The 543 Group

Curiosity Fuels Innovation

When I was a kid, my big 'thing' to play with was Motorific Slot Cars made by the Ideal Toy Company.  They were battery-powered cars and trucks of all makes and models, and the track was the snap-together variety that included long straight-aways, big curves, test track sections, bridges, and even crash-through barricades.  As I was rather enamored with Motorific cars, I received more for each birthday and at Christmas until it seemed I could fill the entire basement floor with endless configurations.  I never ran out of ways to put things together based on my own curiosity about what was possible.

When developing online marketing strategies, or conducting any brainstorming sessions for your business, it is beneficial to bring that same type of curiosity to the table.  All participants should be encouraged to look at all the 'parts' available to address the issues of the day, and to consider numerous possibilities about how they could be assembled or put together to create something innovative, something differentiated from the competition that is compelling and drives desired action by customers and prospects.

Keep a child-like (not childish) curiosity as you collaborate to build that better mousetrap for your business, and anything is possible.  Cultivate that culture in your business, and your teams will always be looking to build something better.

Avoiding Moral Bankruptcy

As part of our process for developing compelling online marketing and branding strategies, we often go through an exercise that prioritizes the 'Measures of Success' of the organization.  This is a pre-requisite to determination the measures of success and key perfomance indicators for evaluation of online marketing initiatives.

For one recent client, the top measure of success stated was Business Ethics and Integrity.  It was deemed to be more important than sales growth, profitability, product or service quality, customer satisfaction, and a host of other measures.  In fact, the President of the organization stated that business ethics were considered so high on the success measures that, if lacking or sub-par, would prevent any other measures from carrying any weight.  This is hard to argue with, but often it is challenging to see how some companies practice what they preach.

The truth is that ethical standards, high morals, personal integrity - core values in life as well as business - matter a great deal, every day.  Most organizations have stated core values, but it's what they do with them that matters, how they follow them that makes a difference, to their employees, to the clients, and to all those that come in contact with them.

It's not enough to say that the client's interests matter most - that must play itself out in how strategies are developed, contracts are written, and ongoing expectations are managed.  It's not enough to say you cultivate an environment that fosters creativity and new ideas; you have to demonstrate trust and support for your staff so they will deliver the impossible repeatedly, and enjoy it.  And, if the leadership of an organization does not set the right example, it is easy to see how all the other measures of success suffer and become barometers of failure.  It's a terrible spiral for some organizations, especially those too naive, inexperienced, or complacent to see what is happening and take action.

Some go bankrupt through circumstances beyond their control.  One way to at least decrease the odds of it happening to your organization is to make sure your ethical account is never bankrupt.

A Simple Vision

It sounds like a simple idea - Organize and digitize all of the core accumulated wisdom of the world, and place it online for everyone to use, in multiple languages.

That's the aim of the founders of the World Digital Library.  Their specific plan?  To "make available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials. The objectives of the World Digital Library are to promote international and inter-cultural understanding and awareness, provide resources to educators, expand non-English and non-Western content on the Internet, and to contribute to scholarly research."

Although it will begin n late 2008 or early 2009 with only a 'few hundred thousand items,' the plan is to ramp rapidly as more countries and libraries offer up their archives.  Cool.  One more site with great content to counter balance the thousands of forgettable ones.