Last week Kristen King asked Should Religion Be Part of Your Brand? She said “I wish companies would keep their religious views to themselves…[it’s] unprofessional and it makes me angry.”

It makes me more than angry.

Kristen used Covenant Transport and a design element on their truck that says “It Is Not A Choice It Is A Child” as her example (read her post, I’m not going to repeat it all here).

One of the comments said, “To try to dictate that I should not stand up for the rights of human beings is tyrannical… Would you want to work with a practicing Murder?”

But as Kristen says, “Morality and ethics according to whom?”

Last year in Are ethical values set or fluid? I said “Universally, murder has always been considered bad, but what constitutes murder is ever changing.”

For centuries killing your wife was considered bad taste, but since she was property it wasn’t a crime; certainly killing your slave wasn’t murder in ancient times and in the pre-Civil War days it depended on where you lived and what you believed.

The Army of God thinks it’s OK to bomb abortion clinics and kill the staff, while Osama bin Laden wants to kill “infidels.”

Religion, like sex, used to be private. Now it is evangelized, advertised and promoted the same way as any other commercial product.

But commercial products don’t vilify you for not buying them.

As I said in my comment, “I am so tired of having almost every person I meet explain to me why
1. I’m a horrible person because I don’t have “the true faith” and will go to Hell.
2. The only true faith is their version and if I don’t switch I’ll go to Hell.
3. They’ll pray for me.
I find number three the most insulting, since it dismisses everything else and assumes their superiority.”

Some defend religion in business as nitch marketing, but where is the line drawn? I’ve been on the receiving end when a “Christian” business owner found out that I didn’t share his beliefs. Fortunately, the court didn’t agree that the differences were an acceptable reason for violating a contract.

There may be valid reasons to mention religion, such as Hebrew National (mentioned by one commenter), but Hebrew National doesn’t spend its money lobbying to make kosher the law of the land.

I passionately subscribe to S.G. Tallentyre’s (not Voltaire) statement, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” only I don’t disapprove, I just disagree.

What I disapprove of is the effort to cram it down my throat; to claim that YOUR morality, YOUR judgments, YOUR beliefs are CORRECT and should color every decision I make or become the law of the land.

What do YOU think?

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I took last week off, but today I want to wrap up the final chapter in IBM’s The Enterprise of the Future (a steady Saturday feature since July 12; be sure and download your free copy)

Chapter Five is called Genuine, Not Just Generous and refers to “an emerging generation of socially minded customers, workers, partners, activists and investors” who are demanding—through their wallets and their feet—a new commitment and level of corporate social responsibility (CSR) from companies.

It’s not an accident that three of the nine drivers that continually moved higher over the last three surveys are all part of CSR—socioeconomic factors, environmental issues and people skills—CSR reputation is critical to attract and retain scarce talent.

According to one electronics CEO, “Corporate identity and CSR will play an important role in differentiating a company in the future;” one consumer products CEO said “Consumers will increasingly make choices based on the sources of the products they buy, even the ingredients and processes used in making these products.”

But, like a leopard, these corporations are having problems changing their spots, “They’re very interested in new product and service opportunities for socially aware customers, however, transparency is not currently a top priority.”

Still, “CSR investments will grow by 25 percent, which is faster than the other trends…”

There are five key points to CSR

• “Understands CSR expectations;
• informs but does not overwhelm;
• starts with green;
• involves NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) as part of the solution;
• makes work part of making the world a better place.”

and five key questions you need to ask yourself

• “Do you understand your customers’ CSR expectations? How are you involving them in solutions?
• Do you know which NGOs your customers listen to and are you collaborating with those groups?
• Have you gained insights from current green initiatives that can be applied to your broader corporate social responsibility strategy?
• Are you offering employees the opportunity to personally make a difference?
• How do you ensure that actions taken throughout the enterprise — and the extended value chain — are consistent with your CSR values and stated policies?”

Finally, “The CEO s we spoke with are upbeat — not just about opportunities for their organizations (important as that is), but also about a bright future for business and society.”

Are you?

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Check out my other WW: worlds to seek

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I may feel that yesterday was New Year’s, but today is Labor Day—summer’s over, school’s starting, the leaves are turning and the year is nearly done.

Toil slows time, but the years fly by when you’re having fun.

It’s said that if you love what you do you’ll never work a day in your life—having fun instead.

Are you having fun yet?

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I know, you were expecting to read about the fifth chapter in IBM’s The Enterprise of the Future (a steady Saturday feature since July 12 (be sure and download your free copy), but I’m taking a break in the name of politics.

