Gotta love those folks at Zappos. They screw up, they explain, they apologize, and they fix it.

And we applaud.

Why? Because Zappos’ actions support the company’s stated purpose, and Zappos’ actions support its claims about who they are as a company. It’s Authenticity in Action.

The Zappos’ Mistake Story in a Nutshell

An online pricing error at 6pm.com ( Zappos.com’s outlet & clearance site) puts everything on the site, even Manolos, at $49.99 or less. The glitch goes unnoticed from midnight to 6am, when it is finally corrected. Despite the potential lost revenue,

Zappos decides not to take the official line in its own boilerplate in their Terms of Use:

(“In the event a product is listed at an incorrect price … due to error … we shall have the right to refuse or cancel any orders placed for product listed at the incorrect price.”)

Instead, Zappos gives its customers the benefit of the incorrect, lower price.

Aaron Magness, director of brand marketing at Zappos, wrote on their blog:

While we’re sure this was a great deal for customers, it was inadvertent, and we took a big loss (over $1.6 million – ouch) selling so many items so far under cost. However, it was our mistake. We will be honoring all purchases that took place on 6pm.com during our mess up.

In a postscript to that blog post, CEO Tony Hsieh:

- Explains the details that lead to the error,
- Admits that they were planning a system upgrade but hadn’t gotten there yet,
- Promises that the system was being fixed, and
- Assures us that no one involved was fired.

Zappos did some problem analysis, they identified the systemic issue, leaders took responsibility, and the problem was not blamed on the poor folks who made the coding error. That’s learning from mistakes, and that’s leadership.  And, for Zappos, it’s authentic behavior.

Authentic Actions Demonstrate Core Values

Their response to the pricing error is authentic behavior, because of how Zappos’ response demonstrates their commitment to their core values.

Specifically, the actions demonstrated value #7: Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication.

“It’s important to always act with integrity in your relationships, to be compassionate, friendly, loyal, and to make sure that you do the right thing and treat your relationships well.”

Also, Zappos’ actions demonstrate another core value, value #1: Deliver WOW Through Service.

Nothing says ‘wow’ like honoring the mistaken price, even when you aren’t required to. Loyal Zappos’ customers may have gotten used to the occasional free overnight delivery, so that ‘wow’ might be tired. However, to have a business accept responsibility for its errors in a way that benefits the customer? That’s still rare, and remarkable.

Even Authentic Actions are Vulnerable

Some people did question the lag time between the discovery of the error, the posting of the explanation, the subsequent followup by the CEO, and Hsieh’s tweeting about the situation. Could the lagged tweeting and information sharing about the event have been intentional, to help Zappos take advantage of the mistake by generating (even) more positive press all the way into this week?

Certainly, the “free” publicity about the $1.6 million dollar mistake has generated some buzz for Zappos. It has also increased people’s awareness of the 6pm.com site/business itself — and so the whole situation can be seen as a $1.6 million dollar ad spend.

Maybe that’s cynical, and maybe there’s some truth to it. Maybe it’s both.

Authentic behaviors are vulnerable to second-guessing by observers.

Observers never really know whether actions have occurred for the reasons that organizations claim, or whether these reasons are just post hoc spin. With authentic behaviors (like altruistic behaviors), it’s not hard to find a more base, less noble, instrumental explanation for these actions.

Authentic behaviors operate at two levels– they express real commitments, and they also generate positive reactions from others, because people recognize these authentic  actions as the ‘right thing to do’.  The positive reaction is nice, but it’s not the reason for the action itself.

Would it have been somehow more ‘authentic’ if Zappos had not been public about their mistake and their response?

The estimable Seth Godin, in response to a comment in Jeff Jarvis’s post on Buzz Machine, pointed out that keeping the mistake secret, quietly honoring the prices and working to ensure that word didn’t get out would not have demonstrated Zappos’ commitment to transparency. It would have been inauthentic behavior. Thus, Godin asks, “Why exactly is it wrong for Tony to tweet this, whenever he tweets it?”

Responding to Mistakes, Organizations Demonstrate Their Character

I’m sure that some wise person stated, in a pithy way, that the ways we respond to mistakes demonstrates our real character. This is true for individuals, and for organizations.

Laurel Papworth notes that Zappos’ error — and response — is the kind of mistake that ends up being great for a company’s reputation. In social media “mistakes often make, more than break, a company’s reputation.”

Social Media and Reputation

Social media is important for reputation not just because social media make a mistake more public, but because they make the resolution of that mistake public. Social media allow us to see both the breach and the resolution. Not to mention, social media allow use to see everyone  else’s opinion about the quality of the resolution, amplifying and supporting our own conclusions.

By itself, this particular action by Zappos doesn’t prove that Zappos is an authentic organization. Instead, it’s Zappos’ pattern of actions, over and over, that create an ongoing experience of Zappos as an organization striving to demonstrate its values through its actions.

That’s the kind of authenticity that no amount  of money can buy.

See Also:

(from back before I liked Zappos: If Stephen Colbert were the CEO of Zappos: Explaining a layoff to your employees

Hat tip to @TechDirt for the story.

If organizations are going to be successful at attracting good members and good clients or customers, they have go beyond showing how they are different from other, similar organizations.

They have to take that extra step, and demonstrate why these differences are meaningful.

“Meaningful difference”

“Meaningful difference” is an important concept in both organizational theory and actual business practice. “Meaningful difference” is how we sustain competitive advantage, and often also how we sustain our reason for being. After all, if other organizations and products are just like ours, why would ours matter?

How organizations and managers create and maintain “meaningful difference” has been on my mind as I’ve been talking with ThisGuy about a challenge his business is facing. ThisGuy has a new competitor that aims to grab his market share by imitating ThisGuy’s product.

This new competitor is creating a problem for ThisGuy, because he isn’t quite sure whether his organization, his product or his own voice is, in fact, different in any meaningful way. (I know, it seems crazy, but it is actually a problem!)

I’ve been trying to work through the problem in the abstract so that I can help with the problem in real life. Let me start by unfolding the issues. Then, I’ll share the real-life specifics.

Meaningful Difference, in theory

Managing the tension between being similar and being different from others is an ongoing organizational challenge.

