Mike Hohnen

Coaching for personal growth, change and development

General

Purpose goes mainstream…

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There is a certain interesting buzz in the air.

Maybe it is more than a buzz – maybe it is a fundamental shift..

It started out some years back as just a murmur or a slight rumbling from the initiated. But lately is has slowly risen in volume and my prediction is that before too long it will have gathered further momentum to become an unavoidable roar.

The shift is the call for ‘Purpose’

In a world with limited natural resources, huge inequality, and financial scandals galore, it is no longer comme il faut to do stuff just for money. That applies not just to companies that produce goods and services but is increasingly demanded by individuals as well – a job is no longer just for the money.

A new generation is emerging (see the generation M manifesto). They demand that we do stuff for a reason and it better be a good one – and just in case you are in doubt money is an outcome not a purpose.

The first time this was brought to my attention was 4 years a go sitting on a tree stump in the Rocky Mountains with my friend Lothar Friis. We were having a profound talk about life, business, gigs and all that. And Lothar said “you know in the end it all boils down to one thing: Purpose. If you have a clear purpose you will almost always bee successful in what you do.” That chat stayed with me rumbling around in my subconscious and I started becoming more aware of purpose as a concept.

The next time I noticed purpose was reading Fred Kofmans book Conscious Business.

A conscious business seeks to promote the intelligent pursuit of happiness in all its stakeholders. It produces sustainable, exceptional performance through the solidarity of its community and the dignity of each member.

In the book he says: “People do not consider Business an area to demonstrate their values .. Why not?”. Kofman asks you to think about a person you admire. Why do you admire that person? List the traits on a pice of paper (try it now by the way) What are the values on that list – probably words like integrity, honesty, caring, love, selfishness, you go on… Is that how business and work relations are run – probably not in most cases. Why not ?

He has a point why can’t we run our business with the same set of values that we would like to see in our local community. Well, five year ago you would be told that that is not the best way to maximize profits, but now it seem it just may turnout to be the only way to maximize profits – read on.

Then I read Peter Block’s “The answer to how is Yes” This opened my eyes to the need to ask ‘why’ before we ask ‘how’. The penny dropped. When we ask ‘Why’ we are looking at purpose (If you have not read it please do – it is a very important book.)

“We too often ask “How?” which focuses too closely on the practical way of getting something done and is actually a subconscious expression of society’s emphasis on control of people, time, and cost. Instead, our concentration should be focused on “Why?”. In other words, we need to pay attention to what really matters to us personally, from heart-felt commitments in our private lives to the creation of projects in the workplace. To be able to act on what matters, explains Block, we must reclaim specific qualities, such as intimacy and idealism. Then we can tackle purposeful work as if we were social architects seeking engagement and change.” (Amazon.com)

In 2006 Nikos Mourkogiannis published the book ‘Purpose – the starting point of great companies’ – a book that according to himself influenced John Mackey in his thinking and contributed to the creation of a new ‘movement’ called Conscious Capitalism that now holds thoughtful, exclusive by-invitation-only gatherings (Introduction to Conscious Capitalism).

FOLLOW YOUR HEART – John Mackey

In 2007 the book Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose is published – a book that was later adopted as the foundation for The Conscious Capitalism Institute (CCI)

“Conscious Capitalism is defined to have three elements; that companies should have a purpose transcending profit maximization, are managed for the benefit of all stakeholders and led by evolved, conscious servant leaders.”

By and by purpose has come out of the shadows of idealism and is going mainstream – obviously the financial meltdown of 2007/2008 has help this thinking a lot and contributed to more people have asking the crucial question: Why do we do what we do?

At TED 2010 Simon Sinek presented his ‘Golden Circle’ and showed that the way to the consumers heart starts with ‘why’ and not ‘how’.- Not as new a concept as he would like us to think but he deliveries the message in a very elegant and convincing way. Sinek has also written a great book on this called ‘Start With WHY’ that I can highly recommend.

SIMON SINEK

Then this spring Umair Haque made the case on his Harvard Business Review blog that doing good is not just good per see – it is just better business. The better Business Manifesto and Why Betterness Is Good Business

Clayton M. Christensen, the Author of The Innovators Dilemma, (also on a HBR blog) then shows us all how important purpose is on a personal level. How Will You Measure Your Life?

“Don’t worry about the level of individual prominence you have achieved; worry about the individuals you have helped become better people. This is my final recommendation: Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success”

And finally this summer Dave Ulrich – not exactly a tree hugger – is out with a new book: The why of Work. Arguing in essence that if your employees don’t understand what you greater purpose is and how they can contribute to that they will be less motivated.

