Nollind Whachell

David Weinberger brings attention to an incident that Tom Coates of PlasticBag encountered that involved a fictional corporate entity named Barry Scott who had commented on Tom’s blog about his post about his missing, but now found, father.

“Hi Tom, Always remember one thing. Life is very, very short and nothing is worth limiting yourself from seeing the ones you love. I hadn’t seen my father in 15 years until 2 years ago. I was apprehensive but I kept telling myself that no matter how estranged we’d become there was no river to wide to cross. Drop me a line if I can be of any more help. Cheers, Barry”

Sounds fine, doesn’t it? Except that ‘Barry Scott’ isn’t a real person – he’s a marketing vehicle for a brand called Cillit Bang and his weblog is a barely disguised viral marketing platform for the product.

I have to laugh about this more than anything. I mean are people really that surprised that things have gone this far (not that I’m defending it in anyway)? I mean we have corporations which are pitching themselves as “fictitious entities” on a daily basis on TV but no one complains about that because it’s “acceptable” (and doesn’t hit so close to home). We see commercials showing people (actors) from the law firm Stanley & Stanley (just made up that name) shaking hands with a client. In the background, we hear the commentator saying “Stanley & Stanley is there to help you when you need a friend.” The company, the corporate entity, is your friend. What about the people in the company? Oh they don’t exist anymore because they’ve been consumed by the entity to keep it alive. 🙂

Here’s another example of how far I think this will go. I read a book not to long ago entitled The New Culture of Desire (which I need to add to my book list). What this book talks about in a nutshell is the ongoing transition of companies in becoming the “life guru’s” or “meta-physicians” of tomorrow. What this means is that in the future, companies will compete for your entire lifestyle and you will select one to fulfill all of your needs and solve all of your problems. Now imagine sitting down at your computer in the future (or whatever it is called then) and up pops your Corporate Guru assistant (aka virtual computer agent) to tell you how best to run your day and informs you of all the special deals on at each of the partner stores associated with this corporate entity. “You need to pick up Billy from baseball practice at 5:00 PM. His baseball glove is probably getting worn by now since it was purchased a while ago. I’d recommend stopping at Sport’s World on the way home to pick him up another one, as it would probably make him feel better and give him some added confidence in his game. Oh, I just noticed that they are having a sale on baseball gloves this week actually. Even better!”

What I’m getting at here is that this interaction with corporate entities will become more and more prolific and normal within our lives until eventually we will treat it as friend and tell our human friends, “Man, Fred my Guru gave me this awesome tip on where to find those new 10 foot by 10 foot Ziploc bags. He’s amazing!” Or “Fred is great! My father just passed away, so he recommended that I take a short break from my work and take a vacation. He recommended a trip to a secluded resort in Mexico and he booked everything for me. It was perfect and exactly what I needed. I feel so much better now and feel like I’ve come to terms with my father’s passing.”

We will see this in our lifetimes unless we start changing our existing culture and put the emphasis back on the people hidden inside of the companies instead of the corporate entity itself. In other words, be a diverse group of people with a company instead of a unified corporate entity with a group of people hidden within it. Instead of advertising your fictitious corporate ideas, focus on marketing the different real people in your company who are doing great things daily and can actually be met by other people. And I’m not just talking about a flash of a face with a corporate business title below it. Show what these real people are doing daily and explain why these different people, in each their own way, help to define the company (instead of the company defining them).

The same could be said for any country, like Canada or the United States. It is the people themselves within the country, with their diverse ethnic mix and outlooks, that truly define the nation as a whole. I mean if the government just showed a white male actor standing beside a flag, then I think most people would be ticked off by this. Instead it is the mother, fathers, daughters, uncles, grandfathers, grandmothers, and so on of all different races and cultures that make up the nation and make it so strong. It is this diversity, not uniformity, with which gives each nation its strength. And it is this very diversity of character and thoughts within each person that makes them so interesting and appealing to each of us.

Ok, I just had a very interesting thought that I’d love to hear people’s feedback on (if you feel so inclined). It relates to my last post on Greg Costikyan’s Manifesto Games company as well as weblogs, the Web, business, society, and culture. In effect, my question is do you think it is feasible for a person to create a business (i.e. freelance work) around helping other businesses through a desired changed of culture within their company? Where the hell did that question come from? Let me explain.

