Monthly Archives: July 2009

The Business of Samu: A Martial Arts Perspective on Executive Leadership

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bamboobroomIn addition to working in the business world, I have spent over half my life in the martial arts. I now have students of my own who I instruct. Often times I am asked if I ‘ever had to use it [martial arts] in real life.’

In a world where most of us won’t get into physical fights for the remainder of our lives, martial arts presents some other useful tools and concepts that we can take with us out of the dojo and into the ‘real world’of business and relationships.

I’d like to share one of those concepts with you as I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. The term is samu. Samu simply translated means something akin to ‘small chores’. It is popular among Zen monasteries and used both in the communal upkeep of the place and as a working form of meditation. Samu is also integral to the traditional martial arts dojo.

I believe samu belongs in business too. In fact, it belongs in the heart of every business person – especially the senior most executives. Here are some lessons to be learned from samu:

If something needs to be done, just do it. Don’t wait for someone else. Don’t find reasons to delay. If you know something needs to be done, you should do it. That may be scheduling a meeting, putting together a presentation, or making photocopies for a meeting. If businesses worked this way things would get done sooner. We’ve probably all sat in a status meeting where a task comes up and everyone looks at everyone else and says “I thought you were doing that?”

No one is too big for small tasks. In the dojo, if toilet needs cleaning, clean it, regardless of whether you are a black belt or a white belt. I sweep the floor of my dojo alongside the newest students, often showing them the proper way to sweep (you can tell a lot about a person’s Aikido by the quality of their sweeping). A student who doesn’t head immediately for the broom closet after class is seen in a poor light. They are likely not to be a good student because they value themselves above what they are learning. This is not too different from an executive who values his time more than other people’s. No one really likes that guy and that impacts his ability to lead.

In a traditional tea ceremony hut in Japan the door is so low you have to crawl through it. This is intentional. By design, even the greatest warrior or lord must humble himself and get on his knees to enter. When executives and leaders are willing to spend some time in the trenches now and then, they connect with their employees and customers. They will hopefully also come to appreciate all the hard work that is done to keep that leader looking good for customers, the board of directors, and the media.

Small tasks reveal big insights. Doing the small chores provides experiential insight than can be very important. Ask an experienced mother about baby products. She will have a mental list of those obviously created, ‘by some single guy who’s never tried to feed a baby while answering the phone’.  Doing the small chores is in essence walking a mile in your assembly worker’s shoes. Or your  salesman’s. Or your customer’s. The insights are invaluable in engineering efficiency and innovation into your business.

The greatest risk of clawing your way to the corner office of the executive floor is that once you get behind the mahogany desk you become comfortable, perhaps complacent, and choose to only spend time in the corner office of the executive floor – far away from employees and customers.

Samu builds pride and community. When the CEO is willing to spend time in the trenches it sends a signal. When employees feel empowered to make suggestions and know the leadership relates to them not from an ivory tower but from a shared experience with the ‘dirty details’of the business, it sends a signal. It is the opposite signal the Big Three auto makers sent when they flew to the government hearings rather than driving.

Being ‘out of touch’has cost companies market share, executives jobs and Presidential candidates elections. If you want people to follow in the direction you’re going, they need to believe that you have stood where they stand.

Back in the dojo… Many prospective students walk in my door with romantic notions of the samurai and martial arts. I sometimes begin by explaining to them that  the word ‘samu’is part of ‘samurai’. In fact, samurai means ‘one who serves’. The senior executive should embody this sense of service… to shareholders of course, but also to employees, strategic partners, customers and the community.

I believe samu has much to offer business people. When an executive begins to feel swept up in the momentum of their own accomplishments it is a cue that perhaps it is time to pick up a broom and sweep up the factory floor.

It is at our own peril that we allow ourselves to become to big to do small things.

The Not-So-New Media

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Guterberg Press lithograph

Heralded as nothing short of a paradigm shift, the Internet has matured in many ways to feel like its tradition media kin. For all the hyperbole about a new age spawned by new media, much of the old media patterns have bubbled to the surface as the ‘killer apps’of these new technologies.

It’s also interesting to note that a lot of the goliath companies still hold tremendous sway over how these technologies are rolled into our culture. Though a scrappy start-up may invent the new gizmo du jour, it’s the big corporations with the established money-making business models that define who ultimately gets bought up, rolled up, and widely distributed. Not always of course, but much of the time. No paradigm shift there.

I am in no way saying the Internet, web and Web 2.0 have not had a major impact on the way we do almost everything. I am however, interested in what I see as old-media applications assuming dominant roles in new media. File it under unintended outcomes in technology, but here’s what I mean…

Webpages as newspapers – In the earliest days of the commercial web we were promised a new way to interact with information. Information theorists went on an on about the power of this interactive media and the amazing things it could unlock.

What we got was digital pulp.

