Chapter 1
truth is a system
There are a lot of virtuous circles in business. They pop up with predictable regularity in PowerPoint presentations the world over. Theyâre second in popularity only to Venn diagrams and maybe the two-way matrix.
Virtuous means righteous. Any circle described as virtuous infers the process being discussed is one with a cyclic effect: that after a certain sequence of behaviour you will end up back where you started but in a better situation. And each time you go around The Circle youâre making that situation better and better. Each point along the way magnifies the effect of the next, and the benefits grow.
After more than 70 years combined in the field of brand strategy, my business partner and I have seen virtuous circles for shopping habits, manufacturing methods, environmental sustainability, financial modelling â you name it. But a decade ago we stumbled across a virtuous circle about management motivation that made us stop in our tracks.
It was in a book called Authentic Leadership by Bill George. The bookâs main theme is that the age-old mandate of capitalism â that you exist primarily to serve the interests of your shareholders â had led to a mutated form of free enterprise. One that was actually delivering less value. George reasoned that the path to long-term shareholder value was through CEOs embracing their own authentic vision and values, not simply taking on the increasingly self-serving motives of corporate America. George believed this would motivate staff to create products and customer service that will better serve the customerâs needs. Which will lead to better and sustained shareholder value.
We loved how George put the knock-on effects of authentic leadership into a simple, self-fulfilling sequence that anyone could apply to their business. It appealed to us as practitioners. You see, we work where the rubber of business theory hits the road: branding and marketing. Our clients expect that our thinking will make something happen for them out there in the real world, sometimes within one working day. So weâre very good at spotting theoretical ideas that can be put to work.
The only problem was we felt this particular virtuous circle was somewhat hidden in a book largely aimed at the CEOs of major corporations. And accompanied by detailed information on the practicalities of running those corporations in the United States. As valuable as those lessons would unquestionably be to many people, we felt they could be made more accessible to a broader group of business owners. We thought it could be turned into a simple tool for anyone thinking of running their own business of any size. A map to a better future that could be drawn on a napkin and understood by anyone, anywhere.
So we drew up our own version, simplified the language and added the best examples from our own experiences that proved the thinking. After more than a decade of use it has evolved into The Circle of True Purpose that youâll see in these pages. Itâs the most commonsense, powerful, useful, game-changing virtuous circle I know of â a five-step plan to a better kind of business. One that I believe will inherit the future.
In our own business, Meerkats: The Brand Leadership Company, weâve used The Circle of True Purpose to help companies change from being motivated by results to being motivated by a higher ideal. Companies in retail, banking, insurance, fast-moving consumer goods, telecommunications, education, healthcare, transport, leisure, entertainment, media and more. Every time, the new path they chose aligned with the five points on The Circle.
Itâs proven to be as potent a tool for startup entrepreneurs who are fully aware of their true motivations as it is for the boards of major corporations that may have forgotten theirs. And it seems just as relevant and powerful for social enterprises as it is for commercial ones.
We think this is so because it turns a philosophy into a system. The distinction between those two words â âphilosophyâ and âsystemâ â is important. Itâs the difference between knitting a jumper to keep someone warm and making a pattern for the jumper that can be replicated by others anywhere in the world to keep millions of people warm. The Circle of True Purpose is a pattern of behaviour anyone can learn and benefit from.
In Part One of this book I take you through each of the five points on The Circle and then explain what happens when you travel either way around. What Iâm effectively doing here is describing how I think the world works now. And seeing if you agree.
the roomful of mousetraps
I remember watching a video one day during science class at the Catholic boysâ college I attended. It was one of those clunky old educational films our Jesuit teachers would play when they wanted to duck outside for a cigarette.
It began with a freckle-faced kid playing with a model submarine and looking up at the camera as a toffy announcer asked, âHey Jimmy. Ever wondered what makes that nuclear submarine go?â
They pretty much all started like that, whether the subject was photosynthesis, stomach acid or the dangers of skateboarding near traffic. But I remember this one had a very creative way of explaining how nuclear fission works. They covered the floor of a large room with mousetraps, hundreds of them, every one of them set and ready to snap. Then they stood in the doorway and threw a single ping-pong ball into the middle of the room.