What I just realized after posting my comments to Greg’s blog is that throughout my entire life, even since I was a teenager, I was focused on culture (although I wasn’t really aware of it at the time of course). That’s because when I turned twenty or so, I started looking at what our existing society placed an emphasis on as important and I disliked what I saw. Over the years, that thought has always stuck in the back of my mind. When working within companies, I found those same negative cultural values existing there as well and I disliked what I saw again. After a while, I started thinking to myself, am I an alien or something? Why is it that my way of thinking seems to be so different from other people. Well that changed when I discovered Fast Company magazine.

You see Fast Company magazine, while from outwards appearance seems focused on working really fast and hard to make money, is really internally about people and what drives us. Again, this relates to our society, communities, and our culture. In other words, how we interact with one another. And within the pages of this magazine, I realized that I wasn’t alone. There were other people out there that thought like I did. Even more so, one day while reading the magazine, I found an interview that introduced me to David Weinberger, his book entitled Small Pieces Loosely Joined, and his collaborative book entitled The Cluetrain Manifesto.

Now when I read David’s ideas and then proceeded to The Cluetrain Manifesto and Small Pieces Loosely Joined, I felt like some massive Monty Python Hand of God had come out of the sky and had pointed at what I was reading like a lightening bolt realization. Everything I read from those books and had been feeling over the years finally came together and solidified within me. Again, I realized that I wasn’t alone in my thoughts. Others felt the same way I did and were struggling trying to change the world to make it a better place as well.

Now fast forward to today after working in business, working for the computer gaming industry, helping to develop online communities, realizing the importance of culture within those communities, and finally trying to figure out a way to help people to collaborate and interact as a large collective on common goals and projects. Now what I more recently realized is that to effectively collaborate with literally millions of people, the culture of this community has to have values that match it. If they don’t exist, then achieving that collaboration is less likely to succeed, even if you have the technology to make it feasible to do so. For example, being open and sharing are two cultural traits that would be pretty much be a necessity if you wanted to interact with that community. If no one was open with their thoughts or didn’t share anything, then no collaboration would occur now would it?

Ok, finally to my point here. I’ve been struggling for the longest time to figure out what I could do as a freelancer that would not only help other people but also help support myself. Of course, I though of the typical website development avenue because that’s my background. I also though about working within the gaming industry as well because I’ve got a lot of experience with regards to working with it as well. And more recently, I even thought about just focusing on helping individuals and small businesses get online creating their own small communities utilizing blogging software such as Squarespace, the web publishing platform that I’m using now. This last approach seemed much closer to what I wanted to do, not because of the work involved building sites for them, but because of the working environment. The interaction would be on a smaller scale that would be more personable, caring, and focused. In effect, on a more human relationship level like what is seen between two people.

So with my thoughts of Greg’s new Manifesto Games company, I started thinking about what they should be doing with their approach and I commented that culture should be the primary driving force of their change, as it would help them stand out from the typical old business culture that exists in the gaming industry today. As soon as I thought this, I wondered if other people and businesses would need help along these lines? You see everyone talks about how blogging is so great and can change your business but I disagree. It isn’t the blogging technology or the act of blogging itself, it is the change of culture that often accompanies blogging that is the most important thing to focus on. If that company doesn’t change their culture, then their blog will just be spewing out the same stale press releases as they did before but just in a blog format.

Therefore, my question is, if I pursue this avenue of helping companies in a desired change of culture, do you think it would be feasible? Do you think businesses would be interested in this? Do you think there are businesses out there right now saying “God I wish we could change to become a better business but I just don’t know how.” Or do you think that as soon as they hear what I have to say they would laugh and walk away. In effect, changing your culture is one of the most radical and difficult things a business can do. It is about simplifying things and getting back to your roots, almost back to the point of when you were a startup. Do you think businesses would be interested in learning how to be more open and honest? Or would they just laugh and say “We can’t do that!” because the old way of business is still so embedded within them. As I said though, I would be looking for businesses who have a strong “desire” for this change, yet they are just unsure how to get there.