Get out of your depth

 

Get out of your depth

David Robert Jones was born 8 January 1947.

He died 10 January 2016, having challenged and changed popular culture.

A singer, songwriter and musician.

As well as an actor, painter, publisher, editor, curator and artist.

Shifting shapes from androgynous alien through to bandaged and button-eyed prophet.

David Bowie, as he became better known, created, adapted and untethered many alter egos.

The flame-haired, platform-booted alien: Ziggy Stardust.

Hedonistic astronaut, Major Tom.

The impeccably dressed and darkest of all his characters, the Thin White Duke.

His exploration of otherworldly personas fuelled by his skills in mime and cabaret and a restless intellectual curiosity.

His musical influences were plentiful: John Coltrane, Harry Partch, Eric Dolphy, The Velvet Underground, John Cage, Sonny Smith, Anthony Newley, Florence Foster Jenkins, Johnnie Ray, Julie London, the Legendary Stardust Cowboy, Edith Piaf and Shirley Bassey.

Not forgetting oompah brass bands, whale song, jungle and opera.

He collaborated with Moby, Trent Reznor, Adrian Belew, Peter Frampton, John Lennon and Iggy Pop.

His worked influenced hard rock, new wave synth-pop, and funk, to name but a few genres.

He was impossible to pigeonhole.

So many albums and genres of music, not to mention fashion styles.

Folk-glam, plastic soul, full-on pop.

David Bowie was one of the most original artists ever.

He preached the idea of always going that little bit further.

“When you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re in just about the right place to do something exciting.”

Of going further than you feel you’re capable of going.

If you feel safe in the area you’re working in, then you’re not working in the right place.

Go a little bit out of your depth.

It won’t always feel comfortable, but that’s part of the process.

Take risks; iterate fast; and dare to be different.

Naturally, taking risks is part of our business.

But it can be unnerving for a client.

The art of persuading a client to take the plunge lies in the tight alignment of strategy and creativity.

Relentless curiosity, commercial insight, research and analytics.

Gaining a deep understanding of untapped opportunities and the big issues.

Not by having wacky, creative brainstorms.

But by displaying to the client that we understand their business and their numbers, so that they are more prepared to take the creative leap.

To hold their nose and to jump in with both feet.

— DB

 

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What are you going to fight for?

 

What are you going to fight for?

Mike Tyson was a ferocious fighter.

He worked hard at it.

He used to run at 4am in the morning.

No one wants to get up and run when it’s dark.

A reporter asked Mike, ‘Why are you running so early?’

Mike replied confidently, ‘Because I know that while I train my opponent is still sleeping.’

It gave him an edge.

A lot like it did for the toughest middleweight champion of all time, Marvelous Marvin Hagler.

The undisputed champion of the late 70s and the 80s.

His training routines were brutal.

Holed up in vacated Cape Cod motels during the bitterly cold winter months, he’d hit the road.

But he eschewed running shoes, as that made it too easy; too soft.

So he’d run in heavy army boots; backwards.

Both fighters knew that graft and sacrifice were a necessary part of the process.

Fighting is something we can easily forget about in our cosy offices and studios.

We love a good life hack as much as the next person: a super-smart shortcut to doing more, by doing less.

But sometimes there’s no substitute for that extra fight.

Graft, persistence, resilience.

Tyson and Hagler were physically brilliant fighters, but they also had an inner fight that turned them from good to great.

Because they both had a clear goal to be the champion of the world.

And second place in boxing is nowhere; you’re the loser.

Having an idea of the bigger mission of your company or brand is a powerful source of inspiration for everybody who works in it, or on it.

It gives something that goes beyond purely financial and functional goals.

Working on a brand mission requires dedication, hard work and sacrifice.

It requires wrestling with some challenging questions.

What do you want to fight for?

What would you protest against?

What are the core values, principles and beliefs that guide you?

What are you deeply passionate about?

What can you be the best at in the world?

The right vision, mission, purpose, positioning or ambition – it doesn't matter which – can light a fire in people’s bellies.

Forget verbose and meaningless mission statements; champion compelling clarity.

Something easy to grab hold of and capable of genuinely moving people, stimulating progress and momentum.

Creating a sense of team spirit and shared beliefs and giving people a unifying finish line.

And when people have a clear picture of where they’re heading they’re more likely to pit their wits, wisdom and will against the challenges that they meet en route.

As Muhammad Ali once said, ‘Champions have to have last-minute stamina. They must have the skill and the will. But the will must be stronger than the skill.’

Are your people ready for the fight?

— DB

 

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The Questions We Asked: The Westmorland Family

 

The Questions We Asked: The Westmorland Family

The Questions We Asked goes behind our work and gives an insight into the issues or opportunities our clients were grappling with prior to briefing us. Sarah Dunning, CEO of The Westmorland Family, takes up the thread:

We’re a second-generation family business. Mum and Dad were and still are hill farmers just outside Tebay in Cumbria. In 1967 the M6 was being built through the corner of their farmland. The government decided there was to be a motorway service area at this point and my parents, in their 30s and keen to get on, made a bid to build and run it. They won the bid and in 1972 they opened Tebay Services northbound.

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Over the next 30 years they grew the business and in 2005 Dad handed over the reins to me. The challenge for me was to retain the DNA of the business whilst redefining it for a new generation. It is easy to feel between the devil and the deep blue sea – you don’t want to be the one that destroys the work of the past generation but you know you must be bold if you are to move it on.

