7 new profit opportunities in mobile retail
Without further ado:
New conversation – starter report from friends at futurelab.
The ultimate question – a platform of integration
Giving the expected answer is a billion dollar industry.
The methodologies are the same, the terminologies are the same, the books are the same and even the packaging is the same.
The rules are set not only for the what but also for the how: presentations, keynote speaches, interviews, meetings: all performed the same way; and I do mean: absolutely the same way, by seemingly identical people, working the stage identically, speaking identically, using the same tools (intonations, emphasis, silence, etc, etc. etc.), and even looking the same. The how is an industry by itself, teaching how the same content should be presented (the same way).
All this is even consumed the same way. The perception-reflex jerks the same way to the same anomalies, producing the same response to the same stimuli. The rules are crystal clear. New trends, new paradigms appear every year together with new “thinker-celebrities”, but none of them cross the borders of the expected.
The herd is strong, the herd is big and the herd is open minded towards variations, as long as they come from inside, from within the herd.
The herd is slow. It is incapable of speed. It is dreaming about speed and it NLPs itself to an illusion of speed, but it is incredibly slow; mentally!
The fast movers in the herd are the guys who come up with such revolutionary messages as: “listen to your customers!” Or the more “advanced” ones: “do you have a social media strategy?” “Generation Y is very different from generation X.” The fastest ones may even add: “Have you thought about this?” “Young kids consume media very differently from you!!!” The list goes on.
The herd is not exeptional. It is dreaming about being exceptional and in this dream anything is possible, including that being exceptional is a question of hiring others from the herd to show them how to.
The herd can’t answer ultimate questions.
No matter what industry, or business area, the question is simple:
what do you want?
Only exceptional people give exceptional answers to this question. These exceptional people demand new breed of consultants or advisors to help them accomplish what they want. Consultants who not only “get it”, but bring something substantially more to the table: an element of surprise that injects such a dose of adrenalin to those ready for it, that it drives them for years.
It’s easy to see how the mere proximity of the elite makes the herd very very nervous on the one hand, or very very indifferent, sometimes flat-out ignorant on the other.
And now the nice part: although the probability is very low, once in a while the constallation is such, that the elite do find each other and conspire to accomplish great things.
Sympathy and antipathy – Leadership implications
I think it should be obvious for most that both sympathy and antipathy, once they influence decisions and choices, are disadvantageous in leadership situations.
Sympathy and antipathy are conditioned, emotional states. Sympathy maybe based on weakness and antipathy maybe based on strength. They maybe based on temporary perceptions, opinions, etc. and once conditions change sympathy may become antipathy, and vice versa.
Some managers intuitively know this, and they try to stay neutral, which is laudable; to accomplish neutrality they focus their attention on skills and talents and neturalize the surfacing sympathy or anitpathy by evaluating people based on how they may or may not contribute to the outcome of projects. This may do on a management level.
On a leadership level detachment and neutrality is achieved by keeping awareness focused on context: the principle based concept for the organization. People are evaluated based on to what degree they are aligned to this concept. The more essential the concept, the more it enables organic organization, i.e. enabling the emergence of hierarchies, whereby skills and talent (on the plane of rationality) are appropriately subordinated to intellect and the corresonding style elements (detachment, control, intellectual intensity, etc.).
The magic of meeting
I won’t write here about the difficulties at regular business meetings, about time pressures, etc. What’s interesting to me is new meetings in context of organic organization.
It seems logical at first glance that
- more people mean more chances for meetings
- virtual meeting places like social networks enable meetings and communication based on orientation (interests)
- the more people we meet the less significant most of these meetings become.
At some other time it would be interesting to look into the question of “organizing principle”, which is the foundation of organic organization, in relation to internet based social networks (organizations); it would be safe to assume that it is not accidental that the online social network phenomena appeared precisely when it did, at that particular time, at that particular number of people in total and that number of people online, at that particular % between the online and offline population, etc. Are online social organizations the “style elements” of mass organizations (without guiding principles), or they are the means of an organizing principle to enable increased integration after an era of increased specialization/individuation/differentiation. There is no room to look into these questions here.
Meetings used to have special significance even as recently as the era between the two world wars. People were aware of the significance of meetings on all levels of the social strata, but especially so on the highest level (nobility), where the protocols guiding meetings reflected this awareness to a much greater extend.
1. Introductions.
In previous eras they were facilitated based on the principle of differentiation. A natural context for differentiation was given by the state, which in some parts of the world was still semi organic (e.g. monarcy) even at the beginning of the 20th century, (the principle) manifasting itself in vertical order of classes or castes for example. Within this natural context introductions were facilitated purposefully, depending on what the static principles required in a give point of time and situation.
Today introductions are only rarely facilitated and when they are, it is mostly in context of economics considerations and not principles. It is of course clear that economics should not be confused with principles, even though the majority does consider economics as the ultimate principle that should even provide context for integration (see EU for example). This confusion is accompanied by rather repulsive, yet unavoidable style elements that are pervasive in business: cold calls, gate keepers, inert bureaucracy with its army of busy, incompetent soldiers, people begging and in the same time harassing each other for meetings, openly lying in public and in private, being “evaluated” (understand: judged) by numbers all under the aegis of values, leadership, social responsibility and other factors that in lack of principle foundations are just empty words and feeble ideologies.
2. Chance meetings
Separation and differentiation are pre-requisites for integration. In previous eras these conditions were clearly in place, creating favorable conditions for synthetic integration through organic organization. People’s actions, almost throughout the hierarchy were purposeful, following a natural order of priorities. On a more practical level most people didn’t go where they didn’t belong and didn’t engage in activities that were either inappropriate or they were not born to do (the era of vocations) so to speak. Respect and a particular creative tension between the hierarchical levels was the foundation of interaction. In such a setting chance meetings were considered to be anomalies, and people had a natural sensitivity for anomalies no matter how small, perceiving them -rightfully- as signs of potentially big, life altering experiences. At such meetings people took considerable time and serious care to understand what’s behind the meeting, what maybe the context and the underlying “message” for them.
It’s not difficult to see that today precisely the opposite is true: differentiation and separation has been virtually eliminated not only vertically (vertical social organization) but also horizontally (e.g. lack of privacy). Based on this alone, there is no chance for true integration. The official pseudo-principle is unification which propagates equality by all means, and where there obviously isn’t any, it attempts to create conditions for it, essentially by “levelling down”, pulling people down to the lowest common denominator, thereby trying to make people equal. There are no vocations: anybody may become whatever he/she feels like: statesmen, doctor, engineer, lawyer, soldier, etc. and once it is no longer fun or “satisfying”, they can change what they do like buying a new shirt. This is probably the reason behind the deterioration of most traditional professions (see incompetent doctors, corrupt lawyers, etc.). The choice is largely determined by what’s “hot” in a particular decade. When meetings take place they are mostly cynical and empty and almost always a waste of time.
Considering all this, there is still a possibility today for chance meetings that possess the magic of meetings of previous eras. Especially today, in the era of virtual friendships, speed dating, speed business meetings, ephemeral business relationships that bleed out after an average of 3 conversations, etc., the chance for significant meetings is low, but their magic is higher than ever. Organic organization where people are connected by principles hasn’t been eliminated, it has just receded.