Mavericks at Work: Why the most original minds in business win. William Taylor

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СКАЧАТЬ 6 in charge of the department as its vice president. (We’ll meet her again in chapter 7, where we explore her new agenda as Chief People Yahoo—the senior HR strategist at one of Silicon Valley’s flagship companies.) Sartain is adamant that the advocacy mission that defined Southwest in the marketplace reflected, and was driven by, an equally palpable sense of purpose in the workplace. “We examined the company at the most detailed level,” Sartain explains, “and asked, ‘From the minute you think of working here to the minute you leave, what makes this experience unique? What is it about our workforce that separates us from the competition?’”

      In the workplace, employees took up a battle cry designed to connect the company’s disruptive business strategy to daily life inside the organization: “At Southwest, Freedom Begins with Me.” Sartain and her team went so far as to identify the “Eight Freedoms” that defined the working experience at the airline—from “the freedom to learn and grow” to “the freedom to create financial security” to “the freedom to work hard and have fun” to “the freedom to create and innovate”—and she created a traveling “freedom exposition” to recruit employees to the cause behind the company.

Over time, the Eight Freedoms “got to the very core of what the experience of working at Southwest is about,” Sartain says. “The message was, ‘You’re not just loading a bag in the belly of that plane, you’re not just serving cocktails, you’re not just creating a budget or writing software. You are giving people the freedom to fly. It’s your efficiency and ingenuity that allows us to keep offering low fares and keeps our planes in the sky.’”7

      What ideas is your company fighting for? What values does your company stand for? What purpose does your company serve? Those are the questions that Roy Spence seeks to answer for every organization with which he works. “Anybody who’s running a business has to figure out the higher calling of that business, its purpose,” he insists. “Purpose is about the difference you’re trying to make—in the marketplace, in the world. If everybody is selling the same thing, what’s the tie-breaker? It’s purpose.”

      There’s no doubt that Spence is a master at using clever language to define and position companies in compelling ways. (He’s in the ad business, after all, and his nickname inside the agency is “Reverend Roy.”) Language, as we’ll explore in chapter 2, counts for a lot when it comes to strategy. How you talk about your company speaks volumes about how you think about your business. And ultimately, how you think about your business determines how well it performs.

      “Sure, you could say that Southwest Airlines really wants to get more people to fly,” Spence explains. “Or you can say that the company is in the business of democratizing the skies. Would you rather be in the airline business or the freedom business? Language is what creates the edge—and operating on the edge leads to more creativity in the business.”

      GSD&M’s best-known bit of language may well be “Don’t Mess with Texas,” which has become the unofficial slogan of the agency’s famously maverick home state. Remarkably, GSD&M coined the phrase in 1985 as the centerpiece of an anti-litter campaign it devised for the Texas Department of Highways. Over the years, the message was adopted by musicians, good old boys, and politicians and became a rallying cry on a par with “Remember the Alamo.” “We took them out of the litter business and put them in the pride business,” says Spence. “It became a big, macho, Texan kind of deal. That’s an edgier place to play. And that edge is why litter went down so much. We made it anti-Texan to litter.”

      Roy Spence is so committed to the power of purpose (his agency defines its business as purpose-based branding) that one of his GSD&M colleagues, Haley Rushing, actually has the title of “Chief Purposologist.” Rushing, who is trained in cultural anthropology, immerses herself in the history, economics, values, and practices of existing and potential clients to unearth the advocacy agenda (or lack thereof) at the heart of their strategy.

      “We don’t create the purpose of an organization,” Spence says. “Our job is to bring it to life and create the language of leadership. In the nineties, we saw that a rising tide lifts all boats. Now we see that a changing tide tests the strength of your anchor. What you stand for is as important as what you sell.”

      INNOVATION THROUGH AGITATION—STRATEGY ON THE EDGE

      You don’t need to convince Arkadi Kuhlmann of the power of purpose or tell him that the values you stand for are as important as the products you sell. “I love our advocacy position,” he exults. “It differentiates us. Most companies, especially in an industry like banking, are truly boring. If you do things the way everybody else does, why do you think you’re going to do any better?”

      In many respects, ING Direct USA is to banks what Southwest is to airlines—an aggressive, low-cost competitor with a brash attitude and a clear point of view. That’s why the company, much like its founder, is feisty, combative, colorful. Its headquarters complex, composed of five beautifully renovated buildings on or near the Christina River in downtown Wilmington, is a blast of color in an otherwise drab, sleepy city. The distinctly American complex also pays homage to the Dutch origins of ING Direct’s parent company. Sales and customer service operate out of a sparkling office tower once owned by Chase Manhattan that’s been renamed the Spaarport (“piggybank” in Dutch). In the lobby of the Spaarport, crackling with energy, is an ING Direct café, an ultramodern coffee shop that offers up cappuccino, sandwiches, CNBC on flat-screen TVs, and free Internet access. Marketing operates out of a onetime railroad office, built in 1904, that’s been renamed the Orangerie. (ING Direct’s flagship product is the “Orange” savings account, and orange colors every aspect of the company’s public presence.) The top executives work in a 19th-century leather tannery renamed the Pakhuis (“warehouse” in Dutch), which was renovated in 2000 and remodeled in 2005 to accommodate the company’s torrid growth.

      It’s a point of pride for Kuhlmann that many of the people who work in these buildings have been recruited from outside the banking business. “If you want to renew and re-energize an industry,” he advises, “don’t hire people from that industry. You’ve got to untrain them and then retrain them. I’d rather hire a jazz musician, a dancer, or a captain in the Israeli army. They can learn about banking. It’s much harder for bankers to unlearn their bad habits. They’re trapped by the past. Remember, resurrection has only worked once in history.”

      Well, maybe twice. Kuhlmann himself is a three-decade veteran of the banking industry whose career began as a fast-track executive with the ever so proper Royal Bank of Canada. “It’s amazing when I think back to those days,” says Kuhlmann, seated at his no-frills workspace in the company’s open-office setting. “At age thirty-three, I was made vice president of commercial banking. I had a private office with the nicest curtains. I had a private dining room. I had a chauffeur who picked me up at seven-thirty in the morning and a guy who came by my desk at eight-thirty to polish my shoes. I remember what happened after the board meeting where I got named vice president. Someone came out and said, ‘Congratulations on your red hat.’ I asked one of my colleagues, ‘Red hat, what did he mean?’ He said, ‘You know, like the cardinals wear.’ I had true corporate power in the old-fashioned sense. Today I’ve got none of those trappings of power.”

      Indeed, Kuhlmann makes it a point to remind his colleagues that ING exists precisely to challenge that style of power. On the sidewalk outside the Pakhuis, for example, is a thick white line painted directly in front of the entrance. The not-so-subtle message: cross that line and you’ve left the sleepy environs of downtown Wilmington (and the financial services establishment) to enter a different kind of place. Employees leaving the Pakhuis see a sign posted right before the exit. It reads, did today really matter?

      “We keep increasing the intensity, the passion, СКАЧАТЬ