recalibrating organizations

Thoughts about organiza/onal futures

© 2009 Anne McCrossan

Recalibrating organizations

27th May 2009

© 2009 Anne McCrossan. All rights reserved.

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The split second that makes everything possible

It isn’t always a case of mind over maFer

Businesses are bodies too

GeIng under the skin of the organiza/on

Dealing with the degenera/ve organiza/on

GeIng stuck in the head

Trac/on, thrust, push and fetch

Beware the crazed corporate zombie

New businesses pulses

Contribu/on as a corporate currency

Credit where credit’s due

How to make the most of the poten/al for ac/on

Integrity creates integral fit

GeIng the synapses going

Being conducive

Listen to the body

A new gene/c code for corpora/ons

A grand challenge and the change we need

A checklist for recalibra/on

Fired up? About

Notes, references and acknowledgments

Contents

Recalibrating organizations Thoughts about organiza/onal futures

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This is the age of the rapid response rate. We’re used to doing everything in a click or two and technology puts everything at our finger/ps.

So imagine for a moment if the transla/on of thought into ac/on from the mind to the body took longer than that and it travelled haphazardly.

If an impulse going from the brain down to the central cortex to your arm took minutes and hours instead of seconds ‐ how frustra/ng and debilita/ng would that be?

In the comedy, ‘Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask’, Woody Allen paints this picture with hilarious consequences.

In a scene set inside a man’s brain, when Woody gets involved in a sexual clinch and tries to answers the ques/on ‘what happens during ejacula/on?’ there follows an excrucia/ng series of aFempts to command the rest of the body in ques/on.

What becomes disappoin/ngly and abundantly, clear is that geIng the mind and the body to move as one can be a gargantuan effort that doesn’t always guarantee gargantuan results.




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When this happens, synapses aren’t firing.

Synapses, the junc/ons where automa/c responses take place, are sub‐surface, sub‐conscious and can’t be operated by logical control alone.

Synapses are natural, visceral, reac/ons connec/ng the soc organs of the body to the central nervous system. They can be trusted to be ‘on the money’, and most bodies ‐ human or otherwise ‐ are lost without them.

Whether it’s business or whether it’s personal, not being in tune with one’s own ecosystem leads to unrewarded, misplaced effort and opera/onal dysfunc/on.

Business management is turning increasingly to neuroscience, to neuropsychology and neuroeconomics, to understand the detail of how to enable commercial rela/onships and transac/ons at close range.

And networked technology is giving us increasing knowledge about how to support human connec/ons so that they can work to best effect in corpora/ons connected by a common purpose. Put them together and you get a powerful combina/on.


That’s what visceral business is about, organiza/ons as socially capitalized and connected bodies that are lean and opera/onally agile with the ability to move people.

Organiza/ons that do this have a strength of purpose and the ability to communicate that purpose credibly and compellingly and they operate not as rigid ins/tu/ons but as fluid networked communi/es.

A new gene/c code for the corpora/on is being wriFen and it’s being brought about by the opportuni/es of social enterprise technology.

More than just media overlay, the changes social connec/vity bring with it are becoming recognized as both subtle and profound.

And the technology that powers it paradoxically heralds a return to an approach with human values at its core enhanced by accountability and the efficiencies of data management and with a collapse of tradi/onal contexts powering new forms of connec/vity.

Visceral business is business that comes full circle. Driven by more than management process, the body of the organiza/on is plugged into organic growth opportuni/es, opportuni/es that benefit the commercial ecosystem, and opportuni/es that are sustainable.



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Businesses, brands and communi/es… all of them have never needed to be more visceral than they do today. Visceral reac/ons stand for a level of connec/vity that can be a powerful and enabling force for business.

Though it may come as a surprise to many who may have thought of conscience as a mental game, ever since the days of the ancient Greeks and Aristotle, conscience has been considered to reside within the body.

PuIng it another way, there’s much collec/ve intelligence that exists untapped within the body of an organiza/on and the best way to develop it isn’t always a case of mind over maFer.

Visceral reac/ons work on ins/nct as well as intellect, an ins/nct that comes from a corporeal intelligence that’s impossible to fake, the flash of inspira/on or the twitch in the gut we experience when something feels real and profound.

Visceral reac/ons lead to response and contribu/on. More powerful than symbiosis, visceral reac/ons are ones that go beyond mutual exchange and generate momentum and growth through ac/ve engagement, learning and development.

It isn’t always a case of mind over ma;er

It’s a fundamental aspect of the human condi/on that body and mind work together. Each one is lost without the other and each are equally in service to one another.

Mind and the body have to collaborate together for synapses to work effec/vely and we’re dependent on those synapses firing within bodies to survive. The same is true for individuals, for groups of individuals and for organiza/ons

When neurons connect in bodies and in businesses, that split second creates ‘ac/on poten/al’, the moment of connec/on that makes everything possible.

Ac/on poten/al is the fuel for business in the networked economy. It’s what catapulted Facebook out from the Harvard campus at speed, taking it from an idea to a $1billion business in less than two and a half years.

Beyond viral, Facebook succeeded because it connected with real needs directly and with simplicity. The top growth businesses of the last ten years have all been online organiza/ons because they do the same; they’ve succeeded by making meaningful and direct connec/vity with their audiences a powerful fuel for future strategy.



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In business management, this level of connec/on, this kind of synap/c response can also be thought of as ‘flow’. Flow is ‘a mental state of opera/on in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the ac/vity’.1

Like the neurological cocktail that’s involved in geIng synapses to fire, flow reac/ons within organiza/ons have certain cons/tuent ingredients.

They come from having clear goals, the scope for concentrated focus, the opportunity to lose oneself in ac/vity that enables the merging of ac/on and awareness, a distorted sense of /me, direct and immediate feedback, a balance between ability and challenge so things are not too easy nor too difficult, a sense of personal control of the situa/on or ac/vity and an intrinsic sense of reward which means there’s an effortlessness of ac/on.

Put together, these factors can create op/mal business condi/ons capable of enabling human interac/on to propel a growth dynamic for a collec/ve or a corpora/on.




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Many organiza/ons are based on mechanical processes, the result of management thinking employed over the last 60 years and of ideas that were created in the age of the factory.

But for organiza/ons that are visceral and that achieve flow, there are clear business benefits to be had, including lower overheads, increased efficiency, reduced churn, increased speed of business development, streamlined cri/cal business processes, improved staff performance and morale together with a higher market capitaliza/on and brand value per head.