Organizations, especially new ones, go to great lengths to look like other organizations in their niches/markets, so that they can be recognized for being a certain type (e.g., bank vs. restaurant) and so they look legitimate. At the same time, organizations try to emphasize what makes them distinctive, in part because this gives them a way to be distinctive and in part becuase it gives stakeholders a reason to chose that organization over others.

Usually, when organizations are trying to find ways to be meaningfully different, they focus on authenticity… on aligning who they are with what they believe with what they do.

Being authentic, being ‘who we are’, requires us to express both what’s similar about us as well as what’s distinctive about our identities. The assumption is that any characteristics that define ‘who we are’ as organizations, whether these characteristics are similar to others’ or distinctive to us, are somehow meaningful. If they weren’t meaningful, the organization wouldn’t be part of the organization’s self-definition. The presence of these characteristics in the organization’s self-definition is proof that they matter.

If an organization is continually striving for authenticity, for aligning who it is with what it believes with what it does, the organization will always be working to express its meaningful differences.

Authenticity is an engine for sustaining differences that are meaningful.

These meaningful differences matter, because they give customers and members a reason to pick your organization over others.

In the marketplace, organizations that sustain meaningful differences (by being authentic) establish competitive distinctiveness. Organizations that cannot sustain meaningful differences can easily be replaced by other organizations. The competitive business challenge is to find and sustain meaningful differences.

Meaningful Difference, in practice

Now here’s the real-life example.

• ThisGuy has a small, profitable online business going — a market niche which his site has been serving effectively for a few years now.

He’s got 4 people working part-time to help him generate and edit content and to manage technology and fulfillment issues. In addition to his ‘real’ job, ThisGuy guides the site’s content and perspective. It is his expertise that shapes the site’s voice and that adds unique value to the content.

• It appears that the strategy of the competitive site is to copy ThisGuy’s business, lock, stock and Tshirt.

As ThisGuy sees it, there is not that much currently differentiating the two sites– they both are serving the exact same small niche, they both are offering content to fill clients’ needs, both going after similar targeted advertisers.

• It takes some expertise to understand clients needs and to know how to serve them, but it appears to This Guy that TheOtherGuy has expertise similar to his own.

Moreover, TheOtherGuy has a perspective on/philosophy about the niche that is similar to ThisGuy’s own. The two Guys don’t even have different styles– the content of both sites has a similar voice.

• Well, it’s actually even worse than that…it seems pretty apparent to ThisGuy that TheOtherGuy has been combing through ThisGuy’s content, taking the most popular posts (and the comments attached to them) and mining them for ideas.

[How does ThisGuy know that? Well, one giveaway is that funny terms used by ThisGuy pop up in TheOtherGuy's posts. True, ThisGuy did not register the phrase "The Manwich Generation" to talk about dads who care for their aging fathers, but doesn't it seem like more than a coincidence that the phrase turns up on TheOtherGuy's site?]

From ThisGuy’s perspective, it’s only a matter of time and focus before TheOtherGuy mines ThisGuy’s site, generates a similar ‘bulk’ of content, adds a bit of his own patter, and steals his market.

Meaningful Difference: Does it always exist?

What, if anything, can ThisGuy do about the new competition?

What I keep coming back to in my conversation with ThisGuy is the issue of ‘meaningful distinctiveness’. I’ve been asking him things like:

• Is there anyway that you, ThisGuy, are meaningfully different from TheOtherGuy? (No, he says.)

• Is there anything meaningfully different in what you present on your site? In how your site looks? (No, he says. When someone copies you … )

• Is there anything meaningfully different in the ways that you understand the market and the product? (No, he says. TheOtherGuy is so much like me it’s almost freaky.)

The only difference ThisGuy can see is that his site has been running for two years, and he’s just got more content on it.

Ultimately, ThisGuy is suggesting that there is nothing meaningfully different that he has to offer.

Could this really be true?

I have so much invested in the ideas that:

(1) if you are authentic, you will be different, and
(2) “who you are’ is inherently meaningful,

I can hardly believe that emphasizing his own authentic self and authentic perspective might not be enough for ThisGuy to remain competitive.

While I have a few other more tactical suggestions about how he could use his catalog and archives to create some distinctive products, truth is these will be easy for TheOtherGuy to copy, eventually.

What else can ThisGuy do to sustain create his competitive advantage?

See Also:

What’s going on at my favorite Starbucks?
Response to 9/11 Tragedy Revealed Business Schools’ Values
Organic Discount or Competency Penalty? The real reason organic wines sell for less

This week’s story about feminists at Newsweek who have publicly challenged that magazine for failing to make progress against gender discrimination encouraged me, as I’m sure it encouraged many others.

To see someone, anyone, make a prominent critique of a prominent organization, and then to have that organization make this criticism public, should have inspired enthusiasm.

More importantly, it should have inspired conversation about how to get Newsweek moving, how to hold Newsweek accountable, and how to advocate for change within our own organizations.

I know that few blogs address organizations per se, so I didn’t really expect to see many posts like mine. But. I did expect to see some posts holding Newsweek accountable.

But you won’t find that conversation on the interwebz today. Instead, the conversation is all about the advocates themselves.

Support for these feminist advocates?

You’d think that feminists around the blogosphere would have rallied to the cause of the Newsweek 3. After all, advocacy requires courage, and courage requires social support.

If you’d scanned some of the major feminist blogs, you might have expected them to highlight the advocates efforts, bring up their own stories in support, encourage them, call for more candor and action at Newsweek, and generally support these women.

Well, you’d need to look pretty hard for that conversation.

What you’ll find, instead, is a conversation about how the women and their advocacy is not good enough. You’ll read that these three women –white women, college-educated women, physically able women, English as first language women – can’t possibly represent “feminism”.

Neither they nor their analysis is diverse enough. Their efforts are trashed because the Newsweek activists fail to discuss race, class, ability, sexual orientation or any other important intersectional analysis of sexism.

Raising a point, Burying the lede

While these critics raise some very important points that must be addressed about the complexity of feminism and the requirement that feminists consider all women and not just women like themselves, and while the advocates offer a not-terribly-enlightened explanation in defense of their article, the whole clusterflock diverts energy from the main issue of the article and the advocacy.

