Monday
A site is born...The Mutualist Manifesto
We come to a crossroads forced upon me by the (self-imposed) need to do something useful with all my books on mutualism.
I want this 'steal this brand' site to focus on the radical and the personal, becoming less and less accessible and conformist...as if it ever was.
It will be dedicated to my self-indulgent rantings as a citizen and a demanding stakeholder in the world. It may occasionally conflict with my entries as a businessperson here:
GLASSHOUSE
A much larger, constructive and structured side of my personality will migrate here...for a while.
"The Mutualist Manifesto"
Here I will be exploring the ideas behind mutualism with John Moore, trying to concoct a set of guidelines for constructive stakeholder engagement in an age of mutualism...and collaboratively writing our book in real time, as a learning exercise with our stakeholders...call it an experiment in mutualism!
PS. Just a few book references there at present as I wade through my library.
I want this 'steal this brand' site to focus on the radical and the personal, becoming less and less accessible and conformist...as if it ever was.
It will be dedicated to my self-indulgent rantings as a citizen and a demanding stakeholder in the world. It may occasionally conflict with my entries as a businessperson here:
GLASSHOUSE
A much larger, constructive and structured side of my personality will migrate here...for a while.
"The Mutualist Manifesto"
Here I will be exploring the ideas behind mutualism with John Moore, trying to concoct a set of guidelines for constructive stakeholder engagement in an age of mutualism...and collaboratively writing our book in real time, as a learning exercise with our stakeholders...call it an experiment in mutualism!
PS. Just a few book references there at present as I wade through my library.
Thursday
Everything in Moderation
Had a browsing day today. Been here, there and virtually everywhere.
Best discovery was a 'Moderation' site by Tom Coates, author of www.plasticbag.org
Tom is converned to structure communities which can mediate and moderate the passions of their people.
Everything in Moderation: Creative ways to manage online communities
In a world of unrequited mutualism, I think 'moderation' is pretty much what brands should be focused on...guiding the exchange of values...
(0) comments
Best discovery was a 'Moderation' site by Tom Coates, author of www.plasticbag.org
Tom is converned to structure communities which can mediate and moderate the passions of their people.
Everything in Moderation: Creative ways to manage online communities
In a world of unrequited mutualism, I think 'moderation' is pretty much what brands should be focused on...guiding the exchange of values...
Making CSR pay...Values to Value...Stakeholder Marketing
Our friends at CSRDatanetworks are organising a great CSR conference for next February...which I believe offers a real step forward for practical CSR implementation.
They want to move beyond ideology to the practical benefits of communication.
The fact is the purported return on investment of CSR depends entirely on stakeholders understanding and valuing its benefits...
Consumers must value more ethical products; suppliers must value better treatment; investors must value brand sustainability; partners must value better engagement; communities must value local investment.
We, as a society, must value more respectful, mutually sensitive relationships.
This is about placing a value on values. It's about re-education of our basic norms, from rampant individualism, so a sense of collective duty.
CSR is about building relationships that sustain brands.
Organisations that wish to build CSR into the fabric of a business organisation therefore face a very simple challenge - to exceed stakeholders' values expectations in dimensions that offer demonstrable mutual value.
Where values collude, value can be created - through the revenues and opportunities which flow from exceding motivational, behavioral and attitudinal expectations.
Where they collide, value will be destroyed - through the frictional costs and risks of weak trust, loss of belief and low commitment
CSR should concern itself with these exchanges of values - the processes of mutual learning which fits the organisation to its human context. It will come to nothing if the actions that expresses these values are not actually valued.
Often this value will come from revenues - charging a premium for peace of mind, or some higher order emotional benefit. But benefits of those deeper relationships will also come through more effective transactions - at lower environmental cost, lower time cost and lower financial cost.
Let's be blunt here. If your staff are happy and fulfilled, you can pay them less - or certainly differently!
In a very real sense then, CSR is stakeholder marketing - susceptible to the same rigour, research and planning disciplines of any other marketing effort.
The essence of this Marketing is dialogue...making an offer, matching it to the needs of stakeholders, delivering - and then, most crucially, checking that you've delivered to reinforce and protect the value that has been created.
Just as organisations build maps of their customers value experience, so they should map their stakeholders values experiences. Just as they research customers to identify unmet value demands, so they should research stakeholders to identify unmet values-needs.
CSR is the attempt to build brand-consistent, mutually beneficial, values-based relationships for human beings - whichever stakeholder role they happen to be occupying at a particular moment in time.
(0) comments
They want to move beyond ideology to the practical benefits of communication.
The fact is the purported return on investment of CSR depends entirely on stakeholders understanding and valuing its benefits...
Consumers must value more ethical products; suppliers must value better treatment; investors must value brand sustainability; partners must value better engagement; communities must value local investment.
