The flowery language of the future is the simple language of today.

Years from now, people may look back upon our era and wonder if people really talked like that. I mean seriously: we use long sentences. We may bracket several thoughts between a capital letter and a period. We spell all the words out – completely!

LOL, they will say.

But they probably will not say that at all. The pseudo-language of our texting, chatting, and IM-ing seems to be an evolutionary transit for us. The methods and means at our disposal for the communication of thought and ideas are not only compressing the signs and symbols we use, but they are also changing it in vital ways. As someone who likes observing these shifts, I notice subtle changes from the narrative to imagistic. Whereas, at one stage in my life, I might have written long passages about how I feel on a certain day, I may replace it now with “ “, and it would mean EXACTLY the same thing.

The poets may struggle with this.

The language of the future may look completely different. One sign of the transformation, as I see it, is the hashtag. Introduced by Twitter as a means of grouping similar ideas, the hashtag is now seeping into other social media forms as well. And I begin to see it in more traditional writing as well. As a symbol, it is a derivation of the number sign and had relatively little practical use before. Never as common as the ampersand (&) or even the ampersat (@), the number sign (or the hash key or the pound sign depending on your origins) has been given new life by becoming the hashtag – a new symbol in the new language.

The hashtag is an overt manifestation of coding script. It basically signals a distinct meaning by itself. It implies the existence of an entire class. One can create a hashtag for anything – even if the class does not yet exist – and it signals a wealth of meaning which may not have been otherwise expressible. I am brought to mind of this in something I saw today. It was a photo on Facebook of a street scene from the 1960s. The scene brought a lot of ideas to mind – earlier times, simpler times, an implication of uncomplicated life, and many others. But the inscription was much pithier.

#oldfashioned

The imposition of the hashtag carries the message that everything about which you are thinking when you see this photo is part of a greater discussion which you have yet to uncover. It is not an old-fashioned scene; it is part of the genus.

Before I start getting nasty comments from people who think that I am merely being nostalgic about the language and speaking as an epigone, it should be said that I am simply fascinated with watching the transformation of the language in real time. I am not sure that I will be able to overturn my several decades of conditioning in order to adapt to it fully. I will still avoid ending sentences with prepositions, writing in fragments, and beginning sentences with conjunctions.

English has no final authority and cannot be a prescriptive language. It will always change and adapt freely with usage. This does mean that seeing things like “I can haz cheezburger” will always rub me the wrong way, but no one can or should stand in the way of this (r)evolution. It means that we are outgrowing the old means of expression and embracing something wider and new. 

My generation is slowly being unlanguaged by the nature of language itself. If we do not make the effort to keep pace and change, future generations of people will struggle to understand what we mean – not the other way around.

#go_figure.

Let’s say you are a baker.

The bread you make is eaten by thousands of people in your city. Suddenly, someone gets sick. A passing expert speculates that it might be because there is poison in YOUR bread. What do you do?

If you happen to be the Government, your reactions are quick and to the point. First, you deny everything. You cry conspiracy. You go on television and eat the bread. Then, when the story does not go away, you pull all the bread off the shelves. Then, when the story STILL sticks around, you lower your health standards, showing that your bread has acceptable amounts of poison in it. Finally, you fire the guy in charge of eating bread on television and lowering standards, and put things back the way they were.

Problem solved?

By dint of the clumsiest of efforts, you have managed to kill any confidence in the bread, in your monitoring mechanisms, in the standards used to approve it, and the people who set those standards to begin with. No one wins.

And the moral of this story is crystal clear. The recent chaos surrounding the discovery of high levels of aflatoxins in the milk being sold in Serbia has led the Serbian government to orchestrate the single greatest screw-up in communications crisis management that I have had the misfortune to observe in my natural existence.

What went wrong? These 5 steps might have saved the day:

1. ACKNOWLEDGE the report

If something like this gets into the media or into the public eye, there is no sense in confirming or denying anything about it until you know what you are talking about. 

