Back in early June, I received my Nice Ride key (pictured above). I had decided in late May to take advantage of the discounted price for an annual subscription, knowing that there would be days where a ride from work to home or vice versa would be more enjoyable than my typical walk. What I didn't expect was to enjoy riding a bike again so much.
Somewhere around my second or third ride, I decided that it would be fun to document some of the places I rode the Nice Ride bikes over the summer on Instagr.am, using the hashtag #summerofnicerides. It was inspired by some of the women in the Twin Cities who started using #summerofdresses last year and are doing it again this summer.
Not long after a few shots were posted, Arik emailed me to ask if I would be open to others joining in to share their adventures using the hashtag as well. I of course agreed and thanks to Arik and the good people at Bike Walk Twin Cities and Nice Ride, it has now found a home on the web for others to share stories and pictures of their bikes, favorite rides and adventures.
You can read more about it on the BikeWalk blog, including how to participate. Or, just go to the "Submit" section on the Summer of Nice Rides blog. It would be great to get more people to take part, so consider this me asking you to join in if you ride a bike. You don't have to use the Nice Ride system and it's really pretty simple to upload a picture, so I hope you do.
Thaz shared a "quote" from a post by Maria that came from this TED Talk by Maajid Nawaz. The quote, wasn't actually a quote, but appears to be Maria's summarization of the first part of Maajid's talk. The statement was as follows:
Regardless of it being a quote or a note, and my liking a lot of what Mr. Nawaz had to say, I don't agree with this notion of identity definition or the term for our current era as "the age of behavior."
Ideas and narratives have always been a part of our identity construction and communication, and our behaviors have always reflected our beliefs about ourselves and the world. What's true throughout time is that our beliefs about these things shape our identities. The change lies in how much information is available to us for our identity constructions today vs. the past and how the exposure to that information has changed our belief structures over time.
In the past (when religion and ethnicity more easily defined our identities), our exposure to new information was tightly controlled and the experiences that shaped us were limited to the geography we lived in and could relatively easily travel around in. At this time, there were fewer expressions of the main religions of the world and people's ethnic make-up was far less diverse. Because of these factors, it was easy to quickly understand someone's identity based on these simple factors.
With the advent of the printing press and new forms of transportation, those boundaries expanded and have continued to expand at a faster and faster rate ever since. As new forms of information distribution and transportation have come to be, our exposure to new and diverse beliefs, values, ideals, etc, have expanded and we have adopted things we liked from other cultures, religions, and the like.
Because of this, the number of expressions of the major religions of the world is far greater today than in the past, as is the ethnic make-up of the world's population. This has made it nearly impossible to define identity by religion and ethnicity alone. Because of how diverse the world's population has become, now we have to rely on people's actions (behaviors) to be the primary communicator of their identity more so than we did in the past.
So, let's not call this the "age of behavior" as behavior has always been a key form of communication, including expressing one's identity; and let's not say that it's a new thing to have identity defined by ideas and narratives.
We're living in the Information Age, which is to say that we are living in an era where we are instantly, continuously and globally connected to different ideas and narratives. Through this, our beliefs can evolve at a far more rapid pace than ever before. This also means that our identities can evolve faster—if we're open to it. But that's another subject all together.
I came across this video from Gary Hamel the other morning and thought it was worth sharing. The man doesn't lie. We've got to change the way we operate if we're going to get different results. It is so simple and so obvious, but is one of the most challenging things for a large, well established organization to do.
While this is an inspiring talk, it made me reflect on something that's been rattling around in my brain for a while now. Yes, we have to change the way we manage our organizations. But that will only go so far. To drive real change, we have to change the way our organizations are managed.
Wait, what? Isn't that the same thing, just flipped around? Are you trying to pull a Jedi mind trick or something?
No.
It's not the same thing. Everything is connected to something else. Changing the way you manage your organization is a good start, but it's only that—a start. If you want to create real change, you can't just change the way you manage your organization. You have to change the way your organization is managed.
In Onward, Howard Schultz discusses how he saw that he needed to change the way stores were being deemed as successful or failing if he were to succeed in turning the brand around. What he learned in the early stages of his return was that through Starbucks becoming a public company, the emphasis on providing a great customer experience shrunk over time and a higher importance was placed on generating positive same store comps for the sake of driving up the stock price.