Businesses now adap/ng to the networked age can struggle with legacy structures that make them seem unnecessarily ins/tu/onalized; they require a degree of recalibra/on. Mechanical, factory thinking is linear, structured and based on output. The vitality of the organic body by comparison is based on the fact that it grows by being scalar and highly distributed.

Like breathing in and breathing out, businesses require both input and output to thrive. As an alterna/ve to the one‐way dialogue of paid‐for marke/ng, the synapse of consumer response is what gives that dialogue a pulse.


In this respect, size and scale can work against heavily structured organiza/ons and create an disadvantage that’s akin to being opera/onally arthri/c or musclebound.

Network effects mean the ar/san who’s hands‐on, elbow deep in the construc/on of his crac, these days has the opportunity to build a following far more freely than the factory.

The ar/san can build a community based on word of mouth; he can build a tribe with whom there’s an in/mate connec/on, loyalty and meaning without the middleman. In comparison to the factory, there’s a raw, visceral aFrac/on that makes a craced business interes/ng to engage with.

Is it possible for businesses to be wholly effec/ve when they’re reliant on external marke/ng s/muli to generate sales? A metamorphosis needs to be made, away from the mechanical frameworks of the factory, towards more developed natural and neural networks; here consumers and employees alike are members of the corpora/on as vital synapses, ac/ng as pathways to support viral word of mouth support, sustainable performance and prosperity.



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For both individuals and businesses alike it’s increasingly being acknowledged that success and advantage come from within the DNA.

As with the human genome, organiza/ons have unique paFerns of behaviour, processes and competencies based on specific characteris/cs, they make up the DNA fingerprint that creates compe//ve points of difference for each and every organiza/on.

Corporate DNA is made up from a combina/on of factors, where and how an organiza/on originated, its heritage and its size. Other prac/cal ingredients include opera/ng environment, the norms and protocols of the par/cular sector a business operates in, how its management framework is constructed, core competencies, geographic and virtual loca/on, corporate culture and the personality of the leadership.

As is the case in humans, nature and nurture both have a part to play. With differen/a/on the key to crea/ng market share, DNA is a highly valuable intangible asset with the poten/al to s/mulate affini/es more effec/vely, arguably, than marke/ng technique alone can hope to provide.

Ge?ng under the skin of the organizaAon

A visceral business approach s/mulates spontaneous growth and contribu/on and takes a whole body view, because when one recognizes that the neurology and pathology of organiza/ons are relevant to business development, then rapid seamless synap/c responses instead of slow, mechanical ones become a reality.

Ins/tu/onalized ways of working do not necessarily s/mulate the levels of return they once used to do. In a increasingly socially capitalized environment, new technologies are bringing with them the opportunity to build trusted networks, new ways of doing things.

It’s possible that conven/onal thinking pre‐2007 may have forever lost the means to generate previous levels of growth it once used to do. Since then, widespread decreases in market capitaliza/on have become the norm in almost every industrial and service sector.

Instead, network effects and how well opera/onal synapses perform are becoming cri/cal factors in business profitability and what makes an investment worthwhile.



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What the network effects of technology has created is the principle that affinity is stronger than structure.

That means understanding what lies under the skin of a business, looking at its metabolism, how to fire it up, authen/cally, spontaneously, with all parts working together.

Today, the net worth of a business lies in the strength of its network, in its people.

Organiza/ons depend on the ac/on poten/al, the firing spark of the synapse.

Ge?ng under the skin of the organizaAon

Few organiza/ons tend to view themselves organically. In the face of the huge benefits that collec/ve mass knowledge that connected communica/ons can produce spontaneously however, mechanical methods of management are coming under serious challenge.

Without synapses firing, the human body falters and suffers from degenera/ve disease. Without synapses firing effec/vely across an organiza/on, without visceral connec/ons rippling through its audiences, degenera/ve disease can strike an organiza/on in exactly the same way.

Some of the symptoms of this degenera/on include employee churn, sluggishness in terms of speed to market, a lack of innova/on, low levels of product take‐up, high overheads and reduced customer loyalty.

One of the greatest economic impera/ves facing businesses today is how to s/mulate effec/ve par/cipa/on across audiences in terms of investor support, employee engagement and consumer response, and the connectedness of social networks has only served to amplify the degree dysfunc/on the factory model and the ins/tu/on have embedded within them.

Dealing with the degeneraAve organizaAon



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Dr. Dan GoFleib, psychologist and author of ‘Voices of Conflict, Voices of Healing’, has observed the effects of this kind of disconnectedness within the medical profession.

He points out how ‘people are going into medical school believing that they will be trea/ng human beings, and yet by the /me they get out of the system all they see are symptom‐carriers.’

In a similar way, the same Achilles’ heel came to plain view within the financial services industry when highly numerate execu/ves busied themselves with genera/ng quan/fiable growth whilst neglec/ng the basic viability of the system itself, with a set of long‐term and cataclysmic consequences generated for the banking community and the global economy as a whole becoming the eventual result.

This kind of behaviour is symptoma/c of a kind of entropy. The previously assumed value of much of our commercial landscape is undergoing something of a metamorphosis. Bricks and mortar now maFer less, the value of labour is diminishing as the market goes global, whilst the value of aFen/on and ideas has never been higher.

Dealing with the degeneraAve organizaAon

Many businesses are based on the principles of hierarchy, with the focus on a group mind largely controlled by an elite management team. It’s this elite mind that’s deemed to have the intelligence, that creates the strategy, and that’s responsible for decision‐making. It is, however, ocen unconnected from and out of tune with the conversa/ons happening around it. Umair Haque has put it this way ‐ in many businesses management teams can be said to be having a crisis of interac/on.

Organiza/ons today s/ll ocen operate off of Henry Ford’s old produc/on model where departments process ac/vi/es and informa/on, business improvement engineering is a manufactured ini/a/ve, business intelligence is conducted via planned, structured programmes of data analysis, marke/ng is about pushing messages as part of a co‐ordinated campaign.

Command, control, cajole, all comes from the centre.

When strategy and opera/ons are controlled this way there’s a risk of being stuck in the head and not in the body. The central nervous system of many organiza/ons is ocen less than sympathe/c to what’s going on around it, making it less capable of being able to survive, thrive and perform.

Ge?ng stuck in the head



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Being stuck in the head, de‐sensi/zed to the vital signs and senses of the rest of the organiza/on, blind to and cut off from the conversa/ons and impulses that are coursing all around it, goes against the grain of social capitaliza/on and is a dehumanizing form of existence.