Yo, people.

A national magazine published an article about its own gender discrimination.

Are we going to ignore this while we bash the advocates with the syllabus of Feminism 101?

It is true, and it’s almost embarrassing, that the Newsweek journalist-advocates did not address the intersection of race & gender (or class, or ability, or sexual orientation or gender performance, or cultural group) in their criticism of Newsweek. It’s upsetting that they failed to note or quote any woman of color in their article. It’s misleading to represent feminism with photos and illustrations of only white women.

Yes, their analysis is simplistic. Yes, they could and should have done better to be appropriately inclusive and to represent feminism in its sophistication and breadth.

But they did something.

These women took a personal risk.

These women took a professional risk.

These women challenged a power structure.

These women are actively learning what it means to be a feminist and what it means to advocate for women.

Shouldn’t we be talking about what they did do, and how to take their advocacy further?

If we who claim to support feminism and feminists spend our energy criticizing women (or men) who make an effort to advocate, by showing them over and over where they screwed up and where they are inadequate, what are we teaching each other? What are we failing to learn?

Julia Berry, at InHerImage, asks a key question:

With these issues being as complicated as they are, how can we truly address racism and sexism at a deeper level? And how can we do so in a way that builds strength, rather than more division and disenchantment? I would love to learn how, without glossing over or ignoring the various issues at hand, we can support each other and continue to make progressive change.

For thoughtful analysis, see also:

Newsweek And Sexism by Echidne of the Snakes
Missing the point about race and feminism by Allision at EconomicWoman
Sexism at Work: Young Women, Newsweek, and Gender…and Race Julia Berry, at InHerImage
What’s wrong with this feminist picture? by Nona at GirlDrive
Will Newsweek Respond to Claims of Sexism?

Photos of vintage Barbies from Tinker*Tailor on Flickr

I would love to have been in the room when three journalists at Newsweek proposed that Newsweek publish their article criticizing Newsweek for gender discrimination.

Why? You know you’re getting close(r) to authenticity when you can have a recursive sentence like that one written about changing things that are wrong at your organization.

Here we have an organization that was sued for gender discrimination, recently accused of sexist (mis)representations of ‘news’, and characterized as a card-carrying member of the liberal media elite, publishing an article that criticizes itself. The article is written by three journalists–  Jessica Bennett, Jesse Ellison and Sarah Ball– who have both the chops and the perspective to do the story right.

Thus, Newsweek has opened up a national dialogue about gender, about gender discrimination, and about its own authenticity.

But now that the dialogue is open, how will Newsweek actually respond?

This story is especially interesting from an authenticity perspective given the relationship between ‘who’ the magazine is, what it’s like inside the organization, and the product the organization creates. It may be that the experience and practice of sexism within Newsweek influences the intended or implicit sexism perceptible in many of Newsweek’s issues.

What’s encouraging about this story?

We have to start first by dispensing with what isn’t encouraging:

• It’s not encouraging  that there would be gender discrimination in evidence at Newsweek or any other American organization.

• It’s not encouraging that employees would experience gender discrimination, or see gender discrimination within this organization.

• It’s not encouraging that it is women, themselves, who are raising the issue.

It would be great if some of the advocates were men, and it would be great if there were more women and a more diverse set of women, leading this charge. (Surely, there are more than three women and more than young, white women, working at Newsweek?) It would also be encouraging if patterns of gender discrimination were noted and actively addressed by the organization’s leadership. (Perhaps they have, we just don’t know.)

What is encouraging, then?

1. These women still have their jobs – suggesting that they are still seen as  valuable employees despite their outspoken critique.

2. These advocates were given an outlet to publicize their criticism of the organization — suggesting that Newsweek is willing to open itself up to examination and critique.

3. The organization itself has promoted their critique — suggesting that the organization is willing to participate in (if not facilitate) the conversation about its commitment to gender equity. This is a great start. But what else should Newsweek be doing and sharing, if they are to respond authentically to their employees’ concerns?

An authentic response to these claims of sexism would include:

1. Information from Newsweek about the steps they are taking to listen, understand and respond to these concerns.

2. A more explicit, documented, qualitative and quantitative analysis of what the problems actually are.

3. A response from Newsweek’s top managers leadership– the publishers and editors.

4. A commentary and analysis from Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist Anna Quindlen (Newsweek’s own 2nd Wave feminist)

5. Documentation of Newsweek’s program for change.

And, for fledgling feminists and advocates everywhere, what I’d really like to see next is the story of how this all came about. No one who has ever raised a concern within her organization about gender issues will fail to wonder at the dynamics of this situation. We might be able to learn something from their story about how to advocate effectively in our own organizations.

Let’s hear more about the backstory

In anticipation that this story will continue to unfolding in a productive way, I want to hear how  Jessica Bennett, Jesse Ellison and Sarah Ball

• Became aware of the gender discrimination around them
• Connected with each other to share their concerns
• Devised a plan for raising the issue
• Mustered the courage to advocate.

I’d also like to hear how they have been supported (or not) by their colleagues and friends inside and outside of Newsweek. Jessica Bennett, Jesse Ellison and Sarah Ball have launched a blog, EqualityMyth, where we can follow them as their consciousness rises. Perhaps they’ll share some of this backstory on the blog.

If Newsweek really wants to respond to its employee advocates in an authentic way, it needs to let us all see ‘the rest of the story’ as it unfolds.

We’d love this to be a story about successfull and authentic responses to an important criticism. We’d love this story to be about building alliances, taking responsibility, moving forward, and improving the organization for everyone. It’s encouraging that Newsweek employees care enough about their organization and enough about social justice that they have become advocates with Newsweek. It’s encouraging that Newsweek has shared this story with us publicly.   And now, we need to hear about specific concerns, specific plans, and a demonstrated commitment to change from the rest of the organization.

Newsweek, it’s time to hear from you.

Thanks to Tracy Clark-Flory for her story on Slate/ Broadsheet: ‘Calling out “subtle sexism”‘ for calling attention to the Newsweek advocates.

