Melodies in Marketing

I recently came across this article by Allan Chochinov from Core77. Check it out, and let me know what you think. I was able to relate many of the points to my recent reading of Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough (which I plan to cover in a future post). Here are some comments I’d like to make.

“First do no harm” is important for designers as well as anyone else involved in some form of decision making. This little rule may seem obvious, but the concept of ‘harm’ may not be immediately visible or understood. One way of analyzing a situation or process for harm is to look for correctionary measures within your realm of influence in the value chain.

‘Stop making crap’ seems like a great goal - you tell ‘em! But I must say that designers are hardly the only ones responsible, although I suppose they could simply say ‘No, I will not design that crap for you. It is bad for our environment and society’. Uhm…marketers, businesspeople, entrepreneurs, and anybody else involved in voting their funds and ideas to a creationary process are responsible for what products are made.

Systems thinking is difficult, but at the heart of holistic sustainable design. If all actions have consequences, we should be not only be thinking about zero-harm immediate and long-term effects in the value chain, but also about positive enhancement that contributes to the quality of life.

To teach sustainability at an early age is important to the development of a culture that practices it; from designers, architects, and engineers, to process developers, operations and marketing managers, purchasing agents, and everyday folk. At the simplest level, this implies promoting the three R’s: Reduce, Re-use, and Recycle. That’s eco-efficiency. In a larger sense, it implies choosing to design, decide, and act more for the benefit of all of US (rather than just the org or little ‘ole ME). That leads to eco-effectiveness.

So education is great. There’s a corollary requisite condition though: the design, composition, and effects of products and processes need to be visible so people could hence make informed decisions. Quick real-life examples of this include the numeric coding on most plastic containers; ingredient listings for packaged foods, drugs, and chemicals; and materials lists used for the construction of buildings and infrastructure. The idea is that we can’t expect people to make great ecological/sustainable choices if they don’t know what they’re dealing with. Secondly design should provide instructions for things like disposal, disassembly, and reclamation. This includes labels, trade-in policies, and public awareness programs for local communities and orgs that best handle this ‘next-in-lifecycle’ stage.

Designing for impermanence just goes without saying. This could mean we use more organic materials that will naturally decompose, not fusing together natural and synthetic materials in ways that can’t be disassembled and reclaimed (easily or all together). Nothing should last forever.

The rest of the article asks us to weigh our options for action/input against our desired effect, and choose the combination that produces a balanced result; be skeptical if consequential visibility isn’t clear and to seek out advice if we can’t make informed decisions; give regard to our community and the environment because they are what support life and society to exist and happily function for this generation AND of those to come; and lastly: Context is king in all design matters.

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What do you think?

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One of the subjects I’m currently studying is American business history. It can be fascinating for its insight into how and why modern business practices evolved the way they did.

Henry Ford helped build the U.S. automobile industry by becoming a master of production methods, and using the subsequent economies of scale to progressively offer the public a better Model T at a increasingly lower price. While he was a brilliant engineer and equitable leader, he detested bureaucracy, org charts, and so called ‘financeering’; as a result, he bought back all of his company’s stock in 1919 and took the firm private. Ford was the proud individualist who understood practical economics, but two conditions slowly brought his firm down. First, his centralized management style couldn’t adapt to the unique needs of a much larger corporation of its operational nature. Secondly, his complete lack of a customer and market-orientation led Ford to make few model updates and new brands, causing a steady drop in market share from 56% in 1921 to 21% by 1937.

Alfred Sloan became President of General Motors in 1923, a firm that was losing money but had various car brands including Buick, Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, and Cadillac. Sloan was a pragmatic leader described by a Fortune magazine writer:

“[He] displays an almost inhuman detachment from personalities, [but] a human and infectious enthusiasm for the facts. Never, in committee or out, does he give an order in the ordinary sense, saying, ‘I want you to do this.’ Rather he reviews the data and sells the idea, pointing out, ‘Here is what can be done.’ Brought to consider the facts in open discussion, all men, he feels, are on an equal footing. Management is no longer a matter of taking orders, but of taking counsel.”

While enabling financing for dealers and customers, and establishing a solid product development and positioning strategy for GM’s brands remain two of Sloan’s notable accomplishments, it was his management design that remains his legacy.