When this occurs organiza/ons become less able to compete in the face of new ideas and are cut off from the visceral experiences of the collec/ve body of their audiences.

Without the itera/ve, adap/ve and forma/ve learnings that interac/on between the head and the body provides, resources tend to slow and become gradually depleted.

The typical retail opera/on, for example, has the symptoms of this.

Branch uniformity, cookie cuFer stores, value engineering to produce reliable, consistent performance. Malls and local high streets look the same, and they can fail to offer any sense of differen/ated experience.

Brand management has all too ocen developed into delivering methodical, u/litarian proposi/ons that are ocen numb to the touch, low on new ideas, on audience acknowledgement and reciprocity and on consequent goodwill and trust; they can be unpercep/ve and unable to generate dynamic connec/ons with customer communi/es and those that know their products best.

Ge?ng stuck in the head

The factory ethos runs deep within the commercial psyche of contemporary organiza/ons and the fact that businesses can develop quickly and easily and more ins/nc/vely than that is something we’re simply not used to.

Just like Woody Allen in the film where we started, these businesses need a reinvigorated means of capability and control.

Homogenous and pre‐meditated, many businesses can have informa/on in abundance, but lack a kind of visceral intelligence.

Their stock in trade is ocen transac/on over connec/on and rela/onship. These businesses don’t value or benefit from water cooler moments, they don’t have the means to capture the itera/ve, forma/ve light bulb experiences that are seen as risky, uncontrollable but that can be highly illumina/ng.

Despite the collabora/ve breakthroughs being demonstrated by many emergent forms of organiza/on as has been showcased the film Us.Now for example, tradi/onal organiza/ons can countenance against these moments. Leadership cultures based on driving through predetermined impera/ves may not recognize spontaneous and co‐created value as an inherently valuable means of management. Essen/ally these are the signs of being stuck in the head.



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Produc/ve exchange involves crea/ng an adap/ve fit in which both par/es move a liFle. History’s proven that the most effec/ve innova/ons come, as Clay Shirky puts it, from ‘small groups of large people arguing with each other'.

Think of those moments when you’ve had an interac/on with a less than co‐opera/ve contact, or a mee/ng in which there’s been a liFle resistance. Ocen, in the long run, they’re how the strongest bonds are made. Both par/es end up learning something and having a sa/sfactory exchange from adap/ng a liFle.

That process of adapta/on is an extraordinarily powerful one but is in reality ocen resisted. It’s an anathema to the factory model and stands outside conven/onal management concepts.

When the opportunity for crea/ng an adap/ve fit with an exac/ng customer is thwarted, however, a brand has created exactly the opposite of what it intended. It’s done nothing to fetch new customer opportuni/es, and instead done everything to push them away.

Zappo’s has learnt this. It’s a business that’s grown exponen/ally by having a generous policy on returns, and by having stakeholder and consumer dialogue flowing at all costs, even when what comes back flies in the face of the business plan.

TracAon, thrust, push and fetch

When synapses aren’t firing and when organiza/ons don’t have the capability to react in real /me, there’s a lack of trac/on.

Tradi/onal management and marke/ng wisdom says organiza/ons func/on from the top down. In effect they have compensated for a lack of connec/vity by using thrust. They deploy marke/ng ini/a/ves in which messages are pushed instead of fetched, ocen abusing the permission of their consumers in the process who’ve in turn become cynical and adept at screening them out. The net effect of this has been that the underlying trac/on and the influence brands are capable of having with their consumer base has been slowly eroding.

Lack of trac/on means the true fan is hard to find, and this makes the marke/ng overlay an ever more expensive lubricant.

Over recent years brand loyalty has disappeared like a landslide. Some would say it disappeared when promises were made and not kept, when corporate and brand communica/ons became transient, lacked integrity or failed to ignite the audience’s imagina/on. When everyone’s a stakeholder, communica/ons are more transparent and connec/ons are ubiquitous, the disingenuous get called out, or worse, are simply ignored. The new baFleground for brand ROI is social capitaliza/on, how to engage an audience to build potency by developing a greater sense of collabora/ve value that can cut costs opera/onally.



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So when lack of trac/on is compensated for by thrust it equals overhead. Compared to trac/on, thrust is a struggle to maintain and costly to do.

With lack of trac/on having diminished the levels trust consumers have in organiza/ons and brands, made management costs increasingly expensive and led to decreasing returns, marke/ng is becoming increasingly a tax that’s paid for being unremarkable.

This can then fuel a need for lower overheads that drives down the price and value of talent.

Before knowing it, a business becomes starved of the very lifeblood that would, as a viable corporate body, make it fit and healthy.

Businesses need trac/on and they need to connect with informa/on from outside and that’s why being visceral and the synap/c connec/on is vital.

When companies outsource their community management, what they’re doing is crea/ng organiza/onal overlay at addi/onal cost as subs/tute for internal leadership across all levels of the organiza/on. Not only are they poten/ally distancing themselves from audience par/cipa/on and involvement, they’re paying significant sums for the privilege of doing it.

TracAon, thrust, push and fetch

Ins/tu/onalized structures tend to func/on via hierarchy and supervision, but mul/ple management layers dull the senses, and in this kind of environment it’s quite easy to enter a world of the walking dead.

What broke the financial service industry in 2008 and has petrified many industrial sectors since, has been an urgent need to service a return on investment con/nuum, to find a never‐ending source of value from a system based on financial metrics at all costs.

Some would say this focus has led to a diminished emphasis and ownership of a number of other indices that may have been more effec/ve in sustaining long‐term corporate economic well‐being. As a strategy this has driven a loss of metacogni/on and ruled out possible ini/a/ves as the risk of risk itself becomes the enemy.

This is something akin to the world of the corporate zombie. We ocen seek comfort and reassurance in code and organiza/ons that aren’t programmed to accept devia/on or to accommodate the discoveries that are interes/ng, fresh, and asymmetrical run the risk of opera/ng in a dead zone. A balance must be struck and as the /de shics towards more open means of management; profi/ng ‘from’ rather than ‘with’ an audience these days means consigning oneself to a fairly short shelf‐life and being vulnerable to more social compe/tors.




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The world of the corporate zombie is a world where businesses exist in a world of aliena/on between the corpora/on and the consumer, where businesses and ins/tu/ons have grown insensi/ve to changes within their ecosystem as a connected communi/es, and they’re lacking a pulse.