This morning in Fast Company we can read : Alex Bogusky Tells All: He Left the World’s Hottest Agency to Find His Soul

“Alex Bogusky, advertising Dadaist, postmodern media manipulator, pop-culture Houdini, daddy of 21st-century advertising, and now a seeker of meaning on the dirt path of life “ .. “ I guess I just don’t aspire to corporate legacy. I’m convinced that the greatness that matters more is the greatness people achieve through helping each other, through collaborating, more than the greatness that’s achieved by grabbing all you can or getting all you can or building all you can”

If you haven’t heard the cry for purpose – you are not listening – and very soon your customers (and your potential employees) are going to be asking you: “What is your purpose by the way?”. And if you don’t have a compelling answer, they will find someone else who does…

Time out – All set for september 2010

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We have spent the past 3 days checkking out the location for our next Time Out – Tucked away high up in the mountains above Nice in the beautiful Parc du Mercantour.

Grand Chapelet - Mercantour - 5

You can just spot the hotel in right hand part of the picture. The road winds its way up from the village of Belvedere a distance of about 10 k’s and ends here at the entrance to the Parc. Once you reach this spot there is no longer mobile phone cover and the locals smile overbearingly and shake their heads when we ask for a high speed internet connection. No chance in this part of the world.

We all need to see the world from 2800m from time to time – it gives a different perspective and that is the whole idea behind this project

Grand Chapelet - Mercantour - 10

The surroundings are breathtaking and I am convinced that this setting will give our participants the opportunity to participate in a reflective process while at the same time getting to enjoy a series of physically challenging outdoor activities that we have planned – which is why we call it: Time-Out.

We shall be publishing more details on this event in the weeks to come – if you are very impatient drop me a note and I will tell you what I know at this point in time.

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Are we suffering from Institutional sclerosis?

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Florida:

“It’s almost as if everyone is stuck in the same place. It seems to me that the mental models and frameworks of the Fordist economy, of the mass production economy, are so powerful and so deeply engrained in the way we think, it’s hard to think in other terms.”

Maybe we are managing ourselves to death – our core competency , managing, is becoming our major incompetency.

We need less management and more leadership.

Watch the inspiring interview with Richard Florida

Is Forbes asking the wrong question?

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FORBES INSIGHTS asks the question:

Can webconferences, videoconferences and other virtual meetings really take the place of face-to-face contact?
With travel budgets slashed in the wake of recessionary belt-tightening, companies are increasingly turning to technology as a substitute for in-person contact. Yet business executives overwhelmingly agree that face-to-face meetings are not just preferable but necessary for building deeper, more profitable bonds with clients and business partners and maintaining productive relationships with co-workers.

Predictably the answer to their own survey is that 84% prefer F2F meetings.

But is that the right question to ask if you are trying to understand what is happening in the meeting industry?

Not in my mind it isn’t!

This is the kind of question Kodak asked photographers 5-8 years back: Do you think that digital photos will replace film based photography? No way they all hollered.
This is the question big newspaper publishers asked thier readers 3-4 years ago: “Can you imagine not having a daily morning news paper in print form” Since then a large number of them no longer exist.
This is the question publishing houses where asked 24 months ago “Will the eReader replace books?” – that was before Amazon sold 2 million Kindel’s in 6 months. Now they are not so sure. More on eReaders here

But the reality is this:

This is borne out in Forbes Insights survey, where 58% of respondents said they were travelling for business less today than they were at the beginning of the recession in January 2008, with more than a third (34%) indicating they were travelling much less frequently.

This is my point, it may not be what they prefer – but this is what they do – not because it is better but because it is cheaper, and more convenient.

Surevy: would you prefer to fly Business or Turist?… No brainer right?
But why is tourist class then jam packed and Business reduced to 2 rows that are half empty on many European flights? It is not what we would prefer. It is what we do.

The big danger is that we in the industry stick our heads in the sand as a result of surveys like this – pat each other on the back and knowingly nod to each other: “f2f meeting are better – we know that – they know that. All will return to normal soon, you just wait and see….”

I don’t think so

That is what KODAK thought

The question we should be asking is : Is the market broken? – see this by Seth Godin: “What every mass marketer needs to learn from Groucho Marx”

Read the Forbes Insight survey here

What do you think?

Gratitude is a profitable emotion to inspire

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A coming paper in the Journal of Marketing addresses that very subject. Building on past research on the role of gratitude in human relationships, it argues that a customer who is made to feel grateful most likely becomes enduringly loyal as a result. Gratitude, as the paper bluntly puts it, can “increase purchase intentions, sales growth and share of wallet.” Robert Palmatier, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Washington and an author of the paper, says that making a customer feel truly grateful toward a business is harder than it might sound. And the hard-wired feelings of reciprocity that can trigger gratitude can just as easily trigger the sense that you’re being treated unfairly.