It was common business tradition before the 1920s, that divisions would be organized not according to product, but by function. This meant centralized command over all purchasing, manufacturing, and sales across multiple lines, brands, and regions. Sloan turned this system on its head by creating a multi-divisional structure with dozens of divisions, each operated by a chief executive responsible for the operations, marketing, and finance of their business unit. Secondly, he created a series of cross-divisional committees that forced high-ranking executives to regularly communicate with one another and be greater in touch with the company at large. In his words, decentralization allowed for “initiative, responsibility, development of personnel, decisions close to the facts, flexibility…”

The key question Sloan tried to continually address was: “How could we exercise permanent control over the whole corporation in a way consistent with the decentralized scheme of organization?” The answer lied in combining coordinated control with decentralization.

Coordinated control was exercised through: 1) Continual financial/operational planning, measurement, and reporting, and 2) Capital allocations. GM became an expert in its use of financial ratios and budget targets. Adjustments to production lines were continually made based on what the numbers were telling top management, what innovations were being made within the firm, and what was happening in the external environment. Sloan knew that constant attention to changes in consumer preferences, technologies, government policies, business cycles, competitive activities, and international trade patterns were essential.

This form of organizational management spread to many other American corporations including DuPont and young, but fast-growing companies from the nascent chemical and technology sectors. While Ford may have been the pioneer of mass manufacturing, it was Sloan that made the greatest impact to both the future of the auto industry and large organizational management.

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Are there any business or industry leaders that you feel have made an important contribution to society? Please share! I’ve read some works by Peter Drucker, and will read about Warren Buffett later this year. But I’d love to hear who you’ve found inspiring.

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Greetings readers. My postings have become fewer as of late, and I would like to impart something other than the usual academic discourses, lively musings, topical summaries and other writings I try to carefully craft with your reading enjoyment in mind. This is a bit about little ‘ole me.

As a 1st generation American born to a German mother and Italian father, I was raised in southern California though spent many summers with grandparents and family in Munich, Germany. I attended private Catholic school first at a military academy from 5th-8th grade, then a preparatory high school for the first two years. To my great joy and fondest memories, I spent my junior year as an exchange student in Sweden, then graduated from a public high school in Fountain Valley, CA.

My college major was International Business, though I didn’t know exactly what that entailed beyond a fanciful image of businesspeople shaking hands and making trade agreements. I dutifully studied my courses in community college and hoped of transferring to UC Berkeley. Alas, I was advised it would be near impossible to get in without a minimum 4.75 GPA. So I came to terms with practical reality and continued at Cal State Univ. Fullerton, which had an excellent IB program combined with a minor in German. Soon after I started, I learned of and applied for a U.S. State Dept. scholarship program to study & work in Germany for one year, accompanied by 60 fellow students from across America. I was accepted.

Together we attended language school for two months, then we were sent to our individual cities. I ended up in Bremen (close to Hamburg), studied at the local university, then worked as an intern at OOCL, a large Chinese ocean carrier. I felt at the time that working in international logistics would be the best first step in understanding what really enables world trade, outside sales offices and ‘The Economist’ magazine.

Upon return to my senior year in college, I was filled with a strong sense of direction and purpose: finish the rest of my classes and continue on the logistical path I had begun. Operations management, international marketing, organizational behavior, and cross-cultural communication were my favorite courses. My last semester was quite busy with regular classes, a “Global Logistics Specialist” academic program from another university, and an internship with a freight forwarder. I happily graduated in June 2004, assisted a British logistics trade show co. in LA and Chicago, and completed the logistics program later that summer.

Although the career prospect cards seemed well dealt in my favor, something big changed within me. Suddenly supply chain management and logistics lost their strong appeal. Sales & Marketing seemed much more interesting, but it didn’t seem to have a place in a highly commoditized product environment where pricing was the only important purchasing factor for clients. Everything else in SCM was about materials/inventory management, transportation & warehousing, visible and accurate data, quality control, and accounting. Retrospectively, I’m happy for all that I learned. It helped me communicate better with clients, operational staff, and 3rd parties. It was frustrating though, to give up on some VERY well-paying job opportunities right out of college. I was a bit confused and sad, but my heart told me to press on…

to be continued…

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