We, as a society, must value more respectful, mutually sensitive relationships.
This is about placing a value on values. It's about re-education of our basic norms, from rampant individualism, so a sense of collective duty.
CSR is about building relationships that sustain brands.
Organisations that wish to build CSR into the fabric of a business organisation therefore face a very simple challenge - to exceed stakeholders' values expectations in dimensions that offer demonstrable mutual value.
Where values collude, value can be created - through the revenues and opportunities which flow from exceding motivational, behavioral and attitudinal expectations.
Where they collide, value will be destroyed - through the frictional costs and risks of weak trust, loss of belief and low commitment
CSR should concern itself with these exchanges of values - the processes of mutual learning which fits the organisation to its human context. It will come to nothing if the actions that expresses these values are not actually valued.
Often this value will come from revenues - charging a premium for peace of mind, or some higher order emotional benefit. But benefits of those deeper relationships will also come through more effective transactions - at lower environmental cost, lower time cost and lower financial cost.
Let's be blunt here. If your staff are happy and fulfilled, you can pay them less - or certainly differently!
In a very real sense then, CSR is stakeholder marketing - susceptible to the same rigour, research and planning disciplines of any other marketing effort.
The essence of this Marketing is dialogue...making an offer, matching it to the needs of stakeholders, delivering - and then, most crucially, checking that you've delivered to reinforce and protect the value that has been created.
Just as organisations build maps of their customers value experience, so they should map their stakeholders values experiences. Just as they research customers to identify unmet value demands, so they should research stakeholders to identify unmet values-needs.
CSR is the attempt to build brand-consistent, mutually beneficial, values-based relationships for human beings - whichever stakeholder role they happen to be occupying at a particular moment in time.
Monday
A Mutualist Manifesto?
Modern society, with its relations of production, of exchange, and of property - a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange - is like the sorceror, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world, whom he has called up by his spells.
In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but of all the previously created productive forces - are periodically destroyed.
In these crises there breaks out a social epidemic that in all earlier epochs would have seemed an absurdity - the epidemic of over-production.
Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism.
The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of civilisation, and the conditions of property; On the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions by which they are fettered.
And how do we get over these crises? On the one hand by the forced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other by the conquest of new markets and by the more thorough exploitation of old ones.
That is to say...by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises - and diminishing the means by which crises are prevented.
However, in future...
In proportion, as the exploitation of one individual by another is put and end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to.
We shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.
These intriguing words were written in February 1848, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in an influential little thought-piece: 'The Communist Manifesto'.
Many of the symptoms, or certainly the frustrations, persist, or have even accelerated. Marx and Engels certainly could never have foresawn how the information age would accelerate this destruction of capacity - nor how rapidly the transference of wealth to the new elite would proceed.
However, the prevailing diagnosis and prognosis have, thankfully, changed out of all character. According to Francis Fukuyama, the battle of ideology has been won. Liberal economics and democracy have triumphed. All that remains is to win the battle for social capital - the cohesion of the human species.
I am not so sure.
Facing a future imperilled by endemic exploitation and a shortage of fundamental life-giving resources, it seems very possible that widespread insurrection will indeed come again to the fore within our lifetime...
Individual responsibility, social capital, economic sustainability and environmental stewardship seem so inextricably linked to me, that the only possibility for the avoidance self-destruction must come from a deep, ubiquitous, and personal recognition of our global citizenship and our shared humanity, devoid of religious or cultural contamination.
Perhaps, one hundred and fity years on from Marx and Engels, during which time we have directly altered 47% of the planet's surface in the name of first world progress, a new more enlightened prescription is required...
...perhaps a Mutualist Manifesto?
Ours sincerely
Tim
NB I've deleted the word original 'Bourgeois' from the communist narrative 4 times, because I hate to endorse cosmetics brands...
(0) comments
In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but of all the previously created productive forces - are periodically destroyed.
In these crises there breaks out a social epidemic that in all earlier epochs would have seemed an absurdity - the epidemic of over-production.
Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism.
The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of civilisation, and the conditions of property; On the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions by which they are fettered.
And how do we get over these crises? On the one hand by the forced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other by the conquest of new markets and by the more thorough exploitation of old ones.
That is to say...by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises - and diminishing the means by which crises are prevented.
However, in future...
In proportion, as the exploitation of one individual by another is put and end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to.
We shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.
These intriguing words were written in February 1848, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in an influential little thought-piece: 'The Communist Manifesto'.
Many of the symptoms, or certainly the frustrations, persist, or have even accelerated. Marx and Engels certainly could never have foresawn how the information age would accelerate this destruction of capacity - nor how rapidly the transference of wealth to the new elite would proceed.
