Influx

Twitter and others tell me that many who attended the presentation by, Blake Mycoskie, the founder of TOMS at SXSW left feeling inspired.

After a few days listening to kids talking about how they wanted to be the next Zuckerberg, in light of recent events, the positive response might not be all that surprising.

What’s interesting about TOMS, Innocent, Howies and a few others of their ilk, is that the founders started off by integrating strong values and principles into their organizations.

They have centers full of purpose.

For them, It was a mandate from the start and they borrowed heavily from the work done by the pioneer Patagonia and to some extent, Timberland.

TOMS certainly has the right to become the next poster child of this corporate revolution with its smart “One for One” concept that ensures everyone wins from the consumer, to the company and those in the developing world. A concept that’s probably strong enough to take into other categories beyond shoes.

If you are starting a business right now, you could and probably should be thinking the same way- why not?

Ad agency people listening to Blake must have been inspired enough to think about what they’re doing themselves and perhaps wonder what they might be able to do to inspire their “old school” clients to think differently about giving.

There are certainly things that can help and shift companies away from their old ways, but with the odd exception, Pepsi, you can’t change a massive, old school culture overnight.

However, incremental change can happen, but it’s still likely to be additive to the core focus of business.

The Economist recently took management guru, Michael Porter, to task for his latest book “Shared Values”, when he tried to suggest he had isolated the next business revolution.

...it is not clear that Mr Porter has come up with any tangible improvement
on the current way of doing business. Is it true that shared value will
“drive the next wave of innovation and productivity growth in the
global economy”, or merely a pious hope? For all we know the next such
wave may come from energy-hungry, socially divisive businesses, given
the paucity of evidence Mr Porter offers to support his thesis. His
arguments have some common flaws: he persistently plays down the
difficult trade-offs that businesses often have to make, even in
ventures with clear potential for social good (eg, advising a ravaged
country on how to cut poverty, at the risk of bolstering its
dictatorship). In arguing that “the purpose of the corporation must be
redefined as creating shared value, not just profit per se,” he risks
giving politicians carte blanche to meddle in the private sector.”

Clearly, there a valid reasons to get clients to think more responsible about their futures and to give back to those in need, but they need to take it one step at a time.

In a frantic, short-term world, companies appear to be really struggling to work out who they even are and what they are doing in the world? You can’t short cut the hard work and simply borrow “social responsibility” from someone else, like Sketchers tried to do when they copied
TOMS, with BOBS.

If they first can discover a purpose, then working out how to give back would be that much easier and may become more integrated with their business goals.

Posted by Ed Cotton