I’ve done the usual helicopter view of Adam Werbach’s book: Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto but now’s the time to dig deeper. Right at the front of Adam’s book is a list of Nature’s 10 Simple Rules for Business Survival.
In this list Adam draws from nature a tough bottom line for sustainable business. “Nature is far harsher than the market: If you are not sustainable, you die. No second chances and no bailouts.”
I’m not usually a fan of rules but these ten make sense to me. They are big-scale – forest-scale. Ocean-scale. Planet-scale. I’ve jotted down my own thoughts on each one…
Nature’s # 1. Diversify across generations. 
How few companies have that aspiration! In principle we all want our businesses to thrive across generations, but how few succeed. Adam tells me that fully one-third of the companies profiled in Jim Collins’ Built to Last as out-performers, are now under-performers. Think Ford and Citibank. They lost the juice of excitement, wonder and delight and got lost in expectations and self-obsession.
Nature’s # 2. Adapt to the changing environment – and specialize.
To get to the future first you have to take on what I call the three ‘A’s – Adapt, Adopt and Act. It’s worked for children, for animals – for all living things and never forget that businesses are living things too. People are often held back by the feeling that the challenges we face are so great that they can’t effect any meaningful change. My response? If you can’t change the situation, change yourself.  In other words, don’t take on the world; specialize. Sure, some of the things people chose to change are small, but put them together and we’re talking serious action. Action that can build as we get more confident about Adapting, Adopting and Acting.
Nature’s # 3. Celebrate transparency. 
Every species knows which species will eat it and which will not. I like to see transparency as opportunity rather than threat.
Nature’s # 4. Plan and execute systematically, not compartmentally. 
Every part of a plant contributes to its growth. Anyone who has been in business understands the damage caused by silo thinking. Community and teams are key. All of us are better than some of us. In Peak Performance we demonstrated the power of inspirational leadership and teams. Groups of like-minded people working together to overcome all odds and achieve impossible goals.
Nature’s # 5. Form groups and protect the young. 
Most animals travel in flocks, gaggles, and prides. Packs offer strength and efficacy. This is a fantastic rule and the best argument ever for playing in teams. It also, by definition, generates that magic thing called duplication–the young just automatically mirror the actions of their “elders.”  Most young people aren’t educated into creativity; they are educated out of it.   Let’s get good at giving people an elastic-sided sand box:  a problem, a deadline, and then get out of their way. To make sure they reach their full potential  have some “older folk” around to guide, mentor and run protection when it’s needed. Usually it’s not needed because what they want is responsibility, learning, recognition and joy. All that they get.
Nature’s # 6. Integrate metrics. 
Measure! Nature brings the right information to the right place at the right time. When a tree needs water, the leaves curl; when there is rain, the curled leaves move more water to the root system. OK, I’m not a big metrics guy. Experience has shown me that a quick decision grounded in intuition often beats the 100 page report and a “meeting from hell”. But I also find inspiration in understanding how the world works, and for that big picture we need numbers – just numbers from a lot of different sources. Smart, revealing, insightful numbers. For example, James Dyson worked through around 5,000 prototypes before coming up with the wildly successful Dyson vacuum cleaner. Let the truth of that number hit you around the head. When did any of us make 5,000 attempts at anything? If all you read are balance sheets, that’s how you’ll see the world and you will fail. Too many factors impact on us for any one perspective to show the way forward. If you think otherwise, ask a banker about subprime.
Nature’s # 7. Improve with each cycle. 
Evolution is a strategy for long-term survival. The long-term is the only term if you want to survive. Short-term thinking – like the ridiculous obsession with quarterly earnings – has taken more eyes off the ball than a couple of streakers at a sports match. The magic mix? Big, long-term ideas combined with the spirit of “Fail fast, learn fast, fix fast”.
Nature’s # 8. Right size regularly, rather than downsize occasionally. 
If an organism grows too big to support itself, it collapses. If it withers, it is eaten. When businesses start there are usually just a few people doing everything. Then there comes a time when more people are on the job than can comfortably fit around the lunch table. Thus middle management kicks in and, as Kurt Vonnegut put it in Slaughterhouse-Five, “So it goes”. Right size is such a great term. The right size of a business depends on the business. This is where business gets specific and where clarity counts. If you want to manufacture cars for the world to drive, your right size is nothing like that of a boutique fragrance. The key though is to know what’s right – right size, right people, right choices – and to take action.
Nature’s # 9. Foster longevity, not immediate gratification. 
Nature does not buy on credit and uses resources only to the level that they can be renewed.  Longevity is about making a worthwhile contribution. Gratification is about an immediate sensation.
Nature’s # 10. Waste nothing, recycle everything. 
Some of the greatest opportunities in the 21st century will be turning waste – including inefficiency and under-utilization – into profit. This rule can transform businesses, regions, nations, and people. One area of waste that I take very personally is the waste of human potential.  In today’s tough climate, we want every hand to the pump. Waste not, want not.