2. VERIFY the information

The story may be true or untrue, but it is far more likely that the story has been somehow misreported. In any case, deploy an army of experts to find out what is going on, find out the implications, and find out what can be done 

3. REMOVE the threat to public health by getting the suspect milk off the shelves

Even if the report was not accurate, the perceived threat to public health is out there. The first thing to do, while you are studying the question and checking it out, is get the affected milk away from public consumption.

4. ANNOUNCE your findings

Once you have looked into the question and got some real answers and reliable data, announce your findings to the public. If it was true, you are the hero. If it was a hoax, you have acted responsibly.

5. REASSURE the public

The best way to reassure a shaken public is NOT by telling everyone how safe the milk is, but rather by introducing new safeguards, demonstrating improvement in your monitoring systems, and by issuing regular updates and status reports on how the problem is being handled.

The proximate cause of the story was the revelation about the aflatoxins. But the end result achieved by the government’s bungled management of the crisis is an even deeper distrust of the bodies which are charged with protecting the public health and welfare. OUR health. OUR welfare. The milk crisis has now spilled over to the entire system and the people behind it.

In any crisis, there is an incipient fear that there is not time to react properly to everything that is happening. A story breaks, fingers are pointed, accusations leveled, people suffer, companies are outraged – and it seems to happen all at the same time. But if it is your job to speak publically about the crisis, you must take your time. If it takes a day or two for you to get the full story, make sure you announce that you are trying to get it.

And you must tell the media what is going on. The less information you put out there, the more you open yourselves up to speculation, false conclusions, and misinformation. Since bad news sells better than good, do not give the media the opportunity to sow the seeds of doubt in your ability to take care of the crisis.

Once the milk is on the floor, it is impossible to unspill it.

The main problem with public relations today is public relations.

If you are a company, a business, or just a guy who is trying to do something that people should know about, the chances that a PR firm today can help you accomplish your goals are, at best, remote.

If this sounds overly harsh, it is only because it is true. The PR industry is its own worst enemy most of the time. The profession is equated with double-talk, spin-doctoring, and (as one of my previous employees said) “selling fog.” This reputation does not just happen by accident. We get a black eye from the thousands of PR operatives who flood the media with drivel and non-stories, behaving as though PR were just an extension of advertising. The net result of this is painfully clear.

People stop listening.

This, to me, is the exact opposite of what having good public relations is meant to achieve. The fact is that people should use their public relations advisors and agencies to do precisely what the name says: establish relations with their publics. Creating a relationship with the client’s target public, with the media, with government, or with any other groups which affect a company’s business goes far beyond the creation of a stream of blathering, self-serving or otherwise. It is a process of discovering the potential links which your client has with its target group and developing them fully. If this is done well, the target publics will want to listen to you.

Imagine a scenario when you are at a party and a guy comes up to you to talk. If he immediately starts to tell you about how wonderful he is and how essential it is for you to be his friend, you will either punch him in the face or run away. He has not tried to engage you at all. He has not shown that you have any common ground or common interest which would lead you to a discussion.

Bad Taste

This kind of behavior, sadly common, sadly typical, will drive companies and businesses away from PR as a part of their business strategies because it misinforms them. It gives them the impression that PR is extrinsic and therefore expendable. It leaves them with a bad taste in their mouths and the assumption that anyone exposed to this behavior would equate their company with it.

At its best, public relations is about smart communications. Although it may seem overly simplistic, the basic communication need of a company is to be appreciated for what it does and what it says by the right people. Every part of a business strategy is connected to its communications: from CEO to manager, from manager to employee, from the employees to the clients, and from the clients to the rest of the universe. A good idea can be corrupted at any point along this chain if it has been miscommunicated. When this boils down to a consumer level, poor information is interpreted as a lie. And if you are seen to be lying to your public, you will watch sales drop.

This is where the PR industry should be at its strongest: to preserve the good idea, to understand it fully, and to communicate it clearly. Often an agency or operator will want to adapt the good idea to fit his or her own conception of what it is. Alternatively, and perhaps even MORE often, the agency will not understand it. This leads directly to the selling of fog – creating a spew of nonsense that misses the point and that actually works against the client’s best interest.