See Also: Book review of Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message That Feminism’s Work Is Done, by Susan Douglas. Reviewed by Jessica Bennett. (Maybe she also felt empowered by the book?

Note: I don’t think that this article can easily be dismissed as a ploy for generating traffic/readership. Despite editor editor Jon Meacham’s efforts to redirect the magazine towards “reported narratives” and “argued essays” (of which this story is a good example), there are other topics more appealing and less revealing if attention is the magazine’s goal.

That said, if you look @Newsweek’s twitter feed, they have some very “interesting” ways of promoting the story of their own accusation: as “The thinking woman’s guide to sexism: Newsweek, women and the workplace” and as a “brave & compelling feature abt young #women, Newsweek & #sexism at work”. Hmmm.

Image of Newsweek’s cover from March 23, 1970 The Visual Language of Liberation photo essay by Sarah Ball

First it was the Siren.
Then it was the Christmas cards.
For a while, it’s been the original artwork by their very own baristas displayed on the walls..

And now, my favorite Starbucks is getting bouquets of flowers.

On a recent visit, there were two big vases of flowers on the counter by the espresso machine. (You can see in this photo what remains of the bouquets.)

Who would be bringing their Starbucks flowers? I asked the barista.

The first bouquet was from the UPS man. (He comes in five days a week and knows everyone’s name.) He had two bouquets left over on Valentine’s Day, so the UPS driver brought one bouquet to his mom and the other to his favorite Starbucks.

The second vase of roses was from a customer “who just likes us”, explained the barista.

What is it about this Starbucks that inspires customers to bring them flowers?

In a previous post, you suggested that I simply ask the folks who work at this Starbucks what makes it special. However, I was concerned about triggering “the Hawthorne effect”, where folks do a better job simply because they know they’re being observed. But I broke down and told the barista that I’d written a few posts about this Starbucks and was intrigued by the flowers.

The barista brought me over to the espresso bar to meet the District Manager, and I shared with him my thoughts about what was distinctive about this store. (He especially appreciated my pointing out how there was no dust on the espresso machines here, unlike at most Starbucks.)

After sticking my nose in their business for a little bit, I took my latte to a table in the back, near an outlet, and contemplated what might make this Starbucks special.

Data Gathering: Employee Interaction

The District Manager rejoined the Store Manager at the espresso bar and they resumed their conversation. Their conversation was joined off and on by the baristas, who chatted as they pulled shots and zapped pannini.

Watching this relaxed interaction, it occurred to me — maybe it’s the espresso bar itself that helps to create what’s special about this Starbucks?

Look at this photo here. Note that the DM and SM are sitting together, at the bar, facing the baristas’ work area. Notice how the espresso bar is located not in the front of the counter, but around the back and behind the espresso pickup area, across from the sinks, blenders and microwaves.

Even though the managers were having their own conversation, it was easy and natural for baristas to pop in and out of casual conversation with them. At one point, laughter over the baristas reading their horoscopes from a customer’s newspaper caused both me and the writer next to me to look up and smile.

More Data: Customer – Employee Interaction

An hour later the DM was gone and the bar was empty. A customer came in with his computer bag, looking to do some work. Since there were no free tables, he sat down at the espresso bar and pulled out his computer. When a new barista came out from the storeroom and walked behind the bar, the customer looked up from his writing and said hello. They started to chat about his scone and then the customer complimented the barista on her recent weight loss. (What?) Then, an off duty barista sat down with a beverage and chats with another customer. I was starting to see a pattern.

Front stage, Backstage, and in between

Up front at the cash register, the baristas are friendly but their priority is to get your order called and your change correct. At the espresso machine the barista looks you in the eye and hands you your drink, but s/he wants to get it to you promptly. Friendly interaction, to be sure, but not much relationship building.

But back here, at the espresso bar, there is no sense of a ‘transaction’ occurring. Instead, customers and baristas are mingling. People are connecting with each other and relating to each other.

The espresso bar area is neither backstage not frontstage in the store. It is a ‘liminal’ area, where boundaries are blurred.

The espresso bar is not “public space” like the cash register area, and it is not “private space” like the tables and chairs. It’s not a commercial or transactional place. Instead, at the bar the employee-customer interaction is informal, spontaneous, and interpersonal.

I haven’t seen anything like that at the other 3 Starbucks (whch have the same DM, by the way). There, they are friendly, but lacking in that extra je ne sais quoi.

I’ve noted before that it’s the people who make the place authentic. But, in places were all of the people are alike, maybe it is the place itself that triggers another level of authenticity? All of these Starbucks have friendly baristas. But perhaps there is something unique to this place that helps bring out the authentic in the people?

Could it be something as simple as the espresso bar? Do you think that this little, physical tweak that lets customers and employees interact in non-commercial ways is what makes it possible for the employees — and customers– to be more authentic, and to create something ’special’?

What’s your sense of this?

See also:
What’s going on at my favorite Starbucks?
Can a Starbucks touch your soul?
The People Make the Place Authentic

What do fledgling entrepreneurs need to know about creating authenticity? And what, if anything, does this have to do with cupcakes?

I had a chance to try to boil it all down to a few key ideas when I taught two classes of an undergraduate Entrepreneurship course at NYU’s Stern School of Business. My colleague, networks and entrepreneurship scholar David Obstfeld, teaches a ‘hands-on plus case study’ course in Entrepreneurship where students create business teams, launch online Amazon stores, and donate their profits to a charity. Starting and running their own real businesses, even if only briefly over a term or two, gives these students a chance to put into practice some of the concepts they are learning in their BBA program in general and as fledgling entrepreneurs in particular.

Professor Obstfeld has me come and lecture (lead a conversation, really) about “Creating Authentic Presence“. The conversation is one part marketing, one part authenticity, and one part social media. What students expect we’ll be talking about is how to market their stores using social media. What they get is (I hope) an awareness of how they can create really compelling businesses by finding the connections between their stores, their teams and themselves.

There is so much that comes out in this conversation that it’s hard to limit it to just one ‘takeaway’. But, it seems that the general ‘aha’ for students is the idea that they can — and should– link

(1) what they sell with
(2) how they organize themselves as a team, and with
(3) who they are as individuals.

