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The Value Creators Podcast Episode #46. Digital Enablement: Customer-Led Business, Subjective Value, and Empathy with David Kramer

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Digital enablement and AI are revolutionizing how companies operate and reshaping the economy. 

At the core of this transformation remains a fundamental principle: the customer is the boss. In this new era, empathy becomes crucial as businesses strive to meet subjective values and deliver hyper-personalized experiences. Consumers demand instant access, precise responses, seamless order fulfillment, and transparency, while resisting intrusive tracking and data monetization.

David Kramer, Founder & Chief Product Officer at Cooperative Computing, joins Hunter Hastings to highlight how AI can enhance creativity while balancing automation and human touch. In this discussion, Kramer shares insights on the digital enablement movement, emphasizing that AI should complement human creativity rather than replace it.

He underscores the need for maintaining a brand’s unique voice amidst the risk of generic content. As AI advances, businesses must adapt, using it to innovate while preserving the essential human element that resonates deeply with audiences. This approach aligns with the shift towards hyper-personalization, where understanding and delivering what each individual wants becomes the new standard, as exemplified by companies like Nike, which serves diverse customer needs with tailored, transparent experiences.

Resources:

Connect with Hunter Hastings on LinkedIn

Cooperative Computing

Connect with David Kramer on LinkedIn

Digital Enablement by Cooperative Computing PDF

Show Notes:

0:00 | Intro: Vision of the Digitally Enabled Firm
01:57 | 5 Key Business Functions: Branding and Marketing
03:15 | Second Key: Sales and Commerce
03:56 | Digitally Enabled Organization: Third and Fourth Key
04:48 | Fifth Key for a Digitally Enabled Organization: Service Delivery Management
07:13 | Human Role: Coding OR Evolving Decisions?
13:13 | Are We Still Customer-Centric?
20:33 | Transition Away From Control
25:01 | Customer in this New Digital Environment
29:39 | Demand for Transparency and Responsiveness
35:34 | Managing Accelerating Digital Change Speed: The Art of Possible
40:47 | Stephen Hawking: Cosmology Depends on the Questions You Ask
45:38 | Is Competition Still Relevant, and Can Large Firms Adapt?
53:52 | Wrap-Up

Knowledge Capsule:

Digital enablement will change the way companies are run, and even change the structure of the economy. But one principle that remains the same, and becomes even more fundamentally important: the customer is the boss, subjective value is the goal, and empathy is the key capability. The customer is the driver of the digitized firm and its business model. The number one capability for the digitally enabled firm is empathy.

The governing factor is what consumers feel is appropriate to meet their needs and desires. They want instant access, fast and accurate personal request response, order completion and delivery, and complete transparency. They don’t want the uneasy feeling of being tracked and surveilled. They don’t want the diversion and interruption caused by sites selling consumer data to third parties to be monetized as digital advertising.

This consumer-led environment will require hyper-personalization: understanding and delivering what each individual wants.

It’s the opposite of mass marketing. Think about a company like Nike. It serves hundreds of millions of consumers. Its business is driven by what those customers want, when they want it, and how they want it. Nike’s customers range from the very best performance athletes who want unrestricted performance at the cutting edge of technology, to sedentary elders who appreciate comfort and stability. How can Nike serve all these customers with equal transparency? Via digitally enabled hyper-personalization. Every individual gets the experience they want when they want it, and how they want it.

The digitally enabled firm

The digitally enabled firm uses digitization (including AI) to know its customers deeply (i.e., through data), fully understand its customers and their individual experiential needs (through deductive analytics), and meet those needs better than anyone in the world (through commercial engagement, operations and fulfillment, service delivery, continuous improvement, and innovation).

For customers in general, whether B2C or B2B, their experiential requirements are going to extend towards instant access and response that is both rapid and accurate. To become an effective consumerized or customer-led company, the digitally enabled firm reviews its capacity in 5 core functions.