In two seconds every single mousetrap had been set off. When the stunt was played back in slow motion you could see that when the ping-pong ball triggered the first mousetrap both the trap and the ball flipped up into the air and triggered two more, which flipped up and triggered four or five more, and so on.
This is a pretty cool metaphor for the importance of truth in business today. Your market is like that roomful of mousetraps. Itâs a new generation of smart consumers who understand how marketing works, who are extremely cynical about companiesâ motives, and who are set and ready to snap at the first sign of misleading corporate behaviour.
One false claim, one exaggerated benefit, one customer experience that doesnât match the promise and â bang! â their truth about you spreads around the world in seconds. A sarcastic meme that gets viewed 10 million times. A Facebook post that gets a million âLikesâ. An angry Tweet that gets picked up by the media.
The bottom line, folks, is that you have a choice: spend your working life in a roomful of mousetraps just dreading the day when somebody throws a ping-pong ball in your direction, or unset those traps â put them in a big box called Outdated Business Convention and tell the truth about why youâre in the business youâre in.
Then relax and enjoy it.
As a boy, I was taught to tell the truth.
I was told that itâs a better way to live. A more honourable way to live. As I grew up I would read quotes and mantras saying that lies are fleeting but truth is forever and the truth will set me free.
A couple of hundred years ago Mark Twain said that if you tell the truth you donât have to remember anything.
A couple of thousand years ago Aesop advised us to not pretend to be anything weâre not.
As a man in his 50s, I now know that these creeds are so abundant in history and literature because they work. Being honest with others about what genuinely motivates us and making sure that our behaviour towards them reflects this delivers fulfilment for us humans. It fills a hole inside us that nothing else can fill. Not money. Not popularity. Not material possessions.
In this way, telling the truth can actually be seen as a very primitive behaviour. An inherently natural human act. And after a long career in advertising â one of the most suspect industries for honesty â I firmly believe that the future of free enterprise as a sustainable idea to advance the lives of everyone on this planet depends on truth.
Which is why True Purpose is the starting point on The Circle. Itâs the sun that drives the solar system of your career, your company and your life. Itâs the nucleus of all thatâs to come.
Your True Purpose is the higher ideal thatâs authentically motivating you to do what you do for work, for a career, for a meaningful life. Itâs the end reward thatâs beyond money, or fame, or beating the CEO of your biggest competitor, or showing your dad that you do have potential after all.
Within all of us, but often most powerfully within those who are compelled to start a business, is a driving force for change, a desire to meet an unmet need, to right a wrong.
Understanding this motivation is critical if youâre going to make the most of it. You need to surface it, enunciate it and then follow it like a guiding star.
It starts as an itch. A tiny tingle of possibility. An almost imperceptible hint of the thrill of doing something that may improve a sector of commerce, or a part of society, maybe even the world. Unfortunately for many people it will remain an itch thatâs never really scratched. Just a faint little voice way down inside of them, drowned out by the noise of our busy, complicated adult lives in a fast-paced world. For others, that little voice becomes a roar.
oh no, heâs going to talk about steve jobs
Yes, I know. Itâs almost a clichĂ© to use Apple as a case study. Itâs too easy, right? Pick the most successful, most inspiring brand on the planet and imply that you too can be a $100 billion company just by employing the methods described in this book.
Okay, fair call. But stay with me on this. The reason I cite Apple is because their story is still the fastest way to understand the concept of True Purpose. And I want you to grasp it quickly because we have lots of work to do to find yours.
So come with me (briefly) back to 1985. To a boardroom at Appleâs head office in Cupertino, California. Steve Jobs, the wonder boy of the emerging home computer industry, is arguing with Appleâs new CEO, John Scully.
Scully wants to continue manufacturing the Apple II personal computer because their sales data and consumer research shows itâs the product people most want. He reasons that after years of being an unprofitable challenger brand Apple is finally making serious money and as CEO he wants to ensure a good return to Appleâs stockholders.
Jobs, on the other hand, wants to move onto whatâs next. Heâs inspired by new microprocessing technology and wants to invent the next great application of it.
Jobs loses the argument with the company board and is fired from the company he started. Apple go ahead and focus on their big seller, the Apple II, and over the next couple of years their phenomenal year-on-year growth begins to slow. New competitors start bringing out computers that are just as good. And soon theyâre...
