CHAPTER 12

SHOCK YOUR CULTURE

Creating an Environment That Is Conducive to Great Storyscaping

We’ve reached the final chapter, and we hope you will find it to be the most important. At this point along the journey, you have been armed with an evolved perspective on how combining a great narrative, immersive experiences, and lots of Systems Thinking can create incredible success for your business. We believe that with this knowledge and an open mind, you can tackle your marketing using the Storyscaping mind-set and a more modern approach. Whether you are just getting started or consider yourself to be a seasoned veteran, and regardless of the resources at your disposal, we are convinced this philosophy and the simple model we have provided will help you achieve better outcomes. That’s the easy part.

In our view, the hard part, which is always the hardest part when you are dealing with a people-based business, is the people side of the equation. So it’s now time to shock your culture. How? Let us share some broad thoughts and a few things about our culture that you might consider for yours.

Collaboration of Connection. Collaboration is an easy concept for anyone to grasp, but it’s very difficult to actually do in any organization. Small organizations are not immune to the challenges that stem from ego and personal insecurity. Yes, you can reasonably expect that the bigger and more hierarchical your company gets, the harder it becomes to harness real collaboration. Culture and environment are the ultimate answers. The ultimate secret weapon lies within your ability to imagine, develop, and foster a culture and environment conducive to Storyscaping.

We truly believe that there are two manifestations of functional cultures that help companies grow. The rest are dysfunctional in the sense that their limitations far exceed their benefits. The first functional model for corporate culture is one that depends on shared values, shared goals, and shared perspectives. This is a culture of “sameness” where teamwork, focus and camaraderie are the intangible benefits. The second functional model is one that depends heavily on a shared Purpose and embraces diversity of skills and perspectives. This is not at all about sameness; instead, it’s about alignment to a cause or belief. The latter is what is required to effectively drive Storyscaping.

Ask yourself this question. In the event you or one of your loved ones became very ill, would you rather have five doctors all from different fields of science and medicine working as a collaborative team to diagnose the problem and find the best cure, or would you prefer to have five similar doctors, each with the same perspective and experience, who all come from the same field of medicine, trying to figure out what could possibly be wrong? Well, we would take option one every time because we believe in the power of “connected thinking.” We don’t believe in the lone genius. The goal of our collaboration is to make connections between ideas and people and people and behaviors and then test the strength of those new connections to make sure they’ll hold. Let us repeat—we believe in the power of “connected thinking.” Our strategists, planners, technologists, writers, and art directors are brilliant in their own fields, but we nearly always find the best ideas come up during the dialogue between people from different disciplines. An idea’s richness and depth percolates when strategists and designers hash things out together, when writers and technologists share left and right-brained thoughts, and when thinkers and doers are both “all-in” throughout the entire project. This collaboration brings to life insights that could go untapped when people are left in their own rooms, mining the blank page for gold. An application of connected thinking moves random ideas toward creative solutions.

True Collaboration versus Subservient Corporate Structures. Can you truly be collaborative in an environment where goals and incentives are focused or interpreted primarily around individual performance and career progression? Does the most tenured person in the room always get the last say on who has the best idea? Does that really foster innovation or progression? This is really a sensitive and tricky territory. In the agency, world there tends to always be someone at the helm who ultimately has the last say on what ideas are pursued and which ones hit the cutting room floor. Those self-proclaimed geniuses tend to come in two flavors. In our opinion, the best ones are more like benevolent dictators; they do a great job of listening; they are great at including others and great at building very dedicated and loyal teams. This works very effectively, but because so much hinges on the strengths and sensibilities of the leader, it does not scale well. The other flavor of leader is more of a megalomaniac who always has to have the last say and believes no idea is a great idea unless it comes from them. Unfortunately this is very prevalent in our industry. We have good news—there is an alternative.

At Sapient, our roots were grounded in more of a consulting company model. This means our assignment teams have been dynamically assembled based on the client ask. When our assignment was to develop a strategy to launch a product in a new market, we assembled a team of experts who were appropriate for the project. After the assignment was complete, each of those experts would have likely been redeployed to another assignment where they would be paired up with a whole different set of team members. This application of multidiscipline dynamic team-building serves connected thinking well. Today we operate in both consulting and agency modes so that we can leverage this DNA to fuel our collaboration and negate any instances of megalomania or dictatorial behavior.

