In this week’s episode, Eric and co-host Dean Aragon of Shell are joined by a giant of the marketing world, Jim Stengel, the former CMO of Procter & Gamble, author of Unleashing the Innovators (2017) and Grow (2012), and host of The CMO Podcast. Jim insists that most marketers aren’t curious enough about what’s around the corner, and get too bogged down in short term priorities. He explains how to balance focusing on today, tomorrow and long term goals, especially as an incumbent business. (Hint: look at your calendar and leverage your team.)
The conversation includes a discussion of the importance of reputation and trust, listening and what Jim would spend the first 6 weeks doing at a new role. Finally, Eric, Dean and Jim wrap up by talking about the importance of brand purpose and why it sometimes falls apart.
For more from Jim, listen to The CMO Podcast or visit The Jim Stengel Company.
To listen to this conversation on your preferred streaming platform, click here.
Transcript
Jim: And we need to get to a point where there are measures of purpose activation that are causal with financial results. So when boards and public companies begin reporting on measures that show the linkage between purpose activation and financial results, and companies are competing to activate their purpose even better, we will have better business.
Eric: I'm Eric Fulwiler, and this is Scratch bringing you marketing lessons from the leading brands and brains rewriting the rule book from scratch for the world of today.
Hey everyone, I'm incredibly excited to share my conversation with you today. We have on a giant from the marketing world, Jim Stengel was the CMO at Proctor and Gamble for seven years. He was at p and g for 25 years in total. He founded the Jim Stengel Company in 2008, whose tagline is a passion for purpose. And as you can imagine, we talk a lot about purpose. In today's episode, he also hosts the CMO podcast, which has been on air and running since May of 2019. That's all about how CMOs drive business results with purpose. It's one of my favorite podcasts. I definitely recommend you go to check it out. He's also an adjunct professor at Northwestern and he's the author of two books. We talk about both of those today. Some of the things that we get into, just to give you a highlight, we talk about purpose of course, but with a real focus on how and why purpose drives business results and everything that Jim has been doing really his whole career.
But certainly with the Jim Stengel Company and some of the investments and other activities that he has, he's really, he has a lot of interesting things to share about how you can actually prove that purpose drives business results. He talks about what he would do if he was CMO of p and g or another company again today, how he would start thinking about things from scratch. And then he leaves us with and actually touches on it a couple times during the interview, a very provocative and profound recommendation around how to be more intentional with how you spend your time and your life in general. So please enjoy today's episode with Jim Stle and special guest hosts Dean Aragon, CEO of Shell Brand.
Hey, before we get to today's episode, I wanted to take just a second and ask a favor if you're listening to this, I really appreciate it. This is a new podcast. We arrival our new company. It's hard to get this all off the ground, and I really appreciate the support to ask an even bigger favor of you if you could please, if you're enjoying the content that we're putting out, if you've listened to a couple episodes or even if you're new, could you please take a minute to share scratch with someone else that you think would enjoy it, that would mean so much to us? Get the word out, start to build our audience. I'd really, really appreciate it. So if you could just take a minute, you can pause this. Just think about is there someone else out there, another marketer who you think would find this content valuable? And please send this along to them. I really appreciate it. Now onto the episode. Jim, thank you so much for joining us today. I've been really looking forward to this conversation since we first connected. I'm a longtime listener of the CMO podcast, so it's extra special to be on the mic with you.
Jim: Today Is your favorite episode. Dean Aragon
Eric: Of course, of course
Jim: The brand guy at Shell
Eric: That has nothing to do with the fact that he's in the virtual room with us right now. Dean hello, how are you? Thanks for joining as my co-host today.
Dean: It's a pleasure and I am a lucky person in that I can call Jim a friend.
Jim: I feel the same way. Dean and Eric, you're in the group now too. Okay. So we're going to have a nice chat today.
Eric: Amazing. I'll I'll wait for my t-shirt. Cool. So we have a lot to get through. I mean, there's so many questions that I would love to ask you and maybe I'll let Dean get one or two at some point as well. But we are introducing a bit of a new framework to the show based on feedback from our listeners. So we're going to have some more structured questions that are hopefully just maybe a different angle into some of the things that we would've talked about otherwise. And then I've got a whole slew of notes based on you and what you've done and some of the conversations that we've had. So yeah, we're going to have to all talk fast. But let's start, and I will say this is a little bit of a inspiration slash maybe stealing with pride from your own podcast, Jim, but talk to us first about what's a brand that you're obsessed with right now.
Jim: Oh my. I'm in San Diego right now, and I'm actually obsessed with two San Diego brands. One is Electra Bikes, E L E C T R A, the most amazing. I have a beach cruiser that's hand painted wide tires. I'm on it every day and when I'm working, if I want to take a 10 minute break, I jump on my electra and I just sort of bomb around town, clears my head. I feel good on it. I like the wind in my face. Second brand in San Diego that I'm kind of obsessed with is a clothing brand called Vuori, which is, I think finished for a mountaintop. It's V U O R I, relatively new brand. Oh my gosh, the clothing is so damn comfortable. It's sort of fitness attire, but you can wear it any time. And I, I've been to their flagship store several times.
I live in it. I just love it. And then outside of that, I'm an espresso person. I've both machines, one in my study, one in our house, I've begin my day and I probably go to that machine. I don't know too much. I'll be five times a day and I HBO Max , I just love mean I'm a streaming person now. I hardly ever go to the theaters. I hardly ever watch any television other than sports and streaming. And I just think almost everything HBO max does is just so beautifully done. I just finished, I'm late on this, but I just finished succession. Wow. So many themes there. So anyway, those three, and there's probably more, but those three, and I, by the way, I just bought my first electric car. I bought a Mustang Mach three E U v and just driven it once because I bought it in Cincinnati and left it there until I go home. And what a game change. I mean, it's a beautiful, beautiful car and I've on, I ordered it 11 months ago and it finally was delivered in January, and it's just a beautifully designed car in every way.
