Truly Deeply/Madly

The suc­cess of the Greens in last weeks Fed­eral elec­tion in Aus­tralia is a great reminder that mar­kets are not homoge­nous, that there are dif­fer­ent seg­ments with dif­fer­ent needs. The Greens have ended up with a National Sen­ate Vote of almost 13% and sur­prise, sur­prise, a con­trol­ling influ­ence on mat­ters that come before that House of Par­lia­ment. Throw in the inde­pen­dents who have also con­vinc­ingly won seats and you get fur­ther insight into the diverse mar­ket needs of an elec­torate. But seg­men­ta­tion is not the pur­pose of this blog, rather the degree to which the Greens have been ever present in Aus­tralia in recent weeks is a great reminder of nature and the Greens quest for eco­log­i­cal sus­tain­abil­ity – more specif­i­cally the lessons on offer for busi­ness, from nature.

To this end I would like to share a Fast Com­pany magazine’s take on the think­ing devel­oped by Adam Wer­back in his book Strat­egy for Sus­tain­abil­ity (Har­vard Busi­ness Press 2009) – along with a few inter­pre­ta­tive thoughts (love the license some brack­ets provide!)

1. Diver­sify across gen­er­a­tions (hang-out with younger gen­er­a­tions, they always see the world differently)

2. Adapt to the chang­ing envi­ron­ment and spe­cialise (think chal­lenger brands!)

3. Cel­e­brate trans­parency. Every species knows which species will eat it and which will not (think real triple bot­tom line reporting)

4. Plan and exe­cute sys­tem­at­i­cally, not com­part­men­tally. Every part of a plant con­tributes to its growth (the death of the silos!)

5. Form groups and pro­tect the young. Most ani­mals travel in flocks, gag­gles, and prides (think potent grad­u­ate pro­grams and mean­ing­ful men­tor­ing programs)

6. Inte­grate met­rics. Nature brings the right infor­ma­tion to the right place at the right time. When a tree needs water the leaves curl; when there is rain, the curled leaves move more water to the root sys­tem (at the very least take on the think­ing offered in Good to Great and know what dri­ves your eco­nomic engine if you won’t step up to triple bot­tom metrics)

7. Improve with each cycle. Evo­lu­tion is a strat­egy for long term sur­vival (rapid pilot pro­gram­ming is a use­ful mindset)

8. Right-size reg­u­larly, rather than down­size occa­sion­ally. If an organ­ism grows too big to sup­port itself, it col­lapses, it with­ers, it is eaten (con­sciously decide what resources are core and what can be out­sourced or con­tracted for spe­cific projects)

9. Build an endur­ing foun­da­tion. Nature uses resources only to the level that they can be renewed (think beyond risk pro­fil­ing and equity to debt ratios – fac­tor in the renewal of your people)

At very least the above is a reminder of the power of an effec­tive anal­ogy in cre­ative think­ing. If that does not make sense to you, think again!

Peter Singline
Brand Scientist

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 27th, 2010 at 9:35 am and is filed under Brand Agency, Brand Design, Brand Strategy, Brand Voice, Brand-Storytelling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.