When I take my sabbatical

My company has a wonderfully generous and creative policy. After five years of service, we are entitled to five weeks of sabbatical - free time to do whatever we want and get paid for it. 
     A side benefit to the company, in addition to having refreshed employees, is that many of my colleagues come back from their sabbaticals and write blogs about the experience, which are often thoughtful and full of special insights into life and work. 
     I still have four years before I can take mine. And I know that I will likely blog about it afterwards. Today, I was listening to Greg Brown and one of my favorites among his old songs came up on the random play function of my iPhone. 
     It's not so much a song as it is a narrative backed by a quiet guitar and occasional harmonica riffs. But it's the lyrics that I think speak so eloquently and cleverly of what's really important about life, and gives a hint of how I might like to spend my sabbatical in 2017. 

I think I'll drive out to Eugene, get a slide-in camper for my truck, pack a bamboo rod, hip boots, a book of flies from a Missoula pawn shop, rub mink oil into the cracked leather, wonder about the old guy who tied these trout chew flies. They work good. Take along my Gibson JF45 made by women during World War II, coffee stained stack of maps, a little propane stove, a pile of old quilts, a can opener, kipper snacks, smoked oysters, gun powder tea, a copper teapot, and a good sharp knife. Sometimes you have to go -- look for your life. 

I'll park by some rivers, cook up some rice and beans, read Ferlinghetti out loud, talk to the moon tell, her all my life tales, she's heard them many times. I'll make up some new juicier parts, drink cold whiskey from a tin cup, sit in a lawn chair and fiddle with my memories, close my eyes and see. Sometimes you gotta go not look for nothin'.

The Northwest is good, once you get off I-5 and wander up and down the Willamette dammit, on the back back roads. I know a few people who'd let me park in their drive, plug in for a night or two, stay up late, and talk about these crazy times -- the blandification of our whole situation. And then back to the woods. A dog is bound to find me sooner or later. Sometimes you gotta not look too hard -- just let the dog find you. 

 Then head south and east, maybe through Nevada, the moonscape of Utah. Stay in some weird campground where Rodney and Marge keep an eye on things. Everybody's got a story, everybody's got a family, and a lot of them have RV's. I'm on my way to the Ozarks, to the White River and the Kern. Those small mouth are great on a fly rod. And they're not all finicky like trout. Trout are English and bass are Polish. And if I wasn't born in Central Europe I should have been. Maybe it's not too late. Sometimes you have to dream deep to find your real life at all. 

I might go on over through Memphis. I played a wedding at the Peabody Hotel once twenty odd years ago, and everybody danced. Usually they just set there and stare. A few at least sway. The roads are stupid crowded everywhere. Kids coming along are used to it -- all wired up and ready, or wireless I guess, and even readier. World peace is surely on the horizon, once us old fuckers die. I'll do my part, but first I wanna to go across Tennessee into North Carolina. Fish some of those little mountain streams, catch some brook trout which are God's reminder that creation is a good idea. The world we've made scares the hell out of me. There's still a little bit of heaven in there and I wanna show it due respect. This looks like a good spot up here. You can try me on the cell, but most places I wanna be it doesn't work. Sometimes you got to listen hard to the sounds old Mother Earth still makes -- all on her own.

When Brands Lose Their Way

All too often, leading brands lose their way. Polaroid. Eastman-Kodak. PanAm. Wang. Digital Equipment (DEC). The history of business is littered with such stories. But why did these once industry-leading companies stumble? They were pioneers in their fields. Yet, their names are no longer with us or, in the case of Kodak, a pale imitation of its once great self.
     Collapses like those occur for a variety of reasons, depending on the circumstances. They can arise from a combination of factors, such as when a weak economy creates opportunities for an upstart competitor to poach customers with a less-expensive alternative and/or a more robust version of the industry leader’s standard model.
     The failure is gradual. It happens because the industry leader is slow to respond to an evolving marketplace, placing false confidence in an established position atop the market.
Polaroid and Eastman-Kodak both reacted too slowly and tardily to the advent and quick adoption of digital photography. PanAm didn’t adapt to a newly competitive airline industry when U.S. regulatory controls were eased, opening the field to a plethora of discount competitors.
     Likewise, Wang and Digital Equipment ignored the coming of the PC, first from IBM and then the clones. Where are Wang and DEC today?

Lazy Certitude
At the heart of such failures, we can usually find a lazy certitude that the status quo will continue ad infinitum. That belief is accompanied by a loss of connection between the people who comprise the companies and the essence of their brand – i.e., what it stands for. Brands must stand for promises made to customers – be it quality, cutting edge technology, responsiveness, superior customer service, or any number of other reasons that people choose one brand over another.
     Companies stumble because the brand promise gradually erodes and becomes hollow bluster, echoing an earlier self-image built on promises actually delivered. This bluster masks a reality of unfulfilled promises and a lack of requisite confidence of the people that make brands live every day. This confidence is built on leaders, managers and employees living the brand promise every day in every thing they do.
     That loss of confidence and connection to what the brand once stood for occurs across the organization – and it festers. Lack of confidence produces more of the same and greater disconnection from the promise of meeting or exceeding customer expectations.
     This can be a natural trend affecting any business, but in this era, the speed at which change happens and impacts organizations is far faster than ever before.

Trend Spotting
Spotting such trends and arresting them begins by recognizing and acknowledging that the organization has lost its core meaning, lost touch with what made it great and the leader in its field in the first place. It may still be the leader, but not much longer if its promise is being eroded by an organizational disconnect.
     It is coasting on its established reputation. It is moving from one quarter to the next focused on revenue and profitability, but without a shared sense of purpose or definition of what it is, or what it stands for. Is this your company today?
     What are your brand promise, vision, and mission? Are they just words on paper, or are the employees, managers and leaders really living them in what they do every day? Are the words and phrases dynamic – which is to say, do they evolve and grow as circumstances change, or are they a mere snapshot of what you once were?
     The challenge around reviving a brand or market position is not so much a revision or reiteration of the words and phrases that describe the brand. Rather, it is the imperative to reconnect every person in the organization and what they do with the true meaning of the venture – its core purpose, mission, vision, and the promises it makes to its constituents. The outcome of that exercise may very well be a complete revision of the brand promise, mission and vision.
     But at the outset, put aside completely the fixation on the words. Rather, work to guide individual employees to rediscover and rebuild their confidence in what the company and the brand signify, thereby reaffirming the brand promise. Assure their focus is on continuing to deliver on the promise that the brand represents so that customer experiences reaffirm it.