Nature’s been around for “yonks”–we can learn much from it.  These 10 are just the start.  Follow a great teacher!

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I was reading recently of a public art project that links New York’s subway system with the idea of “optimism” and smiled to myself, figuring it is bound to attract some cynicism, if not outright ridicule.

That’s because public transit everywhere in the world is one of the more popular targets for complaint, vitriol and even fist-shaking rage.

However, radical optimists (as I freely admit I am) seek out optimism in the hardest places – and where better than the subways of New York?

A campaign instigated by Manhattan designer Reed Seifer to distribute 14 million Metrocards emblazoned with the word “Optimism” to New York commuters kicked off in November last year under the MTA’s Arts in Transit program.

He’s been an optimism promoter since the early 80s after an experience as a young boy with his father and a homeless man. He wrote a thesis on optimism and then started selling buttons. Now he’s reached exponential scale. A cool side-story by the way–look it up.

The naysayers were quickly vocal – “I am optimistic that the MTA is mismanaged and the fares will continue to go up while service goes down”, and the sarcastic sucker-punch: “I feel better already.”

It’ll be interesting to see what effect the campaign has. Is simply putting a positive word out there into the atmosphere enough to cause social change?

I’m a great believer in the power of (correct and appropriate) language to change the entire conversation. I believe it will and does–if only for one!

I’ve called myself a “Radical Optimist” – not an everyday garden variety, but a committed evangelist. Reed Seifer is therefore a Radical Optimist, taking the notion beyond the “glass is half full” cliché. As I firmly believe that, by definition, a glass cannot be “half-empty”–that’s like being “half honest” or “half pregnant”–you either are or your are not–one of these more easily defined, black & white issues for me. Everything is at some progression of “fullness”–you’re either “full” or some portion there-of. The same DOES NOT apply for empty (ness).

Radical Optimism is not about seeing the world through rose-tinted glasses; it’s about taking notice of the roses that are out there – and getting out there to plant some more.

Negativity and pessimism are easy—that’s why everyone goes there so readily. As the MTA campaign reminds us, traveling through life with some optimism in our back pocket is a great idea for us and for those around us.

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Well, we’ll see how I go with being more diligent his year! Three posts over last year don’t quite cut it as “diligent.”

My flavor of the month is Inspiration–how to get it, how to maintain and augment it and its great value.

We have all had occasion to be “in the groove” or in our “flow” or just “on”–we know how good that feels, we achieve great things, we feel almost super-human. But yet all too often it doesn’t happen often enough. So how do we get that more?

I believe it’s more than goal setting (and all that that entails), or having a vision–those are good, but they are really just a means to an end. They help us “get inspired.” That’s the outcome we’re looking for. A purposeful emotion-laden, sensory rich Statement of Purpose Or Inspiration Statement that is USED on a daily basis–that is meaningful to us. A Preview of (your) Life’s Coming Attractions if you will, I believe is front and center to this obtaining and retaining an intrinsic source of Inspiration.