This change of focus drove decisions that made selling more cups of coffee greater in importance than selling perfect cups of coffee and providing an exceptional customer experience. It also led to stores deciding to do things that didn't align with the heart of the original Starbucks brand, like selling stuffed animals because they could make a high margin on them.
After seeing this at store after store, Schultz decided that this behavior had to end if the brand was to survive in the long run. In the first quarterly earnings call of 2008, he announced that the company would no longer be publicly reporting their same-store sales. He immediately received negative feedback from the financial community, but he stood his ground rather than caving in to pressure from Wall Street.
He knew that he had to change the behaviors of the partners (what Starbucks calls their employees at the stores) and to do so, he had to change how they were being judged, recognized and rewarded.
In the chapter titled, "Elevating the Core," Schultz says, "Eliminating comps from the radar was my attempt to send a message to Starbucks' partners: We will transform the company internally by being true to our coffee core and by doing what will be best for customers, not what will boost comps."
It's funny how simple this idea of "changing what you reward to change behavior" is, yet how hard it seems to be to actually implement for so many companies. There are plenty of reasons Starbucks could have chosen not to do this—the pressure from Wall Street being a very big one. However, they did it anyway and it's one of the core pieces to their turnaround. They changed the way their organization was being managed by taking control back from the investment community.
To create significant, lasting change, you can't just fix things on the surface. As I said earlier, everything is connected. It's all a chain. To create real change in a person, you have to change their heart. The same is true for an organization. The same is true for a system. Organizations do not operate in isolation. They're part of a larger system.
If we really want to create the kind of change we all talk about in our industry and in the world, we've got to work our way to changing the heart of the systems these things are a part of. Until then, it's going to be slow and often frustrating.
In this Cannes Lionscase studyvideo, we can see that CHEIL asked themselves how they could get the Home Plus store to come to more people rather than asking how they could get more people to come to the store. Sometimes, simply flipping the key question around is all you need to land on a great idea. It's by no means a new way to generate ideas, but I think it's an often forgotten one.
As an interesting related note regarding the awarding of the Media Grand Prix Lion to CHEIL for this work, AdAge.com shares the following (Ms. Francoli Plaza was the jury chair for the media category):
"It was pretty unanimous. ... When we saw this case most of us appreciated the difference and the consumer insight," said Ms. Francoli Plaza. While there was wide agreement about which agency and campaign should be awarded the top prize, the topic of effectiveness and to what degree results should be factored into the deliberation process prompted much debate, the jurors said. (In the end, effectiveness wound up taking a backseat to creativity.)
It would appear that before they set out to judge the work, there was a debate about where to place greater emphasis, creativity or effectiveness. The planner in me cringes at diminishing the importance of effectiveness, but the creative spirit in me champions their decision in this case. This age-old debate has a far different context in the modern era of media versus its relevance to the past.
In the past, the media landscape was relatively constant. Today, we're living in a media environment that is changing at an exponential rate. Everything and anything can become media with the right idea behind it. Because of this, we need to encourage creativity and diminish fear of failure.
When an idea is brought to life that took a risk and showed positive results, we should celebrate it so as to encourage others who have been afraid to take risks to step futher out towards the ledge. Very few people and brands have the courage to be bold leaders. Most like to be near the end of the early majority when it comes to adopting new ideas. The more these brands see others doing new things, the easier it is for them to inch towards them.
So, while I hate seeing effectiveness take a back seat to creativity, if we're going to have a show that celebrates creativity and inventiveness over effectiveness in some cases, Cannes is the place to do it. From my view, it's the only show that has the attention of both the advertising world and the major brands/clients. By sharing and celebrating ideas that broke the mold while demonstrating any kind of positive results, we'll see more ideas in those same areas that improve upon the original idea to create greater effectiveness.
Ultimately, that leads to a better future for business and advertising alike. And that, the planner in me can definitely live with.
Last weekend I went through a bunch of my notes over the past year and dropped a few of the thoughts that were there into these slides. These were all things that I meant to write a post about but never got around to writing.
The purpose for doing this was two-fold. First, now that I'm wanting to get back to writing more often, I'm hoping that this will give me some fodder and inspiration. Secondly, I'm playing with developing a more consistent slide look/feel for things on here and this is what I'm liking the most of what I've tried so far.
If anything in here piques your curiosity or spurs a thought you want to chat about, drop me a note in the comments. Same goes for any thoughts on slide look/feel.
