Tipping points
Answer this quickly: What’s the question you’re most commonly asked nowadays as a conversational ice-breaker?
For me, it’s definitely, “Have you been vaccinated?” Some people add ‘yet’ to the question, assuming I will be (which is correct). But as I write this, less than 6% of the Australian population is. This is about 10% of what’s needed for decent herd immunity. But, do we know what that target percentage is exactly?
We don’t, and it’s subject to a great deal of modelling. But, what exactly does that modelling look like, and should we care about it? One person who argues we should is Uri Wilenksy, who believes that more and more of our scientific — and social — phenomena are complex systems that require understanding by lay-persons (people like me, and you).
To do this, his team has created a web app called NetLogo which lets you play around with adjusting variables on all sorts of complex systems (climate change, bushfires, mob violence against authoritarian rule, flocking of birds) and then visually seeing how it all plays out. It’s like a mathematical nerd version of SimCity and utterly fascinating to see how altering a variable by 1% dramatically alters the eventual outcome (and the speed with which it’s reached).
The behaviour of complex systems is intrinsically difficult to model due to the dependencies, competitions, relationships between parts, yet many areas of organisational life would benefit from this understanding. Just three examples that I discuss frequently with my clients: response to marketing, customer acquisition and staff uptake of new innovations. Most of my clients simply don’t understand nearly enough about these — and other — complex systems questions.
Question: What complex systems are at play in your work that you would benefit from understanding better?
Hooks
What’s the best organisational purpose statement you know?
This year, I’ve helped an Australian household services brand evolve their almost-100 year old purpose statement for their next 100. A great purpose statement answers the question “Why do we exist?” and with this client, we reflected on several great examples as early stimulus:
Fred Hollows Foundation: Prevent and cure avoidable blindness
World Wildlife Fund: Reduce the most pressing threats to the diversity of life on earth
Uber: Remove movement inefficiencies
What makes these examples so good? Here are three criteria that I use with my clients in our strategic positioning work:
There’s a distinct ‘hook’ in the value proposition: causative questions (“avoidable how?”, “which threats?”, and “which inefficiencies?”) that beg answers which then leads to unique value;
There’s a clear beneficiary: we know who wins (those affected by blindness; wildlife, and those who enjoy wilderness). The beneficiary ultimately pays, either directly or indirectly, thus monetising the purpose statement.
They imply a measure of success: we know what success looks like (numbers treated for blindness, thousands of hectares protected as wilderness; number of trips where movement inefficiencies were avoided) which means we can tie strategic KPIs to these.
I can’t share the specifics of the client I’m working with, but I’m delighted with the seven words we’ve crafted, and which their board accepted this week. It’s a mistake, though, to see them just as words; they’re actually internalised states that will strategically position the business in terms of their future social licence, tomorrow’s services and their next capability investments.
Question: How good is the hook in your organisation’s purpose statement?
How good are you, really?
30 years ago I was an employment consultant, finding jobs for people who had disabilities and mental illnesses. Out of the hundreds of clients I worked with, only one ever asked me at his onboarding meeting, “Andrew, how many people have you found jobs for?”
I asked him why he wanted to know, and he stunned me with his response. “I want to know who here gets the most jobs. I want to work with them.”
To be honest, me and my colleagues never had ways of answering these questions. So we never encouraged our clients to ask them. How was a client of an agency like mine ever to know if we were any good or if I, personally, was top of the tree, middling, or bottom of the barrel?
Question: How do your people know how good they really are?
Please quickly click the ‘heart’ to let me know you’ve enjoyed reading this week.
Spend your weekend enjoying the complexity around you — and see you next Friday.
Andrew
I worry that businesses worry too much about having a wonderful mission statement and too little time understanding tipping points for their markets. In a pandemic I keep watching for signals that competitors are withdrawing from market segments. People in Melbourne are fatigued from lockdowns and some staff are struggling to deliver essential services. Are leaders responding by offering more support to their staff or are some essential human services businesses simply being led into withdrawing from the market segment that staff are avoiding totally fatigued from working in? And will public hospitals in many places in the world start to see their staff no longer wanting to be working in roles where unrelenting stress and fatigue is expected of staff by its leaders? Will the real impact of the pandemic be on hospitals being able to attract staff?
Brilliant piece (and timing) Andrew as I'm working on a couple of purpose statements at the moment and your three criteria are very helpful. I do like the examples you shared as they are beautifully simple, clear and get to the heart of the matter. It looks easy when its done like these are - but it is hard to do it this well! Thanks again - I do enjoy your emails!