The companies that will thrive
…are the ones that start a movement.
Gone are the days of the Industrial Revolution mindset in which it was just a matter of pushing out product to meet the demand.
Gone are the days when getting people’s attention was just a matter of spending tons of money interrupting radio and TV programs through advertisements.
Nowadays, being “good” or even “excellent” is not enough. Because anyone else can do that, thanks to the technology that’s available to everyone. To the consumer, cereal packaging, websites, mobile phone designs all look the same, graphic designer portfolios are all essentially the same, music records on the top charts all sound the same.
It’s hard to find someone producing anything remarkably new nowadays. To add to this, the number of options available to the consumer are intimidating. With all the alternatives available, it’s hard to stand out.
The organizations that will thrive are the ones with a leader — a visionary, a revolutionary, an “original” — who has the guts to go against the bounds set by status quo and stand up and say, “Here is what I think, here is what I see, this is what I am”.
A leader that will little by little make connections with individual people (not just mere customers anymore, but followers and believers of the leader’s message) and little by little start a movement.
In other words, it’s not a matter of just selling goods and services anymore. It’s a matter of having the courage to create a manifesto — “Here is the way our organization looks at the world” — and then assembling a group of followers who believe in the same thing.
“Business” is now a transaction of ideas. The deeper an impact the idea makes, and the wider it spreads, the more successful the organization.
The companies that will thrive must first sell this big idea — author Simon Sinek calls it the “WHY” of the organization — before it sells anything else.
The company that will thrive sees itself as a movement more than an enterprise.
