Further to my post on stakeholder collaboration, a couple of people have pointed out to me privately that I am being too blinkered in my analysis.
Specifically:
=> Having a clear and authentic purpose can be critical to binding together a brand in pursuit of common aims.
=> People don’t always know what they need and need to be led. All pioneer brands shape the status quo rather than just exploiting it.
=> And creating a dream can be essential in pursuit of a vision.
=> And finally, as one NGO client points out, below: dreams can sometimes be the product
“I don’t believe its necessarily brand narcissism to want to create or share a dream. While some want to and should create realities, global creativeness and innovation also need some people to want to create dreams. Many of those may be silly or even self-centred and wrong, but they might still add value to the panoply of life. Remember Greenpeace in the 1970s and 1980s - they changed the way the world looked at environmental issues and created or rather woke up a whole new group of stakeholders.”
In short, I agree with this analysis.
What I actually believe, is that there is a necessary tension between having a clear competency-backed Purpose, while also having a responsive Process to adapt to a fast-changing changing context to leverage effectiveness. I just think too much attention gets paid to defining the first piece and too little to the second, and virtually none to joining these two elements.
The key to connecting these is to work effectively with People - the relationships that keep the organisation relevant and build the ‘license to innovate’ that enables it to reach its purpose.
I remember once hearing a rather large media company expound its ‘values’ - which were the result of many man-months of self-contemplation, and had NOTHING to do with stakeholders’ needs or organisational purpose. The exercise had become almost entirely ‘meta’.
My real point is more that too many organisations get ’stuck’ in the middle ground… rather then effectively navigating between these two poles…through brand learning.
For strongly mission-aligned organisations like Greenpeace the challenge is to learn and evolve with a changing world. Their founding mission will tend to be aligned to a clear need, which will change over time. Recognising this and adapting to it requires collaboration. What’s the point of Body Shop today? What’s the point of Starbucks? Even ‘great’, once purposeful brands get stuck if they cease to collaborate…