What does the company of the future look like?

I have been thinking about this topic for some time and it really bothers me.

Because of my particular experiences as CEO at SMLXL, one can see that the greatest challenges is how organisations structure themselves to embrace and take advantage of the future today.

Different skill sets, combining and blending with eachother, and also a completely different set of motivations.

I was in discussion with a think tank recently, where I stated that I fervently beliive successful copmpanies of the future will be built around a very distinct set of values and passions. It was an interesting exchnage of views.

To give you an example of this is a company called Howies that Tomi and I write about in our book.

Recently I bought some more clothes from Howies.

Why do I buy Howies clothes because all their cotton is organic, they pay an earth tax and plant trees to balance out their carbon emissions for a start. They a clear point of view about the world, which becomes a key part of their philosophy.

I also like the way they think about the world. IN fact Howies is more about the philosophy that it is about the clothes.

This is what they say. OUR WAY.
Back in July 1995, we started making clothing for the sports we loved doing. We also wanted to find another way to do our business so we could ride home at night happy with what we do.

From a remote part of West Wales, where the air is pure and the rivers run clean, a bunch of us come in each day and try to do just that

It is a powerful message, and I believe that in a world where trust and transparency are becoming increasingly central for businesses and organisations - Howies belief system is a lighthouse in a foggy world.

When I received my package from Howies, there was a message on the packaging.

GREED IS NOT ONE OF OUR VALUES

John Seely Brown said

The job of leadership today is not just to make money. Its to make meaning

Let me give you an example. This is what Howies say on their clothes about cotton

The average 100% cotton T-shirt contains only 73% cotton. The rest is made up of chemicals and resins that were used to grow and make it. The same goes pretty much for jeans too.

A whole bunch of cotton goes into making a pair of jeans. And a whole bunch of chemicals too.

In America last year farmers applied 53 million pounds of toxic pesticides to cotton fields. Out of the World’s total insecticide useage, 25% is used to farm cotton.

Kind a scary, huh.

Yet, we all think cotton is one of the most natural things around.

The truth is its not as nice as we’d all like to think.

Indeed, cotton is the world’s most sprayed crop. It uses over a quarter of all insecticides used today.

The way they grow it isn’t good for the farmers health, the water tables health, the factory workers health, the rivers health and eventually the seas health.

Thats why we use organic cotton. Its costs us 30% more than normal cotton. It means our stuff costs a little more, but we think its worth it.

After all you wear your jeans next to your skin for 10 hours a day.

Common sense would say that can’t be too good for you. We all know how nicorettes work.

So going organic makes sense.

It might just be a small thing but lots of small things add up.

You can’t always hit a home run. My mate told me that.

In many ways, when we set up SMLXL what we believed was that marketing communications could not start from formats.

SO for example - “advertising the answer whats your problem?” It was not easy in the early days, too many issues around which budgetry siloes our solutions were going to come from. But we believe a format approach to marketing communications was no longer the way forward.

SMLXL knew that we were going to create something, an initiative, a thing, a product or service but, not what that something was until we had asked the question, what is your problem? And, what exactly are your trying to achieve?

We wanted to give our clients best advice to best enable them to be the most successful they could be, not try to sell them one we had made earlier.

Howies talk a great deal about HOPE

Hope is the place somewhere bewteen take off and landing

We say

The other side of fear is freedom

Today, in 2006 we have more people/companies than ever talking to us about different ways of communicating. Of how their organisations are structured to deliver on this new approach. Tomi and I have been invited to give keynotes at a variety of CMO summits around the globe. Which has been a lot of fun. And for me, not that I ride home from work, but, at the end of the day, I have a very real sense that we are contributing to how companies of the future should successfully organise themselves and better communicate with their customers, audiences, stakeholders.

So what do we say….

SMLXL is a creative company.

We create new products and services, new ways to communicate, new ways to create consumer
communities and new ways to win their advocacy.

Our business does not depend on selling space. We ?nd ways to to ?ll space creatively and if the right space does not exist, then we’ll invent it.

SMLXL operates at the intersection between business strategy, interactive technology, media and
marketing communications.

We are passionate, we are not cynical, we are driven by something other than greed, and ultimately we belive that is a powerful communicator of who we are and what we do. Being on a mission makes a difference. Companies of the 21st Century have to be driven by a passionate need and desire, which be translated into a core brand truth and promise.

We believe that Brands today, need advocates, not consumers

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