|
Brand Religion in conversation with Jannie Hofmeyr ( conversion market modeller) Your questions on what should brand management learn from religion have been bugging me. I wanted to respond with something sensible and useful, but couldn't think of anything to say. Herewith some thoughts which may be helpful. First: most of the corporate vision and mission statements that I've come across are trite and useless. Vision: "to be the best", etc!!! Mission: to look after all stake-holders!! We find great examples of both "vision" and "mission" in religion. Paul of Tarsus' "the kingdom of heaven"; Buddha's "nirvana". The most important thing about them is that people respond by saying to themselves "yes, that's where I want to be". A decent vision presents a compelling picture of what "how the world should look". The mission should then be a simple and understandable statement of what the core task is if the vision is ever to be realized. Paul's mission was "make Christians". And he had quite a clear "guide-book" by which people could know a) whether or not they were Christain; and b). whether or not they were making Christians. Buddha's mission was the elimination of "pain". The method was the eight fold path - it could be written on the back of a cigarette box. While I'm rambling: even if the vision wasn't exactly clear - what is "nirvana" after all - the people somehow embodied it in themselves. People got an idea of what Buddha was on about by being with/seeing him, etc. Second (a different, but related topic): myth. When we first looked at "myth" as students, we were taught that "myths" were not false. they were stories created to present a picture of reality to people that would help people make sense of "the meaning of life" and help them develop strategies for coping with life. My teachers taught this point of view to emphasize that our school pupil views of myth (i.e. that they were false, old-fashioned attempts to answer basic questions about existence that people ask) were wrong. "Myth" should be judged on its own terms - and its terms were that it could not be false because it was not trying to be scientific. It was an attempt to provide foundational undestanding of what life was about. And the people who created the myths (the religious genuises of the time) knew that they weren't being scientific, but didn't care because that wasn't the point. Now, the more you read those old accounts (myths, whatever), no matter from which religion; the more you have to be struck by the fact that there is real reasoning and real martialing of evidence in them. In other words, these were not "consciously not science". Quite the opposite. They were the attempts to do back then what Stephen Hawking attempts to do now. They are giant intellectual attempts to come to grips with the true nature of the universe and our place in it. By a long way round, what I wanted to say was this: what makes myth special, is that it is an account of reality which rings true to people and at one and the same time, motivates them. In other words, the pictures that good myths paint, evoke an emotional response which inspires and motivates people. If it is good myth, then the emotions so evoked lead people to behave in a way which is consistent with what the myth implies should be "the best/proper" life. A myth is useless if there is any suspicion that it isn't literally true - that's the point. And in addition, it is useless unless it inspires action. Third, still on "myth": good company history is "myth". Founders of entrepreneurial companies talking about "the old times - when they first started in their garages" or whatever. In this sense, I've noticed that we have "myth" developing in the Conversion Model enterprise. Stories told about defining moments. Battle stories. These histories capture a true record (with some emotional embellishment, probably, but I have to admit to not being able to disentangle what I remember about the emotions of the time from what might be embellishment) and play a very important role in giving people in the enterprise a place in the history. The histories also capture the values of the people involved and in that way, help to create the culture. Now, one of the things about this is that, you don't realize at the time that what you are doing is building a "history". You're just doing stuff. Then, when you sit around with the staff, relaxing with a glass of wine or over coffee, you start the story-telling. Perhaps one of the things that makes it possible is consistency. The stories start to form a history because you can see a certain integrity of aim and value emerging when you look back. One thing about this - I'm beginning to think it may be important that the histories be told by good story-tellers. Leadership matters. It doesn't have to be charismatic. But it must be respected. Some last points: parables are very conscious attempts to "teach". I'm sure, when you get it right, that they're a good way to teach - because I do think that people respond better to anecdotal teaching than they do to grand theories or arid sets of values, etc. But it occurs to me that the medium by which these sorts of things become part of company knowledge/culture, may be just as important as having the stories in the first place. Just giving the people in an organization the ongoing opportunity to access its "wisdom" base may be as important as having a coherent story to tell in the first place.
|
