I was recently speaking on chat to a friend of some problems I had with trying to impress on
the company, the seriousness of their disconnect with their end
clients who were, after all, you know real people… (like them?) it sort
of went like this..
We are all much more creative than we give ourselves credit. Sorry for
my disconnection with you … I have been trying every which was I can to
relate and communicate to non-creative (C level Operations &
Executive personnel ) to get them to comprehend what I consider as real
business concerns … they consider as irrelevant emotive concepts like
customer experience, engagement, feelings, and other more tangible
concepts such as sustainable growth (that they understand) and future
growth strategies that require innovative and out of the box thinking ..
any real growth without innovation is a fantasy .. future real growth
will come from disruptive products and services that fracture and
re-define the markets
I am certainly passionate about those areas …. where the corporate
world think they are operating in a vacuum …. the psychological aspects
of individual C Level career success restricts focus, narrows perspective & may break engagement & understanding of customers
– I think it more than breaks the connection with the customers …
except for those very rare people who have their feet on the ground –
not too many of those …
Its amazing the mess that this one issue is causing the likes of News Corp, HP, Netflix, Yahoo and the obvious one is the looming changes facing Mass Media … you know Film, Mass Media (TV)+ Cable + Newspaper + Magazines .. Amazon must be loving this ..
I am been quiet on the blog, because I have been trying to process
the so many changes since the uncloaking of the morally reprehensible
behaviours of News Corp and a separate free lesson on how to damage your
brand and lose over a million of subscribers courtesy of NETFLIX,
Yahoo and the bickering … and the fork in the road that HP find
themselves — put there through their own bad strategic planning … and
lets not forget Delta who are without doubt the singularly worst client
and customer culture I have ever observed in a company ….. and finally
what the death of a truly inspiring creator, Steve Jobs
will mean for Business in general but for Apple in particular, so I
will come back here … give me a while to compose my thoughts and we will
get at it.
PerhapsI can point to a letter sent by a recent passenger of Delta by
my friend Sandra Maxey … here is the link … @sandymaxey Letter to Delta Airlines CEO – http://bit.ly/qcPxoK
But a couple more points while we are here, I am wondering if we are all in the mess because of the MBA
Program … it may make business understandable, but business is not a
thing, each company is a life, made up of their own dreams and
aspirations, full of individual people whom it might be nice to think
are actually going in the same direction as the company, (most aren’t
because of flawed Corporate cultures) and the most important aspect,
their customers, who are all real people, who want to be valued and
engaged … and refused to be categorized and sorted just so it makes it
easier for the company to dissociate themselves from this truth ..
companies are people … so are customers, people even own it … (maybe not
directly) people manage it, operate in it, and who they sell their
product or service to … you need to value them or basically become
irrelevant .. you will cease to exist.
One last observation, the large aspect of the MBA attitude is one of
expedience .. which is kind of abhorrent to me .. however that aside,
recently I heard that Harvard and Wharton Schools were adding ethics
classes to the MBA .. what a total wast of time, ethics, principles and
integrity is not something you can teach, it is something that has to be
part of your values, the actual make-up of your personality – if not,
when you are put under pressure they (ethics) will not be your go to
code of conduct.
So I would say again, to change the way the world thinks we need to
teach our children what is really of value – and guess what its not
money .. more later
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