As Dr Norman Vincent Peale would state in his book The Power of Positive Thinking. Take the time to ponder, to empty your mind once a day on a daily basis, then fill it with this statement and all the emotion it invokes in you. The the power of creation takes over, your mind will drive the actions in and for you that will, quite literally, bring that to pass. No question in my mind.

So write one, use it, DO IT

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It used to be amusing to me, but now I am boarder-line frantic. Watching good (sometimes VERY good) people go past the point of amazing and into the realm of destructive–to themselves.

In my humble opinion, the recent market melt-down was entirely a function, and classic example, of this.

Be confident Yes, have a self-assured posture, Yes. But don’t cross over into “I can do no wrong,” or “I know better than everyone” That is a slippery slope to both yourself and those who would follow you,.

Recently, I had occasion witness just this. This person and his team were good, perhaps even VERY good, they had even established and published “rules” for how they operate. They had build an expectation and created much confidence and progress as a function of such. People knew what they could count on. The “rule of law” lead to great productivity.

But then… along came a circumstance that would under normal circumstances easily fit into the rule-set, but they chose to ignore that and go a separate way. Loss ensued. Maybe not economic loss at first, but loss of respect (even self respect), loss of confidence in them and loss of ability to “posture up.” I am certain economic loss will follow. Such a shame, such a loss, such a waste.

Anyway, life is good, we should be good and do good–even when it is hard or unpopular (and this one wasn’t even that)–that is the mark of a fine individual and certain leader. That is who I would choose to be and follow.

So, yes, do your press releases, do them as you normally would. But please, please, please don’t believe them–no-one else does!

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Welcome to 2009! It’s GOT TO BE better than 2008 right? How…?

This may come as a shock to some, but contrary to popular belief these days, there is no “secret” to success. 

The answer has been widely available and evident on book shelves in autobiographies, biographies, audio and self help titles and documentaries for generations. There is more information available today than there ever was and yet just as many people as before struggle through life suffering from “the eternal discontent.” 

Of course we know why that is don’t we – because the formulae require effort, focus, application and follow through- something that probably more than fifty per cent of people struggle with. 

Why? This is the question I have asked myself on a number of occasions. 

The cynical part of me looks at all this “law of attraction stuff” and says, yeah right! The generic “search for success blueprint” is especially unhelpful when people define success differently, and define success differently at different stages in their lives. Don’t we? 

If there is a grand spectrum where at the one end we attract success in life through ‘new-age magic’ and at the other end we attract things because we “focus” on them, then I sit firmly at the “focus” end.

I have been so burdened by this question of how success really happens that one day in 2006, I got out every relevant book I owned, all the biographies and self-development titles, laid them on the floor and analysed all the contents pages to see what they had in common. 

From one hundred and twenty books I clustered down what these writers, many of them famous achievers, suggested were crucial to becoming successful. The biggest surprise to me was that they were all saying the same thing, in different ways!

Then I got on with trying to understand this phenomenon in more detail. 

Here are what I call the “Nine Powers for Success”, neatly distilled for your purposes. I’ll still interview goalgetters along the way because everyone is different and it’s good to learn from different perspectives. 

I challenge you to pick up any self-development book, audio tape, biography or autobiography of a leader in their field – you’ll find most of their strategies are related to these nine factors: 

The Nine Powers are the following:

1. Taking charge and being conscious of your thoughts and how they impact your life.
2. Acquiring specific self-knowledge, resulting in understanding your BIG purpose in life.
3. Using creativity and imagination to simulate success until it really happens (visualisation and affirmation).
4. Creating actionable steps towards your big purpose every single day. Linking what you are doing now to your big purpose.
5. Using past achievements to help you now, and displaying gratitude for the good things you already have in your life.
6. Being in tune with and understanding what drives other people who help you achieve your goals.
7. Giving value to and getting it from others, and improving things around you, unconditionally.
8. Creating positive habits and eliminating bad ones, making the best of 24 hours.
9. Overcoming the inevitable obstacles – bouncebackability.

How many of these do you aim for regularly? Do you have a few that might be unique- that don’t fit into this summary? 

