narrative

Inder Sidhu: The Story of All Great Organizations

by on May 18, 2011

Huffington Post…

What do Mitt Romney, Big Oil and Nintendo have in common? Each is trying to sell a story that few seem willing to buy. Former Massachusetts governor Romney wants you to believe his universal healthcare program isn’t like President Obama’s. Big oil wants to convince you that government subsidies are needed despite record profits . And Nintendo wants you to believe that games developed for social media and mobile devices are ruinous to the entertainment industry. It’s worth pondering these efforts for a moment because everyone has a story to tell — about our products, people or potential. The better you are at telling your story, the more customers, partners and shareholders are likely to believe in you. Their faith can translate into profits, market share and influence. This is why it’s important to get your story right. So have you? Before answering, think about the narrative that you provide — both intentionally and unintentionally. Let’s start with the intentional one. For your story to resonate, it must be several things at once. Above all else, it must be unique, sincere and memorable. Consider your uniqueness: Have you looked deep within your walls and zeroed in on that which separates you from the rest? It could be almost anything, including your ingenuity, location, pricing, quality, access or trustworthiness. Surely something about you distinguishes you from your competitors. If you are McDonalds, it’s your value and consistency. If you’re Ritz Carlton, it’s your commitment to customer service. And if you’re Apple, it’s your innovation and execution. No matter who you are, you no doubt have something distinct or compelling about you. If you are not telling the world what it is, then you are likely under-valuing your story. This is a costly mistake few can afford. Ditto for your sincerity. For a company narrative to connect, it has to ring true and complete. There should be no lapses, omissions or inconsistencies. Not mentioning the elephant in the room may serve you well at Thanksgiving, but not in business. Your story must take into account your past shortcomings, but it need not dwell on them. Nor should it lean too heavily on previous accomplishments, especially if they have not been repeated or leveraged in any meaningful way. When it comes to sincerity, a narrative should not be transparently self-serving or fatuous in any way. If it is, it will invite scorn or derision. When Philip Morris CEO Louis Camilleri recently said that tobacco was ” not that hard to quit ,” he not only insulted the intelligence of his customers, he also raised the ire of health professionals, too. ” Appalling ,” summed Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer for the national office of the American Cancer Society, afterwards. Hard to argue with that story. In addition to uniqueness and sincerity, a business narrative must be memorable. It’s preposterous, for example, to claim to be the world’s finest restaurant or best retailer. But a memorable one? That’s certainly doable. Think about the organizations you engage. If you go out of your way or pay a premium to patronize any company, it’s probably because they provided something that resonated with you. If any of your customers feel similarly, then make this an important part of your story. But don’t stop there. In addition to the intentional messages you communicate, consider the ones you unintentionally broadcast. They are as much a part of your story as your advertising or public relations. Just ask any frequent business traveler. They’ll tell you that no benefit lavished upon them or commercial targeted at them will erase the memory of negative experiences endured in the air or on the ground. When it comes to storytelling, almost anything you do can become a part of your narrative. If you want to succeed in business, you are going to need a strategy to help you achieve your objectives. But you won’t be able to create that strategy until you get your story down. Who you are and where you are going are the essence of what sets you apart. When you can share that with the world in unique, sincere and memorable way, your chance for success increases immeasurably. Inder Sidhu is the Senior Vice President of Strategy & Planning for Worldwide Operations at Cisco , and the author of Doing Both: Capturing Today’s Profits and Driving Tomorrow’s Growth . Author proceeds from sales of Doing Both go to charity. Follow Inder on Twitter at @indersidhu .