1. Branding and Marketing

This is the primary function of the customer-led company simply because the first requirement is to accurately identify, deeply understand, listen to, reach, message, and persuade customers of the firm’s value proposition. Without branding and marketing, there’s no flow of information (and no flow of cash since marketing induces willingness to pay). Branding and marketing incorporate the firm’s value proposition into customers’ daily thought culture, aligning with and complementing their mindset and their perspectives, and shaping the firm’s hyper-personalization capability. This marketing capacity is becoming hyper-automated since it is fueled by digital information flow, instantaneously processed for insights and driving the rapid reaction to generate the high-response relationship the customer seeks and, ultimately, the capacity to anticipate customer desires.

2. Sales and Commerce

Conventional commerce, including e-commerce, will go away as digital assistants become the power behind purchasing and daily life choices. They become dominant sales and commerce engines, to the digitally enabled firm’s advantage in the case where they interact well with customers and integrate into customers’ own systems and lifestyles. The result will be memorable on-demand buying and delivery experiences and frictionless repeat purchases.

3. Order Fulfillment and Operations

Real-time operational data and analytics will enable risk and error avoidance, predictive planning, and the scalable infrastructure required for frictionless operation. Fulfillment and operations provide the means to keep promises and meet expectations, two vitally important commitments in the consumer-led relationship.

4. Customer Engagement

The customer’s experience-in-use is the critical key to value creation, and the digitally-enabled firm will be integrated into this experience, thereby opening up the opportunity for continuous addition of new and supplemental value and ever-strengthening sticky relationships. Continuing engagement after a purchase and after a usage experience is important. Some brands are creating digital online spaces and experiences where customers can participate and engage, such as Gucci’s Vault on Discord. Even when they are not buying or consuming, customers can be digitally engaged with their brands.

5. Service Delivery Management

Process automation ensures delivery excellence and consistency, and customer transparency generates confidence and trust across all channels. Digital integration enables continuous improvement of processes whenever feedback indicates an opportunity. Digitally enabled firms exhibit excellent governance of the service experience.

How do we manage digital organizations of this kind, where decision-making must be near-instant and the accuracy of a millisecond decision is so critical? It’s futile and dangerous to rely on traditional management styles. Leadership and governance will exist, but they’ll change considerably. One result will be the digital CEO, connected to all aspects of all decision-making processes, governing in millisecond transaction times.

The advantage for humans

The thing that humans do very well, better than any AI, and in all likelihood for a long period of time, is understand people through an emotional perspective. And this is where the engine of branding and marketing and all economic activity actually exists. Humans will continue to keep control of their own consumerism in order to grow economic activity so that we enjoy the world that we live in. The human is not only in the loop, but the core of the loop in this regard.

Digital machinery and digital processes can understand feedback loops very well. It can read the clicks and the purchase data and generate the appropriate signals for analysts, but it can never understand the emotional attachment between economic activity and consumer needs. Consider a purchaser buying a red shirt from a shopping site. The AI can record the purchase, align the data with other historical data to generate a pattern, and perhaps draw a pattern recognition inference. Perhaps there’s a trend or a tendency. Perhaps there is a comparison to be made with other shoppers, yielding more inferences. But if the purchaser loves red shirts because his or her grandma bought them a red beanie hat for their 8th birthday and they’ve loved that shade of red ever since because they loved their grandma – AI can’t empathically diagnose that motivation, and probably won’t ever be able to.

But AI can make the purchase frictionless, the delivery faster and more accurate,  and monitor the customer experience and perhaps enhance it in the future, perhaps generating loyalty and relationship stickiness. AI can become self-teaching and self-learning by structuring data and organizing it and running feedback loops. But it doesn’t know what to do with the emotional components of human engagements.

It may be possible to develop triggered models – data models or simulation models that can create signals from the states of emotional and empathic input that come from humans and human interaction, and it will get better at fine-tuning the signals and the models. It is already possible to detect temperature changes (blushing), eye movement, body language and other signals of emotional change.

