• Strategy
• Brand
• Culture

It strikes me that these three elements represent an absolute powerhouse of potential for success.

Having a solid strategy is oft neglected. A less-than-consistent focus on brand muddies market presence. And ignoring the power of the internal company atmosphere to impact performance comes at great peril.

If a company aggressively focuses on these three elements, and then effectively integrates their implications, success cannot be too far away.

The root cause of everything we’re experiencing is a failure of holistic thinking in a world of increasingly complex, fragmented, and ubiquitous information.

Think about it. The integrated, “systems thinking” approach advocated by Peter Senge twenty years ago has still not become the operating model. And that failure may well be the root cause that Arbess identifies.

What kind of momentum might we generate — globally — if each of us were committed to holistic thinking, embracing complexity, integrating vast sums of information? Any efforts we make, it would seem to me, might at least serve to minimize the damage currently being wrought by small thinking dogmatists.

Let’s try.

While it’s easy to voice quick agreement with that quotation, it’s a wholly other thing to live and work as if you believe it is true, terribly true. Perhaps it’s the challenge we should embrace each day… to commit ourselves to ongoing change.. change in outlooks, in habits, in methods, in styles, in expression.

And not change for change’s sake, but instead the sort of change that Darwin himself embraced… change based on learning new things that spur survival.

Let’s learn and change today.

The last days have seen headlines celebrating a victory for “the people” over Bank of America, and the bank’s planned and retracted ATM fees. The most common analysis from most media was that it was a triumph for the people, rising up against big banks and demanding change. I believe that is not the core of the story.

Bank of America changed their plans, not just because there was public and negative clamor. They changed because their peers took a different course. Other large banks decided not to charge flat ATM fees. Those decisions at other banks created an option for consumers, and that’s why B of A had to reconsider. Consumers didn’t vote with their feet and leave B of A, but that option existed because the other large banks offered an alternative.

The truth is… the other large banks were the primary cause for the policy change at B of A, not consumer uprising. There was no restoration of significant democratic power. Which news organizations are doing any of that analysis? More importantly, which news organizations are helping our masses do any such analysis?

Perhaps the greatest contribution from Steve Jobs, in my view, is the passion and unrelenting commitment in his life to converging humanities and technology. It was a commitment evident in his personal life, in the software he inspired, in the product design he envisioned, and in the company he built. Apple will be forever a company that embodies this convergence, at least we should hope.

In all the things that all of us do, if we could but be mindful of that convergence of the humanities and new technology. Separately they hold great potential and some peril. Converged they offer nothing but promise.

Let’s do it in memory of Steve Jobs.

The Apple web site said it better than anything else I have read or heard… Apple is a company that only he could have built. It’s so true, we should repeat that sentence and ponder the wisdom there.

Apple is a reflection of Steve Jobs, and only founders have that opportunity and that luxury and that burden. He carried it admirably and proudly at times, at other times clumsily. But he never didn’t love it.

Now the company moves to its next iteration, always — we would hope — with the Steve Jobs vision in its DNA, but it must become the next Apple, pardon the pun. Its real challenge will be to build upon the foundation and the vision of their inspiring leader/founder, but becoming something perhaps even greater, even more innovative, even more standard-setting for the rest of us. Steve would like that.

I recently saw the TED talk by Jill Bolte Taylor, and it was incredibly moving. Here is a brain scientist who experienced a major brain injury, and both lived to tell as well as to process its implications for us. If you’re able, take the 18 minutes to listen to her experience. It is powerful

But if you do, take more than 18 minutes afterward to reflect on the implications for your life. Your brain. Your place in the universe.

It’s well worth the effort.

I had a nearly visceral reaction to that title. OMG (as my kids say), is that a book I also want to read or what? I immediately bought the digital version, and it awaits me making the time.

So why this absolute attraction to someone advocating (I assume) silence? After all, the book could be sub-par, for all I know. I’m guessing Mr. Prochnik posits the reality that we live amidst too much noise. Do we all instinctively know that?

A thought… pending what I learn from the book, I have lately been in the habit of periodically “choosing” silence… turning off noise, from a variety of sources.

It seems a welcome refuge, and therefore telling.

More thoughts on this to come.

Referring to the advantaged and wealthier segment of our citizens as “job creators.” Anyone in business knows you, in fact, are in business not to create jobs, but to generate revenue and profit. If you can do so without adding staff/jobs, you will. Simple as that. And many do. Decisions will be driven based on revenue potential and profitability, not on job creation. Job creation is a secondary gain. If it serves profitability, it will happen. If not, it won’t. However, to characterize an entire set of people as primarily “job creators” is a miscasting of their role in our economic engine.

It is a great denigration of language and the art of communication to engage in this masking and deception… no matter where it comes from.

It occurs to me that thinking too much is not the polar opposite of thinking too little, at least not in business. Could we really suffer from thinking too much, especially in these days of such small thinking?

Perhaps the temptation is to simply think too long. We can have good thinking, deep thinking, quality thinking and simply do it with appropriate speed. Perfection is said to be the enemy of the good, but it is also the enemy of speed. Even thoughtful speediness.

We can move quickly and thoughtfully. It shouldn’t have to be an either-or dilemma.