Use Your Head

Smart communication is all about applying common sense. As a PR advisor, your first task is to listen and grasp the concept. If you are too in love with sound of your own voice and the brilliance of your own ideas, you may mesmerize the client, but you will be doing him a disservice.

Stimulating talk about your client is a double edged sword – it is the quality of the talk that makes it useful. Words for the sake of words will not do the trick. And, in the same vein, a large quantity of ill-conceived communication can drown out any real messages. Your words have to be intelligent, cogent, to the point, and, above all, must involve and engage the listeners. The only way this will happen is if your PR advisor knows what he is talking about.

Spin Doctors and Fog Sellers need not apply.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, we used to know each other.

It is a sign of changing times and habits that I must now consult my phone’s contact list to remember anyone’s name. This says as much about my failing memory as it does about the way we process information today.

In an article in the New York Times Online (“Are We Becoming Cyborgs?”), a few interesting questions were raised that deserve out close attention. The idea of technology transfiguring from means-to-an-end into an end-in-itself looms darkly over the article. Of an older approach to technology, Baroness Susan Greenfield notes that

“Instead of complementing or supplementing or enriching life in three dimensions, an alternative life in just two dimensions — stimulating only hearing and vision — seems to have become an end in and of itself.”

What this means, all too self-evidently and perhaps a little frighteningly too, is that this “alternate life” Greenfield describes is in a good position to take the place of our primary lives. The worlds provided by the social media, gaming sites, and other such require a great deal of fuel to keep turning – and this fuel is self-perpetuating. Feeding the machine is accomplished by using the machine.

The biggest downside to this, in my view, is the dampening of creative thought. Facebook, for example, teaches us to think in smaller more concise snippets, quips, and quotes, many times the source of the quips and quotes is Facebook itself. I am appalled at the number of photos, pictures, articles, and other links which appear on my wall every day wherein the Facebook user merely posts without comment.

And don’t get me started on cute puppies and kitties…

The creative process at its best is one in which multiple inputs combine and associate in new or interesting ways to form something altogether different from many sources. The sources which used to be more common were conversations, newspapers, television, and books. These fonts of information and opinion are very strong in that they draw from heterogeneous realms, many of which we may not personally espouse or with which we may not identity ourselves.

Closed Circuits

Facebook and other social media thrive on the idea of a closed circle. The fuel to feed the machine comes from a small group comprising friends and, eventually, friends of friends. Automatically the universe has just become quite small. And while it is not always the case that we agree with our friends or think the way they do, it is more common than not. This means that the inputs which confront us when we open Facebook over our morning coffee are basically part of our own identity – with very little to challenge our views and opinions.

As a tool, the Internet has become indispensible. We use it to find information, look up words, check references, and learn in the way dusty encyclopedias used to help us. But even so, the act of taking a dictionary from the shelf and looking up a word splashes us with peripheral or incidental knowledge: we notice a word or two on other pages which we seldom use or do not know.  Compared with the more surgical strikes enabled by Internet search engines, the lack of efficiency is compensated by the knock-on effect of wider exposure to information.

Tilting at Windmills

I admit to spending several hours in a day trolling through Facebook. I do not think I have held an actual dictionary in my hand for years. But the idea of denouncing social media and the use of new technologies would be as futile as it would be ignorant. My point goes more to the manner in which we use it, or the extent to which we depend upon it, for our interactions. The windmills never actually posed a threat to Don Quixote, even if he perceived them to be malicious giants. The Internet may be a giant, but its dangers come from us.

I perceive the dangers to spring from the easiness of the Internet. When we want a conversation, it offers chat. When we want to read, it offers links. When we want company, it offers us our friends and connections. Much easier to boot up than to dress and go down to the local café. Much easier to google a word or image than to spend hours leafing through books, potentially heading in the wrong direction half the time.

To the question posed by the article in the Times, I expect we are becoming cyborgs in a very real way. Our cybernetic components are not yet integral to our bodies, but our fingers are rarely far from some sort of keyboard.