The direct connection to the customer

The most exciting part of all this is the direct connection of the business model to the customer. Whether in the recording of online purchase data and digital behavior, or the monitoring of eye movements, the connection is direct and the end user directs the flow. AI (what Kramer calls digital sapiens, working alongside homo sapiens) enters the customer’s system and the customer’s life cycle and becomes part of that customer’s life, and part of the customer’s culture. AI makes data-driven decisions, and the data is customer data.

How do firms make the transition?

The first transition step is to conduct a digitization discovery: what is the capacity of the firm to digitize across four dimensions?

1. Digitizing organizational structure – eliminating hierarchy, planning, and command-and-control and substituting digital implementation of job functions wherever appropriate.

2. Methods, procedures and routines – where they have emerged and proven useful, can they be digitized for continuity and consistency? And can we change them digitally when it becomes clear we need to work differently?

3. Systems and technology – how well are IT systems facilitating people, processes and change?

4. Key performance indicators – what are the signals of success and how well are they measured, monitored and distributed for action? The key here is not KPI’s as control mechanisms (which is how they are traditionally used) but as feedback loops: building up an understanding of the current state and the patterns of its dynamics through data, analytics, and the response environment.

A current state of these dimensions is established through discovery, from which a delta is derived: what is required to improve and accelerate:

* To grow revenue.

* To become more operationally efficient.

* To continuously improve the performance of the firm through digitization and data-driven decision-making.

* To develop the cultural identity that best facilitates the collaboration of digital sapiens and home sapiens. There will be a different way of working and different forms of collaboration, and the cultural identity of the firm will be highly relevant to the nature of the adoption of these new ways.

The new customer experience

In the world of e-commerce and digital advertising that has evolved recently, the customer experience has often been undesirable, in that customers are surveilled and tracked by cookies and other software devices, and are urged into transactions by “interrupt and annoy” messages that are unwanted frictions in online engagement. This is evidence of a failure of empathy.

But the new AI approach is to prioritize an understanding of how the customer prefers to interact. After profitability (which is the mandatory gateway – business can’t proceed if it is not profitable), the quality of the customer’s experience in the response environment will be the number one attribute of business operations. Understanding the needs of the individual customer and interacting with those needs in the way that the individual customer likes best is the goal of the digitized capability that we call hyper-personalization.

Digital assistants will become more closely attached to and associated with individuals and will sense our feelings – whether that’s frustration with a process or delight with an experience. Businesses are building the tools for empathic diagnosis, empathic response and instant and dynamic updating. They’ll become highly effective at hyper-personalization.

This is the realization of the dynamic of customers bringing innovation and desirable experiences into being. Through the responsiveness environment, customers will figure out how to generate a desired experience and achieve it through the adaptive dynamics of the digital assistant.

An example of this principle in action is 3D printing, which is the capacity for an individual to self-manufacture. The implementation of individual consumer desire (“I want what I want when I want it and how I want it”) is made materially operational, whether in the form of 3-D printed buildings, machines, or clothes, or food.

Speed of change and the art of possible.

The acceleration of the rate of speed of change has been identified as a challenge for firms, but in the new customer-led digital age, the acceleration is in the hands of the customer. When what customers want is more and more attainable, they will learn to ask systems for what they want and the system will understand enough of what’s available from all potential sources to recommend and bring it to that customer. The system will assemble sub-components into a solution. For example, if a customer wants a mirror with a digital camera in it and an audio source of weather information, powered by DC because they live in Denmark, and that particular configuration is not currently offered, a digital assistant will specify it from available parts and build a personalized sku, deliverable two days from now at a specific price. That’s the art of possible: not what exists now, but what it is possible to assemble quickly.

Asking the right questions

The future lies in getting better at prompting: asking the AI the right questions: Can I do this now? What is possible? The questioner dreams it up, and the system assembles the dream. Then, the organization implements the assembled solution in the firm’s environment and in the marketplace.

