2640 Lyndale Ave S.
Minneapolis Minnesota 55408
Learning to flow
Colours of Water
March 22, 2013

Lao Tzu
Image via: Tom@HK at http://flickr.com/photos/62424894@N00/2175595214
The highest form of goodness is
like water.
Water knows how to benefit all
things without striving with
them.

Life depends upon business.
But does business support life?

New science of water
Science that serves people
Connected to our everyday experience
Holistic
Interwoven into life

New science of water New models in business
Science that serves people
Connected to our everyday experience
Holistic
Interwoven into life
Businesses built around people
Work connected to meaning
Networked
A living construct

Is business learning how to flow?

AIDA Model
Developed by Elias St. Elmo
Lewis 1898
States changed behaviour is a
result of changed attitudes.
Image via: greeneyefordesign.com/

Marlboro Man
Image via: http://www.wallz.eu/

Cognitive dissonance
Developed by Leon Festinger 1957. We change our attitudes to fit our behaviour rather than the other way around.
Image via: thefreeman.net

Albert Otto
Hirschman
Economist who proposed that
cognitive dissonance be
employed as a strategy for
behaviour change
Image via: www.twylah.com

Facebook
Developed an application that
rewards the behaviour they
want to create.
Changed the way we think
about the world.
Image via: lolzbook.com/

Companies are defined by what they do,
not by what they say.
Zeus Jones Proprietary and Confidential. All rights reserved 2011.
Image via: Thomas R. Bruce/

Image via: http://www.adme.ru/

The actions of business are shaped by the
tools we use. The tools are shaped by the
philosophies we hold.

Brand Pyramid
Designed to enable companies
to be consistent and say the
same thing everywhere.

Brand Molecule
Developed by John Grant 2006
Designed to enable companies
to do a variety of coherent
things

Business performance directly tied to job satisfaction
Over the past five years the average annual return on the Workplace Fund was 10.81%. The S&P Index for the same period was just 3.97%
100 Best Companies to work forParnassus Workplace Fund

Job
satisfaction not
tied to income.
Daniel Kahneman and Angus
Deaton of Princeton studied
effect of increasing income
upon well being.

Performance
inversely
correlated with
bonuses
In 2008 Dan Ariely at Duke
University showed high bonuses
universally led to worse
performance on knowledge
work.

Job satisfaction most directly tied to work with
meaning. Work with a purpose & autonomy.

Companies are increasingly defining why they are in business.
And being held to that description by people inside the company and outside.
Image via: www.techautos.com

Image via: www.emeraldinsight.com/

Image via: www.emeraldinsight.com/

Zeus Jones

Traditional Management Project Lead
Permanent
Top down
For past performance
Authority
Reward
Temporary
Bottom up
For current need
Responsibility
Training

Valve Software
Image via: www.isett.com

Morning Star
Image via: www.smithsonianmag.com

GE Appliance Park
Image via: www.ideastream.org

Paul Fairlie
From York University in
Canada has attempted to
measure meaningful work
within organisations.
Found it is also correlated to
physical health.
Image via: employeeengagement.ning.com

It’s not just internally that traditional
structures are dissolving.

Customer
satisfaction
central to
marketing
efficiency
All forms of advertising trusted
by less than 50% of people
This is on top of the fact that
99.99% of advertising fails to
reach its intended audience.

Blurring roles
of customers
Not merely source of income
but can also help to generate
new business.
(Yes, yet another triangle)

OKCupid
Online dating site that uses
member data to improve
success rate of its members.
Creates reports on dating that
act as marketing

Etsy
A marketplace for arts and crafts
Image via: chezbeeperbebe.blogspot.com/

Traditional attitudes towards competitors and
competition are also changing.

Innocentive
Technical collaboration between companies like DuPont, Procter & Gamble, BASF, and Eli Lilly and Company

GreenXchange
Open source repository to share and license sustainable processes and IP.

BMW and Toyota collaborate on fuel cells
The two companies also agreed to collaborate on a fuel-cell system, lightweight technology and electric powertrains.
Image via: www.h2it.org

Companies coming together around higher
purpose and collaborating around a platform.

Jean-Charles Rochet & Jean Tirole
Named these kinds of relationships: multi-sided markets in 2002
Image via: www.facebook.com/Image via: www.tse-fr.eu/

Traditional markets Multi-sided markets
Transaction-oriented
Winner take all
Linear scaled
Individualistic
High control
Relationship-oriented
Value ecosystems
Network-effect
Cooperative
Lower cost

Modern
Business
Developed by Zeus Jones 2009
Designed to connect employees
to the mission of the company
Designed to remove the barriers
between customers and
employees

Obedience to authority experiment
Stanley Milgram also documented the toll taken upon shock givers.
Image via: www.imaginesciencefilms.org

Edward de Bono
The job always changes you; you never change the job.
Image via: http://hubmilan.wordpress.com/

Geoffrey West
Physicist who has studied the maths of cities
Image via: conversationcrossroad.com

Cities scale
sublinearly
Cities grow sub-linearly and
endure because they are
networks
Companies grow super-linearly
and die because they are not.

If profit is bound to work with meaning and
companies are bound to customers and each
other...

Is business learning to flow and can it, one
day, support the lives that depend upon it?

2640 Lyndale Ave S.
Minneapolis Minnesota 55408
Thank you
Colours of Water
March 22, 2013