Among my New Year’s intentions this year, I have decided to write letters by hand. This will take longer to do, be difficult to read, contain spelling mistakes, and require trips to the post office. The process may seem like a symbolic gesture, but my reasoning is less one of principle than one of asserting a little more humanity into my cyborg existence. I wish also to remind myself that speed and efficiency are not the only values in communicating with others.

Express intent, personal contact, and taking time are also there.

If you look at it from the Failure side, the line is almost indistinguishable from the background noise which is being offered. Appearing before a potential client, his first and most important question will be: what can you do for me? If this cannot be answered to reasonable satisfaction, the Gaussian blur will increase again.

Nothing is more confusing to a client than a confused consultant. This translates out in many levels. For example, if you make an appointment with a client to “acquaint” him or her with your services, you may deliver a very eloquent presentation to the client on the virtues of everything you can do, from Soup to Nuts, while the guy in front of you is only wondering about how to offload last year’s bananas.

In that case, you will have given him nothing he can use. All the rest of your professional services (wonderful, unique, and value enhancing though they be) are passing by the client’s head in fuzzy, rushing blur. What about the bananas?

If he asks you this, you have the opportunity to recover your position by shifting the focus of the discussion. In most cases, however, you may know nothing about his bananian problems and he will not be the one to tell you. The burden is on the consultant to be focused. Bringing the client into better focus is only one part of your job during the meeting.

Why does this happen? Firstly because the client does not like to think. If you are offering a service, he or she should not have to scratch his corporate head and wonder what your services have to do with him. He does not have to think on this occasion – his job is to listen to what YOU have been thinking about and how it will benefit him.

Anything else is just asking the client to sell to himself.

Another bit of unfocused thought comes when a service provider waltzes in and says he can do everything. I mean EVERYTHING. There are two distinct problems with this: A) no one needs everything; and 2) no one can do everything. Not to mention iii) that it gives the impression that you have NO IDEA why the client might need you in the first place.

Focus is about knowing the game before you roll the dice. Focus is about doing your homework and knowing the client and their current predicament/problem/situation before settling down your briefcase. And knowing (importantly) what you can do to make their lives easier.

From the Success side of the line, the focus is sharp. On your side, your ducks have all been lined up ahead of time. You know exactly what you are going in to pitch. You know exactly how it will benefit the client and make the business better, stronger, or bigger. In that case, the client may relax into the issue at hand with greater ease. He does not have to think about your business, but rather only his. The client may still send you away, but at least it will be for the right reasons. On the other hand, going to the meeting without properly focused intentions will nearly always end in failure.

Adjust your glasses beforehand – it helps.

Thank you all for coming to today’s meeting in which we will review all of our previous meetings and discuss the relative value of convening another meeting in which we will meet about the conclusions (if any) of this meeting. At that time, we will also be presenting a presentation of the presentations seen heretofore.

Clear?

If, by the time we arrive at Slide 421 of the 7,030 slides prepared for this debacle of a meeting, you have drifted into sweet somnolence, you may be forgiven. The fact is that we waste entirely too much time in meetings which have no point. In my view, these may not be classified as meetings.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I am a big one for meetings. I will suggest meetings, join meetings, schedule meetings, meet about meetings. Meetings have a function and are useful at the best of times. Useful, that is, as long as the meeting has a point. As soon as people begin doodling, making private lists, and shifting back and forth in their chairs, something is definitely wrong at the conference table.

There are, however, three simple questions which might be answered before calling a meeting.

1. What is the point?

This seems like a simple enough question, but I have often been surprised at the number of meetings to which I have been invited which feel like more of a fishing expedition. When you gather the staff around the conference table, it is not a time to get suggestions about the topic of the meeting. We should ALL know already. We may have already seen a written agenda for the meeting.

2. Who has to be there?

If we have to decide whether or not to accept a new client, the cleaning staff may not have to be present. On the other hand, six vice-presidents are not required to assess the placement of the soda machine on the third floor. Most of the VPs have never been to the third floor anyway. If at any point you ask yourself during a meeting “what am I doing here?” there can be but one answer: nothing.