Copilot is a good early example of what’s possible – a tool that observes and takes information and comes back to you to say, ‘here are the activities at which the firm is not efficient that could be done much more efficiently.” For example, the AI detects that people are keying-in invoices, and the process could be automated. It provides the art of possible. It could do the same for customers and customer interactions.

Constructing the firm for the new environment

Today’s construct of the firm is:

The empathetic component – how do we create valued experiences for the customer?

The technical component – what do we need from a technical perspective to meet customer expectations?

The financial component – how do we operate profitably and efficiently?

Ask these questions of an AI and, ultimately, the AI will respond with a highly accurate recommendation of what company or brand to build. It has the universe of knowledge at its fingertips, with all customer and buyer data to reveal preferences and trends and desires. The best entrepreneurs will be the ones asking the right questions, while the operation of that business can be left more and more to the AI and the digitized firm. The AI will build a digital CEO that can develop a market analysis and a business plan, perhaps raise capital against that plan, sign up the initial customers, design the products and aesthetics, and the customer experience. Over time, the digital sapiens species footprint will expand, and the homo sapiens species footprint become more specialized and focused. Competition will boil down to building specialized digital CEO’s. The software might be open source and free, and the data proprietary, so the added value is in designing better digital CEO’s from better data sets.

How? By asking better questions. McKinsey, for example, has decades of data and intelligence about good decision-making and what’s associated with it. That could be the input data for building a digital CEO. WPP has data about great marketing campaigns and great marketing agencies and could create great marketing CEO’s. Digital doctors will out-perform non-digital doctors because of the mass of data around medical history, practice, research and so on.

Management will become less and less relevant because digital sapiens can do more and more of it. Entrepreneurship – creatively asking the right questions and imagining the future in a better way than others – will become more and more relevant.

The Value Creators Podcast Episode #31. Christian Sandstrom: How Entrepreneurial Initiatives Beat Government-Backed Missions

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In this episode of the Value Creators Podcast, dive deep into the classic battle between market-driven innovation and centrally planned industrial policy with our esteemed guest, Christian Sandstrom, a leading voice for individualism and free-market solutions and author and professor at Jönköping International Business School and the Ratio Institute in Sweden.

In this conversation, we unpack the government’s grand “moonshots” and “missions” which claim to solve societal challenges but always miss the mark due to bureaucratic inefficiency and a central planning approach that negates the potential of market dynamics.

Learn why centralized missions such as the cancer moonshot or the war on homelessness can become drains on public funds while failing to deliver meaningful progress, and the importance of fostering an entrepreneurial society where markets create value and select the best solutions organically, rather than imposing ‘one-size-fits-all’ government-led directives.

This episode is a treasure trove for anyone interested in the interplay between innovation, the economy, policy, and technological advancement!

Resources:

Christian Sandstrom’s Books:
Moonshots and the New Industrial Policy
Questioning the Entrepreneurial State

Episodes Mentioned:
Christian Sandström: Why Governments Can’t Act Entrepreneurially

Show notes:

0:00 | Intro
03:09 | Mission Economy: MOIP
05:16 | Attraction Perspective: Is the Mission Economy Same for all Governments?
06:33 | Book: Behavior of Economics
08:26 | Three Broad Headings: Sequence
10:50 | Public Intellectuals: These Are Not Serious Economists, These Are Celebrities
13:48 | Empirical Evidence Defined
17:04 | Apollo Mission: Examples
19:20 | Example: Home Building Challenge
21:07 | Alternative: Aim for Entrepreneurial Society 
27:26 | Challenge: Separating the Entrepreneurial Component from the Bureaucratic Government Entangle Component 
29:46 | Technology Can Decentralize Economic Activities
31:33 | Moral Beliefs and Imperatives 
34:04 | Entrepreneur Ecosystem
36:13 | Books Campaigns: Spreading Word Beyond Books
39:40 | Wrap up: Christian is Optimist OR Not?

