Tom Asacker

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The Business of Belief: Why We Believe What We Believe in Business and Life

Top posts

1. The marketplace is deaf

2. Breakout, breakthrough or breakdown

3. Branding is a dangerous concept

How to give a great speech.

I get a kick out of the counsel that flows from the web. I find myself frequently smiling and shaking my head as I read expert rules for this or that, which inevitably conflict with other experts’ sage advice.

One authority declares, “Never use more than ten slides in a presentation,” while another spouts, “Kill PowerPoint!” The passionate management guru and professional speaker Tom Peters employs more than a slide a minute (and sometimes, so do I).

So what should you do? Split the difference?

Here’s what to do: Ignore the experts. Think about your audience--What’s on their minds? How are they feeling? What do they value? What’s important to them?--and bring your ideas to life for their benefit:

Be captivating – What can you say that will inspire your audience, and how can you say it so they’ll stay engaged and hopeful?
Be desirable – Bring your main point, your passion, to life in a way that’s reflective of their passions and that feeds their immediate and long-term hungers.
Be real – Character influences more than arguments. Tell your audience why you do what you do. Make your words vivid through anecdotes and examples, and speak clearly and from the heart.

Don’t become confused by the din of the web. The answers to all of your questions lie with your audience, and within you.

P.S. This isn’t really a post about giving a speech.

The telos of business.

"If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time; but if you are here because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together." ~ Lilla Watson

"We work on ourselves in order to help others, but also we help others in order to work on ourselves."~ Pema Chödrön

Aristotle believed that everything has a telos, that all organisms move from an imperfect state to an innate, perfect one. For example, an acorn’s telos is an oak tree. He also believed that human life has a telos, and that aim is happiness.

I’m not so sure about human life, but I’m convinced that the telos of our modern marketplace is happiness--happiness that comes from novelty, entertainment, and social interaction; happiness realized by being more productive, safer, and healthier; and happiness that flows from contribution, self-worth and identity.

Happiness must be a business’s intent. Not products. Not services. Not content. Not money. Happiness. Happiness should be an organization’s context; the frame through which its people view their purpose, activities, and results. Theodore Levitt’s “what business are you in?” if you will.

To be clear, I am not saying that the genesis of all successful ideas is the burning desire to make other people happy. It is certainly not. Many, if not most, innovations are born of curious and creative minds intent on solving their own problems and making themselves happy.

What I am saying is that the long-term success of those ideas in the marketplace is absolutely dependent on the happiness and well-being of others. Because given an abundance of choice, people pick and choose their personal definition of what they believe will improve their lives and make them happy. Happiness is their ultimate currency.

My friend Paul has profited greatly from this seemingly hippy-dippy concept. His initial idea for website testing software was launched in a University dorm room with a secondhand computer and a few hundred bucks back in 2005. He developed the product primarily to solve his own problems as a designer, impelled by the marketplace’s lack of an affordable and functionally intact solution.

Fast forward seven years and Paul, along with his partners, now operates a growing, multimillion dollar software business. But it wasn’t the original idea that rocketed him to success. Rather, he listened intently to his customers’ wishes and responded with new, market-shaking ideas; ideas that are feeding their hungers and fueling his growth.

Let me be clear about something else. Although Paul is a very kind soul, he is no altruist. He’s a shrewd and sensible capitalist. He’s simply aware that it’s all connected; his success and happiness is bound up with the success and happiness of his customers. The future well-being of his business lays not with its beginning, but rather with its telos, its aim. And so does yours.

We are in the midst of a massive marketplace upheaval. Like my friend Paul, we must all rapidly change our perspectives, our myopic focus on our short-term desires, and embrace a new, customer-driven ethos. It’s time to expand our concerns from measured performance and efficiencies, and obsessively ask, What’s going on in people’s lives? What role do we play in that drama? What role could we play to improve their lives, to make them happier?

The telos of the marketplace is happiness. Does that mean it has to be yours? Of course not. This isn’t a short-term, hard and fast rule; there are far too many exceptions for it to be. But, I assure you, your marketplace competitiveness and organizational well-being over time will inevitably come down to your telos. The difference between you and an acorn is that you get to choose yours.

The riddle of marketplace success.

Are you driven by your perceptions or by your dreams?

The how of great brands.

I've had the opportunity to work with many leading brands over the years, and I’ve also watched purposeful, passionate organizations struggle for significance. I’ve seen dedicated religious leaders lose their ministries to apathy, while others swelled their church attendance into the thousands. I’ve witnessed friends start businesses to change the world and ultimately fail, while self-interested, financially motivated ones continue to thrive.

As much as I would have liked to (and believe me, I’ve tried), I have not found an individual’s or organization’s ‘why,’ its purpose or cause, to be the basis for success. Even though it feels good to make that connection—to think in terms of intent instead of execution—it’s clearly not the case. And for one simple reason: People don’t buy ‘what’ you do or ‘why’ you do it. They buy ‘how’ you do it; the unique and compelling way you bring your idea to life for their benefit. It’s your ‘how’ that creates engagement, adoption and devotion.

Did Steve Jobs and Apple believe more passionately in elegant product design than Sony? Jobs was inspired by Akio Morito and fascinated with Sony products. Did Martin Luther King Jr. have more passion for equality and civil rights in America than Howard Thurman? Thurman enlivened King and served as his spiritual advisor. How about the Wright Brothers? Were they more stirred to fly than folks like Gustave Whitehead and Lyman Gilmore? Of course not. But they did conceive a patented control system, which is still used in modern aircraft today.