3. What has to be decided?

Something always has to be decided at a meeting. If there is no decision to be brought, it is merely information which can be disseminated through other reasonable channels: email, web, or strategically placed post-it notes.

In the end, meetings are all about decision-making. In a democratic workspace, it may be that a vote should be taken. In a more autocratic environment, the decision of the day may only be to obtain buy-in.  Whatever the decision is, there must be SOMETHING to decide – otherwise you have gathered and co-opted people who might be productively working at something else entirely.

Decidedly unproductive.

The three questions feel ridiculous when stated out loud. It would seem that the answers should be self-evident and therefore superfluous in the asking. But in applying the razor to any of the meetings which you call, you may find yourself with more free time to do that thing which allows you the liberty to call meetings in the first place: your business.

In a revolution, all of the former structures to which we had held strong are flung aside and replaced by radically different – and often diametrically opposed – methods, tools, and points of reference. On the other hand, some would argue that a revolution is merely the replacement of one tyranny for another. Under Robespierre, the French revolutionaries changed even the names of the months to show how much disdain they had for the monarchy in France.

But they still measure time in months and days.

As it is for all evolutionary processes, while we are inside them, it is highly difficult, if not indeed impossible, to look at the results on a day to day basis and see anything extraordinary. On the other hand, from an outside perspective, looking at its various stages may look like a full scale revolution.

Today’s practitioners of PR labor under one or the other of these assumptions: the first, unable to notice that while he was faxing his press releases the internet had hijacked his tools-of-the trade, and the second, looking with disdain on the first and calling him a throwback to the Permian extinction.

Both are, of course, wrong; and both are, of course, exaggerated. The fact remains however that today’s practice of PR is only making minor inroads into the potential presented by the new tools available from social marketing. Companies like Twitter and Facebook are happy to declare their hegemony over global communications, but they have not seen the longer term significance of what monsters they have unleashed.

Messages and Messengers

This is where the concept of EPR comes into play. The reality of our situation today is that not only do we have new tools, but the evolution of our profession has become such that we cannot use the tools to any benefit if applying the same old methods.  What is needed, in order to bring the usefulness of these social media tools into play is to rethink the very way we are working – we need to understand thoroughly the process of thought which leads us from the Big Idea to the end message recipient. We need, moreover, to wonder who is the creator of the method and whether or not we can even consider him, as once we did, as a passive receiver of information or messages.

The evolution of the PR trade is one which has slowly and surreptitiously shifted the power of information from industry to consumer. The consumer today is holding all the cards, even if we – and here I refer to all forms of communications providers from PR to advertising to media – continue to believe that we are in control.

The classic scenario: a company decides that it would like to show itself as caring and nurturing to its consumers.  It rebrands and plasters the town with new ads. It comes up with slogans and messages and plants them with the media, sending press releases, spinning articles in the press, setting up events. All of this seems like a very good idea. It is the way things have always worked.

The basic problem, however, comes from the fact that the company is NOT in charge of its messages. They proceed with a top-down theory in which a loud noise is made from atop the mountain of progress and echoes all the way down to the inhabitants of the valley below. The premise says that anyone hearing the good news about the company will come clambering up the mountain in order to attain the products, get a job with them, or just become an adoring fan.

This way of thinking is not wrong, but it takes into consideration only the most basic and primitive of communication channels and devices which have existed for decades. It relies on the fact that people gather information passively from newspapers, magazines, television shows, news channels, and talking heads. In fact, the idea of “gathering information passively”, much more than the media used to gather it, is the one which must be now called into question.

Erosion of Trust

There was a time when we relied on the media for unbiased and factual information. Even if we had doubts from time to time about the objectivity of the source, we generally took what we read in the paper and see on the news as pretty much true. In the lifetime of my generation, however, this trust and faith has been eroded rather sharply.  We doubt the intentions of those behind the media. We doubt the veracity of the authors of stories. We wonder if they have been thorough in sourcing their information and if the sources are reliable. Journalism has not completely eroded in this way, but our perception has become jaded. Many in the PR profession will rely on this kind of erosion to pass non-stories, paid stories, or un-newsworthy nonsense into the pages of the less scrupulous publications.