Knowledge Capsule:

  1. Entrepreneurial Society vs. Mission Economy:
    • Societal goals are achieved when Individuals take personal responsibility,, translating abstract ideas into actionable steps.
    • Decentralized, bottom-up approaches are always superior to top-down, government-driven solutions.
    • Professor Sandstrom advocates for minimizing government restrictions and regulations to allow markets to evolve and find solutions organically.
  2. Challenges with Mission-Oriented Policies:
    • Complex problems (sometimes called “wicked problems”) can’t be solved by government-led missions.
    • They require decentralized, collaborative solutions rather than centralized control.
    • There is always the problem of government officials pursuing self-interest or being influenced by interest groups, leading to inefficient and muddled outcomes.
    • Mission-oriented policies can distort competition, neglect opportunity costs, and fail to address root causes of issues.
  3. Empirical Evidence Against Mission-Oriented Policies:
    • Historical case studies and literature review show limited success and unintended consequences of mission-oriented policies.
    • Examples like the Apollo program and the atomic bomb highlight engineering successes rather than entrepreneurial ones.
    • Such policies often fail to address systemic issues effectively, such as homelessness or economic revitalization.
  4. Role of Public Intellectuals and Behavioral Economics:
    • Public intellectuals often simplify complex economic concepts, leading to oversimplified policy prescriptions.
    • Behavioral economics can criticize markets but sometimes overlooks biases and inefficiencies in government decision-making.
    • There is a need for a more nuanced understanding of economic principles and policy implications.
  5. Alternative: Entrepreneurial Ecosystem and Technological Advancements:
    • Technological advancements enable smaller-scale entrepreneurship and decentralized economic activities.
    • Focus on building collaborative, complementary networks across firms and technologies for innovation.
    • Markets are seen as collaborative ecosystems rather than purely competitive arenas, emphasizing the role of cooperation and innovation in achieving great outcomes.
  6. Moral Beliefs and Imperatives in Policy Making:
    • Public perception often drives policy decisions, creating what are seen as moral imperatives for government action.
    • Balancing these supposed moral imperatives with practical, market-driven solutions is crucial for effective policy making.
    • Need to consider unintended consequences and trade-offs of policies driven by moral beliefs.
  7. Optimism for the Future:
    • Despite challenges, there is optimism that technology and entrepreneurial ecosystems can drive positive change.
    • Global interconnectedness and creativity offer opportunities for entrepreneurial solutions to societal challenges.
    • The potential for decentralized, collaborative problem-solving gives hope for addressing complex societal issues more effectively.

The Value Creators Podcast Episode #27. Mark McGrath on Entrepreneurship Versus Managerialism

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Adaptive entrepreneurship refers to a dynamic approach to business leadership and business practice that embraces continuous learning, rapid adaptation, and the creation of novel ideas. Mark McGrath and Hunter Hastings discuss the critical aspects of adaptiveness in dynamic environments. They explore the aftermath of failure to adapt to nonlinear external change. The conversation emphasizes the importance of the shift from traditional management to adaptive leadership, as defined by a fusion of entrepreneurial economics and John Boyd’s unique approach to “the whirl of reorientation”, and focusing on the importance of influencing and inspiring collaboration, as contrasted with managerial control.

Mark McGrath highlights the role of appreciation leadership, recognizing the worth of ideas, and fostering human interaction. He advocates for continuous reinvention and the active creation of mismatches to outpace competitors. Entrepreneurs need to embrace adaptive systems, prioritize human-centric leadership, and leverage novel ideas for sustained success in ever-changing business landscapes.

