
Of course, we still need awareness, understanding and optimism.
But they follow perspective.
Insights are what drive success today.
Insights were the fuel that powered Google, Apple, Amazon and others.
And they’re the keys that will unlock your success as well.
The computer scientist Alan Kay said, “A change of perspective is worth 80 IQ points.”
Success doesn’t come to the smartest, nor to the most optimistic.
It comes to those with the right perspective for our times.

Heart first.

In the late 90s, I was introduced to the single most important aspect of successful influence.
The lesson was passionately expressed by an aging salesman in the film “Jerry MaGuire.”
“If this is empty, this doesn’t matter.”
He made his point while emphatically pointing first to his heart, and then to his head.
I was quite moved by that flashback scene.
And I was sure I knew exactly what he meant. 
But I didn’t. 
At the time, I was working at a company that developed and sold medical devices.
My job was to get busy healthcare providers to recommend our products to their suffering patients.
Since I was dealing with “caring” people, I naturally chose to appeal to their hearts.
I invested heavily in emotional communication that tapped into their innate desire to help others.
And it failed miserably.
But I learned something important about the heart-head equation.
An insight that helped inform my future success. 
Heart is not about emotional messaging. 
Heart is about empathy. 
It’s surprisingly easy to confuse the two.
It took me awhile, but I was eventually able to feel our audience’s deepest desires.
And visualize their motivating picture.
And once I did, the response was emotion.
But not joy or laughter.
Rather it was the feeling of being uniquely understood.
There’s nothing more difficult in business, or in life, than empathy. 
To look at our lives through other people’s lives. 
And nothing more important when creating belief.

A brand is not a separate thing.

A wise Rabbi once said, “If I am I because you are you. 
And you are you because I am I. 
Then I am not I and you are not you.”
We are not separate. 
We define each other.
We are fronts and backs of each other.
In order to describe a particular brand — what it is — you must describe its behavior — what it does. 
And to describe what it does, you must describe it in relationship to its audience and its audience’s behavior (customers, fans, members, et al). 
Which means that a brand is one, interdependent system of behavior, and not a separate thing.
What a brand is involves what the customer is. 
A brand doesn’t know what it is unless it knows what its customer is. 
In fact, we know what our organizations are (as brands) in terms of our customers. 
That’s why smart ones focus on strengthening relationships with actual customers, and not on the independent creation of content and attention.
Look, if you lean two sticks against each other, they stand up because they support each other.
Take one away and the other falls. 
So consider carefully whether your daily activities — your investment of scare resources — are propping up and supporting real and potential customers,
Or adding even more noise and confusion to their busy lives.

The answers are not here.

It’s official.
The answer to every possible question about the marketplace is a click away.
And free to one and all.
The internet is choked with information and advice.
Who is doing what and why.
What works and what doesn’t.
Trends and predictions.
10 steps to this, 6 keys to that, how to, how not to, when to, whether to, and on and on and on.
Unfortunately, no one knows anything. 
So unless your mind is “strong enough to bear the weight of its ignorance,” filling your head with all of this noise will only confuse you.
Or confuse you more.
You can’t learn to play baseball by reading books and blogs about baseball.
And you can’t succeed in a rapidly evolving marketplace by choking down information about the marketplace.
You learn by being with the people you’re hoping to attract and serve.
You get insights by finding their feelings deep inside of yourself.
You succeed by crusading and experimenting for them.
If and when you find yourself confused, get out of your office.
Leave your store.
Step away from the factory.
Turn off your computer.
Heaven forbid, power off your cell phone.
Then saturate yourself and your ideas into their daily grind.
The answers are not here.
They’re out there.

Shine a light.

One of my first jobs was at a Procter & Gamble plant.
I worked the graveyard shift, loading soap on tractor-trailers. 
I got paid by the pound. 
When the shift ended, a few of us would head to a pool hall. 
Whoever loaded the most poundage would pay. 
I never paid, not once. 
It wasn’t for lack of desire. 
The other guys had been working there longer and had developed a relationship with “management.”
Some guy at a desk who determined which loaders got which size loads. 
I never had a chance. 
So I created a game for myself. 
If I couldn’t load the most weight, maybe I could load faster than everyone else. 
I didn’t make a penny more, but I did get a reputation. 
The fastest loader on the dock. 
Strangely, it made me happy.
It motivated me.
I thought about that time as I sit here, working on my new book.
A few weeks ago, I gave a presentation about belief to leaders at Procter & Gamble (funny how life unfolds).
When it was over, someone paid me a compliment and said, “I can’t wait to read your new book.”
And just like my reputation as the “fastest loader,” that comment made me happy. 
Since my return home, I’ve been on fire with ideas and resolve. 
That one small sentiment, from someone I respect, lit up my belief in my work and myself. 
It was easy to motivate myself to load soap. 
It was a simple task. 
Me against the soap.
So I simply shined my own light.
Writing a book is much different.
It’s a solitary struggle.
It’s not me against a blank page.
It’s me against myself. 
My rambling thoughts, inadequacies, doubts. 
Over time, the vision gets murkier and murkier.
And so it gets harder and harder to visualize success and, therefore, to write.
The same thing happens to all of us.
We try to lose weight, but the scale doesn’t budge.
We look for work, but keep getting rejections.
We put in long hours at work, but problems continue to pile up.
So what keeps us going?
For some, it’s fear.
But for most of us, it’s belief in our actions.
And that belief is fueled by visceral signs of progress.
A small win, a kind word, an attaboy.
No one will continue to walk down a pitch dark path.
They’ll eventually sit down and wait for the first sign of light.
Those positive signals are the light.
And they make all the difference in the world.
So please, never stop shining them.

Embrace the fog of uncertainty.

The great Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle once wrote, “Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.”
This is especially true today, as we grapple with the problems posed by continual change.
Problems which make it difficult to foresee, let alone control, the near-term future.
In response, many leaders have taken an impulsive, fear-driven route.
They ignore their brand–their inspiring purpose and unique point of view.
And rely instead on fire-fighting and command and control.
And their people have naturally responded by going through the daily motions and camouflaging problems.
There are no fresh perspectives, since a culture of fear stifles creativity and candid discussions.
I heard someone once compare a lack of organizational focus to hitting a thick fog while driving.
We tense up and slow down. 
We become a two-fisted driver. 
We turn down the music and order people to be quiet.
We lean forward to get a few more inches “out there,” looking for little markers to get us through the present “situation.”
And what happens when the fog lifts?
We relax and speed up to make up for lost time. 
Well, here’s the problem: the fog is not going to lift this time. 
It’s now a permanent part of the business environment (kind of like South Scotland).
You can either be timid and anxious and hope you “get there.”
Or you can embrace the fog, get your people and customers on board, step on the gas, crank up the tunes, and enjoy the ride.
Which ride you choose is entirely up to you.
I know which ride I’d choose.