It is this erosion of trust which opens the door for EPR. The fact that media/information consumers are no longer content to be spoon-fed their news and opinions leads them to take advantage of the social media to create a News by Consensus concept. Under this concept, the actual veracity of the information is less important than the weight of its support by other consumers. They speak to each other; they question what they hear and read; and they form their own opinions which, eventually, pass into Fact.

When the rains come…

PR, never an industry overly concerned with truth or facts as much as by its perception, must see this social phenomenon and react. The simplest way to look at it would be the analogy of the rain storm.

People who get caught outside when a rain storm begins look to the sky and cringe. They run for cover as the heavens open up and drench everything below. Until now, PR and advertising has had this same philosophy: rain down the messages and hope to soak as many people as possible. We try to localize the rain as much as possible, trying to seed clouds over target groups only.

When we are being soaked to the skin, we do not take into consideration that the rain does not originate in the clouds. It begins on the ground – in oceans, seas, lakes, ponds, and puddles. The rains which we feel are only part of a cycle. By the time the storm begins, we cannot enter this cycle – we simply take what we get.

Ideas and opinions fulminate and gather together in the pond and puddles. Here they mix and combine and eventually, under the heat of the sun, evaporate and head skywards.

What does this mean for us? It means we must reverse our processes and begin to work backwards. The new tools of social media allow us to refocus attention from the content of the rain to its constituent elements. We must abandon the idea of the top-down approach to information and start looking at how to influence and act from the bottom-up, from the sources of information. We must work from the ground up.

Social media empowers people to affect the course of the information they take in. In a way, it can be seen as much more limiting to the media/information consumer as it becomes extremely specific to individuals. The job which faces us now is not so much to inject this pool with information as it is to interact with it, to become part of it, and to integrate it.

Motivators

Social media appeals to people as individuals. People with Twitter accounts can spend their days telling their “followers” whatever random thoughts pop into their heads. Most of it cannot be of interest for mass consumption. On the other hand, people then choose to become followers of other Twitter members and by that act of choosing, they begin to delineate patterns.

Ironically, however, these individuals use the social media to associate themselves with large groups, or create them. From a psychological standpoint, the urge to express individual opinions and ideas stems from a need for acceptance into, not isolation from, an inclusive social network.  Facebook is a good example of this. One of the most widespread effects of Facebook is the drive to accumulate as many friends as possible. We constantly hear people complaining that they do not have enough “friends.” Recently I was told about a person who lives in a small town and hates her neighbors. They never speak or even greet each other in the street. But on Facebook, they are “friends”…

From my perspective, this says a lot about the exclusionary quality of mass media. People want to count, not as numbers or statistics, but as people. They want to say what they think and be heard by someone.

So now what?

Recognizing the nature of the question brings us half-way to an answer. The facts of the case are these:

We know that social media is a fast growing phenomenon and that the proliferation of tools, sites, blogs, and interfaces will only continue to grow for the immediate future.  We know also that these tools are being tested now for their versatility and, eventually, their profitability. Furthermore, we know that most of the “conversation” that we would like to join is more concerned with form than content.

Evolution is ongoing and inevitable in communications and public relations. The way we talk to each other and the way we receive information are gradually melding. Evolutionary Public Relations must take this change into account and open the door for us to change how we view the industry.

For ages we have listened only to the client. Now let us listen to the consumer.

When Nike came out with the “Just Do It” campaign in 1988, sixteen years after it was founded by Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight in 1972, it marked a quantum leap in the brand’s growth and popularity. The campaign was wildly successful and became part of the common vernacular. People used the slogan in regards to anything and everything. Just do it. It became the motto of the 80s and 90s.

The “Just Do It” campaign ran for more than 20 years, and is still alive and kicking in the minds and hearts of Nike fans and enthusiasts of every generation since mine (or my father’s). Today, 23 years since the campaign’s inception, however, it seems that the marketing department has given up.

A new slogan was launched this year: Full Speed Toward Whatever.. What it inspires seems to be more like lethargy and apathy than aspiration. Maybe this is meant to reflect our particular Zeitgeist, but it reads like someone who began with a thought and then got bored in the middle of writing it down. Whatever.