We formed a new leadership team and agreed that we wanted to grow and that another motorway service area seemed like the logical step. It took seven years to plan but we finally opened the northbound side of what became Gloucester Services in May 2014. So in the last 10 years we have gone from a local Cumbrian business employing 450 people to one with businesses 300 miles apart, employing 1,000 people.

One of the decisions you have to make as a business is when to bring in external expertise. This can be difficult, especially when it relates to your core brand, but that’s sometimes when you need it most. In 2012, prior to opening Gloucester Services, we were discussing problems that were strategic but also creative. Squad were a small and young organisation, they knew our business and had some empathy with it and they came with both a strategic and creative background. And so we set about working together.

There were many questions at that time, which tended to pose themselves in the order that the problem arose. One of the first ones was what to call our new services in Gloucestershire, partly because we had to invest a lot of money in motorway signage. However, in trying to answer one question, we often found that we couldn’t do so without first answering a series of other questions. It became apparent that the initial question wasn’t always the most important one. Often there was a question behind the question that we needed to address first.

It became clear that the most important first question to resolve was what the brand stands for. Our ethos, which sat at the heart of the business, was very much about being a Cumbrian family business that had grown out of the farm and remained tied to it. However, we had to square this with our desire to grow the business and specifically with the opportunity we had to build a business in Gloucestershire, which inevitably would take us out of our own Cumbrian farming community. This dichotomy extended to many aspects of our business – our product offer, our buildings, our branding – so we had start with some fundamental questions.

Should the buildings in Gloucestershire ‘feel’ like Tebay Services? Should the food be from Gloucestershire, or should we bring some from Cumbria?

We knew our businesses couldn’t be ‘rolled out’ as Costa, Pret and M&S are. It’s much harder to grow a business this way, because each business has to be bespoke. It also means we’ll never grow to be a giant as some businesses do; but perhaps that’s a good thing – there is something to be said for staying smaller and true to purpose.

However, whilst Gloucester Services should have its own personality, as distinct as Tebay Services, we wanted the customer to feel that they were still siblings, albeit not twins. We had to consider how the buildings and landscape should read back to our identity. We wanted to capture the essence of our Cumbrian businesses but re-express it in an appropriate way for a new build. So whilst both feature heavy timber and stone, and feel quite earthy in their way, we exchanged the agricultural and rustic approach of Tebay, for a more contemporary and sleek design.

So how could we create a brand and branding that ties together our businesses with a recognisable thread, yet preserves that character and independence of them?

I have always believed that a business’ ethos should be the compass for every initiative and every innovation you undertake. Only by doing this will the customer understand what you are about. It is not enough to articulate your ethos (even if you can) but you have to deliver it through every touch point because some things are better felt than articulated.

Delivering it through every touch point is quite involved for us because we have around 100 acres of space, about 15,000 product lines and 1,000 people working in the business. We have 10 million customers a year through our businesses and our aspiration is that each one will leave with a sense of what we are about. I have no doubt that we regularly fall short of this aspiration, but we have to keep on trying.

So how could we make sure our branding was present but with a light touch – not like a rubber stamp?

To see how The Westmorland Family’s questions were answered, read the case study here.

Sarah Dunning and RG gave an extended talk based around this article at the 2016 Family Business United Annual Conference and the Cumbria Family Business Conference at Rheged the same year.

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A ripping plum cake

 

Ripping a plum cake

Albert Ball was a flying ace of great daring.

The first celebrity fighter pilot of the first world war.

Handsome and dashing, yet modest.

Known as the “Lone Wolf” due to the way he stalked his prey from below.

Hailed by not only his nation but his enemy, the Red Baron.

Albert shot down 43 enemy planes and one balloon.

With a further 25 unconfirmed kills.

He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and the Military Cross.

Shot down and killed, aged just 20, his parents collected his Victoria Cross—the highest award for bravery—from King George V on 22 July 1917.

But what was it that made this young man such a deadly fighter pilot?

Plum cake.

We know this because he requested it many times in his letters home.

To his mother he wrote: “You make me a cake, and I would like it all the more. I so love to have a huge piece of cake to go flying with in the morning. It is fine, and if made by you would be better still.”

To his sister: “I was so pleased to get your ripping cake, but I have nearly finished it. I love to take a huge piece with me when I fly.”

Plums are full of nutritional benefits: they’re crammed with dietary fibre, loaded with minerals, packed with vitamins (A, B6, C, E and K).

Plenty of stuff to fuel wellbeing and performance.

But of course it wasn’t the goodness in plum cake that made him so formidable.

It was what the plum cake stood for.

A potent symbol of why he was taking to the air.

A symbol of home, loved ones and a nation.

We can learn a lot from this.

Many CEOs now view their employees as their most important audience.

But more than ever, employees are individualists.

The old methods of command and control are no longer working.

Corporate missions can be cold, official and unexciting.

It’s important to give people a sense of purpose without imposing an ideology.

Through symbols and storytelling.

Filling people with a sense of what needs to be done and an utter belief in its imminent success.

Whether it’s a piece of advertising or marketing; a space or an object, almost doesn't matter.

What does matter is the meaning with which it’s imbued.

This is what makes it dramatic and emotional.

With an ability to propel people in the right direction.

Motivating, accelerating and sustaining positive behaviours.

Puncturing people’s autopilots.

Now that’s ripping.

– DB

 

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