What I have found interesting is that almost all of the “Inspired People” I have met have an intuitive understanding of all of these powers. While they don’t succeed each and every day on all of them, most are constantly striving to utilize these powers to achieve what they want out of life and in business. 

What is your secret to getting things done in your life and in your career? It is often good to take a second look at your current strategies and assess what is working and what is not. 

The answers are out there and within your grasp I suspect.

Let’s have a fine 2009! It’s all up to YOU!

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I’ve been railing against idiot bankers for a while now. Wall Street was driven by greed, dishonesty, and dishonor. The salaries paid were obscene and their arrogance amazing. I don’t really care what happens to the bankers. In fact, I’m more than a little ticked-off that so many of them have walked away with fat bonuses over the last three years and we found no way to get that money back.

What depresses me is what happens to the average person. Many employees have seen their 401K retirement funds decimated by the greed, stupidity, and arrogance of these so-called “Masters of the Universe”. Now don’t get me wrong, I LOVE capitalism and the free-market, but this 3rd standard deviation of it was nothing but an obscene aberration.

And the worst is yet to come. Management around the world are having to take radical cost actions to survive. If you talk or listen to CEOs all over the world and no matter what business they are in or in what geography, when you ask them this question, “What’s your most important resource?”, they always have one answer – their people. But, at the first hint of trouble, the first thing that many of them do is get rid of them, indiscriminately and usually starting with the innocent in the middle and at the bottom, rather than at the top where in most instances the blame lies.

Last week in the U.S., mass layoffs reached their highest level since the recession month following the September 11 attack. Unemployment hit 6.5 per cent in October, the highest rate since 1994. No industry is immune. Chrysler laid off 6,825 people last month, 25 per cent of their workforce. The once mighty Goldman Sachs laid off 3,250 people, 10 per cent of their workforce. Poster child Yahoo laid off 1,500 people, 10 per cent of their workforce. And Merck, once all-powerful in the pharma world, laid off 7,200 people, or 12 per cent of their workforce.

My view is that one of the roles of business is to make the world a better place for everyone. The way it does this is through innovation and ideas that create jobs, not by high-falutin’, fancy-named pseudo technological financial instruments which destroy wealth, hope, and dreams.

That is why our business is GREAT. It’s yours. You’re in control. Its destiny is entirely in your hands—and that’s great. Do it!

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I LOVE Sport. The compeition, the effort, the agony, the winners and losers. The collective focus. The TEAM.

Sport touches everyone.

A recent study I read about on sports and happiness says that having a winning NFL football team boosts the wallets of a city’s inhabitants by a full $120, making harder workers and bigger spenders, while increasing happiness and self confidence.

Even if your team is not winning, sports fans remain dedicated, sometimes even obsessed. This is because following a team is a pure example of an emotional connection; an experience that is part frustrating and part exquisite pride and happiness.

We all love the feeling of community, the emotional tug on the heart-strings, the hope that maybe, just maybe, this will be the year.

It’s a dream of hope that springs eternal! As a fan, what you experience is Loyalty Beyond Reason, and as a sports fan I know exactly what this means! What truly matters in the end is performing, not simply winning.

There is a connection that irrevocably binds fan, team and sponsor, look at how we, as Kevin Roberts would say, inpires Loyalty Beyond Reason around a sports team. These are ideas that can grow value for one and all: fans, brand marketers, sponsors, managers and boards.

1. Share a dream. One Team, One Dream. Sponsor, owner, player and fan. A mission isn’t going to light up the ball park. Feel like a family, play like a team.

2. Connect with emotion. Ditch rational-based marketing and move people to your cause.

3. Move from Irreplaceable brands to Irresistible. Lovemarks.

4. Check in with reality. Do you just want to be respected, or loved and respected?

5. Use Mystery, Sensuality and Intimacy–the three secrets.

6. Seal it with Sisomo. Hand your brand over to fans and connect with the family of screens. They’ll take good care of it!

7. Perform at Peak. Create the conditions for Flow. Just like the best sports people, find the zone where passion and harmony put you at your best.

