I've been mulling over this thought for a few days since an earlier post on the subject, and remembered some work I did for the interesting website Management Issues on The Age of Meaning.
To move this "what comes next" discussion forward, I'm going to produce here a abbreviated version - across a few chapters, of that rather long essay. (This seems - to my relief, as it originated several years ago now - to be an argument that is only turbo-charged by the more-than-sobering lessons of our current recession)
The core argument is that The Information Age is over: information in and of itself no longer provides value.
Those of us - and I feel a little exposed saying this - who find Twitter nothing more than the most recent and shrill manifestation of Rushdie's "blurt culture", feel increasingly that a little access to the means of (information) production and distribution is a very dangerous - indeed tiresome - thing.
And on the corporate/government side, as per my recent post on the dodgy data goings on, as well as David's post expressing concerns on privacy, and finally my earlier piece which precedes this one, on the collapse of the dream of digital revenues, digital, or more specifically, easy-access information, does seem to creating as many problems as it solves.
The Age of Meaning work argued essentially that information lays matters bare, to the degree that, at least from a corporate and commercial point of view, the two things that matter above all are Leadership and Branding.
Here's the opening salvo.
To answer thy best pleasure, be’t to fly,
To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride
On the curled clouds; To thy strong bidding task
Ariel and all his quality.’
Ariel to Prospero, The Tempest, 1.2
The problem of direction
This is the end, not the beginning or middle, of the Information Age.
What comes next? It’s The Age of Meaning.
Information (as networks of data and connected people) has done its work. We need to move on, to build rapidly on what has been achieved, and to acknowledge where we have failed.
There is a new vagueness and uncertainty in the behaviour of the global corporations. A more frequent looking-over-of-shoulder. A loss of the common bravado. That’s because they’re no longer sure where they’re going. “Why do we matter?” is suddenly an important and far tougher question.
Everything that’s worked before, now seems not to. The focus by operational management on different strategies, different models of value, different information, and different approaches to marketing, are all red herrings.
What’s missing here is a simple thing, yet one that we rarely hear discussed. It’s direction. “Where to next. And why?”
The new leadership challenge
Direction is a problem of leadership – THE problem, in fact. And corporate leadership has been, overall, inconsistent of late. What has been lacking? If you think about it, you’ll see that the shared sense of meaning (and under that, the consequent shared sense of purpose, value and values) upon which confident and successful trade depends, has been diluted.
In the most useful, simplest, yet surprisingly often overlooked explanation, leaders lead by creating and managing meaning. They lead, in fact, by enacting the human values and standards that they, as individuals, stand for. They lead by standing up for, not just standing for, their values. This, fundamentally, is the core of the new corporate brand.
The gap between what’s promised in communications (and many leaders have been wrongly taught to see their jobs as being primarily about communication) and what’s tangibly experienced as leadership behaviour by the organisation’s internal and external global stakeholders, is what marks the success or failure of the leader.
Corporate strategy without cogent corporate direction is, to pirate a familiar phrase, simply “works without faith”.
The problem is that leaders have no clear platform of meaning in which to address this issue. “If we don’t know why WE matter, how can we establish whether - and if so in what way – issue x or y matters?”
This is not a customer value problem
When have you ever heard customers talk about value? There’s value for money, but that commonly means simply the best available price, cheaper than anywhere else. Is that what business means by value? I prefer to assume not!
The value problem typically referred to by management, on the other hand, is the challenge of perceived customer value. “How do we convey the value of this new feature on our handset? Why is this drug better than the competitor? Is the new value of this or that service equal to the extra we need to charge in order to deliver it?”
Are these questions about customer value? I’d say no, they’re first about meaning. These problems rephrased are all essentially: “How do we establish sufficient customer meaning around this product, feature or service to enable an acceptable return for the business?”
How we experience leadership
How does leadership feel to a stakeholder? The employee, the customer, the investor, the watchdog, the excluded? Remember that these people are no longer remote from leadership – the network delivers a new kind of “blind intimacy”, wherein successes, failures, promises and betrayals are – now within minutes or hours rather than weeks or months – uncovered, shared and discussed. And acted upon, most importantly.
A failure of leadership is not experienced simply as a headline, a scandal. It’s experienced by the stakeholder emotionally and physically. We feel a sinking of the heart, a hollowness. I call this entropy. We’ve been feeling entropy with increasing frequency. Just watch the news. Walk round and look at people. See the world as it is.
Great leadership, in contrast – with the surges in shared meaning it creates among stakeholders – actually builds not just purpose, but energy. It fuels the organisation, all those who cluster around it and those who come into contact.
Today’s leadership challenge, before anything else, is to re-establish for commerce the shared platforms of meaning – among all stakeholder groups, not just customers – that will tell us where we’re now heading. And why. And that will provide the fresh energy that fuels the confident, credible forward movement we long for.
Why is branding important here?
Branding, by which I will, from here, mean no less than responsibility for how organisations are seen to behave, has, like marketing communications overall, recently contributed little of note in terms of useful insight to commerce. Commerce and its brands, in turn, have contributed almost nothing of note to the world.
The world, in the meantime, is now so networked, so data-savvy, and increasingly cynical, that the failings of corporations and brands are a daily feature of the news.
We can change that. This work is a manifesto, a form of compass, for a new way of thinking for business, a new way of leading for leaders, and a new, critical, role in the unfolding drama, for the discipline of branding.
We need – a crucial example of the new thinking – to accommodate a new and powerful challenge to leaders and the brands they represent – the global networked tribe.
As presented here, branding in The Age of Meaning is the mindset, the processes, the organisational commitment that drive this new shared energy and meaning, that authentic leaders must now create, through every touchpoint, to deliver and optimise a virtuous cycle of positive stakeholder experience and expectation.
My challenge to you
This is like nothing that’s ever been seen before.
Or is it? Think about Carphone Warehouse (note this was before Talk Talk and the David Ross scandal), John Lewis, Harley Davidson, Apple. These are not simply great brands. They are great organisations whose sense of shared meaning extends far out from their corporate headquarters. For them, brand is not mere messaging and imaging. It’s doing. Their branding is woven into their beliefs, the way they behave. And the way they are led.
You’ll find few statistics in this work. You’ll either intuitively get it, and then see the numbers that support the case. Or you won’t. And no amount of research will change your position.
But before we move on, ask yourself this: “What’s it going to be? Energy? Or Entropy?”
Mike, I'm glad you've resurrected such an important discussion. I look forward to its unfolding as this progresses.
Already I would like to take up the issue of the relationship between meaning, "values" and customer value that you raise here. The subject though is complex and easily strays into areas like assumptions and beliefs. So I want to approach it in a measured way and not as a knee jerk reaction to your statements about customer value.
Posted by: David Stoughton | April 18, 2009 at 03:17 PM