Literally web pages took on the form of newspaper and magazine articles and advertising. Most still do today. Interactivity remains largely limited to hyperlinks and banner ads. Since then the ads have become more invasive and we’ve added video embeds to the print format. Admittedly, occasional use of Flash and other technologies allows for interactive applications and charts which provide additional levels of information. Also acknowledged is the added impact of commenting and rating. The ivory towers of content creation have been taken down a peg or two for sure. However its worth noting that this hasn’t resulted in more great content, just more content.

Anyhow, 20 years into its life the vast majority of web content is still text and still littered with print-ads (even if they’re now ‘flash banners’that annoy us more creatively). In fact, a lot of the design trends emerging from Web 2.0 harken back to the clean, open, utilitarianism of the print media. Those Flashed-out, type-hurricane, multi-media sound extravaganzas are usually reserved for product advertising and, in that sense, the sites feel a lot like clickable TV commercials.

The Internet as TV antannae – From Apple TV to YouTube to Hulu the Internet is increasingle being used as a distribution pipe for linear programming. This is really no different than the rabbit ears on the old black and white in grandma’s house. Curiously, it is linear narrative, not interactive programming, that is the growing expression of online video content. In an age where the technology exists for interactive video engagement more people choose the tried and true click and watch products. Now we’re talking about renting movies and playing them on our TV through the Internet. This is distribution pure and simple.

Twitter As lecturne (soap box, megaphone, take your pick) – Originally Twitter asked us to ‘answer one simple question… what are you doing?’It was subsequently panned for the banality of the tweets (‘drinking coffee and reading.’). Then people started trying to make business of it. And what model did they go for? Broadcast. Today the trend is to collect followers like audiences and broadcast to them. Increasingly, these are people we don’t know and often have never met (online or off). That’s no more a conversation than the dude on the soapbox with a megaphone chanting ‘No new taxes’. If I follow 6,000 people how many tweets am I truly aware of (and honestly, now, how many did I choose to follow because I’m interested in them?) Conversely, if I have 6,000 followers how many of them are truly people I know (or who actually follow me because they’re interested in what I have to say)?

Bloggers as spokepeople – The ethos of blogging was originally ‘for the people, by the people’. In theory, bloggers, without the ties to corporate sponsors or media conglomerates could speak their minds and provide honest opinions and commentary (even if they weren’t always fact-checked truths). It didn’t take long for old business concepts to find their way into blogging too. Some bloggers became brands unto themselves and with branding also became marketing tools. Now we see the beginnings of a backlash as both the accuracy and authenticity of a blogger’s words are under ever increasing scrutiny. The line between professional journalist and blogger is getting softer and while most people focus on the democratic aspects of this, there is a flip side which has to do with buying bloggers to talk about you which is no more ‘authentic’than placing an ad about yourself.

Online communities as offline communities – It’s conventional wisdom that the people we engage with online are people we know offline. For all the promise of social media letting us broaden our sphere of acquaintances, most of us use it to stay in touch with people we already know or knew in the past.

The other predominant of social networks is akin to the Twitter-cast model  - friend collecting in an effort at either become a broadcasting brand or for some other means of self promotion.

What we don’t see as much is evidence of people taking advantage of the dreamy-eyed vision of meeting people from far away places that we’d never have known without the miracles of this technology. There isn’t a lot of that going on except on the dating sites.

…Please note, I am not judging these popular applications of new technologies as good or bad. They simply are what they are. If anything, I am interested as to why for all their potential to be something else, the prevailing uses have more in common with previous media models than with the  ’paradigm shifting’revolutionary uses that make the executive summaries of funding decks.

This all came up as I was reading this article. My questions is; If Interactive media is being used in traditional ways, then isn’t all this talk of ‘interactive media’taking over ‘traditional media’just sort of semantics? Isn’t it all evolving media?

For all the talk of revolution our culture tends to drag its feet in adopting change. The first car was called a ‘horseless carriage’because that frame of reference was critical in making the technology accessible.

When we stop looking at new media as new or special or a holy grail or a ‘paradigm shift’and start looking at it as simply the evolution of older media then we can focus on how people are using it now.

I’ll say it again… focus on people… not the technologies they use. What is the nature and context of the lives of people today. The technology surely influences this, but so does geography, age, diet, education, religious upbringing and dozens of other factors.

Yet businesses time and again in dealing with people choose to focus on the new technologies while so much evidence exists that people like using these new technologies is very old ways. There’s a big ‘why’to be investigated there. Who knows what useful insights exist behind that inquiry.

Aligning Incentive & Motivation in the Green Space

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Incentive is a central concept in economic theory. Without proper incentive, it’s difficult to compel action which in the catalyst necessary to extract value from resources (human and material). That’s the capitalist outlook. It has been posited that one failing of communism is its lack of meaningful incentive. Collectivism may not motivate people as much as personal gain. If you’re only going to make the same wage no matter how hard or efficiently you work what is the motivation to work extra hard or to pursue efficiency or quality through innovation? The state of Cuba and North Korea today and Russia after communism’s collapse, bear some of this thinking out (though I do acknowledge other factors are also involved in all three situations). It is also worth noting that China’s ascent accelerated greatly only upon adopting some capitalist aspects into its economic structure. While this is a broad, sweeping account, I believe it is safe to say that incentive matters.