Connec/ve /ssue in a human body revolves around contrac/ng pairs of muscles deployed as opposing pairs. On a fundamental level, opposi/on is how we keep alert. In the human body, the tools of opposi/on are how the human body becomes lean, efficient and organized, and this is a far cry from the uniformity and bureaucracy of ins/tu/ons.

What’s become clear over the last few years is that the hierarchical and bureaucra/c nature of many businesses and organiza/ons has been failing. As businesses strip out management layers because of economic contrac/on it’s worth thinking about one thing: Organiza/ons need to be conducive to receiving impulses from without to be healthy, impulses that may fly in the face of management strategy, but that may be good for business.

As the an/dote to the corporate zombie, sustainable architectures of par/cipa/on build bridges between a business and its distributed network. There may be some very real economic and social advantages to working this way.


As the railroad and the telephone transformed the way we do business, the web is bringing with it new opera/onal impulses that inform new ways of business development.

Whilst a ‘blink’2 response isn’t always accurate, the speed of modern communica/ons means we need to work with it more and more. In that point of connec/on fascina/ng things happen. Consider the gut reac/on, a flash of inspira/on, the twitch that tells you in a nanosecond something has moved you ‐ it feels like an irrefutable truth, and is the strongest mo/va/on for ac/on. These are the kind of reac/ons that make people want to do something.

In a socially capitalized environment the strongest ins/ncts exist when our bodies tell us to move, not our heads. The social web is an environment in which affini/es dominate, where rigid structures have far less currency than they used to do and where competencies that were once crucial in management no longer match the dynamic value of a community that cares.

The management zombie by comparison is dead behind the eyes, fran/c but ineffectual, and the corporate zombie organiza/on is incapable of making the kind of visceral impact necessary for memorable connec/ons to happen with consumers. When organiza/ons block the paths for spontaneous contribu/on from their audiences they restrict their own opportuni/es to boost business through a free and flowing groundswell of energy, aFen/on and ideas.




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Visceral business is different, thrilling, highly aFrac/ve territory. It’s bold and inspira/onal. Connec/ng and crea/ng distributed networks of influence has powered growth of businesses like Google, Facebook, Bebo and Myspace, and made them capable of becoming some of the fastest growing companies in the world over the last five years.

Web‐based communica/on means influence and trust can circulate within loose communi/es highly efficiently and the power and value of this emergent capability cannot be under‐es/mated.

A host of social lending solu/ons are springing up to challenge tradi/onal banks ‐ Umpqua, Zopa and Grameen and Prosper are just some. The social web is crea/ng the community bazaars of Etsy and Aussiebum, the authen/c engaging consumer experiences of LiFledish, Fairtrade and Threadless and Zappos, the distributed networks like Unilever's Shak/ ini/a/ve in India that taps into exis/ng networks of women’s self‐help groups, the trusted networks like Mumsnet, the community recruitment ini/a/ves of Zubka, the local community ini/a/ves being piloted by brands like Waitrose and the other companies that recognize their future lies in serving the interests of mul/ple stakeholders by puIng community management at the heart of the marke/ng and organiza/onal agenda.


This is a host of examples of viable businesses that focus on community communica/on and exchange. They’re businesses that can func/on well because they’re managing the flow of this exchange as an alterna/ve to the more rigid regula/on of conven/onal management process by leading and then geIng out of the way.

ContribuAon as a corporate currency

When the visceral reac/on strikes, when that gut reac/on or a flash of inspira/on happens as a moment of truth and an irresis/ble, powerful s/mulus engages creates ac/on poten/al, that desire becomes a form of contribu/on.

And as social engagement and the power of people over product becomes a primary driver of the commercial success, the ability to engender contribu/on within a business is becoming highly relevant in ways that were inconceivable just a few years ago.



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Visceral businesses ac/vely seek out contribu/on both within and outside their organiza/onal walls.

Many exis/ng organiza/ons find it a challenge to work out how to accept this form of contribu/on, how to s/mulate volunteering, how to accommodate this level of itera/ve fit because it requires high levels of adaptability, management with a light touch and communica/ons skills that are different from the one‐way, centre‐out conven/onal hallmarks of sales and marke/ng media.

When someone first comes into contact with a business or brand, the first thing they contribute is aFen/on.

Whilst this is not hard currency, neither is it given freely. AFen/on has a value that tradi/onal business management approaches can discount or discriminate against ocen without realizing it.

Many businesses mistreat and devalue the aFen/on they get paid by thinking that there’s too much cost in giving aFen/on back; they aren’t geared to reciprocity. Reciprocity is worth baking in to a business model because in the age of ‘freemium’, valuing and nurturing aFen/on is a crucial part of building a following and sales conversion.

With reciprocity in place, as trust builds, aFen/on travels to the front of the mind leading to conscious permission to engage.

ContribuAon as a corporate currency

It’s this conscious permission that lies ahead of any chance of consump/on. Sale and consump/on has been tradi/onally where the energy’s been focused as hitherto the only important point of commercial transac/on. Consump/on today though is just as likely to be a page view, aFen/on paid via a free trial, some thing that amidst the disloca/ons of our nanosecond culture and the general scarcity of concerted focus aFen/on creates the kind of closer proximity that necessarily has to exist before people will pay.

Without this kind of rela/onship a business runs the risk of becoming dull and expensive, it reduces its chances of it also being futureproof. Be remarkable, build a rela/onship, inspire and deliver a promise, and through that rela/onship will come goodwill, knowledge, influence and ideas that can become a mainstay for innova/on and the fuel for future strategy.

Let the users decide, find a tribe that needs leading. The best evangelists are prized ambassadors, the agents of value, they’re consumers who spread the word. Ideally, they’re employees, and if they’re not employees, why not? Whether internal or external, the advocates who spontaneously step up are the people who hold the key to future growth and effec/ve produc/on.

Fan behaviour, their advocacy and their influence all create a model of business development that’s self‐s/mula/ng. Just as in an intelligent central nervous system, these kinds of contribu/ons fire the synapses that can create a movement.



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It makes sense to treat this form of voluntary contribu/on as a currency and it makes sense to credit it as a means of consump/on and produc/on becoming integrated and aligned as a ‘profit with’ as opposed to ‘profit from’ rela/onship.