Resources: 

AGLX – Consulting & Coaching Group:

aglx.com

The Adaptive Entrepreneurial Business Model Graphic:

The-Adaptive-Entrepreneurial-Business-ModelDownload

Mark McGrath on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/markjmcgrath1/

Show Notes:

0:00 | Intro

01:50 | Rethinking Management Amid Uncertainty

04:23 | Entrepreneurship: Navigating Uncertainty for Value Creation

06:38 | Entrepreneurship as a Continuous, Never-Ending Process

08:50 | Massive Mismatch: Preserving vs. Exploring New Futures

14:16 | Disruptive Innovation

15:19 | Entrepreneurial Method as Continuous Ongoing Loop of Value Creation

20:21 | Idea of Entrepreneurial Intent

22:42 | Positive and Negative Feedback: Feedback Loop

25:12 | Organizational Structure and Empowerment in Business and the Military

34:56 | Quantification VS Qualitative Analysis

38:02 | Rethinking Management VS Embracing Adaptive Systems

39:20 | Wrap-Up: Mark McGrath’s Concept of Leadership

Knowledge Capsule:

Defeating Linear Thinking::

  • Failure in business often stems from an inability to adapt to nonlinear external change.
  • Possessing resources is insufficient without the right frame of thinking.
  • Success requires constant adaptation to unpredictable challenges.

Boyd’s Leadership Philosophy:

  • Emphasis on leadership quality over command and control.
  • Leadership is defined as the art of influencing and inspiring collaboration.
  • Appreciation leadership focuses on recognizing worth and understanding how things work.

Reinventing Management:

  • Hunter Hastings proposes to replace the term “management” with an adaptive system.
  • Mark’s response: we don’t use the term “management” and don’t think about it. Leadership quality, not a title in a hierarchy, is crucial for success.
  • Advocacy for a mindset shift away from traditional management approaches.

Continuous Adaptation:

  • Organizations must continually reinvent themselves for sustained success.
  • Industry leaders like Steve Jobs and Warren Buffett exemplify the importance of creating novel ideas.
  • The ability to adapt to changing landscapes is paramount for thriving in dynamic environments.

Human-Centric Leadership:

  • Appreciation leadership promotes human-to-human interactions.
  • Recognition of worth and understanding of how things work are crucial.
  • Contrasts with isolating command and control approaches.

Creating Mismatches for Success:

  • Mark McGrath encourages the cultivation of mismatches or novel ideas. 
  • Adaptive systems recognizing value and fostering continuous learning are keys to success.
  • Gaining a competitive edge involves disrupting the status quo with innovative thinking.

The Value Creators Podcast Episode #26. 11 New Mental Models for Business

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Mental models are defined as fundamental assumptions that shape the way individuals perceive and interact with the world. When our mental models are wrong, we can’t see the world as it really is. New mental models introduce a new and better understanding. This episode of the Value Creators podcast introduces eleven fundamental mental models, ranging from understanding value as a subjective creation within the minds of customers, to the strategic accumulation of knowledge within a firm, to the pivotal role of empathy and the transformative nature of marketing as behavior. Each mental model contributes to a new holistic paradigm designed to guide entrepreneurs in creating sustained value.

Mental models contribute to the necessary shift in business mindsets towards a dynamic approach that emphasizes the continuous flow of experimentation and the ongoing refinement of knowledge through error correction. 

Resources: Hunterhastings.com

Shownotes:

0:00 | Intro: Choosing Right Mental Model for Success

02:43 | Mental model Number 1: Value is Created by the Customer

04:07 | Mental Model Number 2: Knowledge

05:13 | Mental Model Number 3: Empathy 

06:23 | Mental Model Number 4: Marketing

07:26 | Mental Model Number 5: Design

08:15 | Mental Model Number 6: Innovation

09:30 | Mental Model Number 7: Entrepreneurship

11:08 | Mental Model Number 8: Finance and Accounting

12:13 | Mental Model Number 9: Organization

13:08 | Mental Model Number 10: Business is a Flow

14:05 | Mental Model Number 11: Knowledge Accumulation

15:20 | Wrap-Up: Value Creation For Customers

Knowledge Capsule:

Mental Models for Success:

  • Mental models as fundamental assumptions about how the world works…
  • Correct mental models lead to valid conclusions, while incorrect ones result in mistakes.

Mental Model Number 1: Value Creation Paradigm

  • The customer is the creator of value.
  • Challenge the traditional view of businesses creating value; instead, recognize customers as value creators – since value is subjective and is generated in their minds.