However, the prevailing diagnosis and prognosis have, thankfully, changed out of all character. According to Francis Fukuyama, the battle of ideology has been won. Liberal economics and democracy have triumphed. All that remains is to win the battle for social capital - the cohesion of the human species.
I am not so sure.
Facing a future imperilled by endemic exploitation and a shortage of fundamental life-giving resources, it seems very possible that widespread insurrection will indeed come again to the fore within our lifetime...
Individual responsibility, social capital, economic sustainability and environmental stewardship seem so inextricably linked to me, that the only possibility for the avoidance self-destruction must come from a deep, ubiquitous, and personal recognition of our global citizenship and our shared humanity, devoid of religious or cultural contamination.
Perhaps, one hundred and fity years on from Marx and Engels, during which time we have directly altered 47% of the planet's surface in the name of first world progress, a new more enlightened prescription is required...
...perhaps a Mutualist Manifesto?
Ours sincerely
Tim
NB I've deleted the word original 'Bourgeois' from the communist narrative 4 times, because I hate to endorse cosmetics brands...
Friday
Open letter; Closed minds.
Mr Blair; Mr Duncan Smith,
I'm confused.
Last week the Labour party conference promised me 'a fairer future for all'. Sounds great I thought. Something to believe in.
This week the Conservatives have offered me 'a fair deal for everyone'. But they will also trust me they say.
How do I choose? Do I want a deal - or a future?
I just can't decide. Actually I want neither, because neither is deliverable by governments which are obsessed with a world of fakery and branding.
In this cowardly new world, all values sound the same.
Isn't it time we moved beyond 'branding', beyond 'values' and offered our fellow citizens a little more respect?
Yours, oh so sincerely...
Tim Kitchin
----------------------------
As an aside, the Institute for Global Ethics says there are five universal human values which 'apply' across all cultures. What are they you wonder?
Honesty
Fairness
Respect
Responsibility
Compassion
Now how helpful was that? Not at all. That pretty much sums up the present role of brand values in business decision-making. Grrr...
(0) comments
I'm confused.
Last week the Labour party conference promised me 'a fairer future for all'. Sounds great I thought. Something to believe in.
This week the Conservatives have offered me 'a fair deal for everyone'. But they will also trust me they say.
How do I choose? Do I want a deal - or a future?
I just can't decide. Actually I want neither, because neither is deliverable by governments which are obsessed with a world of fakery and branding.
In this cowardly new world, all values sound the same.
Isn't it time we moved beyond 'branding', beyond 'values' and offered our fellow citizens a little more respect?
Yours, oh so sincerely...
Tim Kitchin
----------------------------
As an aside, the Institute for Global Ethics says there are five universal human values which 'apply' across all cultures. What are they you wonder?
Honesty
Fairness
Respect
Responsibility
Compassion
Now how helpful was that? Not at all. That pretty much sums up the present role of brand values in business decision-making. Grrr...
Tuesday
Anti-Spam. Don't just sit there, do something...
Peter at Purple Cow.wants you so sue spammers. Personally I'd rather you found a way to destroy their business which didn't involve passing money to lawyers...
...but heh, his heart is in the right place.
Spam sucks. It takes up disk space, bandwidth, and time. It demeans us all. Offers us stuff we don't want or can't use, pretends we opted-in when we surely did not....
One person CAN make a difference, but a whole lot of people can make a difference too, and a much more profound one in this case. So says Peter.
He wants to teach you how to sue spammers. It's easy, and you will help send a stern financial and legal message to people who continue to send spam. You can disrupt their business, cause them to pay you a pittance for your lost time and great aggravation, and make them realize that you don't want to be on their so-called opt-in list...
(0) comments
...but heh, his heart is in the right place.
Spam sucks. It takes up disk space, bandwidth, and time. It demeans us all. Offers us stuff we don't want or can't use, pretends we opted-in when we surely did not....
One person CAN make a difference, but a whole lot of people can make a difference too, and a much more profound one in this case. So says Peter.
He wants to teach you how to sue spammers. It's easy, and you will help send a stern financial and legal message to people who continue to send spam. You can disrupt their business, cause them to pay you a pittance for your lost time and great aggravation, and make them realize that you don't want to be on their so-called opt-in list...
Why oh why...
"People don't like change".
So I was informed this evening, when suggesting that new business models might emerge which offered more fulfilling and human forms of value.
At a quick tally, I have been told this 3,027 times in my life.
It's utter crap.
People love change. They just don't like to be changed.
(0) comments
So I was informed this evening, when suggesting that new business models might emerge which offered more fulfilling and human forms of value.
At a quick tally, I have been told this 3,027 times in my life.
It's utter crap.
People love change. They just don't like to be changed.