This is a poten/al alterna/ve to the salaried employee model. Based on contribu/ons made, it’s possible that influencers and partners can become the new bedrock of a recalibrated organiza/on, where incen/ves are based on input as well as output, where strategy is co‐created as a viable as a way forward and where online collabora/on becomes transparent and accountable.

Visceral businesses encourage dynamic ac/vity so that people in effect pay for their experience by being excited about it.

As long‐held economic assump/ons come under review and freemium models are becoming integrated as a part of commercial business exchanges, there’s a need to think in new way about making contribu/on count for us in ways that we haven’t been able to before.

What wealth can be generated when we’re able to credit connec/ons and contribu/ons made because people care and because they use their skill, their talent and their voice to make a difference?

Credit where credit’s due



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As I men/oned earlier, recognizing that the neurology and pathology of organiza/ons are relevant to their development makes rapid seamless synap/c responses instead of slow, mechanical ones a possible reality.

In an 1989 ar/cle in the Leadership & Organiza/onal Development Journal called ‘Organiza/ons Get Stuck Too’, Bill Critchley and David Casey described the main stages that organiza/ons navigate via a process of gestalt.

This gestalt goes through several phases. Sensa/on, the ini/al visceral response, is the first phase of any s/mula/on; then awareness, that conscious understanding that confirms cogni/on follows. This awareness stage can be easily compromised but crucially is instrumental in cemen/ng any kind of group commitment.

Following the awareness stage, mobilisa/on takes place, and from that and only then is there effec/ve ac/on, the opportunity to make contact, the scope for sa/sfac/on before, finally, comple/on of the experience through withdrawal and rest. Moving through this cycle in a balanced way creates ac/on poten/al at each phase, as each stage is succeeded by another.

All stages of this cycle are of equal importance and both individual and organiza/ons can get stuck on it. Who knows the workaholic that can’t stop, the highly aware person who can’t help procras/na/ng, or the organiza/on that’s ac/ng in a frenzy but failing to make much headway?

How to make the most of the potenAal for acAon

Organiza/ons can get suppressed, hysterical, knowing and angry, frightened or simply exhausted. Without acceptance of this natural cycle, change can be a challenge that leads simply to burn out. For many this is ocen what it proves to be. Because of that organiza/ons can invest in becoming resistant.



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The physiology of the human body shows us that highly complex networks populated by differen/ated collabora/ve ac/vi/es have great poten/al. Bones, muscles, sinews, soc /ssue, bear out the wisdom of complexity theory and the need for organiza/ons to be highly differen/ated. These are elements that all have a vital and quite dis/nguishable purpose within an overall whole. The human body is a hetararchy, and the best proven example of an efficient, self‐propelling system that we have.

What it teaches us is that effec/ve synap/c responses do not require similarity and homogeneity but difference.

It shows us that a commiFed body can work together through just about any blockage it has as long as it has integrity. This is a principle with the poten/al, too, to create highly tangible compe//ve points of difference for corpora/ons.

We appear to be coming to an age ‐ at least to some extent ‐ in which there is an end to edifice. Compe//on, transparency and an increasing surge towards democra/za/on via the web mean that the winds of change are blowing, not just making it harder for management to hide behind a firewall, also making it less in their interests to do so.

New business growth is being based on new values ‐ human universals, socer values of crea/vity and innova/on, of shared goals and distributed equity, of purpose, of meaning and peace.


Social media creates a democra/c step‐change, a transparent age where the digital footprint speaks volumes, where informa/on is accessible, where it’s socially libera/ng and where, despite the easy allure of socialwash, exploita/on is becoming a harder act to pull off.

It’s more and more difficult and counter‐produc/ve to do evil in the dark; aFen/on is scarce and this is leading to a heightened aFrac/on to meaning.

The success of the networked whole, as people are coming to realize, is largely dependent on having a good reputa/on. That reputa/on has to be able to reach out and be aFrac/ve, with the prize that strength of reputa/on in a networked world begets new forms of value.

Integrity is defined as 'soundness of moral character; honesty; the state of being whole, en/re, or undiminished'. In a networked, socially capitalized and connected economy, integrity can be said to create integral fit.

So business leaders have a requirement to look at their organiza/ons and see where there is slack, not simply as producers or as a measure of output, but slack in terms of strength of rela/onships, slack in terms of trac/on in the message, and where transac/onal aspects of slack there can be largely eliminated by technology.



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Organiza/ons can benefit from looking at how to build the integrity of their organiza/on in ways that highlight where the trust lies in their network, within individual rela/onships, how they can build influence, and which key players can become leadership beacons for an outreaching organiza/on.

A characteris/c of businesses that fire on all synapses is that they have not just integrity, but ‘blatant integrity’.

Blatant integrity doesn’t just hold up in the face of scru/ny, it reduces the chances of objec/on beforehand and significantly increases the effec/veness of rela/onship building because it brings with it goodwill.

This kind of organiza/on has a corporate willingness to embrace opposi/on and in actual fact to welcome it. Opposi/on is taken as a sign of aFen/on, that someone cares and as such it’s a compliment and a chance to demonstrate leadership.

Barack Obama very publicly set the tone for this in his terms for leadership of his own administra/on complete with ethics leFers. Commercially, Zappo’s and TwiFer are the kind of rapid fire business growth examples where integrity of service has propelled rela/onships from being casual to highly commiFed.

The compelling case for integrity is that when an organiza/on is in integrity, a trackable footprint becomes an substan/al asset making it possible to generate posi/ve media for free by being compelling and credible.


The best brands have always had a combina/on of both of these two aFributes, but what’s becoming clear is that corporate rela/onships maFer differently to how they used to do; /me served and track record can’t indemnify against anything very much, the marketplace today is the landscape suited to the commiFed, of going above and beyond; influence is transient and leadership is about leaning in.

Ge?ng the synapses going

According to Dr. Vasily Klucharev at the Donders Ins/tute for Brain, Cogni/on and Behaviour in the Netherlands, our minds tend to converge to form a group mind when pooled together. Group‐think brings with it both strengths and vulnerabili/es, and some group behaviours are beFer than others at being conducive to effec/ve group working

These behaviours, as seen for example in viral or swarm behaviour, enable visceral responses to be poten/ally a powerful contribu/ng factor towards business health and growth.

In the digital age, it’s the loose influencing networks, the neural pathways, that shape everything.

Neuroeconomics, a powerful emergent sphere of business focus, is increasingly suppor/ng the view that there’s a burgeoning business case for the synap/c response and puIng rapid‐fire itera/ve development on the new corporate agenda.