There are arguments in its favor, of course. The idea is that it should show us that Nike leads in any direction we choose, at full speed. Or that we can achieve full speed toward any goal through Nike. We should aspire to full speed. This seems to be the intended message. But in reality, the message just tells us: who cares?

“Whatever” is, for my money, the wrong word. Whatever contains shrugging shoulders and lazy carelessness. The campaign, as you can see above, emphasizes the words “full” and “whatever”. The passing consumer who is hit in the face with Nike’s new campaign will retain, for the most part, the “whatever” – it is maybe the only thing he sees or at least it is that last thing he sees. Because of the ubiquitous swoosh logos indicating Nike, the campaign’s real impact is more like this:

Nike. Whatever.

Falling asleep at the wheel of the marketing machine can be fatal for companies and brands. Anyone remember “New Coke”? In the meantime, the competition celebrates and uses the advantage to thrust forward. Adidas is now “all in” with a very positive and upbeat ad campaign. Reebok, an also-ran in the sports footwear race, hangs in there with Run Easy and the slogans “ReeThink. ReeSport. ReeJoy” (whatever that means). The fact is that when the leader seems tired and has apparently given up on being the generator of positive sneaker mojo, the others will immediately rush in and fill the breach.

There comes a point when a brand believes itself to be immortal. Usually this is only delusion. McDonald’s has not changed much of its image since the 1950s. Coke, with a few set-backs, has stayed on track since 1886. Nike and Phil Knight could probably have ridden on the back of just do it for another generation or two.

But at this point I am reminded of the words of Jean Namour, president of Ellesse International in the second half of the 1990s, just before the brand was allowed to fade into insignificance after his departure. Actually Voltaire said it first…

“Better is the enemy of Good.”

Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were,

As well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were

…

- John Donne, Meditation XVII

The New Business is not new.

The struggle between collective and individual has reigned in every aspect of human life since time immemorial, and it is still in play at present. The only difference is that today we observe ourselves within a downwardly spiraling pattern and willingly do nothing to prevent ourselves from being drawn into the vortex.

Today we conduct our business as islands. We seek the increase of the bottom line, the value for shareholders, the approval of the stock market, and compare ourselves to other runners in the same race as a means of validating our efforts. In times of great prosperity, the numbers feel objective. In times of crisis, it is a bell curve. We must aspire to the top position – be it in absolute values or in the relative values gleaned from beating out the competition and besting the suppliers, hoodwinking the consumers and reaching deeply into everyone else’s pockets as a means to advance our goal.

The Old Business is this. It seeks its own dominion. It privileges gain over success. It fails, in fact, to distinguish between the two. The New Business must make this distinction. The world’s many individual economies and the view of the global economy has dramatically changed. No amount of bandages and liniment will be able to restore it to what it once was. The only way for business to survive – if indeed we want it to survive – is to change the game. Not the rules, not the strategies: the game itself must be changed.

The core issue here is one of supply and demand. We want things. We make things. We sell things. And we use the money to buy more things and make more things to sell. We like to believe that our business is indispensable. No one can live without the things we make or the services we provide. This wishful thinking is useful only to a point. The harsh reality is that consumers can usually do without or replace almost any product or service in a heartbeat.

Symbiosis

Cut-throat competition to one side, there comes a point we must look to our own interdependence in business. An economy exists so that all might exist within it. This includes competition. But what we sometimes lose sight of is that we do not compete with everyone on Earth at the same time. Consultants compete amongst themselves when their services are the same, but sometimes they also compete in areas of potential services. Likewise the commercial and criminal lawyers do not really compete, but they would be hard pressed to collaborate very much.

When I think of interdependence, I think of sticking to our core competences and relying on the existence of others to add value where it is needed. A service provider could potentially do anything or offer anything to anyone, but only in his area of expertise will he excel.

No man, no business, no company is an island. And only free, honest, and open cooperation at every stage of the value chain will ensure that we do not isolate ourselves (and go out of business).