Mental Model Number 2: Customer knowledge is the source of competitive advantage

  • A lasting competitive advantage for firms comes from accumulating and compounding customer knowledge and understanding..

Mental Model Number 3: Empathy as a business tool

  • The tool for building customer understanding is empathy.
  • Empathy is not “thinking as they think” – it is a simulation of the customer’s experience and how the customer evaluates it.
  •  The simulation enables businesses to understand and address customers’ unmet needs.

Mental Model Number 4: Marketing is behavior not communication

  • Marketing is not communication and persuasion.
  • Marketing is behavior, an act of love towards customers.

Mental Model Number 5: Reverse the flow of design

  • Design is working backwards not forwards – backward from the customer and their experiences and desires., 
  • By working backwards, design ensures that customer wants are integrated seamlessly into products and services.

Mental Model Number 6: Innovation is continuous

  • Innovation is not an event – it must be continuous, unceasing experimentation and improvement.
  • The greatest innovation lies in innovating new business models..

Mental Model Number 7: Entrepreneurship is the only route to value creation

  • The value creation process is enabled through entrepreneurship, not management.
  • Entrepreneurship translates customer’s genius in sensing that things could be better (How do they know?) into innovative products or services through continuous new action.

Mental Model Number 8: Finance and Accounting should look forwards as well as backwards

  • Traditional accounting can’t accommodate value creation – the intangibles that create customer value.
  • Make sure your accounting balances backward-looking tracking with forward-looking economic calculation.

Mental Model Number 9: Rethink organization

  • Don’t organize!
  • Encourage self-organization and autonomy for employees interfacing with customers.

Mental Model Number 10: Business as a Flow

  • Don’t plan!
  • Adopt a continuous flow approach in business and individual work.

Mental Model Number 11: Unceasing knowledge Accumulation

  • Constantly critique and improve knowledge through collaborative open-minded critique and error correction.

The Value Creators Podcast Episode #23. Moshik Temkin on Leadership By Warriors, Rebels, and Saints – Leadership Wisdom from the Pages of History

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Moshik Temkin is a historian who offers an alternative perspective on leadership. He asks, do leaders make history or does history make leaders? Those two forces can’t be separated. While leaders contribute to shaping history, they are also molded by powerful historical forces. This nuanced perspective is evident in analyses of historical figures like FDR, Margaret Thatcher, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X, emphasizing the role of circumstances in leadership’s response to complex historical challenges, ultimately leading to significant changes in their respective nations. The conversation explores moral leadership in the civil rights movement, comparing the approaches of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Despite their distinct styles, both leaders shared a commitment to collective progress and justice, challenging the prevailing emphasis on individual success. Temkin addresses the ethical dilemmas leaders encounter during crises, prompting reflection on the justifiability of extreme measures for the sake of victory.

How does this discussion contribute to the question of leadership in business? Leadership is subjective. We look to those who we feel can guide us, whether in politics or business. There are principles that cross both fields.

Resources: https://www.moshiktemkin.com/warriors-rebels-saints

https://www.moshiktemkin.com/

Knowledge Capsule:

Leadership Perspectives:

  • Moshik Temkin explores the complex relationship between leaders and historical context, emphasizing that leaders both make history and are influenced by historical forces.
  • Rejecting a simplistic view of leadership, Temkin suggests that circumstances and historical momentum often shape the significance of individual leaders.

Individual Leaders in Historical Events:

  • Examining historical figures like FDR, Margaret Thatcher, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X, Temkin highlights how leaders interact with historical events and crises.
  • While acknowledging the impact of individuals, he emphasizes the role of historical circumstances in determining the success or failure of leadership.

Moral Leadership and Collective Progress:

  • Delving into the civil rights movement, Temkin discusses the contrasting leadership styles of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.
  • Both leaders, despite their differences, shared a commitment to collective progress and justice, emphasizing the importance of leaders focusing on the well-being of the entire community rather than individual success.