Read the full article in the NYT

What are your richest passengers doing?

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Another great insigt from Seth Godin

It’s not the rats you need to worry about

If you want to know if a ship is going to sink, watch what the richest passengers do.

Read it and think again

Is the meeting industry doomed?

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Kodak did not loose the market for paper film because of Fuji or Agfa. The market for film was replaced by digital cameras. British Airways need not worry to much about Lufthansa or SAS – Ryan Air is a problem and so on.

In these examples what has happened is that competition has come from where it was least expected and in both cases this competition was initially ignored as not significant – “they are not delivering the kind of quality that we do” – and bam! One day we wake up and Ryan Air is a huge airline business and we all have digital cameras in our pockets – even the pro’s

This has happened in industry after industry ever since the buggy whip business was exterminated by automobiles. Why and how this happens is well documented by Clayton Christensen in his wonderful book : The Innovators Dilemma

The same shift in client behavior is now occurring in the meeting and conference industry. The competition is not from other regular players in the market but from a combination of events that together have created a perfect storm. Once the storm is over the market will never be the same again.

The elements that are causing this are:

1. The financial crisis has forced business to be more careful how they spend their money so they question the value of every thing – if it is not adding value why are we doing it? ROI i now a key requirement – see more here

2. CSR – The realization that we need to curb our Co2 emissions and one of the big sinners in this is of course travel. (It is also a convenient excuse to cut travel cost)

3. Time pressure on every one means that we are are all looking for ways to cram more into the same 24h/7d week /360d year frame – there is now mores stuff to do, read, see than we have ever experienced before and that means prioritizing. Asking one self hard questions like: is this worth the effort ( travel, money, another night away from home etc).

4. Web 2.0 the big shift from web 1.0 is the ability to interact – real time two way communication on the web. Virtual classrooms, breakout rooms – web casts etc. There is a whole new industry that is growing rapidly and that sees a huge opportunity to replace the traditional meeting environment with a virtual environments. Brush up on Web 2.0 and learning here

Points one 1-3 are the problems we would all like to see solved and point 4 seems to be a possible solution. Not perfect but it works and is easy ( Just like digital cameras)

“At IKEA Virtual Meetings should always be first choice”

Progressive business are responding fast. IKEA has a campaign running called Meet More Travel Less

Tandberg, TNT and Vodaphone are others also working on this.

TANDBERG – 100 000 video calls per month – 2500 flights avoided, 2,5M$ saved on business trips (30M$per year) – 17500 man-hour saved per month – 275 tons of CO2 saved per month

TNT – On track to save nearly11,5 $ in 4 years by replacing travels with videoconferencing – ROI:71%

VODAFONE – 25% reduction in business trips in 2 years – Resulting in double digit millions of cost savings

The response from the meeting industry is ahh.. no need to worry, virtual meetings will never be as good as f2f meetings.

Perhaps not but that is exactly what Kodak said about digital cameras, What BA said about the zero service concept from Ryan Air and what the vinyl record producers said about music on CD’s.

So is there no hope for the meeting industry – yes there is but we need to understand how to deliver value. Class rooms and serial power point monologue are not the solution.

The problem with creating value in the traditional meeting and conference set up is that it is very limited – there is often a short term entertainment value, the odd aha experience – but that’s it.

In a situation where we are all under pressure. Supply, by far, outstrips demand in virtually all industries and services – most business’ create meetings and conferences in order to help participants change – but as any one who has tried to get a teenager to clean up their room by telling them to do so, will recognize, we do not change because someone tells us to do so ( there would be no smokers left in the world if that where the case) Telling does not work.

We change when we arrive at our own conclusions. ( if you do not believe me read Change or Die that will help you reach your own conclusion)

So having one or even worse a series of speakers stand up and tell us what to do, think or feel in order to cope with change is relatively useless – the ROI is negligible – and in that connection the speakers fee is not the main cost, it is the time and travel of the participants.

In order to create real change we need to gather people in order for them to interact. Change requires learning and learning is collaborative – no I do not mean 10 min of ‘networking at the coffee break – but real meaningful conversations – deep dialog.

Only through dialog will you get people to reach their own conclusions and then hopefully act on them. Yes we can have inspirational input if it is short, sweet and to the point AND gets people thinking and talking.

But this will require the meeting industry to radically change their formats,( venues, room, seating,speaking formats, tools, etc) those that do will survive those that don’t will join the buggy whip business as interesting business cases for future students to smile at.