Melodies in Marketing

Gary Hamel in late May 2008, gathered together 36 prominent leaders in business and academia to attend Management Lab’s inaugural conference: Inventing the Future of Management. It was structured to address 4 questions and through exercises and interviews, and compile a list of 25 challenges for management in the 21st century.

Four Questions

1. What are the impediments or design flaws preventing organizations to:
   - Adapt to change without trauma
   - Innovate and daily mobilize everyone’s imagination
   - Engage by creating environments conducive to extraordinary contributions
2. Given these systemic impediments and organizational demands in coming years, how should management innovators set the agenda? What big challenges must be addressed?
3. What are some potential solutions to these challenges? Are there exercises, activities, or experiments that would help?
4. What limitations are currently hindering management innovation, and how might they be overcome?

Attendees & Interviews

• Attendees (official list) included Eric Schmidt (Google), Henry Mintzberg (McGill Univ.), James Surowiecki (The New Yorker), Jeffrey Hollender (Seventh Generation), Jeffrey Pfeffer (Stanford Univ.), John Mackey (Whole Foods Market), Peter Senge (Society for Organizational Learning), Kevin Kelly (Wired), and Tim Brown (IDEO) among many others.
• Pre-Conference interviews (compiled document), highlights everyone’s preliminary answer to the four questions in the following format: Flaws, Fixes, and Other.
• Video Interviews with all Attendees (Quicktime format)

Management “Moonshots”

These are the highlighted challenges and solutions as compiled by Hamel and his team, following the interviews and team exercises. For a detailed look (highly recommended), please see the document at the bottom of this (link) page, which gives the master challenges (as numbered list); broad challenges (Blue headings, as extracted from pre-conference interviews); the big challenges (Red headings, as identified from conference team exercises); and the corresponding points to each (black text).

Gary kindly notes that while many of these aren’t ‘new’, they’re important nonetheless. Here they are:

1. Reconstruct the philosophical foundations of management
2. Fully operationalize the ideas of community and citizenship
3. Seek orientation in a higher and broader purpose
4. Distribute (share) the work of creating direction and strategy
5. Develop holistic performance measures
6. Stretch executive timeframes and perspectives
7. Increase trust, reduce fear
8. Create a democracy of information
9. Expand and exploit intellectual variety
10. Substantially reduce the gravitational pull of the past
11. Enlarge and empower the pro-change constituency
12. Expand the freedom for autonomous action
13. Create more space for emergent strategies
14. Create an internal market for ideas, talent and resources
15. De-structure and dis-aggregate the formal organization
16. Dramatically diminish the influence of (formal) hierarchy
17. Reinvent the work of executive leadership
18. De-politicize decision-making
19. Reinvent the means of “control”
20. Transcend the efficiency vs. innovation trade-off
21. (Further) Unleash human imagination
22. Enable communities of passion
23. Create (more) open organizations
24. Rethink management thinking
25. Humanize (the language of) business

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Last week, my friend May Hsu asked me to help produce an 7min interview with Tom Stout, who we met up with at one of his recent home projects.

[Video Link for Email/Other Subscribers]

Although the subject of green homes & gardens is fairly new to me, I did find the learning experience to be interesting. Secondly, I discovered that my wide angle lens attachment can tend to mess with auto-focus in small areas. Lastly I found that while the speakers did do an okay job, the initial topical run-through and rehearsal vastly improved the filming experience and kept the scope of the video in awareness.

You can see some beautiful garden design pictures and learn more about Tom’s business at StoutLandscape.com

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. . .

Sustainability Officers Working with Marketing Leaders - Sometimes sustainability leadership comes as an additional role for a marketing leader. But increasingly this position is being filled with qualified individuals from a technical background. This AdAge article discusses how these two roles can work together to properly communicate green objectives & accomplishments as part of a firm’s corporate social responsibility programs within a public relations & advertising context.
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Vehicle Eco-Calculator - Todd And and his team from Leopardo construction created this tool for management to use for considering the petrol efficiency and ecological impact of proposed vehicle purchases.
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Webinar for Sustainability Reporting 101 - Presented by Addison Communications, this free webinar on sustainability reporting may be worth your while. It’s on Wednesday 23 July, between 1-2pm U.S. EST (GMT+5).
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The Green Bottom Line for Consumers is First Personal - This article by the Hartman Group, a research firm, confirms similar findings about consumer interests as does Clorox and other firms: The personal realms are where people care about the most. Skip through the first 1/3 of this article and also see their great Body-World Continuum Graphic.
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Michael Pollen and What’s Wrong with Environmentalism - In this excellent interview with Yale University, Michael discusses sustainable agriculture, world commodity prices, a 3 prong solution, and some terrific insights that tie into the ’sustainability is personal’ topic within healthier living. Money quote: “your health is inseparable from the health of whole food chain that you’re a part of…there’s a direct connection between the health of the soil, the health of the plants, the health of the animals, and you as eater.”
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Nanotech & The Unknown Risks - This is a very promising field, which can help us design lighter and stronger materials among MANY other uses. But with all new technologies, we must be aware of social, economic, and environmental risks. This article also by Yale University sums up the concerns quite well. As paraphrased by writer Carole Bass, the raw materials of nanotech are most commonly carbon and metals like silver, iron, and titanium which at the nanoscale, take on new and unpredictable properties. This makes them versatile and valuable, but it also makes them potentially dangerous in ways that their larger-scale counterparts are not. Case studies, research, and the current state of affairs are given.
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Sustainable Print Marketing - The choice of paper is a great first step. Until I find or write further on this unique subject, I’ll just point you to New Leaf Paper as the best sheet supplier in North America. But these articles by ‘Notes on Design’ about Ink Considerations and Working with Printers, provide excellent introductions.
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Japanese Packaging Reduction Design - Very clever PingMag article with great pictures and stories. Features include Nissin’s Cup Noodles transition from polystyrene to paper, ‘Nobori’ shop banners turned into tote bags, and aluminum drink cans with concave-convex patterns that reduce material and improve grip (based on research by NASA).
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The State of LEED - While many are familiar with LEED building certification by the U.S. Green Building Council, this article by GOOD Magazine discusses the current state of affairs with LEED certification, some valid concerns, and how the guidelines will be revised in the Fall.
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Nanopaper and its Potential - This article by MIT Technology Review, discusses current R&D into making super strong paper fibers and weaving that results in a material stronger than cast iron and tougher than bone.

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Au Revoir !

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In this complete interview, Tibetan Buddhist leader His Holiness the Seventeenth Gyalwang Karmapa reflects upon the meaning of oneness in this age. Noting how values of oneness hold the Tibetan culture in exile together, His Holiness describes how cultural cohesion has revivified the religious view of metaphysical oneness. His Holiness believes that religion and spirituality must adapt to reflect the evolving human condition, although root causes of suffering remain the same. Spiritual leaders and luminaries can facilitate this adaptation by connecting their spiritual power with the devotional power of the masses. Spirituality can be spread not through commodification, but rather through meaningful and conscious relationships intended to benefit the whole.

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. . .

Although my garden machete couldn’t make the picture, my essential message remains the same:

Reductionism is a noble value for healthy living

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Where can you trim excess in your activities and plans?

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