As you all know, John McCain announced his running mate in an acknowledged effort to blunt the Democratic convention momentum (yawn). Nothing new there.

McCain chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Based on my limited knowledge of political maneuvering, her main advantages are gender, Conservative credentials, and age.

Upon reading here and there today, I got the impression that the Republicans are hoping that “Hilary women” will vote the Republican ticket because the Vice Presidential candidate has the same plumbing. Never mind that Palin stands in diametric opposition to most of Clinton’s beliefs.

At the Democratic Convention and in the media Obama was hailed as a personification of Dr. King’s Dream, but If he (an eighth cousin to Dick Cheney and an 11th cousin to G. W. Bush) does win he’ll actually be the seventh black president (after Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Dwight Eisenhower)—just the first one who shows and, as Americans have proved over and over, appearance is everything.

Are we [the American people] really as shallow as we’ve made ourselves out to be?

Is our vision truly so focused on form that substance sinks into oblivion?

By Wes Ball. Wes is a strategic innovation consultant and author of The Alpha Factor – a revolutionary new look at what really creates market dominance and self-sustaining success (Westlyn Publishing, 2008) and writes for Leadership turn every Tuesday. See all his posts here. Wes can be reached at www.theballgroup.com.

I was reading Miki’s postings on Saturday about “disruptive innovation” as described in IBM’s Enterprise of the Future, so I downloaded my free copy.  I walked away with a nagging concern that these 1000+ CEOs are still chasing their tails, because they seem to be looking for the answers to long-term growth in places that require the highest investment and the highest risk.  Instead, there are much greater sustainable profit and growth opportunities sitting right in front of most of them.

The point of looking for “disruptive” innovation is that it is believed such innovation will drive a long-term, sustainable competitive edge for the innovator.  The trouble is that such innovation models typically require technology development or other innovation into untried areas that more often than not fail to deliver either long-term or sustainable growth.  It is often too easy to “one-up” such innovations, so the investment often never quite pays off as hoped.  Not everyone can deliver an iPhone or a Blackberry.  Too often the technology “breakthrough” only offers a short window of opportunity until someone else improves upon it.

This drive to find ”new” places or ways to sell is usually driven more by frustration at the failure of marketing and sales to provide sustainable growth opportunities than it is by a real lack of opportunity in existing markets and business models.  The fact is that customer satisfaction and fulfillment is very low in most product and service categories, which leaves a readily addressable opportunity for growth to the organization that can understand what to look for.

When we do research in most product and service categories, I am almost always surprised at how low customer expectations are compared to how high their dreams and aspirations are.  That gap represents a significant opportunity that can often be addressed without large investment.

What it takes is a willingness to open up the focus of innovation to go beyond product improvement, process refinement, or other functional innovation (including technology breakthroughs).  The real focus to create really disruptive innovation should be upon those dreams and aspirations, not functional improvement.

Innovation that focuses upon these dreams and aspirations (the Alpha model shown in my book refers to these as “self-satisfaction” and “personal significance”) can drive growth that catches competitors flat-footed and often unbelieving that success could come so simply.  We’ve had many examples where an organization used this kind of innovation, created dramatic growth, and their competitors doggedly proclaimed that “there must have been something else that happened to create that growth.”  In many cases, competitors never figure out what the real ego-satisfaction innovation was that drove success, so they waste time and money unsuccessfully trying to “compete” by copying other things they see happening that they think must be the true cause for the success.

Apple’s iPhone just experienced this.  The success of the iPhone put several competitors on a panicked innovation track to try to at least get “in the game.”  None have succeeded, because all of their efforts have been on the product improvement and functional innovation side, while the real success of the iPhone is far more on the ego-satisfaction side of the equation.

I own one of the original iPhones.  Functionally, it’s pretty darn good, but so was the Blackberry to which I compared it.  In some ways the Blackberry was better; in others the iPhone was better.  But on the ego-satisfaction side, there was no comparison.  Like the iPod or the MacBook Air or just about any of the other Apple products available right now, all you have to do is touch an Apple product and you feel that you’ve been transported to a planet where companies suddenly know how to make customers “happy.”

Who can describe what happens or why?  It’s so emotional that it’s beyond description.  But it is real enough that people are buying them like crazy despite the “economic downturn” we find ourselves in.  Address a person’s ego-satisfaction needs well and every competitive product pales by comparison.