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Inder Sidhu: The Story of All Great Organizations

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Rep. Brad Miller: Republican Amnesia on the Financial Crisis

by on January 31, 2011

Sometimes party loyalty asks too much, even among today’s rigidly unforgiving Republicans. In December, the four Republicans on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) appeared to accept the Republican agitprop explanation, or “narrative,” of the financial crisis: government regulators, under pressure from liberal Democrats like Barney Frank and Maxine Waters, bullied banks into making foolish, “politically correct” loans so poor folks could buy homes that they couldn’t afford. But when the FCIC issued its final report last week, three of the four Republican commissioners flinched, apparently unwilling to sacrifice forever their scholarly reputations to the cause of partisan hackery. Instead, the three Republican commissioners argued that the financial crisis was caused by a combination of dimly understood macroeconomic forces, an unforeseeable “perfect storm.” Was this crisis preventable? ” We don’t know ,” said Republican FCIC commissioner Keith Hennessy. That argument has also been justly mocked by economics bloggers as “hoocoodanode?” (“Who could have known?”), but is far less laughable. Only one commissioner, Peter Wallison, stuck with the Republican agitprop narrative. Republican politicians with little scholarly reputation to protect are undeterred , of course, by the defection of three of the four Republican FCIC commissioners or by the repeated demolition of the narrative by economists. But here’s a question Republicans in Congress don’t want to hear: why haven’t they reminded us that they warned before the financial crisis that subprime mortgages would come to grief? And why haven’t banks, happily exculpated by the narrative, reminded us that they warned at the time that they were being forced to make foolish loans that would endanger their solvency? The answer is simple: the Republican narrative was created from scratch after the financial crisis. During the height of subprime lending, the lending industry, conservative commentators and Republican politicians celebrated subprime mortgages as the triumph of the innovation that comes from unfettered capitalism. Subprime mortgages, they said, made homeownership possible for millions of American families who could never own their own home under the dreary, stultifying rules that Democrats like me proposed. Robert Crouch testified at a congressional hearing on behalf of the Mortgage Bankers Association on November 5, 2003. Crouch said that “through innovations in the mortgage finance industry, and through various financing and risk enhancing tools created for the specific purpose of extending credit to our more needy communities, credit-impaired individuals now have ample opportunity to obtain loans through this ‘non-prime,’ or ‘sub-prime’ market.” The growth of the subprime market, Crouch said, “disproportionately benefited low-income and minority borrowers, as these groups are much more likely to rely on subprime credit. One clear and visible outcome has been an increase in homeownership rates for low-income and minority borrowers.” William M. Dana testified at a congressional hearing on March 30, 2004, on behalf of the American Bankers Association. Dana said that “the ABA believes that the development of the subprime market has been a positive development for American consumers.” Market innovation “has made credit available to many consumers who had previously been left out of the marketplace,” he said. “The development of the subprime market has assisted those borrowers tremendously.” What Republican politicians said was so similar it was almost like bank lobbyists wrote their remarks for them. “I need not remind my colleagues on the committee that Americans currently enjoy the highest rate of homeownership in the history of America,” Congressman Jeb Hensarling said at a congressional hearing on May 24, 2005. “The benefits of free enterprise and competition have been plentiful. With the advent of subprime lending, countless families have now had their first opportunity to buy a home or perhaps be given a second chance. The American dream should never be limited to the well-off or those consumers fortunate enough to have access to prime rate loans.” Nor was there a discouraging word about subprime mortgages from conservative commentators. The Republican narrative puts much of the blame for the financial crisis on the Community Reinvestment Act (“CRA”), a 1977 civil rights law aimed at “redlining.” At the time, banks literally drew red lines on city maps around neighborhoods in which they would not lend. But in 2000, the conservative CATO Institute published an article that said “CRA” should stand for “Community Redundancy Act.” The article argued that “progress predicated on technology, financial innovation, and competition — not CRA — has broadened the U.S. financial marketplace,” including lending in neighborhoods that had once been redlined. If a lender discriminated against a low-income neighborhood, “the profit motive would lead another lender to move in and fill the void.” It’s true that Republicans were critical of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the principle culprits in the Republican agitprop narrative. But Republicans’ criticism was that Fannie and Freddie weren’t buying enough mortgages for riskier, low-income borrowers. Fannie and Freddie were shareholder owned corporations run for a profit, but they began as government agencies that bought mortgages from banks so banks could lend more money and more families could buy homes. Both were “privatized” in the sixties, and both did very well by doing good. In 2001, Fannie was 13 and Freddie was 18 on Fortune Magazine’s list of the most profitable corporations. But by the nineties, Fannie and Freddie did not have the business of buying mortgages to themselves. Others in the industry were also buying mortgages and selling mortgage-backed securities, also quite profitably. The competition was bitter. Fannie’s and Freddie’s competitors argued that despite the subsidy from the government’s implicit guarantee, Fannie and Freddie were neglecting affordable housing for low-income Americans for the sake of profits. Fannie’s and Freddie’s competitors urged that Fannie’s and Freddie’s business be largely limited to affordable housing for low-income borrowers. Republican criticism of Fannie and Freddie was part of an internecine battle in the financial industry between Fannie and Freddie on one side, and their competitors, companies like AIG and Lehman Brothers, on the other. Fannie’s and Freddie’s competitors — and their Republican allies — argued that Fannie and Freddie had an “implicit guarantee” from the federal government that amounted to an unfair subsidy. Peter Wallison (yes, same guy) wrote an article in the American Banker on March 3, 2006 opposing an increase in the “conforming loan” limit that was typical of the criticism of Fannie and Freddie at the time. Fannie and Freddie were already “doing less than conventional lenders in helping the underserved,” Wallison said. Fannie and Freddie “only provided about 4% of credit going to minority borrowers.” Rather than compete with other lenders for profitable mortgages for upper-income borrowers, “Fannie and Freddie should do a much better job of providing affordable home financing to a neglected portion of the mortgage market.” If political bullying is to blame for Fannie’s and Freddie’s conduct, Republicans were at least equally guilty. The financial crisis occurred seven years and eight months into a Republican administration that let the financial industry write its own rules. A narrative of the financial crisis that absolves Republicans and the financial industry requires an acrobatic and brazen imagination. Believing the narrative requires willful amnesia.