What should link these three elements is some kind of shared, consonant meaning. If the meaning of one piece is embedded in the meaning of the other two, and if all three are reasonably well aligned, the entrepreneurs’ business activities will be more fun, more meaningful, and more competitive.

Embedded meaning in a trio of Brands

We talk about the concepts of personal, product and organizational meaning using the language of brands and branding. Despite my bias against focusing on brand before identity, branding language helps build on what students already know from their marketing classes and from being educated consumers more generally. So, we tak about a store/product ‘brand’, an organizational/team ‘brand’ and a personal ‘brand’.

The students all start with a solid understanding of how to develop a business idea, by identifying and selling products to fulfill a customer need. That’s marketing 101, and entrepreneurship 101. They think that entrepreneurship is largely about crafting a compelling business idea and getting that up and running.

It’s the other two pieces that seem to catch the students’ attention as something ‘new’.

First, students seem caught by the idea that who they are as a business team — as these particular 4 or 5 students, as entrepreneurs, as experts on the market niche, as fundraisers for a charity — would have anything to do with defining, significant qualities of the business that they create. Student entrepreneurs tend to underestimate how much the ways that they work together will show up (intentionally or unintentionally) in the way their storefront looks, in the products within their storefront, and in what’s communicated by their storefront to online potential customers.

And, students are often surprised when I argue that who they are as individuals — the characteristics that are distinctive, and significant, and meaningful about each one of *them* – has so much to do not only with the stuff they sell but also with the qualities of their student team as an organization.

What I try to help the student entrepreneurs wrap their minds around is the idea that product (store), organization (their team), and person (themselves as entrepreneurs) work best together when they are intentionally connected by some thread of shared meaning.

Finding meaning in cupcakes

For example, one team has created a cupcake baking supply store — everything a person needs to enjoy his or her cupcake fetish (except for the cupcake itself).

There should be reasons why their particular team chose to create a cupcake baking supply store as opposed to any other kind of potentially profitable storefront. These reasons should be linked with the reasons why each of them as an individual chose to be part of this team. These two sets of reasons should resonate with  what their store is actually selling. In this case, their store is not selling cupcake tins, or colored sugars; It is selling the d.i.y. pride, the sense of indulgence, and the sheer beauty that their cupcake baking customers are searching for.

It’s easy to see this connection graphically, using embedded circles, but harder to see this connection across the levels of their entrepreneurial activity.

Using Social Media to Create Presence

As it happens, the process for establishing their business’s presence online, using social media, actually invites students to start to look for the connections between themselves, their team as an organization, and their stores. Knowing your own distinctive qualities, your own core values, the meaning that you look for, all help you establish your business’s presence online.

Because they are time constrained, the entrepreneurs have to begin their online marketing efforts by piggy-backing on their personal social networks and their own online voices. These entrepreneurs become brandividuals. They discover that a little self-reflection and a little self-awareness help them communicate not what their business ‘is’, but rather what their business is really all ‘about’.

The student entrepreneurs should discover that creating a presence for their stores using social media is not about promoting their stores or finding customers. Instead, creating a presence for their stores is about clarifying and expressing what makes their stores distinctive, significant and meaningful.

Which, in my view, makes business easier, more fun, and more authentic.

Blue cupcakes by QuintanaRoo on Flickr

If products reflect an organization’s values and an organization’s identity, does Apple’s new iPad tell us something about where Apple as a company is headed?

And, if that’s where Apple is going, do we all want to go there too?

Here’s a proposition:

• Apple as an organization is changing, from an organization that’s “about” creativity to an organization that’s “about” consumption.

• Most consumers haven’t noticed this change, although the tech community is on to it.

• While many consumers won’t care, Apple’s core customers and its biggest fans will feel disappointed by this identity change. Some may even feel betrayed.

Let’s build the argument:

An organization’s products communicate that organization’s identity.

An organization’s products – their physical features, their intended uses, their manufacturing processes, and their marketing strategies — communicate an organization’s values.

When an organization creates, produces, distributes, and supports a product, that organization makes important choices. The organization places bets on what it thinks consumers want (or need), decides which possibilities it wants its products to support, and decides how it uniquely will make these come about. The organization chooses a physical design, a software platform, and a set of utilities, to support a certain kind of current use.

The organization’s choices also express, demonstrate and create the organization’s vision of the future.

Corporate values = product attributes = corporate brand = product brand

The relationship between an organization’s identity and its products’ defining attributes is like the relationship between the chicken and egg. Neither one comes first, and each depends on the other.

Consumers have an understanding of the organization’s brand (or identity) and see the brand in the organization’s products. And, consumers come to equate the qualities of the product and the attributes of the organization itself.

Nowhere is this interdependency between organizational ‘brand’ and product brand more apparent than at Apple.

Apple’s product brand: What do we think makes Apple products special?

Each Apple product is positioned as a tool to ‘think different’. Apple products emphasize sophisticated visual design, simplicity, sheer beauty, and an “alpha-underdog-ness” that suggests that everything that makes Apple products different from convention also makes them better.

Apple’s organizational brand: Who do we think Apple is?

Run down the list of attributes that you think Apple stands for. Apple will stand for something different for each of us, but for the general consumer Apple is hip, cool, cutting-edge, what the “people in the know” use, what the hip and cool people use. Apple is more creative and more sophisticated. Apple is elegance through refusal to pander.

Apple is the Alpha-underdog. Apple is the choice of creative professionals. Apple is the choice of people who like to tinker, people who like to build, people who like to create. Apple is hip, cool, forward, smarter than you. Apple is the company with not just a different way, but a better way.

Now, let’s turn to Apple’s latest product, the iPad …

What do the features that distinguish the new iPad tell us about who Apple might be becoming now?

[There are some terrific analyses of the iPad's features linking the technical choices to values that these choices might reflect. Rather than restating these here, let me direct you Peter Kirn's analysis of the "Closed Mac" at CreateDigitalMusic, and Samuel Axon at Mashable. Be sure to look at the critique of the iPad's Digital Rights Management (DRM) features by Nate Anderson. And, for thoughtful analyses of what these features mean to the tech community, go to Alex Payne’s reflections 'On the iPad' and StevenF's blog.]]

