The Fire Sessions 2009 - Part 2 of 3: Passion, Clarity… and Grizzly Bears

Posted on May 13th, 2009 by Kindling Spirits and currently 7 commenting.

Olivier Blanchard, the Brand Builder himself, has been kind enough to cover the 2009 FIRE Sessions. Here’s what he captured:

In Part 1 of our Fire Sessions 2009 coverage, I talked a little bit about the crucial role played by culture in creating relevant, remarkable, engaged businesses. With all the talk about tools and technology and metrics, it is easy to forget that the essence of what I would call a “brand” really stems from there. It isn’t to say that discussions about tools, technology and metrics aren’t important, but it seems that many of us - myself included - tend to put the cart before the horse in this regard. Focusing on adjusting and nurturing a progressive, engaged, well-adjusted culture of a company may be the single-most important strategy any company could ever undertake to ensure a) its own survival and b) a much brighter future.

Dan Heath

Which leads me to this little gem from Dan Heath’s presentation yesterday: “If you’re going to be a bear, be a Grizzly.”

Wow. Short, sweet and to the point. There is no compromise in that statement, and it perfectly articulates two crucial things about how company cultures / business philosophies help create unique company cultures that resonate and attract scores of loyal fans:

1. Stand for something. Don’t just say you do. Stand for it. Draw that line in the sand. Don’t just be… everyone’s favorite bear. Don’t try to be the friendly little black bear for the under 14 demographic and the mean ruthless polar bear for male action sports fans and a cute little Panda bear for the eco-friendly crowd. That’s how you end up losing yourself. In life and in business, you cannot be all things to all people. You cannot please or appeal to everyone. You have to decide who you are, what you stand for, accept that what you do to turn on your loyal fans will turn off people whose interests and tastes are the polar opposite. (No bear pun intended.) So if you are going to be a bear, go ahead and be a Grizzly. Take your bear nature as far as it will go. Commit to it 100% and never look back. Walk up to that river bed you want to claim as your own, stand up, and let that grizzly roar rip loose. (Remember that Haka dance from Part 1? Yeah. That!)

2. Once you commit to being a grizzly, everything you do should be about becoming and being that Grizzly. Looking at it from a business perspective, that means creating a 100% committed “grizzly culture” inside your organization (and then tapping into grizzly fan cultures outside of it). You can’t be a grizzly if half your staff thinks they need to behave or look like a Panda. If your product design people want to hold on to their panda culture, they probably need to go work for a panda company. What you need are grizzlies through and through. And that, boys and girls, takes us to the heart and soul of this culture conversation: Passion.

The Fiskateers Panel

I saw it in the Fiskateers yesterday: Those wonderfully obsessed, orange-wearing, scissor-carrying, movement-driving community of Fiskars users, now THEY have passion. They have it in buckets, in fact. They have their own language. Their own uniforms. Their own culture. None of it imposed imposed in any way. None of it is driven by messaging or trade dress guidelines or a scripted campaign strategy. That culture is theirs. It belongs to them. Why? Because it grew from their passion for what they do. Passion creates, nurtures and drives cultures. Without passion, you cannot create cultures.

What does that mean for organizations? Simple: If your managers, your staff, your people aren’t passionate about what you do, what they do, if they are working for you solely because of a paycheck, what kind of culture do you really have? What reason do you give your “customers” to come back? To be loyal? To bring their friends and loved ones to your door?

But if everyone in your organization (from the decision-makers on-down to the folks in the trenches) is engaged, passionate, and completely into what they do, what YOU do as a company, and what your customers are all about, then guess what: You start earning yourself an army of rabid life-long customers. Passion is infectious. Passion is powerful. Passion is almost identical in every way to love. If passion and love can move mountains, imagine what it can do for a a cookie company or a car manufacturer or a specialty retailer.

Dan Heath

Be careful though: Dan made a point to remind us that “it is easy to squander passion”. Don’t do it. Taking passion for granted, losing your grip on its importance, falling short of embracing it for all its worth has its consequences. Don’t fall into that trap. In a few years, when everything is rolling smoothly and you’ve conquered the world, don’t forget your grizzly nature. Don’t push it aside. Who you are and what you stand for don’t fade away once you reach a certain size.

The point being that no matter your size or your your market tenure, nobody is ever going to be passionate about a not-particularly committed, vanilla-ish company that tries to just be kind of nice. Kind of good. Kind of safe. People might like it okay, but be passionate about it? Not so much. Why is that important? Because as Dan puts it: “Attracting everyone is attracting no one.” (Which is the danger of growth purely for the sake of growth.)

To inspire passion, you have to boldly draw that line in the sand. You have to stand for something (preferably something that matters): The best driving experience in the world. The most obnoxiously incredible craftsmanship. The most comfortable shoes on the planet. Flavor so good it will make you moan outloud in public places. Customer-service so incredible it makes people choke up when they talk about it to their friends. You have to commit to it 100%. Remember that grizzly roar we talked about earlier? That’s clarity. You’re going to need it if you want people to understand exactly where you stand. Let go of the long explanations about what makes you a grizzly bear. Nobody needs to know that you have 12″ claws and car-crushing jaws. If you embrace your Grizzly nature and truly become a Grizzly, trust me, they’ll get it.

One last thing: When it comes to creating these types of cultures, you can’t just hire people because their resume lists the right skills anymore. It isn’t about bullet points and keywords and pedigrees. It doesn’t really matter that someone has worked with Disney, Microsoft and CNN. So what if they did? Is that really what matters? Is that truly what defines their value?  The hiring process, the internal nurturing process, they shift from where someone has worked to who they are and what they’re about. It shifts to conversations about passion and that crazy thing we like to refer to as a higher calling. When you are in the business of embracing your grizzly nature and establishing yourself as a grizzly culture, you want to surround yourself with people who are passionate about being grizzlies.

As Jake McKee put it: “Train the culture you want.”

Read that again: “Train the culture you want.” Say it outloud. Write it on a white board somewhere in your building. Email it to your boss, even.

Don’t overlook those five simple words. They may be the most overlooked in the business management world today.

Man, I could write two dozen posts on some of the conversations we had yesterday. Amazing.

Look for the third and final part of this little coverage series later today.