We did that with so many products throughout our Alpha Factor Project that it’s hard to recall them all.  The funny part about each one was, however, that competitors seldom figured out what was really going on.  That was truly disruptive.  Often we would wait, expecting competitors to catch on, only to see them blindly fall into the product improvement trap trying to copy what we had done without addressing the core ego-satisfaction needs that had actually created the success.

The point is:  if you absolutely have to change business models or find new markets, because you’re selling in a way or to a market that is a dead-end, then by all means change.  But if you’re just frustrated with your lack of success at getting enough out of your current model and markets, then make sure you aren’t focusing upon product improvement and functional innovation, when the real need is on the ego-satisfaction side.

Do your products/services address ego-satisfaction?

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Continuing the focus on disruptive innovation as discussed in chapter four  from IBM’s The Enterprise of the Future (a steady Saturday feature since July 12; be sure and download your free copy) begs the question as to what is being disrupted? What are companies really doing to drive financial performance?

The most common approach is “revenue model innovations, nine out of ten are reconfiguring the product, service and value mix. Half are working on new pricing structures.”

Changes include offering more services; moving to recurring charges (as opposed to one-time payments); bundling or unbundling depending on products and industry.

The major change in pricing is being driven by more knowledgeable customers who can tap into global choices. “More are starting to price based on value to the customer, rather than on cost plus.”

The truly disruptive innovation, i.e., industry model innovation, you may have been hoping for isn’t as likely.

“CEO s mentioned several reasons for not pursuing industry model innovation. But most can be summed up with: it’s tough to do. For similar reasons, industry model innovators are more focused on redefining their existing industries (73 percent) than on entering or creating entirely new ones (36 percent).”

Not surprisingly, it’s the outperformers that usually focus on industry model innovation—think Apple.

So, what can you do to embed innovation in your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) and strategic planning?

“Think like an outsider; draw breakthrough ideas from other industries; empower entrepreneurs; experiment creatively in the market, not just the lab; manage today’s business while experimenting with tomorrow’s model.” (See the details I the doc.)

And be sure that you can answer the following four questions with a resounding “Yes!”

1. Is a disruptive business model about to transform your industry? Is it more likely to come from you or your competitors?
2. Do you spend time thinking about where the next disruption will come from?
3. Are you watching other industries for concepts and business models that could transform your market?
4. Are you able to create space for entrepreneurs and innovative business models while continuing to drive performance today?

If you can’t, then start working on them today!

Is your MAP in tune with disruptive innovation?

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Even as you read this, the very financial whizzes responsible for the subprime fiasco and global credit crisis, just the most recent on a long list of financial screw-ups, are lobbying Congress for permission to buy and manage your pension fund.

“A broad coalition of Wall Street firms, from banks and insurers to hedge funds and private equity firms, are pushing lawmakers to let them buy and manage so-called frozen corporate pension plans, which no longer accept new members but must continue to cover current ones. Of the $2.3 trillion in U.S. corporate pension fund assets, some $500 billion sits in frozen plans, including those of big companies such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Verizon, and Alcoa.”

In an UN-surprising move the Treasury Department approved the idea; fortunately the IRS ruled that the plan would require legislative approval (and you thought the IRS wasn’t your friend).

Hilariously, Treasury “offered a blueprint for lawmakers to allow “financially strong entities in well-regulated sectors” to acquire pension plans. Now the debate moves to Congress, which would have to change existing law.”

Knowing who those “financially strong entities” are will really increase your warm and fuzzy feelings—they include Aon Consulting, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Prudential Financial, Cerberus Capital Management, and, to raise the level from hilarious to hysterical, consider that “JPMorgan’s newest property, Bear Stearns, was among the first to lobby Congress and regulators. It started last year, just as two of its hedge funds were imploding.”

But your friends on Wall Street are drooling over all the zeros in the potential fees. “…McKinsey & Co. predicts that the assets in frozen plans will more than triple, to $1.7 trillion, by 2012. By taking over frozen plans, Wall Street firms could charge fees based on the total assets, perhaps in line with the standard 1% to 2% levied by many money managers.”

Charles Millard, the current director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp loves the plan, as does Former PBGC Director Bradley D. Belt, a GW Bush appointee and former top aid to John McCain, “who two years ago teamed up with private equity firm Reservoir Capital Group to form Palisades Capital Advisors, a pension advisory firm,” and thinks that the little guys like him should be able to play, too.

As to the thoughts of the opposition, “Critics, including some on Capitol Hill, worry that financial firms won’t always have workers’ best interests at heart…”

Ya think? Well, duh.