Once you’ve got Loyalty Beyond Reason, you’re all fans. The great thing about fans is that they all face the same way and dream the same dream.

Turn that group into a winning team and scientists and economists say it’s worth $120 each and bundles of happiness, which is priceless.

Which all confirms what husbands have always known and wives have feared for years.

Watching sport is good for you.

This can apply to any company….or cause.

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Let me introduce you to FREDA. She’s smart and knows exactly how to get what she wants. You ask FREDA how to accelerate your business to full throttle and she’s right there with the answers. I refer to FREDA every day. Whenever you face a challenge, friends like FREDA are money in the bank.

FREDA, for those of you who haven’t met her already, is an acronym. Focus, Re-invention, Execution, Distribution and Accountability. These five inspire a perfect storm of the perfect attitudes and habits. They’re exactly what we’ll need to make the best of the changes that are heading our way. Complacency and “it’ll be OK” are history.

FREDA is the future. Give serious thought to how FREDA works in your Business.

Focus.

It’s important for everyone to focus on the special contribution they can make. All of us are better than some of us. Musician, teacher, secretary, nurse, bricklayer, all we need is anyone with a better idea – a world-changing idea – about how to make a difference.

Re-invention.

The twenty-first century truth? To be world-class is no longer enough. To secure our future we have to change from world-class to world-changing. There are more than 190 countries (let alone companies) on our planet and several have recently made the leap to become world-changers. Think of the Dubai/Mumbai/Shanghai nexus.

Execution.

Lovemarks is a big idea that works across all levels. I have seen small businesses and global companies executing Lovemark programs to achieve super-premiums. A great example is Yemen where the leading mobile network MTN has implemented a Lovemarks program. The result? Preference for MTN has grown to 42 per cent of all mobile users, and this despite the fact that its nearest competitor is 40 per cent cheaper! We all need a Lovemarks strategy, and fast.

Distribution.

Steve Jobs of Apple got it right when he said, “Great artists ship”. We’re in the distribution business, but we have to do it and the rest also–and very well.

Accountability.

The role of business is to make the world a better place for everyone. This means being accountable for the environment, the economy, our social structures and our culture. It’s time to shift the focus of accountability from setting limits to embracing possibilities. The conviction that companies can help change the world has to be driven by individuals, not by government or souless big companies.

So Howdy FREDA–get to know and “use” her well.

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Never underestimate an intimate gesture.

How often in your life has it been something seemingly small that has had the most powerful emotional impact?

We all have our own stories. The hand on your shoulder when you needed a human touch; the letter that expressed what matters most at just the right moment; the invitation to a family gathering when you were feeling despondent and alone.

And I’d add the postcard that turns up in the mail and simply says “I was thinking of you” (I got one recently). In today’s digital world of email and texting there are a lot of ways we can connect with friends and family, but the traditional postcard (or handwritten note) seems to be holding its own and indeed experiencing something of a revival.

The Guardian notes that in the UK, 135 million postcards were delivered in 2006, 30 million more than in 2003.

Why is a nineteenth century idea like the postcard thriving in the twenty-first century? Yes, it’s certainly Intimacy, plus I think a brilliant helping of Mystery and Sensuality.

Specifics? The Mystery of trying to work out who the postcard is from. A signature scrawled across the printed caption is often impossible to decipher. The Sensuality of a stunning image selected with you and your taste in mind, and the Intimacy of a handwritten message.

I make a point of handwriting comments on as much of my mail as I can for the same reason. My Montblanc fountain pen is one of my Lovemarks and I believe its inked messages have far deeper resonance than the many emails I send.

There’s the surprise of handwriting in our increasingly digital world, but there is something direct and personal in this special connection between writer and reader – hand to heart.

In a world of dumb mass mail-outs, there is a lot to be learnt from the simple postcard.

And I mean more than putting some fake ‘personalized’ Post-it note on the top of an article. Real-ness and Intimacy is something you can’t fake. People take it personally or they don’t.

There’s no half-way house. You have to reach out and trust your intuition about what will be welcome. But DO IT.

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