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Rep. Brad Miller: Republican Amnesia on the Financial Crisis

Ken Markman: The Advent of Brand Culture

July 29, 2010

Recognizing the Need for Reinvention Whether you work with brands every day or want to develop your own brand, your success lies in a different place than most experts would have you look. We have a tendency to travel the same road, again and again. We talk incessantly about the same problems: The trade, the economy, the licensor, the licensee, the deal. It’s an endless, circuitous, chain of circumstances with little time or effort directed toward understanding the changing consumer. Who is The New Consumer? They are Millennials. They are your strongest advocates. We’re not the first, nor the last to mention them. But, if you don’t know who they are…the short answer is they’re your future. Their values, attitudes and demographic characteristics are different than all previous generations. They are driving digital technologies that are changing media habits; enabling consumers to self-edit, while at the same time, by choice, become advocates of what is meaningful to them. It’s causing brand-marketers and licensors to reconsider how they are reaching the right audience at the right time with the right message in the right place. Like it or not, they are tethered to technology. Successful products offerings enable Millennials to participate in their own experiences. It is tribal; technology is the acoustic rhythm to their narrative. As a result, the convergence of technology (xbox 360 Kinetic, Apple iPad) and the interplay of mobile phones (apps), immersive retail experiences and location based (touch-screen) venues are the new brand media mix. Millennials Millennials, there are about 80 million of them born between 1980 and 19951. They are the prize. They are who you must embrace. They are not just consumers, they are the owners of your brand. They are advocates who dictate purchase patterns and are the voice of authority. Millennials are setting the new social agenda, in a context called BrandCultureTM. We are just beginning to witness the nuances and shifts of their consumer behavior. The real ah-ha will arrive when we unlock the coding of this generation and the hardwiring of their brains. If you know a Cognitive Scientist, hire them; they’ll be your most trusted resource when unraveling the mysteries of your new consumer and the behavior that is driving businesses, brands and culture in the 21st Century. Consumer Attributes They think in pictures: Images are the narrative of culture. 32,000 years ago the earliest of cave paintings served the same purpose. They’re hard wired into our brain. They work like semeiotic messages. Meaning, the images are the language of story-telling. It’s the earliest form of personal and cultural brand messaging. (Consider: Facebook, Flickr and the iPhone). They remember stories; so, don’t repeat facts: Brands are emotional stories. They are experiences, merging interest with intent by igniting curiosity and inviting consumption. “Your brain didn’t retrieve a fact about an experience,” says Douglas Merrill, former Chief Information Officer of Google, “….your brain retrieved the story.” Their brand is their message: Messages are everywhere. They work as reoccurring themes that bond culture. They establish a context and work like scaffolding in your brain. They function in a setting of story-telling and myth-making where symbols are language and images are text. They embrace the “authentic” power of Social Media: Okay. I get it. We know Social Media is important. But, do you really know why? It’s not because of its instantaneous reach or ubiquitous use. Social Media dominates all other media because of its relevance. It’s your story, shared with others, that touches the same core emotions. They use technology: “It’s not just their gadgets, it’s the way technology has been fused into their social lives.” This is the new “collective -connective,” a social dynamic requiring participation — real, authentic participation. It’s that simple. Why We Believe In What We Create? We remember things that are important