All of these tech analysts focus on three key features of the iPad:

1. The iPad runs on a closed platform and reflects a closed vision.

The iPad is a completely closed tool. All of the software for the iPad is proprietary; it is owned and/or controlled by Apple. The iPad’s hardware is also closed. These design decisions by Apple mean that the iPad cannot easily be modified, personalized, or expanded. The iPad cannot be used to create new programs using open-source software by non-Apple software designers, developers and home hacksters who like to think differently.

The iPad is closed to anyone with any idea that is too small or too personal to fit with Apple’s business plan.

2. Access to the iPad is centrally controlled by Apple, not by you.

Because the creation and distribution of apps for the iPad are controlled by Apple, the only things you can use on the iPad are tools that Apple has chosen for you.Kirn offers a concise analysis of the iPad:

“It’s a storage device you own but that someone else controls.”

Apple  controls what everyday consumers can use their iPads to enjoy. Apple also controls which other businesses can have access to consumers, and even how much access to consumers a media supplier can have.

Instead of disintermediating process by taking out the middle man, Apple is inserting itself more fully in between content creators and consumers.

This positions Apple to exert more power, more pressure and more control over both customers and suppliers.

3. Closed + Controlled => Consumption, not Creativity

The iPad’s closed platform and the centralized control of apps and content work together to create a technology product that is not so much about creating things as it is about consuming things.

Back in the day, Macs were heralded because of the way they enabled users to add on hardware & software and build up their own applications. Now, with this move to a closed platform and controlled access, owners of iPads can’t make their own little programs to run their own little stuff. They can’t generate new things. They can’t use the iPad like a ‘real’ computer. iPad users can only choose from among the set of things offered by & through Apple.

The iPad is not a tool for creativity, but instead a tool for consumption.

A creativity tool allows you to experiment and invent. A creativity tool is limited only by your imagination, taste and skill. In contrast, a consumption tool invites you to shop, to acquire. A creativity tool allows for customization through purchasing, which is itself made possible by your means, your tastes, and your disposable time.

But shopping is not quite the same as expressing. Customization is not the same as creativity.

Abandoning the Digital Creator?

What has long made Apple special and distinguished it from all other hardware & software companies has been its perceived commitment to the digital creator.

Whether you were a digital creator as a coder, a software designer or nerd with a screwdriver, Apple was there for you. Whether you were a digital creator as a graphic designer, a basement mixmaster, or a an explorer of user interface, Apple was there for you.

Apple was all about thinking different.

Now, with the shift to the values reflected in the iPad design, Apple is acting as very different kind of company. It is acting as a digital entertainment and consumption company. It is all about the digital consumer.

Instead of being an organization that wants us to “Think Different”,
it looks as though Apple wants us instead to “Buy Different”.

if you were to ask ‘What features would we need to put into our product to establish and protect ourself as a digital entertainment company?”, you would create products with:

Closed platforms. Closed hardware. Controlled, subordinated third-party development. Digital Rights management everywhere. Lots and lots of things to buy.

Oh, and don’t forget, you’d create a product that can’t be physically expanded or repaired, and that will need to be replaced with the next advance in technology. You’d create a product that had to be bought over and over again.

In short, you’d create something like the iPad.

Why would it matter if Apple was becoming:

• A company more interested in entertaining than in creating?
• A company more interested in controlling rather than enabling?
• A company more interested in centralizing than distributing and sharing?
• A company more interested in selling than in supporting creativity?

A lot of folks wouldn’t really care. Many consumers will be happy to own and use this new variety of Apple product, without a concern for what it might say about the future of computing or the fture of Apple.

But, there are two groups of consumers who will care about a change in ‘who’ Apple is.

Apple’s core group of fans will care.

The consumers, customers, and suppliers, as well as many of Apple’s own employees — will feel a significant loss as Apple moves away from its previous identity. These fans will lose the actual software and hardware support for their creativity. These fans will not longer be able to look to Apple as the Alpha-underdog defending creativity and innovation in the face of computerized consumerism.

Apple’s ‘aspirational customers’ will also care.

Aspirational customers are those who buy a company’s products and support an organization’s brand because of what it represents about who they themselves can become. These customers will lose the sense of who they can become as Apple’s identity changes.

Apple’s core customers and core fans will need to revise their understanding of who Apple is and what Apple stands for. And, these core customers will need to revise their relationship to Apple as an organization.

For me personally, while I’ve never myself written anything beyond some customizing code for my blog themes, there’s always been the potential, the promise, that I could whip up some little tool to manage my photo files, my tags, or my return address labels. There’s always been the possibility that I could be more of a digital creator with our iMacs and Macbooks. When I fire up my Macbook at Starbucks, yes, I am signaling to you that I’m some kind of digital creator. At least I could be. With my Macbook.

But now, with Apple’s new iPad and new set of corporate values, I’ll have to rethink my relationship with Apple. At the very least, I’ll need to revise my sense of who Apple is and what Apple really stands for.

I wish I could come up with some pithy metaphor or double entendre to sum this up, but I’m still processing these concerns in my mind. Then again,

Maybe I don’t need to create a conclusive statement by myself. Maybe I can shop my way to creativity? Maybe I just need an app for that?

Maybe Apple can sell me one.

See also Jaymi Heimbuch’s article “What Does Apple’s iPad Really Mean for Society?” at Treehugger, where she evaluates the iPad for its environmental impact

Images: “Come see our latest restrictions” image from Ars Technica, Apple Graphics (wallpaper) free on Designrfx

Earlier this week I met with a group of organizational change advocates, each of whom is dedicated to reshaping the relationship between work and life.

Work-Life issues per se aren’t really my gig, although I’ve had a fair amount of work-life conflict in my day as an employee and as a manager. However, I invited myself along to this strategy session because I’m convinced that work-life fit, synergy, resonance, whatever-we-call-it is something we have to address if organizations themselves are to be(come) more authentic.

I have noticed in my own organizational change work and in the perspectives of other consultants how often conversations about work-life strategies are kept at the sidelines. When we talk about how organizations can, will, or should change, we talk about technology, sustainability, flattening hierarchies, innovation, and so on, but we don’t talk about these opportunities in ways that pay attention to work-life issues.

