ThinkingSparks

Virtuous brands

Another reference to Jennifer’s blog. In her post Words and meanings she is looking for a word to describe brands that are noble, upstanding, honorable, and have integrity. Heroic brands it became and in my previous post I posed several question with regard to that terminology.

Jennifer also describes her struggle on character and effect. I have been thinking about these topics for a long time too and I am writing my Master’s (Philosophy of Management and Organization) thesis on a related topic. As my previous post said I am not a fan of the term Heroic Brands. I have been looking into the theory of Virtue Ethics and came up with the term Virtuous Brands; or Virtuous Organizations for that matter.

In short, in virtue ethics the idea is to achieve Eudamonia, which means happiness of human flourishing. Eudamonia describes the state achieved by the person who lives the proper human live, which can be obtained by living by the virtues (Source: Wikepedia, although a lot is written about ethics and virtue ethics.)

Virtuous organizations can be a virtuous corporate brand if they allow and stimulate the people within and outside to live a virtuous life and not in any way impede that or in a paternalistic way decide for others what Eudamonia is for them.

As to the struggle on character and effect I like to suggest - in line with Matthew Healey - that a look at the three normative approaches (virtue ethics, deontological and teleological) in ethics will clarify the dilemma.

Authenticity or marcom ploy?

I always enjoy the Mantra Brand blog even though I do not always agree with the author. Her post of January 10 is interesting. It is about Heroic Brands and it names some examples of companies that are or have heroic brands. I have some questions about that.

Why is a brand heroic if it takes into account the interest of others instead of just the organization? Why is that an act of heroism? Isn’t it an act of morality to consider how your actions influence other people’s interests? And since when is someone a hero when he or she is moral? Being moral should be normal and not an exception to the rule.

Corporate sustainable responsibility is the new factor in competition. Porter just wrote an article in HBR about it. The problem is that CSR – or being moral, as I see it – is seen as a tool to beat the competition. So how authentic is it to do well only as a means to a commercial and self serving end?

Mantra Brand gives some examples of brands that are heroic. One of them is Dove. I like the Dove commercials as they feature normal women, with everything that is beautiful and not ideal (at least to top model standards) about their bodies. But being responsible is more than a series of commercials with pear and apple shaped women with cellulite. According to Skin Deep the Dove products contain ingredients that may be harmful to people’s health. Check out the report. Apparently being responsible only goes skin deep.

Vodafone customer service

Some whistle blower has talked to the largest Dutch newspaper about the mess at the customer service desk of KPN, the Dutch telecom company. Apparently employees read e-mails from the customers, put customers on hold for an extremely long time so the company earns more money, of if the customer has a tough problem the employee just hangs up the phone.

As a customer I have gone through this experience with KPN. It was mind-blowingly frustrating!!! The other day I had the same with Vodafone. The Blackberry of my partner didn’t synchronize with Outlook anymore. After some reinstalling of software I was fed up with it and called the helpdesk. They would have the experts call me back A.S.A.P. with a solution or when they had solved it.

“How can they solve this problem from a distance”, I asked. “I do not think this is possible.” According to the helpdesk person this was not beyond Vodafone’s power. I told him that I had my doubts if the nature of the problem was understood, but if Vodafone could solve the problem from a distance, that would be fine with me. With the scary though that either Vodafone did not understand the problem and it would never be solved or had an unknown way of accessing both the Blackberry and the pc from a distance, I waited. And waited.

After about 9 hours of even going to the bathroom with the phone, I decided to call them back. The woman on the other side of the phone asked me somewhat surprised if I had really expected to have been called back on the same day. My surprise surmounted hers as I asked her how long I would have to wait. I could expect to be called back within a working week she told me. I asked her if she didn’t consider that to be absurdly long for something that was probably an easily solved problem. This was normal as there were too many customers with Blackberry problems she said. Not enough personnel, I thought as my total frustration as a customer turned into a jaw dropping state of wonder as a professional. I suggested that it would have been a good idea to inform prospective Blackberry subscribers about the service level they could expect. “Why would we want to do that?” the lady asked, “If we do that no one will want them”. “Exactly!” I said as I decided that further discussion was useless and wondered as a professional how it can be that these companies still exist.

Organizational culture and the fall of organizations

The movie Apocalypto by Mel Gibson starts with a quote by Will Durante. It states ”A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.” Apparently Durante refered to the Romans, but I would say that it is as easily applicable to organizations.

When organizations perform poorly very often competition or circumstance is blamed. It is hard to take a good look at oneself and wonder if oneself is to blame. But very often the rot starts from within.

Not many organizations take their organizational culture into account when making their plans for the future. Very often culture is seen as something that is. The way people dress or the fact that they have a open door policy. Organizational culture is more complex than that, and also complex to influence. That doesn’t mean that in the case where an unhealthy organizational culture threatens the existence of the organization itself, one should not make a conscious effort. Otherwise your organization may fall like the empires of the Romans and the Mayas.

Male and female brainpower…

“You: The owner’s manual” (a book on the human body) states that women’s brains are better equipped for analyzing complex situations and that men’s brains do a better job at problem solving. A really interesting fact as it generated the following three thoughts:

1. Men and women need each other within organizations to analyze and solve the problems the organization faces.
2. If that is really the case why are so many organizations headed by men? By themselves they do not have the full potential of brainpower. And if ego's get in the way, listening to others is out.
3. Surprising fact as I thought that women would be the more practical problem solvers.