Not One of Us Is Smarter Than All of Us. Designing your team is, in and of itself, a craft. The time and attention required for this aspect of your culture recipe is equally important to the others, yet its soundness is most often underestimated. That is why we dedicated a whole chapter on sharing what works to culminate the best of your specialized resources—the people and the team. The best examples we can provide for this chapter come from our living outline of how we’ve managed to shock our own culture within SapientNitro. Our company started with six core values in mind that have shaped and guided every choice we’ve made: Openness, Relationships, People growth, Leadership, Client focus and Creativity. Think about how some of those same values may make perfect sense in your organization. Think of your entire staff as a collection of creative-minded individuals who are all collaborating to solve problems and make an impact on people’s lives. We believe that in order to make anything happen, you need these creative-minded people to play three critical roles: the architect, the steward, and the craftsperson. Each playing their part as the need arises but never limiting themselves to one single role as the project needs evolve. We call this “Idea Engineering.”

Architecture. In the same way that Joseph Beuys said, “Everyone is an artist,”1 we believe that everyone is creative. In our world, the project managers, account directors, social media junkies, ethnographers, technologists, media planners, strategists, designers, and copywriters each contribute to the creative process that brings great ideas to life.

So to us, it’s less about “being creative” or “doing creative” things and more about the application of creativity, not serendipitously, but consistently from region to region, office to office, and team to team. This does not mean we don’t believe in big ideas. Rather, we firmly believe that ideas of all sizes and shapes have little value unless you bring them to life. After all, it’s only the great ideas that we bring to life that empower human potential and change the world.

For people who come from the world of advertising, it’s hard to imagine that at one time the copywriters and the art directors worked on different floors of their respective buildings and never interacted. We now know the magic of how an art director and copywriter encourage each other to think of their assignments in new ways. With this shift, each became more committed to the quality of the work, because neither could simply hand off their work to someone else at the end. Many “creative” companies today still continue on day after day, quarter after quarter without admitting to themselves that it’s unwise to separate departments in this new interconnected world. In many places, technologists still sit on different floors of their buildings than where the writers sit, as do the art directors. Planners and strategists are sealed away in strategy departments. At SapientNitro, we could not imagine a world where technologists, creatives, and strategists don’t work hand in hand. When we brainstorm, three is hardly a crowd, and often four, five, or six is even better. Our “collective” informs our culture, showing the way for what’s possible and what’s next. The goal is to put the right talent on the right problem.

Sure, there have been the occasional fortunate accidents and incremental adjustments to an existing idea, but most of the major leaps that are made are in response to some threat, obstacle, or problem to be solved. And the best solutions come from asking the right questions. This is often called “the wisdom of babes,” and it’s the kind of wisdom that leads us to question our assumptions and look at our world with greater attention. It rewrites the instruction manual instead of abandoning the dream. It redesigns the packaging when we thought we were fishing for a new campaign. It launches a nationwide bus tour when all that happened around this time last year was an e-mail blast.

“Nothing worked. So then I thought I’d try the wrong shape, and it worked.”

—James Dyson2

James Dyson’s vacuum cleaner sucked, and sucked badly, so badly that he was motivated to invent a new one. It took 15 years and exactly 5,126 failed prototypes before he hit gold by doing it “wrong.” Dyson finally created a better vacuum once he abandoned the established and expected rules. In his own words, “I started out trying a conventionally shaped cyclone, but we couldn’t separate the carpet fluff and dog hairs and strands of cotton in those cyclones. I tried all sorts of shapes. Nothing worked. So then I thought I’d try the wrong shape, the opposite of (the traditional) conical. And it worked.” How did his strategic approach work? His “wrong thinking” worked so well that the titans of the industry balked at his new design and refused to buy his invention, believing they had the right way, and no other way existed. So Dyson was forced to go at it alone, and barely squeaked by selling slightly more than 15 million units, some retailing for as much as $2,000 to date.

“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.”