Don’t let your feelings fool you. Intentions carry weight; they help inform decision-making, inspire like-minded people, and sustain motivation during difficult times. But they only matter if you bring them to life in a bold and memorable way. What matters most in today’s marketplace is timing, guts, and creative execution. It’s the combination of domain expertise, strategic value creation, and an obsessive attention to detail—especially with regards to others’ experiences—that gives rise to great brands.

What propelled Apple to its cult and Wall Street status? Steve Jobs’ powerful strategic vision and uncompromising sense of ‘how.’ Why do we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.? Not because he cared deeply, but because he inspired us to care with his carefully crafted experiences and expertly delivered oratory. What accounts for the rapid growth of companies like Hyundai, Standard Chartered Bank, and Chipotle? Their ‘how,’ pure and simple.

Picasso had it right when he wrote: “Success is a very important thing! It has often been said that an artist should work for himself, out of love for art, so to speak, and hold success in contempt. But that is wrong! An artist needs success. Not only to live but to be able to create his art.”

What ‘why’-inspired organizations need in today’s hyper-competitive marketplace is strong leadership to help them stay focused on the ‘how.’ Without a strategic obsession on the external needs and feelings of your audience, your ‘why’ will slowly fade as more ‘how’-driven organizations attract away your customers, members, volunteers and donors. And, like you, I’d really hate to see that happen.

Businesses are not made.

Why is change so difficult for organizations? Primarily because of the generally accepted myth of business creation. We believe that businesses are made by arranging and rearranging parts; people, departments, managers, et al.

Leaders think of themselves as technicians and architects who develop a plan and fashion the business in accordance with that plan. They imagine themselves as carpenters or sculptors, who impose their will on the "material" and bring the creation to life.

Businesess are not put together. You don't work on them from the outside in, like a potter works with clay. Businesses grow. They expand. They blossom. Like a cell in the womb, they progressively complicate themselves.

Businesses are living organisms that resist foreign materials, including new ideas, just like the human body resists beneficial new parts.

The yin and yang of business.

There's a yin and a yang of every business. The yin is the water and earth, the substance of the offering, the "value."

The yang is the fire and air, the theater, how you bring that "value" to life in a vivid and compelling way.

If you're stuck, if your growth is stalled, you either have a yin problem or a yang problem.

If your current customers rave about you, if they pay a premium or go out of their way to experience your offering and tell their friends, but you're not growing, then you have a yang imbalance. It's time to invest in the performance of your offering, bold and creative approaches to both communicate and demonstrate your idea to more, like-minded people.

On the other hand, if you're experiencing pressure on your pricing, if customers view you as simply one of many options, it's time to strengthen your yin and refocus your energy on the utility of your brand, to weave in more distinctive value for your audience.

This yin-yang tension is real, and it’s being felt by many as brands continue to get pushed and pulled by the rapidly changing demands and preferences of the liberated and empowered masses. Don't sit passively and let the tension rip you apart.

Do something.

Choose the correct paradigm to shift.

"The paradigm of competition is a race: by rewarding the winner, we encourage everyone to run faster. When capitalism really works this way, it does a good job; but its defenders are wrong in assuming it always works this way." - Richard Stallman

A paradigm is nothing more than a set of assumptions, values, and practices that constitute a way of viewing reality. For example, if you view business as a competitive endeavor, then you place yourself, metaphorically, on the same track as the "other guy." You think about staying a step ahead of the other guy. You value staying a step ahead of the other guy. You put practices in place to stay a step ahead of the other guy.

Unfortunately, customers could care less about you and the other guy. Customers care about themselves.

Today's paradigm shifting is about new, out-of-the-box consumer experiences. Old paradigm: Music delivered how radio wants it delivered. New paradigm: Your music delivered when, where and how you want it. Old: Limited selection and high late fee, video rental stores. New: Streaming videos by subscription (and to your tablet). Old: Clipping coupons from your local newspaper. New: Contextually relevant merchant deals on your smartphone. Old: Daily fee car rental, plus gas and insurance, plus long lines. New: Car sharing services.

If you study marketplace evolution, it becomes apparent that incumbents typically fail to reinvent their industries. Disney let Pixar do it. United watched as Southwest Airlines skyrocketed to the top. Nokia was disrupted by Apple and Google.

Why? Because market leaders are wedded to an existing paradigm, to caution and convention. And so, they focus on incremental changes in their served markets to stay a step ahead of the competition. They don't innovate for customers. They tweak their offering to try to beat the other guy.

Mark Twain once wrote:

"The best swordsman in the world doesn't need to fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the person for him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has never had a sword in his hand before; he doesn’t do the thing he ought to do, and so the expert isn't prepared for him; he does the thing he ought not to do and often it catches the expert out and ends him on the spot."

Do you consider yourself an expert? Or are you an antagonist for the benefit of your audience?

(Rest assured, we will never provide your email address to anyone. Period.)

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Tom Asacker is timely and thought-provoking. I went to school on his ideas.

- Jeff Taylor, Founder, Monster.com and Eons

When Tom Asacker writes, I read. It's the right message for the right time.

- Tom Peters