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March 15, 2008

hugh & the rabbi, episode 3

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[LISTEN TO PODCAST HERE.]
John­nie, Mark and Rabbi Pinny all gathe­red for our semi-regular pod­cast. It was so far my favo­rite show, by a long shot. I think we’re slowly get­ting the hang of it. Rock on.
The Show Notes:
The con­ver­sa­tion begins with a docu­ment from 2002 that Mark e-mailed us all, entit­led “Beyond Sel­fish­ness”. So why did he send it to us?
1.10 Mark: I was recom­men­ded this docu­ment a few years ago by a client, and I found it really expres­sed pas­sio­na­tely the ideas I was star­ting to have, about where we were going wrong with Capi­ta­lism.
1.45 Mark: The docu­ment con­tra­dic­ted cer­tain very com­mon ideas in busi­ness– “The Heroic Mana­ger”, or “Sha­rehol­ders are the only peo­ple who mat­ter in a busi­ness” etc.
2.18 Pinny: The docu­ment reflects something much lar­ger going on in our times: The ever-growing need and demand for peo­ple, espe­cially lea­ders, to be more “trans­pa­rent” and “acces­si­ble”.
3.15 Hugh asks the ques­tion: Do y’all see this hap­pe­ning all over in real life, or is this something most of us are just paying lip ser­vice to?
3.40 Pinny: It’s something that really star­ted with the inter­net com­pa­nies, but sprea­ding out­wards. Men­tions Mark Zuc­ker­berg: Some­body worth $15billion yet still shows up for work wea­ring no socks.” The big com­pa­nies will still stay the same, but the change will come from the newer, youn­ger com­pa­nies.
4.30 Hugh talks about a con­ver­sa­tion he had with a few peo­ple inside Mic­ro­soft– how there’s a gene­ra­tion gap gro­wing within the com­pany, bet­ween the Old Guard, and the new gene­ra­tion of Mic­ro­sof­ties, who see their com­pany in much more open, orga­nic terms.
5.45 John­nie talks about how all these “Web 2.0” tools [that simply were not avai­la­ble 10 years ago] allow peo­ple to con­duct busi­ness on a far more orga­nic, natu­ral and HUMAN man­ner, in a nim­ble and agile way that big com­pa­nies simply will not be able to com­pete with. “The Revo­lu­tion will not be tele­vi­sed, because it’s already hap­pe­ning around us.”
8.00 Pinny: The inter­net allows human beings to “Tap into the Infi­nite”.
9.15 Hugh: I’ll always go back to Euan Semple’s com­ment: “What makes the inter­net inte­res­ting is Love.”
9.30 Mark: The inter­net is about peo­ple, not tech­no­logy, not machi­nes. Howe­ver the “machine” is the abi­ding metaphor for busi­ness and govern­ment.
11.00 Hugh asks Pinny: Being a guy who has a large busi­ness, how do you balance the need to “Grasp The Infi­nite” with the more pro­saic rea­li­ties of run­ning a busi­ness– mee­ting pay­roll, paying sup­pliers etc etc.
11.30 Pinny: The way to make the balance to unders­tand what the “Pur­pose” of the busi­ness is, and then make sure the wheels under­neath are run­ning.
12.30 Pinny tells a great story about “The Fif­teen Hats”, when he, his brother and two others first star­ted the com­pany. They lite­rally put ele­ven hats on the table, each one labe­lled with one of the ele­ven exe­cu­tive job tit­les, and then they sha­red the hats out amongst them­sel­ves. Now Pinny’s com­pany has 100 emplo­yees, ergo “100 Hats”. In 8 years, their com­pany has never had one per­son quit. Which for an inter­net com­pany, is a “pretty big deal”.
13.50 Mark: Every man­ger would LOVE to have their emplo­yees loving their work, love coming into work, but simply won’t have this by trea­ting peo­ple like “num­bers” or a “piece of resource”.