— Dr. Seuss3

Success is yours for the asking. The need to question everything in business is the reason “what if . . . ?” people, “how can we . . . ?” people and “why . . . ?” people exist—to make sure the real problem is being addressed. Asking the right questions, or failing to do so, has changed industries from railroading to movie rentals. Imagine for a second that the companies that started the movie rental industry had initially invested in the Internet and provided their subscribers access to DVDs without having to travel to and enter a store with limited supply. What if the railroad industry recognized that they were, above all else, actually in the transportation business and decided to boost their offerings by investing in airlines? The power behind asking the right question is that it reveals the right path for us and for our clients.

Stewardship. Creativity is a fragile, volatile, and collaborative journey that needs equal parts stewardship and imagination. The role of stewardship should never be undervalued. For Michelangelo, it was the Pope; for Vincent Van Gogh, it was his brother Theo; for Michael Jordan, it was either Phil Jackson or Nike, depending on who you ask. The most dedicated stewards figure out the real goal behind a request, involve stakeholders, and keep everyone engaged and collaborating. They protect infant ideas, providing them the time, space, and nurturing needed to grow into healthy, wise, and perfectly ripe ideas. They also understand how an idea solves the key problem and are able to advocate on behalf of the best possible solution. This start-to-finish ownership is a responsibility for everyone in the company, and is a prerequisite to delivering a successful solution.

Craft. We celebrate the power of craftsmanship, and the way we approach it is a way in which few companies in any industry can copy. Technologists, programmers, usability experts, and media professionals lead the charge by building the most breakthrough solutions. It’s not enough to have a great idea if it never sees the light of day. The skilled craftsperson collaborates with other stakeholders to make sure that great idea is perfectly executed. Together, they become a team where each teammate is equally passionate about craft. They troubleshoot and test so that every creation offers the end user an experience that makes a difference in that person’s day and life.

These three critical roles of architect, steward, and craftsperson often manifest daily in the way that everyone goes about their job. The combination of these ingredients is the foundation for realizing an idea, and it nestles in at the heart of Storyscaping.

The fact that technology has been changing all of our lives at a breathtaking pace makes this a great time to be creative. And we as business owners, decision makers, and game changers are right in the center of that thrilling change every day. Fortunately, the speed of change hasn’t tempered humanity’s fascination with and impulse toward creativity—it’s actually fuelled it. So it’s critical to have a spirit to solve as well as a spirit to create.

Back in the day, Carroll Shelby and his team of California hot rod engineers (with support from Henry Ford) displayed a foxhole mentality and a can-do spirit as they hand-built their car, the Cobra. In their day, they challenged and beat Ferrari, shaking up the racing world. There was a steward in Henry Ford and architects and craftspeople in Shelby’s team.4 It was a combination of creativity applied for solutions. That team, their mentality, and their spirit are an example of what Idea Engineering represents at SapientNitro. In the same way that these folks did, we are taking on the establishment by proving you don’t need a well-known brand or 50 years of legacy to create something that accelerates progress and usurps the position of the lead dog. What you need is a committed and diverse team, some ingenuity, and the willingness to retool when an engine or two blows up in your face. Having a spirit that makes an impact on the world by bringing ideas to life is why we are constantly working to craft the next great Organizing Idea, the next big solution, the next inspiring story, and most assuredly, the next world of immersive experiences. It’s also why we then seek to surpass it.

We sincerely hope that sharing a little of our approach to culture and creativity will inspire you to reflect on what it will take to empower Storyscaping within your organization. Remember, we know through experience that the functional model required to effectively drive Storyscaping depends heavily on a shared Purpose and embraces diversity of skills and perspectives. Are you ready to shock your culture?

In closing, we reflect on our journey of Storyscaping. We opened with the value of stories and how we use them to create meaning in our lives, highlighting the fact that stories help us understand the workings and threads of the world. Next, we explored the unsung hero known as “experience,” and put a spotlight on the value of bringing stories and experience together. Then, the Storyscaping model was introduced and the many dimensions of brands and consumers were explored at length. We defined and illustrated Organizing Ideas, the Experience Space, Systems Thinking, and Story Systems so they can become a welcomed part of your marketing team, too. Last, we lifted the veil on organizational culture, showcasing collaboration and connected thinking as the showstoppers that fuel Storyscaping.

We hope this journey has helped you imagine a new way of working that fits the new world we all live in. We are confident that many of the thoughts and tips we shared throughout this book will invoke a spark that enables your potential (both brand and company) to grow and develop beyond where you previously imagined. Above all, we hope that this story becomes part of your story.