Can you relate?
In terms of bottom line profits, it seems to matter whether or not companies and their brands are able to “relate.”
Pointing to 60 “best of breed” companies within the Global Lamp Index (whose combined market cap is $4 trillion), those far exceeding investment results, when compared to industry peers over a decade, are companies who connect to their “living assets,” according to Profit for Life author and money manager, Joseph H. Bragdon.
Sizing them up, these enterprises seem better able to learn, adapt and innovate despite market ups and downs. In fact, the profiled companies have roughly doubled in value over a decade at the same time the S&P 500 lost value. Source: http://www.lampindex.com/.
“When the culture beckons people to work with their hearts, as well as their minds, they are more productive than those who simply do a job,” Bragdon writes.
I’ve put about 30,000 miles on my vehicle since the middle of last year, driving to see clients and client prospects all over the state. And I’m finding Mr. Bragdon’s opinion to be pretty much true. Brands yield more powerful returns when their identies connect their human capital inside to customers on the outside. The leaders who “get it” seem to instinctively know to communicate to audiences not as an “it”, but rather in human terms—reaching out to stakeholders as real people living in real places. Brands like H-E-B, a Texas born and bred brand. For them, tough times seem less of a struggle. They’ve worked constantly, even in tough times, to recalibrate and reload and get better at what they do.
Only a comma away is what I hear from Daniel Pink, author of Drive and A Whole New Mind (a book I recommend to just about anyone in a creative craft), who challenges us to think about how humans are motivated at work. He takes dead aim at traditional business practices of managing people with the carrots and sticks that destroy creativity and instead calls us to consider autonomy, mastery and purpose as a path to uncover the unseen, intrinsic drive to do things because they matter.
And if you get a chance, take a look at the most recent (Jan/Feb) edition of the Harvard Business Review. An article entitled “What Really Motivates Workers” by Professor Teresa M. Amabile and Steven J. Kramer puts a fine point on the whole matter. I’m showing this article to clients nowadays. Oh, also, there’s an awesome chart on page 30. It has nothing to do with all of this, but I love charts.
As a final comma, something Steven Tomllnson offered a few days ago on stage at TEDx Austin: he believes we should think less about the idea of a career as work. Instead, we ought to think about our careers as a calling. If we’re in that frame of mind, then nothing’s hard.
We can relate.
Jeff Hahn, Principal
Hahn, Texas