Worse yet, we fail to remember that creating organizations with better work-life resonance is the only thing that will make any of these other initiatives effective.

You’d think that organizational change consultants, corporate strategists, and everyday leaders & managers would be interested in what is clearly the strategic initiative that would support and enable all others initiatives.

Instead, folks seem to be deterred from paying attention to work-life issues because we don’t ask each other to address the myths that make work-life a side issue and not a central issue.

These three myths are that (1) Work-Life is a women’s issue, (2) Work-life initiatives are only for employees who can’t keep up, and (3) Work-life initiatives are ‘nice to have’ but not critical. I wrote earlier, in The (Feminist) Business Bloggers’ Lament , about how sexism prevents us from considering work-life strategies, so let’s focus here on the other two myths.

Myth: Work-Life Initiatives are only for employees who can’t keep up.

When an employee needs some kind of flexibility in his or her work arrangement, managers and organizations implicitly assume that there is something “wrong” with that employee. After all, other employees can accept the constraints of the job as designed, so what’s his/her problem?

The employee who asks for flexibility is asking for ‘accommodation’ because he or she just can’t cut it.

We assume that the employee asking for flexibility is the exception. Every other employee fits quite nicely into the box we’ve created, right?

By focusing on the individual as the problem, rather than considering the role of the organizational system, we overlook what’s really the problem. What’s not cutting it is the relationship between how our organizations are designed and how human lives really are.

Our organizations are designed to ignore the realities of human lives. Our organizations are designed to create a competition between work and life, and then to stack the deck so that work wins.

.

And, when organizations do provide any kind of job or career flexibility, we treat it as a generous effort by an organization to provide remedial help. Flexibility is treated as a benefit for that particular employee, and not as a business-enabling move that serves the whole organization.

The conversation rarely if ever considers work-life initiatives as the first step in creating a resilient, agile organization.

Myth: Work-Life initiatives are ‘nice to have’, but not critical.

Our assumptions about work-life issues reflect the very strange, and in many ways misguided, view of what work in an organization should be.

Our notions of what organizations should be and what capacities they should develop keep expanding. We want our organizations to be able to produce and/or respond to clients 24/7/52, we want more productivity, more innovation, and even more social relationships that create profitable social capital.

And, we want to get all of this from the same employees, with the same (old-fashioned) job design, work system, and human resource approaches.

I never like to reduce us humans to our mere bodies, but think of this example: Would we ever design organizations that made it impossible for people to take bathroom breaks? Or take some time out to eat? Or to breathe?

Yet, we design organizations so people can’t get enough sleep, can’t come to work restored, can’t muster up the energy to get excited about their work, who have to be motivated to be(come) engaged. These are just the limitations we notice when we think of ourselves as creatures whose only purpose is to work.

When we look outside the work box, and we consider ourselves as human beings who desire full lives, rich lives, productive lives, and nourishing relationships, how can we imagine better organizations without re-imagining how organizations can resolve the work-life conflict? After all, this conflict is created and sustained by these very organizations.

We’ve designed work and organizations in ways that make it very difficult for all of us to find a fit between our work and our life outside of work, or between our lives and the work that is part of our lives. We have designed organizations to estrange us from the very parts of our lives that create us as whole, authentic, humans.

Working & Organizing Differently

As my organizational change colleague & Work+Life Fit blogger Cali Yost reminds me, the research on work-life difficulties shows that

“People don’t want to work less. People want to work differently.”

We need to stop treating work-life issues as though they were the occasional concern of employees who can’t hack it, and stop treating corporate work-life policies as something nice that we do for the less-than-ideal employee.

Instead, we need to have a work-life fit conversation in which we recognize that workers have lives, that our lives include and extend beyond our family roles, that each individual has a unique understanding of what work-life profile works best for them, and that how an individual defines and achieves work-life fit will change over the course of an individual’s life.

We need to think big and inclusively about what each individual organizational member really needs to live a full, authentic, engaged life. And, we need to think of this before we ask for more from organization members.

Our biggest opportunity as change agents and leaders is to embrace the reality that successfully addressing Work-Life issues will be the core component of any plan to improve, grow, change, and expand what we expect from our organizations.

An organization’s work-life strategy can enhance (and impede) the organization’s capacity to do what it wants to do, whether that is to make money or to change the world. Work-Life fit, resonance, responsiveness or whatever-we-want-to-call-it is what will make it possible for organizations to become more resilient, more agile, and more effective.

We want to work in organizations that don’t ask us to compromise the breadth and depth of our lives outside or inside work. We want to work in organizations that help us live and work responsibly and joyfully. We want to contribute at work and everywhere else in our lives as authentic, whole people, in authentic organizations.

This might seem like a vision of mythic proportion… but it’s simply reality.

[Jan 21: In light of yesterday's Supreme Court Decision, I'm re-posting this serious & pop-culture critique of the anti-democratic argument that Corporations Are People. Scott Klinger writing over at Alternet, sets out what it would/should mean for corporations really to be treated as "persons" and thus have the same responsibilities as people too. Me, I'd like these corporate persons to be held to the same contribution limits as the next person-- so that I and Exxon would both be limited to $2,400 per candidate per election.]

If we were to list the top five or so Supreme (Court) mistakes of the last 200+ years, on that list would be the mistake in 1886 to treat a Justice’s unofficial remark about corporations’ hypothetical legal status as though it were part of the Court’s actual decision. This offhand suggestion that corporations could be considered ‘persons’ in the eyes of the law is a mistake that’s compounded over the years, to the point where it has fundamentally distorted democracy and capitalism as we “know” them.

Okay, so now you know my feelings about the issue.

But did you know that Stephen Colbert feels the same way?

Check out this clip from a show earlier this week, where Colbert makes sense of a most unfunny perversion of civil rights.

Corporations’ ‘Personhood’ is an inauthentic identity

The notion that corporations should have rights (but not responsibilities) as though they were actual human citizens has become so taken-for-granted as “the way things are” that it handicaps our ability to understand any for-profit organization’s authentic identity.