14.20 John­nie: How we’re sadd­led with this idea of “Homo Eco­no­mi­cus”. If we’re not going to buy into the “Ratio­nal Man” model, then we have to get used to tal­king about con­cepts like “Love” and “The Infi­nite”.
15.45 Pinny: I believe the com­pa­nies that “get this mes­sage across” are going to be the ones that will suc­ceed.
16.25 Hugh asks John­nie: So when we’re tal­king about things like “Love” and what­not, how do you edu­cate your big cor­po­rate clients with all this stuff?
17.00 John­nie: I remain opti­mis­tic. Most peo­ple who work at a com­pany know the com­pany works not because of their rigid models, but people’s willing ness to work around those models. Most peo­ple are “just one inter­ven­tion away” from a more human rela­tionship with the com­pany.
18.30 Hugh talks about The Blue Mons­ter, and how it came about. “I didn’t invent something for them to believe, a-la mis­sion sta­te­ment, I just arti­cu­la­ted a belief that was already there.”
20.45 Mark talks about wor­king with a client of his, a large TV com­pany. How he got them to arti­cu­late a sha­red sense of pur­pose, rather than a “mis­sion sta­te­ment”.
22.00 Hugh: If you look at all the great brands that have emer­ged in the last 2 deca­des [Nike, Starbuck’s etc], one thing they have in com­mon: They’re all GREAT at “arti­cu­la­ting belief”.
22.30 Mark: A lot of the current mar­ke­ting sch­tick is about impo­sing something that isn’t there. Which what makes so much of it false, sha­llow and objec­tio­na­ble in the real world. Maybe the job of mar­ke­ters in the future will be to “arti­cu­late what’s already there”.
23.00 Hugh talks about wor­king on the McDonald’s adver­ti­sing account in 1997. “Stay Hungry”. Conc­lu­sion: The stuff that makes com­pa­nies inte­res­ting is the same stuff that makes the Bible, the Torah and the Iliad inte­res­ting.
27.00 Pinny: When a com­pany grows, the thing they must remem­ber is the beliefs they had that got them there in the first place. Not always an easy thing to do.
28.00 Mark talks about the disas­ter of Qua­ker Oats buying the Snap­ple brand. The got into serious trou­ble because “They didn’t know how to handle a com­pany built on belief”.
31.00 Mark: The mar­ke­ting myth of “Best Prac­ti­ces”.
31.45 Pinny tells a great story about one of his favo­rite mar­ke­ting cam­paigns. Adver­ti­sing for Zap­pos Shoes, inside the plas­tic buc­kets they use in Ame­ri­can air­port secu­rity, of all pla­ces.
33.00 Hugh talks about being a Jeff Buc­kley fan­boy re. Play­ful­ness and vir­tuo­sity– a power­ful combo– in mar­ke­ting, as much as in music etc.
35.30 Hugh talks about “Inno­cent Drinks”, a brand that comes up pretty much in 90% of all Bri­tish bran­ding con­ver­sa­tions. “Minor Inter­ven­tions of Hap­pi­ness”.
36.50 Pinny talks about “The A-Ha! Moment” in all very suc­cess­ful [and very unsuc­cess­ful] mar­ke­ting cam­paigns.
37.15 John­nie: “The Tyranny of Big Ideas”. Tal­king about Improv Thea­tre: “When you try to take too much con­trol, you take away the huma­nity from the pro­cess.”
38.50 Pinny: “There are no Big Ideas. There are only Little Ideas.”
40.43 [FINIS]
[LISTEN TO PODCAST HERE.]

One Response to “hugh & the rabbi, episode 3”

1. Valeria Maltoni says:

   March 16, 2008 at 7:22 PM

   @Pinny — Ita­lian air­ports do the coin for cha­rity thing. I’ve seen it done at Bologna Air­port. And you’re right, peo­ple res­pond to it.
   @Johnnie — small ideas mat­ter a great deal.
   Thank you all for the inspiration.