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The consequence of all these trends and development is that corporate influence is becoming increasingly flee/ng, the cumula/ve effect of the brand becomes only as strong as the value of its last interac/on, and it’s an influence that increasingly resides in the reputa/on of its officers, as well as the brand as a whole.

In this context it’s important then that we look commercially at how credit can be generated in new ways.

Organiza/ons should consider how they can build a following outside of a reliance on mainstream and mass‐produced media, through ways that include providing authen/c construc/ve commentary to business ac/vi/es on an ongoing basis, with a mul/plicity of leadership embedded into the organiza/on that can build discreet, aFen/ve and reciprocal rela/onships with key audiences, credi/ng others who contribute as a given and valuing posi/ve contribu/on in all its forms as the means of building new channels of equity and return.

Having anyone’s aFen/on involves gaining their permission to operate, and with this comes a major implica/on, namely we need to treat the scarcity and value of aFen/on respecsully and recognize that being given any aFen/on at all is a privilege.

With this in mind, organiza/ons are being asked to inspire via big ideas and grow their abili/es to encourage full par/cipa/on; as Seth Godin says, ‘the whole is full of people who need leading and we have a desperate shortage of leaders’.


There’s a marke/ng rule of thumb worth bearing in mind, which is that if your ideas aren’t working they’re usually not big enough. Branding, as they say, is a contact sport, so what’s going to make an impact? Maybe, when building a following creates compe//ve edge, opera/onal efficiencies and a host of associated opportuni/es, inspira/on now comes with a business case aFached, and that corporate renaissance is dependant on a flow of business ideas from previously more marginalized resources.

Decades of deference and the manufacturing model has encouraged a kind of collec/ve iner/a, where only leaders lead and only the most industrious will do the heavy licing.

In synap/c flow this is rearranged. Income is derived from output and output comes from full and autonomous contribu/on. With the costs of contribu/ng falling and more and more engagement being generated this way, it becomes possible to create a compound value based on authen/city, meaning and personal sa/sfac/on alongside conven/onal, func/onal, u/litarian advantage.

This is how employees, customers, stakeholders and audiences emerge and engage to build business value co‐crea/vely.

It doesn’t maFer whether an organiza/on is a u/lity business or whether it’s based on a cause. In either case, network effects enable flow to be used as a business model capable of aFrac/ng cri/cal mass through co‐opera/on.



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Being conducive one can be said to be going beyond having passive influence to demonstra/ng contribu/ve, helpful and favourable behaviour.

How conducive one is, either as an individual or as an organiza/on, is an increasingly easy aFribute to read as part of a digital footprint.

Conducive behaviour is a part of one’s sphere of influence and the personal reputa/on that now supplements corporate reputa/on as the network’s worth holds sway.

ScoF Monty, Head of Social Media at Ford, is a prime example of conducive behaviour in ac/on.

ScoF is a visible personality within a corpora/on who has effec/vely added his personal reputa/on to the overall credibility of the Ford brand online.

ScoF’s communica/on with his own audiences on TwiFer, Youtube and across other social plasorms adds new channels of informa/on to Ford’s footprint and builds a following for ScoF that aims to support the Ford brand authen/cally.

It goes beyond advocacy to demonstrable affinity, where win:win rela/onships can be sustained because the behaviour is seen as credible.

Being conducive



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Another hallmark of conducive management is leadership with a light touch; it’s the kind of leadership that allows room for such ambassadors.

Just as a sign of successful technology is that it becomes invisible by being embedded, effec/ve management within a new media environment does the same.

Effec/ve management doesn’t need the apparatchik to func/on anymore and in the digital age leadership skills are being redrawn and redefined.

Within online digital community networks and managed data environments, the means exist to strip out the padding and cost of supervision.

Transparency becomes not just affordable but desirable; the lack of trust that hampers the goal of being truly conducive can be eliminated, and these kind of conducive contribu/ons can be used as the fuel for future strategy.

When looking at who and what to value in this new paradigm, it’s clear that community management and good communica/on skills really do maFer. The key ques/ons for organiza/onal leaders to ask are ‘how well are my people able to lead others, how responsive are they, how usefully do they contribute to the development of new ideas, how well do they s/mulate others to have a share of voice and how much influence do or can they have?’

Being conducive


© Ed Brenegar : www.edbrenegar.com


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Being conducive

For example, two organiza/ons can func/on in exactly the same space and have a world of difference between them in terms of performance because of how well they connect with their customers and the conversa/ons that people want to have with them.

The models of consump/on and produc/on are changing. As func/onal competencies become easy to replicate and as transac/ons are becoming automated and traded up to rela/onships, creed becomes a real point of difference. Strong impulses are developed by having an overwhelming sense of purpose that people can believe in.

With the playing field leveled and advantages of scale eroded online, the plain, the vanilla, u/lity purchase is no match for a transac/on that takes place within a meaningful rela/onship where value is added through strength of leadership, dialogue and inspired ini/a/ve.


The benefit of a brand that’s built on conducive behaviour is that investors can buy into a network that’s proven, the value of which has a good chance of increasing because alignment creates efficiency and network effects.

There is a prudence in looking at these socer indices alongside the numbers.

It’s investment in reputa/on, in talent, in what already is. The group reputa/on of talented individuals with a track record is a surer bet than many.


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As far as audiences are concerned, different groups on the adop/on curve, innovators, early adopters, laggards, have markedly different needs.

How well a business resonates with their communi/es and business development opportuni/es can be increased by thinking differently about each group and what they need. Those users that interact as users infrequently, compared with those that do everyday, for example, also have different types of rela/onships; they must have different strategies for development too.

Being conducive

As preferred and trusted networks emerge and shic us from transac/ons to connec/ons, life/me customer value and enduring rela/onships offer the most poten/al reward for any business.

Long‐term consump/on, levels of input, word of mouth support, the contribu/ons of enthusiasts, they all encourage a sense of organiza/onal wellbeing.

In all of them, what marke/ng becomes is the vision of consumers delivered as a service.

There are opportuni/es to be gained by developing the leadership poten/al of each and every member of an organiza/on, each doing their own thing, each going their own way, each with a specializa/on, each being remarkable.

This creates a kind of champagne effect as the strength of the individual becomes the key to the strength of the collec/ve.

Being visceral helps organiza/ons and individuals thrive in an increasingly socially capitalized world, where audiences are looking for credibility and organiza/ons are looking for efficiency.

