What does the company of the future look like?

I have been thinking about this topic for some time and it really bothers me.

Because of my particular experiences as CEO at SMLXL, one can see that the greatest challenges is how organisations structure themselves to embrace and take advantage of the future today.

Different skill sets, combining and blending with eachother, and also a completely different set of motivations.

I was in discussion with a think tank recently, where I stated that I fervently beliive successful copmpanies of the future will be built around a very distinct set of values and passions. It was an interesting exchnage of views.

To give you an example of this is a company called Howies that Tomi and I write about in our book.

Recently I bought some more clothes from Howies.

Why do I buy Howies clothes because all their cotton is organic, they pay an earth tax and plant trees to balance out their carbon emissions for a start. They a clear point of view about the world, which becomes a key part of their philosophy.

I also like the way they think about the world. IN fact Howies is more about the philosophy that it is about the clothes.

This is what they say. OUR WAY.
Back in July 1995, we started making clothing for the sports we loved doing. We also wanted to find another way to do our business so we could ride home at night happy with what we do.

We wanted Howies to say something, to stand for something, to try to change the things we cared about. Was it so bad to make people think a little? We didn't think so.

From a remote part of West Wales, where the air is pure and the rivers run clean, a bunch of us come in each day and try to do just that

It is a powerful message, and I believe that in a world where trust and transparency are becoming increasingly central for businesses and organisations - Howies belief system is a lighthouse in a foggy world.

When I received my package from Howies, there was a message on the packaging.

GREED IS NOT ONE OF OUR VALUES

John Seely Brown said

The job of leadership today is not just to make money. Its to make meaning

Let me give you an example. This is what Howies say on their clothes about cotton

The average 100% cotton T-shirt contains only 73% cotton. The rest is made up of chemicals and resins that were used to grow and make it. The same goes pretty much for jeans too.

A whole bunch of cotton goes into making a pair of jeans. And a whole bunch of chemicals too.

In America last year farmers applied 53 million pounds of toxic pesticides to cotton fields. Out of the World's total insecticide useage, 25% is used to farm cotton.

Kind a scary, huh.

Yet, we all think cotton is one of the most natural things around.

The truth is its not as nice as we'd all like to think.

Indeed, cotton is the world's most sprayed crop. It uses over a quarter of all insecticides used today.

The way they grow it isn't good for the farmers health, the water tables health, the factory workers health, the rivers health and eventually the seas health.

Thats why we use organic cotton. Its costs us 30% more than normal cotton. It means our stuff costs a little more, but we think its worth it.

After all you wear your jeans next to your skin for 10 hours a day.

Common sense would say that can't be too good for you. We all know how nicorettes work.

So going organic makes sense.

It might just be a small thing but lots of small things add up.

You can't always hit a home run. My mate told me that.

In many ways, when we set up SMLXL what we believed was that marketing communications could not start from formats.

SO for example - "advertising the answer whats your problem?" It was not easy in the early days, too many issues around which budgetry siloes our solutions were going to come from. But we believe a format approach to marketing communications was no longer the way forward.

SMLXL knew that we were going to create something, an initiative, a thing, a product or service but, not what that something was until we had asked the question, what is your problem? And, what exactly are your trying to achieve?

We wanted to give our clients best advice to best enable them to be the most successful they could be, not try to sell them one we had made earlier.

Howies talk a great deal about HOPE

Hope is the place somewhere bewteen take off and landing

We say

The other side of fear is freedom

Today, in 2006 we have more people/companies than ever talking to us about different ways of communicating. Of how their organisations are structured to deliver on this new approach. Tomi and I have been invited to give keynotes at a variety of CMO summits around the globe. Which has been a lot of fun. And for me, not that I ride home from work, but, at the end of the day, I have a very real sense that we are contributing to how companies of the future should successfully organise themselves and better communicate with their customers, audiences, stakeholders.

So what do we say....

SMLXL is a creative company.

We create new products and services, new ways to communicate, new ways to create consumer
communities and new ways to win their advocacy.

Our business does not depend on selling space. We find ways to to fill space creatively and if the right space does not exist, then we’ll invent it.

SMLXL operates at the intersection between business strategy, interactive technology, media and
marketing communications.

We are passionate, we are not cynical, we are driven by something other than greed, and ultimately we belive that is a powerful communicator of who we are and what we do. Being on a mission makes a difference. Companies of the 21st Century have to be driven by a passionate need and desire, which be translated into a core brand truth and promise.

We believe that Brands today, need advocates, not consumers

Comments

[Harsh Dhundia]

Alan

Well said! Reading into your post it seems like we're going to see a new challenge for the marketeers - how best to communicate a company's mission. In fact mission-drive marketing can be seen in a number of firms (whether that is really their mission or not is questionable, but the advertising campaigns have definitely worked for them). Take Microsoft's "Your potential, our passion" campaign for example.

Companies of the future, I believe, will be much like communities of practice where we will see some movers and shakers (influential people) who won't necessarily be influential because of hierarchy, but how well they work in the community. What are the rules of the communities...what works, what doesn't? Who can influence and why? And who sustains that influence? These will be the questions to answer in management science in the next decade and the future companies.

Harsh

[alan moore]

Dear Harsh, I think you are right.

If you take the principle that the 20th C was about efficiency and the 21st is about experience than that must exist, inside and outside the organisation.

I agree that an organising principle, belief, flat organisation is key.

Rightly put if you build your business as a community vs. as a siloed organisation. How do you do that?

Who drives it. would be interesting to find out if there are any stanford/Harvard management gurus thinking about these things

I think we had a post about leadership entitled Organisations and innovation http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2006/05/organisations_a.html

I am sure there are some more

[Tom Chandler]

Passion! That's a word so rarely applied to corporate marketing that I'd hesitate to use it in conversations with my clients. The reason? They react badly. They stare. They wonder what you've been drinking.

Passion unites people. It creates communities. It is perhaps the single most powerful differentiator in existence (I'll take it against features, price, benefits any time).

Shared passio? I can't think of a better community builder.

Naturally, it's the first thing excised from the marketing plan, messaging platform or copy. Maybe it's because the management gurus you mentioned are so often trained to reduce the organization to widgets, margins, QA stats and costs.

Passion-based marketing. I'm copyrighting it right now... 8-)

[Harsh Dhundia]

There is an interesting term for marketeers - "The dream merchants". How could one be a "dream merchant" unless there's some passion in that campaign? For me word of mouth marketing is indeed passion-based. If we can't get our users to be passionate about our product or service we can't get them to advocate our product/service. So, I think the notion of passion-based marketing is emerging but with different names under different umbrellas. We just have to figure out what it takes in terms of marketing to create passionate users - what it takes to be "The dream merchants".

[Tom Chandler]

So few companies support the passsionate users that already exist, much less do what it takes to create new fanatics.

Most organizations seem reluctant to make their passion a centerpiece of their marketing. (the result of outsourcing to disconnected agencies perhaps?) But isn't that really what we're talking about with engagement marketing? Aren't we really telling an organization to share (via blog perhaps) their passions and values with their community?

So much of what I've read here, in the book and elsewhere deals with large organizations, yet I see an enormous opportunity for small and medium-sized businesses to "out-engage" their larger, less "passionate" competitors.

The technology is cheap, the users are on the Internet, and the only real roadblock seems to be content.

It's an exciting time to be in marketing... 8-)