The ‘personhood’ that grants corporations the same rights to free speech and grants them even more political power than a human individual contradicts both our understanding of “person” and our understanding of “citizen”. It makes it hard for us to have a thoughtful discussion of how a for-profit corporation should participate in democracy. It distorts not only how we consider corporate cash contributions to political candidates and parties, but also how we think about corporate social responsibility and corporate citizenship.

Do you understand the ‘Corporations as persons’ logic?

There are many arguments for why corporations make bad “people” and even worse “citizens”. Chief among these is the difference between why people exists and why corporations exist. Consider this argument from the Attorney General, in this excerpt from the oral arguments to the Supreme Court, courtesy of the DailyKos,

JUSTICE STEVENS: One of the amicus briefs objects to — responds to Justice Kennedy’s problem by saying that the problem is we have got to contribute to both parties, and a lot of them do, don’t they?

SOLICITOR GENERAL KAGAN: A lot of them do, which is a suggestion about how corporations engage the political process and how corporations are different from individuals in this respect. You know, an individual can be the wealthiest person in the world but few of us — maybe some — but few of us are only our economic interests. We have beliefs, we have convictions; we have likes and dislikes. Corporations engage the political process in an entirely different way and this is what makes them so much more damaging.

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Well, that’s not —I’m sorry, but that seems rather odd. A large corporation just like an individual has many diverse interests. A corporation may want to support a particular candidate, but they may be concerned just as you say about what their shareholders are going to think about that. They may be concerned that the shareholders would rather they spend their money doing something else. The idea that corporations are different than individuals in that respect, I just don’t think holds up.

GENERAL KAGAN: Well, all I was suggesting, Mr. Chief Justice, is that corporations have actually a fiduciary obligation to their shareholders to increase value. That’s their single purpose, their goal.

If organizations exist to make money (aka increase shareholder value), then their concerns are ultimately far more narrow than the concerns of real people, real citizens, whose life goals and purpose are far more complex. More broadly, citizenship itself requires a concern for more than short-term profit. Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and even Alexander Hamilton all understood this too.

Defining Citizens & Citizenship: An Important Topic for Management Education

Whether you agree or disagree that corporations should be people, we should all be having a conversation about what it means to grant equal citizenship to corporations. Yes, many of us are focused on the organizational issues around the political conversation about Health Care reform, and thus may not be paying attention to Supreme Court rulings. Even so, we should also be educating ourselves about both sides of the argument about corporate personhood.

A conversation about the relationship between business, politics and society should be part of every MBA students education about business. Were I to redesign an MBA curriculum, or even teach again my class on “Books for Brave Managers”, this topic would be on our agenda.  One 90 minute class on this topic could teach future business & non-profit leaders how to think more deeply about the roles of organizations (for profit and not for profit) in our national and local civic lives.

As we wait for MBA curricula to be redesigned to reflect the emerging needs of business and society, we can learn more about this topic ourselves. It may seem very abstract to ask questions like “What is an organization really?” “Should organizations be the legal equals of individual people?” “Is making corporations ‘persons’ the best way to have corporate (for profit) entities participate in democracy?”, but the implications of our explicit and implicit beliefs are quite real. Just consider What could Change if Corporate Personhood Were Abolished?

What about you: Do you think that more managers and leaders should understand the arguments for and against Corporate Personhood?
Originally posted September 18, 2009

Here are some resources to check out:

David Korten’s book ” When Corporations Rule The World”
Thom Hartmann’s book “Unequal Protection: The rise of corporate dominance and theft of human rights”.
The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
Reclaim Democracy.org

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Supreme Court examines Citizens United vs. FEC, the case of an anti-Hillary documentary. (slate.com)
• Citizens United Case Underlines Court’s Deep Ideological Divide (christyhardinsmith.firedoglake.com)

There’s something going on at my favorite Starbucks.

I’m not quite sure what it is. But there is new evidence today that this Starbucks is somehow special/better than the other 3 in my town.

Before I tell you about that, I should probably explain that there are 4 Starbucks within a 2 mile radius of my house. And, I go to each one over the course of the week or two, depending on what else I’m doing and the ambiance I seek.

Each of the four has its own thing going on and they are each good for a different purpose.

There is one particular Starbucks that I go to almost every Wednesday morning, after I drop my daughter off for orchestra rehearsal. This is the Starbucks where I go for a few hours of free wifi and quiet time.

In addition to being my ‘Wednesday morning Starbucks’:

This is the same Starbucks that had the “Take your photo as the Mermaid” game that I got such a kick out of.

This is the same Starbucks where I saw that guy who I was sure was Michael Bloomberg. (I was so sure I took his picture. Look really closely.)

This is the same Starbucks that has framed photos taken by one of the baristas on the wall. (You can see them, right above Mike Bloomberg.) The photos are for sale, but you’d only know that if you asked.

This is the same Starbucks where I brought our donations for the winter coat drive — despite there being a coat drive at my dry cleaners, the supermarket, and the grammar school.

This is the same Starbucks that has an ongoing bookclub and a windowsill of books that has become the local hub for BookCrossing, where I got yet another copy of Pride & Prejudice (you can never have too much Mr. Darcy.)

And now, this is the Starbucks that gets Christmas cards. From its patrons.

Have you ever seen a Starbucks that displayed Christmas cards from their patrons? Or even received Christmas cards from its patrons?

Earlier today, I took this photo of the store’s bulletin board, where there were six holiday cards from various patrons. (Sorry it’s not a better picture. I felt a little self conscious taking the picture.)

Interestingly, each of the six cards had handwritten notes on them, thanking the baristas for making their mornings, evenings, Saturdays, etc. a bit more special.

This is just NOT the same ‘Starbucks’.

I am now officially curious about what is going on at this Starbucks. I think that next Wednesday I will muster up the courage and marshal my curiosity, and stick my nose into their business.

What should I ask them?

See Also:

Can a Starbucks touch your soul?
Burned by Inauthenticity
The People Make the Place Authentic
Clients full of win (@randomdeanna)

Also,  check out Scott Weisbrod’s post:: 4 Lessons fromStarbucks:A Brand on a Mission at Experience Matters   (1/27/10)