Transformative Leadership:

  • Temkin underscores the concept of “transformational leadership” by citing examples such as FDR and Margaret Thatcher, leaders who brought significant changes to their respective nations during critical periods.
  • These leaders exhibited the ability to transform existing structures and navigate through complex historical challenges.

Leadership and Decision-Making in Crises:

  • Temkin explores the difficult decisions leaders face in times of crisis, referencing instances like the decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan during World War II.
  • The conversation touches on the ethical dilemmas leaders encounter, questioning the justifiability of extreme measures in the pursuit of victory in war.

Leadership’s Collective Impact:

  • Acknowledging that leaders play a role in shaping history, Temkin emphasizes the collective impact of historical forces and societal structures on the emergence and effectiveness of leadership.
  • The conversation prompts reflection on how understanding historical context is crucial for comprehending the complexities of leadership.

The Value Creators Podcast Episode #22 Cynthia Kay on Small Business, Big Success

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We live in a video age, which opens up a vast array of entrepreneurial pathways. Video is a field for open-ended free creative expression, as well as for tightly managed business tools built for ROI. It’s the ideal field for creative entrepreneurial small business innovators. Cynthia Kay of CK and CO is both a business founder and CEO of a video production business, and a consultant and advisor to small businesses. She shared some of her insights and a preview of her 2024 book Small Business Big Success. 

Resources: 

CK’s business resources site: https://cynthiakaybiz.com/

Books you can buy now: https://cynthiakaybiz.com/books/

Cynthia Kay’s upcoming 2024 Book – Small Business, Big Success:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0CFWFZQTS/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1700618573&sr=8-3

Knowledge Capsule:

Value Proposition:

  • Like any other entrepreneurial business, a video production business needs a compelling value proposition.
  • A value proposition is always about meeting customer needs – what need are they filling by paying for video production?
  • No matter how creative, video production must offer a customer value that exceeds perceived costs. It must make customers feel proud and fulfilled, and give them a sense of standing out from the crowd.
  • This often includes educating them on how to use a supplier’s services, e.g. the many different benefits and values available from one video shoot.

Operational Excellence:

  • High creativity does not in any way reduce the need for a video production business – or any small businesses –  to prioritise operational excellence.
  • Customer expectations of excellence are high, no matter the size of the supplier they choose.
  • CK advocates the use of top notch systems, procedures, and automation to enhance overall efficiency. Build the back room to be as strong and dependable as possible. Every business can deploy the best systems.
  • Owners must be in the operational trenches.

Return on Investment (ROI) Challenges:

  • Calculating  ROI in creative fields is a challenge – but must be done as part of the customer value proposition.
  • There’s such a thing as subjective calculation – e.g. recognizing the role of anecdotal evidence in demonstrating the value of creative services.
  • Focus ROI on the things that matter for customers.

Being the Best in Business:

  • Whatever business you are in, set out to be the best.
  • Making – and living up to – such a claim can be based on multifaceted performance.
  • Consider factors such as understanding client needs, building strong relationships, and optimising the utilisation of budgetary resources.
  • One of CK’s propositions is to be the best at getting the most of a client’s budget, whatever size it is. That’s an excellent “best” claim.

Small Business Success Strategies:

  • Pick your customers carefully – pick those who will love you and those you can grow with.
  • Commit to building relationships over time.
  • Build great teams that are right for the client, and turn them loose.

Supporting Small Businesses:

  • Cynthia Kay not only runs a small business,she plays a big role in helping others and in supporting small businesses in general.
  • She’s actively involved in associations and support groups, and urges other small businesses to do the same.
  • She gives her time to the facilitation of roundtable discussions, and offering advice on common challenges faced by small businesses, including scaling and team development. These kinds of discussions can yield enormous value for participants just by sharing experiences.
  • It’s good for small businesses to support other small businesses and build the business backbone of the neighbourhood, the town, the city, the state and the nation.