when they are experienced as stories. Our brains take notice of them. We become conscious of them. They become relevant, take on a purpose and meaning and move to our memory. Cognitive scientists call this process encoding, which means something is being converted from one format into another. Cultural Myth, Story Telling And Recurring Themes Bond Culture It is based upon the uniquely human capacity to symbolically classify experiences, link and then to share them…the process through which an older generation induces and compels a younger generation to reproduce the established lifestyle, consequently a culture that is embedded in a person’s way of life. This multi-generational social condition is called the “Cultural Evolution Theory” which states, “that traits have a certain meaning in the context of evolutionary stages, and they look at relationships between material culture and social institutions and beliefs.” The importance of realism amid such heightened realities in worlds of fantasy make characters, specifically heroes and their powers, when stripped away, real to an audience that wants to believe they really exist. This transformation is a blurring of “reality’s” fantasy. Captured in symbols and an extremely evolved iconography, popular, recurring themes understood completely or not, become folklore…create a suspended disbelief: a new reality for a new generation… borrowing from the past and making them their own…a form of branded history, with its own images indelibly marked on the minds of a new global audience. The images they represent, from myth to folklore, become the legacy that defines a brand. Central to this process is the concept and arch of the Brand…or as we will call it: BrandCulture KKMBRANDS.COM

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Simon Johnson: David Axelrod’s Talking Points

July 14, 2010

David Axelrod was on the Diane Rehm show this morning — a great opportunity to connect with listeners who will actually stop what they are going and pay attention, at least for a short while. He was awful. He had even the most basic facts wrong — it’s not “8 million people have lost their jobs” but rather “more than 8 million jobs have been lost” since December 2007. He rambled — it was hard to see his point, particularly in the introduction. But most of all, there was no narrative — why exactly did we have a recession, why has it been so bad, and why aren’t the jobs coming back? Without a narrative, how can anyone make sense of the past 18 months? Axelrod can choose his narrative — and obviously doesn’t need to agree, for example, with the view that the financial system became dangerous and now needs to be reined in — but he has to say something coherent. You can’t just make isolated points like “the fiscal stimulus helped” or (even more confusing) “we’ll now address the budget deficit.” There was really no explanation for why the economy has become such a difficult place for so many people. How did we go from apparent prosperity in 2007 to the deepest recession of the past 50 years? And how are we going to get the jobs back? Blaming things on the Republicans in some vague sense (e.g., tax cuts) also doesn’t make sense to people. If you want to get partisan, you have to connect the dots in a convincing manner — otherwise people will (rightly) tune out. Does the problem here lie with the economic briefing that Axelrod received before going on air? If so, changing those responsible would be an obvious first step. But the issue may be deeper — or higher up the administration. It is entirely possible, based on what we are seeing and hearing now, that even Axelrod and other members of the political wing of the White House don’t really understand what happened (the big banks blew themselves up) — and why they are now so powerless to do anything about it (after being rescued, the banks fought hard to block effective change). The credit system remains fundamentally damaged and unfixed; this undermines expectations for the future in many ways and slows the recovery of jobs. This post originally appeared at The Baseline Scenario .

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