Incentive also figures into business quite a bit. From compensation to marketing to the strategies and tactics involved in buying and selling entire companies. Incentive leads to motivation and motivated people tend to be more productive.

Interestingly, incentive and motivation aren’t always matched to the people being asked to act. I attribute this to the easily-triggered trap of assuming that the people being solicited are like the people doing the solicitation. In short, assuming they want the same things the solicitor wants. Parents deal with this when their child’s life goals(“I want to be a painter”) are different than their own (“We want you to be a lawyer”). Managers deal with it when their employees goals (“Don’t rock  the boat, rocking the boat gets you fired”) are not aligned with that of the company (“Think outside the box.”). Marketers encounter it when their perception of a product’s value (“Thicker, stronger denim”) proposition is not aligned with what the target is looking for in the product (“The label is too big and the cut is weird”)  Sometimes the product itself is simply being sold to the wrong target altogether.

Recently I’ve been working on projects related to the Green space. Here, again, I see ongoing evidence of a misalignment of incentives and motivators between the solicitors (organizations seeking funding) and those solicited (corporations).

Today “Green” is enjoying immense popularity. It has emerged from niche interest to become a national headline topic. It’s on everyone’s agenda from the President on down.  Not coincidentally, we’re in a recession too.  That’s a blessing and a curse for the Green groups. The problem here is two fold.

  1. On the plus side, recession boosts awareness. Without pesky money to think about, we have time to think about other aspects of our lives – like the environment. Corporations, often vilified in recessions for their greedy behavior also turn to social issues during recession for some much needed PR love. However, the very lack of money running around the economy that gives people and corporations time to think about the environment can also inhibit them from acting on it.
  2. When the economy recovers lenders start lending, spenders start spending and soon the popular incentives of growth in a capitalists culture – more money, a promotion, a bigger home, that plasma TV – distract us from those feel-good balance-seeking social concepts. We see this cycle repeated after each recession. The media’s fickleness only compounds our inherent A.D.H.D. and we’re easily swept up in the next big thing (which sometimes is also the next big bubble).

For  Green to sustain itself (financially and as a priority topic among corporate benefactors) especially during boom times, it needs to be recontexualized in terms of incentives that motivate corporate interests These incentives are well known – enterprise value, growth, higher share price, positive brand perception, loyal customers, etc. They are the incentives that surface in marketing campaigns and around finance discussions.

In this sense, if Green organizations want to appeal to more than the philanthropy wing of a company they must translate the incentives that motivate them (protecting the earth, reducing pollution, saving wildlife, conserving resources, etc.) into those that motivate corporations.

How might carbon offset, renewable energy, pollution reduction, resource conservation etc. contribute to reducing manufacturing costs or improving customer purchase intent? What is the quantifiable value of these outcomes in terms of sales, marketshare, or enterprise value?

Conversely, because today Green tends to be more expensive than the environmentally less-friendly options, it might be worth looking at the negative angle of the argument (though the marketing folks don’t like to lead with a downer). For example:

Let’s assume a loyal customer base of 100,000 people.

You produce 100,000 widgets at -1¢  cost/widget  saving $1000 each month supplying widgets to your full customer base. Over a year that’s $12,000 saved by using a less environmentally-friendly manufacturing process.

Then let’s say you get ‘outed’via the Internet which feeds into the mainstream media spreading the word quickly. (A very real scenario in a Twitter-impulse world.)

In response, 10,000 customers (10% of your audience) stop buying the widget because it pollutes the environment.

That’s 10,000 fewer $1 transactions per month or $120,000/year in lost revenue.

Even at 2% customer base reduction, you still end up losing twice as much as you saved using a polluting process vs. a Green one. (Say nothing for the flaming you get from bloggers, activist Facebook groups, nosey reporters, etc., all of which will cost money to turn around through positive PR and advertising.)

Admittedly these numbers are oversimplified, but the point is clear. Rather than talking to corporations with an emotional appeal positioned as a charity with soft metrics built around it, Green interests should seek actionable, consumer insights about their customers, the corporate executives. Doing so might reveal a way to address Green as a core business proposition that impacts a company’s balance sheet.

Sure, the corporation’s marketing arm will put a feel-good consumer-facing spin on it for advertising purposes and glean that benefit as well. But alone, positive feelings and goodwill are not likely to motivate a corporation to look any further than that small, discretionary philanthropy budget.

Meanwhile an opportunity is lost to Green interests and corporations alike because more and more, the trajectory of the planet, its resources, pollution level and the collective cultural environment consciousness lends itself to a truly quantitative ROI for incorporating Green not as marketing spin but as a core operating principle.