And be sure to see what Small Business Bomers has to say about this!

What do you think?

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Chapter four from IBM’s The Enterprise of the Future (a steady Saturday feature since July 12; be sure and download your free copy) is about extreme innovation, AKA, serious disruption.

Innovative products and services aren’t enough any more.

“As one U.S. CEO explained, “We’re starting to think about things we couldn’t do before.” With the Internet, businesses can now find niche markets for rare, surplus or highly specialized goods — a virtual “garage sale,” as it’s often called. Business processes, as well as some products and services, are becoming more virtual. New delivery channels and electronic methods of distribution are overturning traditional industry conventions. And these advances are not just changing the way individual companies work — they’re creating entirely new industries.”

So what exactly is happening? Is there a direction that the majority believe will work?

“Among those making extensive changes to their business models, enterprise model innovation is the dominant choice. Forty-four percent of CEO s are focused solely on enterprise model innovation or are implementing it in combination with other forms of business model innovation. This trend toward enterprise model innovation is even more pronounced in emerging economies (53 percent).”

What does ‘enterprise model innovation’ mean? It refers to the challenge of offering your customers something truly different all by yourself—a business model that is fast dying in a world of speedy global connections, sophisticated, interconnected consumers and breathtaking speed of change.

“While 38 percent of CEO s plan to keep work within their organizations, 71 percent — nearly twice as many — plan to focus on collaboration and partnerships.“

And the most important point, as pointed out by one Australian CEO, “It’s about deciding when to collaborate, whom to involve, how to lessen the destructive force of competition.”

More on this next Saturday.

Is your company involved in enterprise model innovation?

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By Wes Ball, author of The Alpha Factor – a revolutionary new look at what really creates market dominance and self-sustaining success. Read all of Wes’ posts here.

A friend just sent me a copy of an article about the presidential campaign from back in late May.  At first I wondered if she just thought I was so far out of touch that I needed to do some catching up.  She pointed out instead that my Alpha Factor model was playing out right before our eyes in this campaign.  I agree.

The article was written by Bernie DeGroat at the University of Michigan.  It quoted research conducted by another university colleague about the value of “experience” in getting the presidential nomination.

Here’s part of what he said: “A new study by D. Scott DeRue of the U-M’s Ross School of Business and colleague Jennifer Nahrgang of Michigan State University shows that the number of years of political experience doesn’t matter much when it comes to getting nominated.”

According to DeRue, “It is clearly not experience, so there is something else about Obama… Obama’s personality and charisma have captured the hearts of the American people.”

Guess what?  That’s exactly what I found in my research regarding how people make decisions.  Rationality is not dead.  It never existed.

We all grow up believing that people make rational decisions based upon clear lists of performance or other “factual” criteria.  It’s just not true.

People are emotional beings and that’s where their decisions are made.  Make people feel good about themselves (I refer to that as “Self-satisfaction”) or help them believe that other people will feel better about them (I call that “Personal Significance”), and you are tuned into the “buying channel.”  That’s where all buying decisions really occur.

When researchers ask people why they made a buying decision, they always give a litany of rational reasons’

• it works better;
• it costs less;
• it fits better;
• it has more features;
• blah, blah, blah.

None of those proved out to be real reasons, according to my research.  They were just the way people believe they need to explain their decisions to other people.

The real reasons for their buying decisions were far more controversial and emotional.

• it makes me feel better about myself;
• it makes me believe that other people will notice me more;
• it makes me believe other people will think better of me;
• it makes me feel that I am more the person I wish I were;
• it makes me believe that more people will love me.

It’s all emotional fulfillment that drives decisions.

Companies could learn a lot from the current presidential campaign.

John McCain may have all the experience that Obama lacks (a rational factor), but he has proven himself incapable of making people feel good about themselves or of making them believe that anyone will think better of them for voting for him.  Hence, Obama has strong support among a broad cross-section of the population in both political parties.   McCain doesn’t.

This has nothing at all to do with my personal political preferences.  I personally wish the Republicans had a “real” candidate – someone who could inspire people and make them desire to be part of his campaign.  They don’t.

What does this say about leadership?

If you think you can run a company on purely rational factors, you’ve lost before you start.

If you think you can steer a corporation without making people feel good about themselves and about being part of what you’re doing, then you will certainly fail.

Every Alpha company I have tracked that has lost its way got lost on this issue.

Although every CEO knows that he has to manage the rational side of the business, he better also understand that the emotional side is where the key to his real success lies.

How do you handle the emotional factor?

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