Hugh MacLeod
Cartoons drawn on the back of business cards
September 17, 2004
Just added the following blurb to The Hughtrain:
There
"Hugh's Daily Cartoon" Newsletter. A new cartoon sent out every weekday morning to your inbox [RSS version here.]. A wee chuckle to start your day off right etc.
4 Responses to “start-agains”
I'm a cartoonist.
I sell limited-edition prints.
I wrote a book.
I'm CEO of Stormhoek USA, which markets South African wine in the States.
I also draw private commissions.
Prints |
Opening | Current |
|---|---|---|
NY NY |
$275 |
Two points:
–I’m reminded of a critical point in my marriage. We agreed that:
(a) “Maybe we can start again with something new;” but
(b) “This relationship is over.“
We did start again, with the advantages of familiarity, history, affection etc. It worked. But we had to tolerate a period of uncertainty and a real burial of the old ways.
–Agencies might benefit from teaming with some of the defter life and personal coaches who understand business models. Our proficiency can elicit the embedded knowledge&creativity of the client to discover:
*the actual (not generally griped-about) causes of the problem(s);
*the scope and impact of the problem, i.e., what actually needs to be re-invented;
*the ideal outcome, and prioritized/triaged likely outcomes;
*how to get there, including size chunks of the process;
*plausible next steps;
*minimizing negative unintended consequences of change;
and, uniquely valuable
*working with the client’s values until buy-in is sincere, and the client willingly owns (and anticipates with some pleasure) his followthrough.
Along with knowledge&experience, it’s a personality type, maybe MBTI, more ploddingly logical&causal than ad folks tend to be, more creative&innovative than business folk.
Markets are now about conversations. A good coach is an expert in conversations that go somewhere, with respect to all interests involved.
Designers appear to think they already know how to do this. In my humble opinion, they don’t, entirely, yet.
I am glad you point this out. I am totally biased because I used to work there, but Microsoft does not get enough credit for doing the hard work. Not just for reinventing industries bu reinventing itself — Schumpeter’s creative destruction. It re-invented desktop productivity by making it GUI. It reinvented GUI operating systems by making them work not just on the BMW of PCs (Macs) but also on the Fords, GMs and Yugos of PCs (IBM clones). It re-invented itself when it finally faced the fact of the internet, totally throwing out old assumptions and organizations and shipping new releases every month. It has a lot of reinvention to do now. It will be interesting to see if it can still pull it off.
Similarly, I love what Lou Gerstner did with IBM. They were old, dead, huge, slow. And somehow by embracing a vision of the inverse of this, taking ownership of it and driving it into the org IBM became cooler than sh_it and the envy of Microsoft.
VW is another. They reinvented themselves and a category. After years of doing nothing cool since the original bug and getting passed over by the Japanese on the one hand and BMW on the other, they did something bold. They went back to thier roots of “People’s Car” and updated who the people were. “Driver’s Wanted” became an invitation to a best of both worlds for everyone. Everyone could have fun driving a German engineered car for the price of a Japanese economy one. And they backed it up with great, fun cars that worked.
One last one is Jack in the Box. They have done this over and over. The brand was totally DOA. No one thought of them anymore and then they embraced their wierdness with the goofy head and all of a sudden they got cool again.
Sorry for going on and on about this but it struck a nerve. It takes a lot to admit errors, see others eating your lunch and then to actually do something bold about it.
No worries, Johnza, I agree with you. Turning a tired ol’ company around is worth doing. And it’s fascinating stuff, methinks.
Just read an amazing obit in the economist http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3195773 about Beyers Naude. Talk about reinvention. He was a hard core aparteid Afrikaner, leader of the church and preacher in favor — some thought he would run the country. But after the Sharpville massacre he turned completely. He became a relentless but never grandstanding protestor against aparteid, alienating all his friends and family, courting assasination and arrest and worse, denounced as a traitor, kicked out of his church etc. Now they have streets named after him. Nice in these times to hear about people like him.