Mee/ng these needs creates powerful and potent condi/ons for business health and growth.



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The interes/ng thing about passion is that when it’s s/fled or thwarted by circumstance, it just gets stronger.

Passion is an essen/al but ocen trivialized and much maligned character trait of the human spirit.

Do passionate people give up when things tricky? It’s a fundamental characteris/c of being passionate, in fact, that they don’t. Acer a period of being s/fled, when one finds oneself in tune with one's passion again it can create a real surge of very dynamic produc/vity. With passion, it really is a case of absence making the heart grow fonder.

Passion comes from listening to the body and the soul, and from respecsully tuning in to what really maFers. It takes /me. And whether that body is poli/cal, corporate or personal, this is what 'listening to one's body', means.

In toughening circumstances it’s easy to lose sight of where and what our real passions are and just survive, but for connected businesses and distributed networks this does not do. And it’s easy also to get caught up in a rush of frenzied ac/vity, of ‘doing’ without ‘thinking’, without the calm reflec/on that listening to one’s body entails.

Listen to the body



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In /mes of uncertainty and depression, repeatedly the ability to see beyond the limita/ons of the darker horizons of a situa/on is fueled, most par/cularly, by passion.

Being in tune and connec/ng with the corporate body, in Steve’s case, Apple, made the passions within his people easier to connect with and success easier to achieve. It made a priority out of finding what ways would release a surge of meaningful ac/vity when the struggle was really on. It was innova/ve, it was brave.

Because social networks constellate around spontaneous, unbridled and uncontrived interest, they can be highly efficient when without constraint in a similar way.

For corporate businesses to have a good chance of genera/ng future wealth for their investors, investors need to allow organiza/ons to seek an approach to wealth management that centers value around the social network and that liberates the passion of their people.

They need to listen to the body.

Listen to the body

In a commercial context, 'doing' too much can obliterate any opportunity to do some really useful ‘thinking’.

Thinking can be seen at /mes as a commercial risk when the name of the game is just delivery, pure and simple.

The commercial accelera/on that’s been driven by the external investor and the consequent need for a year on year return isn’t sustainable in the long term when the system's got nothing lec to give.

Steve Jobs, when talking about managing through and economic downturn, relates to the issue of passion.

“When the dot‐com bubble burst”, he said, “what I told our company was that we were just going to invest our way through the downturn, that we weren't going to lay off people, that we'd taken a tremendous amount of effort to get them into Apple in the first place ‐ the last thing we were going to do is lay them off.

And we were going to keep funding. In fact we were going to up our R&D budget so that we would be ahead of our compe/tors when the downturn was over. And that's exactly what we did. And it worked. And that's exactly what we'll do this /me."



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What it asks management is to develop a more sensi/ve intelligence, for organiza/ons to look at outcomes as well as incomes, and for businesses to review how they deliver on their essen/al promise and reason for their being that to a very real extent goes beyond the boFom line.

We’re in an age when unleashing latent talent, amplifying capabili/es and enabling the commiFed gives us a chance to stand on the brink of a emerging corporate renaissance.

Making deeper, more meaningful and sustainable connec/ons with audiences has marke/ng, digital and HR implica/ons, it offers major opportuni/es for streamlining and structural change.

A new geneAc code for corporaAons

The emergence of social networking asks us to take a more organic management approach that builds on collec/ve wisdom and energy.

It requests we develop management that can lead and get out of the way and new kinds of intelligent leadership across the span of an organiza/on, leadership based on contribu/on, and reward based on a rounded set of metrics.

This autonomy is inherently aFrac/ve because natural connec/ons are more cost‐effec/ve than those that are forced. Permission lowers the price of entry, and corporate DNA is free.

The next /me you find your business struggling, tune in to what’s really going on under the skin. Is the business firing on all cylinders? If not, where are the blockages? How much aFen/on, imagina/on, confidence and trust is in the corporate footprint? What’s being ar/culated through networked behaviours?

An organic and conscious management approach has fail‐safes set inherently within it. ‘Profit with’ instead of ‘profit from’ will call out exploita/on in the face of renewal. With best inten/ons established, feedback can be more freely given which builds the value of preferred networks.



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As Gary Hamel set them out in his HBR ar/cle, ‘Moonshots for Management’, there’s no doubt management has some grand challenges ahead of it. It’s being asked to go from a being a mechanical construct to a biological, more humanizing one, underpinned by a changed set of economic impera/ves and holis/c performance measures. This is less about management consultancy, more perhaps about corporate homeopathy and holisi/c approaches to value engineering.

Instead of a having a name over the factory door, organiza/onal futures may be best served by focusing on crea/ng a /ght body of people that stand for something. Acer all, people will forget what you said and they’ll forget what you did, but they’ll never forget how you made them feel and what you inspired them to do.

Back to film again, the place where this story started. In 1876 Eadweard Muybridge captured the essence of mo/on with his photographic studies of horses.

At that /me, stop frame photography ushered in the age in which photography changed the way we understood the human condi/on as it exists via the study of the split second.

With the advent of that new technology, a whole era of human expression and a new levels of understanding about the physical condi/on became possible.



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At that /me and as a consequence of the technology, ar/sts like Degas then studied what photography meant and ar/culated back to us the essence of the human condi/on in ways that hadn’t been remotely appreciated up un/l that moment.

Photography and that first mo/on picture, spawned the world of film. It created new media that made compelling storytelling, reaching out to new audiences and giving birth to whole new industries.

In the same way now, digital technology allows us to make similar advances, this /me in terms of the corporate movement and how we organize.

Capturing the flee/ng experiences that move us is the new goal of process management.

It’s the prize of the synap/c response and making connec/ons is a new business benefit we cannot afford to overlook, either as producers or consumers.

Response and contribu/on mark us out as valuable. These days then, maybe if you’re not geIng fired at least once a day, can you say are you really doing your job?



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A checklist for recalibraAon

How strong is the organiza/on’s iden/ty? Beyond the logo, what exists in terms of common ancestry, shared interests, experience, beliefs, geography, profession, shared problems, religion, philosophy? Do people in the organiza/on understand its origin and does it have a coherent iden/ty that makes the community congruent?

How are people ini/ated? Rituals encourage respect and commitment for the community as a whole and the part each person plays within it. Are there roles and liFle rituals to help to get the right people through the door?

Where and how do people gather? Is there a des/na/on, a mee/ng place and a territory that members can call their own.Does it act as a shelter, a launching pad and a soc place to fall?

How are self‐interests aligned with the common purpose of the organiza/on as a whole? Do you have a /ght body of people in your organiza/on, is the prize of being involved bigger than being in it for oneself? How are egos dealt with? Can they be lec at the door sufficiently for members to be crea/ve and brave?

Asking a few key ques/ons can enable momentum within any corpora/on. How close is yours to being a visceral business by answering some or all of them?

What’s the business about? Does it have clarity of purpose, a passion, a cause, great ques/ons to answer, interes/ng challenges to solve and a common sense of direc/on?

What are you doing that’s new? What is the business doing that’s about more than business as usual, what’s progressive? Where’s the rush of excitement about doing something that hasn’t been done before that’s going to bond par/cipants together?

Who and where are the leaders? Can the business point to benign, trusted leaders that are respected by its members, that act as totems within the business and are valued as such?

Are the leadership skills in place across the organiza/on that can inspire others to lead unselfishly and point out examples of greatness to follow in others?



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Does charity maFer? In the most successful trusted and networked organiza/ons, charity is recognized as important and giving is its own reward. There’s a willingness to share, to give as much as to receive and to ‘spread the stroke’. How much is this embedded into the culture of the organiza/on?

How high are the levels of individual ownership? In highly effec/ve organiza/ons, high levels of individual ownership and collec/ve responsibility co‐exist simultaneously, enabling them produce great results for their members and, at the same /me, genera/ng pride in the ac/vity that’s being created together.

Is there a sense of collec/ve conscience? Strong organiza/ons are aware of what, and what not, to accept in their best interests. Both explicit and implicit communica/on ar/culates and confirms this from /me to /me. That communica/on comes from the leader (s) and also from the group as a whole. It upholds the common values the organiza/on has together.

Does tolerance and mutual respect exist for different points of view? Are other viewpoints able to be taken in effortlessly and is everyone encouraged to par/cipate? Does each and every member have the poten/al to make an important contribu/on to the success of the organiza/on at any given moment?

Is anyone able to join in? How inclusive and open is your organiza/on? How does it deal with the aFen/on of those that are interested in it, so they have a role to play?

What’s the focus of your organiza/on and how well is it ar/culated? Focus is a sign of there being a collec/ve commitment and of dedica/on and vitality. Focus shapes the energy an organiza/on has at any given moment. How well is it defined?

Is there choice and variety in ways that the commiFed can engage? How geared is the organiza/on to providing mul/ple ways to par/cipate, get involved and contribute for those that want to do so. Are you harnessing the best interests of these people?



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What’s it worth? Is the organiza/on able to gauge the value of belonging for its members as well as measure its value based on the metrics of what maFers to it and the outside world?

Is it fun? How much pleasure does your organiza/on create? Does it have the capability to just aFract people who want to join in? How does it fare compared to compe/tors where being fun makes it even more special.

Is it capable of exceeding expecta/ons? A ‘nothing is impossible’ philosophy is a mark of confidence and is highly inspiring. The strongest organiza/ons offer the belief and the hope that the opportunity to exceed expecta/ons is present. They enhance and nurture their people by providing strength in numbers and this way, the organiza/on goes beyond exis/ng limita/ons together.

Not standing s/ll? Is the organiza/on responsive, does it innovate and evolve, does it look acer the new and the young as the path to its future? How open is it to new ideas and experiences as part of a con/nuous process of renewal? Do the leaders encourage new leaders, is con/nuity an essen/al ingredient?

Does the organiza/on ques/on itself? The self‐ques/oning organiza/on builds integrity this way and becomes something its people can believe in, valida/ng the organiza/on and crea/ng a process of perpetua/on. Does yours deal with the difficult stuff conscien/ously and re‐evaluate ethical issues in an open, honest and ongoing fashion?

Is there a baked‐in resilience? The strongest of all organiza/ons have resilience built into the way they do things, specifically by valuing their heritage and when things get tough the stronger ones look acer the weaker ones by passing on their experience.

How many ‘light‐bulb’ moments are you having? People form strong and powerful bonds when they have shared memorable, character‐forming, and high‐value experiences together. Light‐bulb moments uncover something deep within the individual and collec/vely become part of a shared rite of passage.

Fired up? Here’s what to do next

It doesn’t take much to get started. Some simple ini/a/ves can be created through the development of people and leadership skills, technology or through marke/ng. If acer reading this you’d like to discuss your needs, please feel free to get in touch.



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About

Part strategist and part pragma/st, Anne McCrossan is a specialist in business and brand development based in London focused on helping organiza/ons make the most of their intangible assets in /mes of transforma/on and change.

Visceral Business is an approach to marke/ng and organiza/onal development that helps businesses align their digital ac/vity, human resources and marke/ng to help organiza/ons adapt to an increasingly socially capitalized world.

It helps organiza/ons develop strategies for par/cipa/on and create lean and effec/ve networks and works with businesses across strategic development, organiza/onal change, marke/ng communica/ons and employee and audience engagement and with brands to help them make deeper, more meaningful and sustainable connec/ons with audiences.

Our areas of exper/se include brand and business audits, strategic posi/oning assignments, leadership and social media coaching, brand iden/ty development and community and communica/ons management.

Anne McCrossan (+44) 0203 355 0582 (+44) 07508 021951

Web www.visceralbusiness.com www.annemccrossan.com

Blog hFp://annemccrossan.com/a_bit_visceral Email [email protected] TwiFer@Annemcx



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Notes, references and acknowledgements

1 Flow: The Psychology of Op/mal Experience’, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Defini/on source from Wikipedia 2 ‘Blink’, Malcolm Gladwell ‘How We Decide’, Jonah Lehrer ‘Tribes’, Seth Godin ‘Voices of Conflict, Voices of Healing’, Dr. Dan GoFleib ‘Construc/ve Capitalism’, Umair Haque ‘Here Comes Everybody’, Clay Shirky ‘What would Google Do?’, Jeff Jarvis ‘Organiza/ons Get Stuck Too’, Bill Critchley and David Casey ‘Moonshots for Management’, Gary Hamel, HBR, Feb 2009 Us Now. Watch the film at hFp://watch.usnowfilm.com/

Illustra/ons by Hugh McLeod www.gapingvoid.com

Cover photo by Gunnar Freyr hFp://www.flickr.com/photos/gunnarfreyr/2210695636/



www.visceralbusiness.com


recalibrating organizations

Economy & Finance