Eric: How did you decide to go with the Ford versus the Tesla?
Jim: My son was doing some work in the auto industry and he said the early reviews on the Mustang were unreal. The design is unreal, and at the end of the day, he feels that GM and Ford know how to make cars. At the end of the day, they will make better cars than the brand. That's all the buzz today, Tesla. And I think if you look at the Mustang and how everything fits together, it's a better built car than a Tesla.
Eric: I think that's really interesting in that space is obviously there are these really hot brands and a lot of buzz around these new started from scratch electric vehicle companies, but there's a lot of legacy and a lot of knowledge and a lot of money and those traditional businesses, and they are catching up. They might be a little bit late, but that's going to be interesting to watch play out. I'm curious, Jim, we're still on the first question, but the question of what's a brand that you're obsessed with? Your answers were kind of about the product. This bike's amazing. I love the espresso, the shows on HBO Max. Is there something about those brands that also speaks to your maybe there's no differentiation. What would you say to that of I asked you about brands and your answer was about product?
Jim: Well, I think they're brands that have become something, they're a habit for me or they're a ritual. I put 'em, I vor every day. I ride my Electra every day. I watch HBO O Max a couple times a week. I will get into the Mustang when I'm home nearly every day. So I think a criteria for a brand that has impact and has meaning and has purpose is it becomes part of people's rituals. Why is I just interviewed the CMO of Orange Theory yesterday for my podcast. That is a meaningful ritual for over a million people around the world. And when you become part of someone's life and you have impact on that person in moments that they're interacting with your brand, that's the criteria for me, for a great brand and a brand that will last the test of time as long as it stays relevant.
Eric: I think it's also us marketers sitting here in our tiny corner of the world. We see brands, but for most consumers, and that's us included, there's really no separation between product and brands. And that's one of the things that I see and that we see as one of the differences obviously over generalizing, but a lot of challenger brands, a lot of startups, they're the way that they operate and the way that they think, they don't separate product and brand. And then as some of these companies grow and get bigger, there starts to be a little bit more of a silo between the product and the brand. But where it hits the market for better or for worse, the product and brand are the same thing. So I think it's just, and it's just interesting to hear you riff on that.
Jim: Well, I think brand great brands can last forever. Great products change, right? Apple is a great brand. It's products 20 years ago were very different. So a brand is a much more everlasting idea, a much more appealing idea. And I think brands have a purpose, products have a use to deliver that purpose in a meaningful way. And so I think when we get stuck on a product as a brand, I mean in the early days of p and g, this was even before I joined the company, there was debate about making Tide a liquid. People thought that Tide was a powder, and that's a very limited view and that's a very dangerous view. Fortunately, there were smart people there to say, no tide's a brand and it's going to take different forms over time, and it's okay to call a liquid tide.
Dean: I think those are fundamentals, Jim, that thankfully you're reminding a number of the market leaders who might be listening in because I think sometimes we go into this binary and detached view of the brand and the product. And to your point, the brands can transcend the form and function of a product or a service or a solution. But would you agree that, but unless it's also rooted in utility or a benefit that you connect with, it's also potentially a shallow connection. So you need both, shall we say, a respect for what it delivers to you, but also an emotional admiration or connection to what it represents. Is that something that you can agree with?
Jim: Yeah, absolutely. Dean, I interviewed Guy, Guy Kawasaki who was an early employee of Apple for my podcast a couple weeks ago, and I asked him advice for CMOs and he quickly said, join a company that makes great products, and if you don't have great products, your job is going to be very hard and you'll end up being inauthentic. So one of the best things a great marketer can do or a great CMO can do, and Unilever and p and g marketers do is push, push, push for better products, products that deliver a superior and more delightful experience in the competitive set. So yeah, Dean, I totally agree with that philosophy and that point of view.
Eric: So Jim, you are doing a bunch of different things these days. I'm curious what you are most curious about professionally with everything you're doing, everything you're seeing, all these conversations that you're having
Jim: Oh, this maybe is an unexpected answer. I'm curious about how I spend my life right now and how I spend my time and how can I have greater intentionality and how can I learn from others on that front? One reason I love doing a weekly podcast is I get inside someone else's life to see what their intentionality is. And if I think about the most important things in my life, they are all about very specific friends and family and people I want to be with more. I also want to be more in more nature. I want to take care of my spiritual and physical self as well as my mental and social self. So I'm endlessly curious about, and we're a little bit at the start of the year now, so we all think about that a little bit more sometimes at the end of the year. Just very curious about experimenting a little bit more and ensuring that I am self-aware enough to be spending the time and I want to spend my time on, and this is the blend of personal and business, and I think it's always a blend. It's always about integration. So that's one area I'm curious about. I'm, and Dean knows this, I'm very curious about how purpose can be baked into our way of doing business so that it is sustained as a way of doing business. And we need to get to a point where there are measures of purpose activation that are causal with financial results. So when boards and public companies begin reporting on measures that show the linkage between purpose activation and financial results, and companies are competing to activate their purpose even better, we will have better business. So I'm very curious about that. I'm spending a lot of time right now with my team and a software company we've invested in on achieving some sort of breakthrough and purpose measurement. NPS is not it. We need something beyond that.
Dean: Yeah, Jim, again, I think it's great that as marketeers were talking again about this fundamental ingredient called curiosity, right? So perhaps a slightly Provo provocative question, what do you think marketers are not being curious enough about when they should be?
Jim: Dean, I'll give you a very fundamental answer. I don't think you're curious enough about what's around the corner. We're still spending way too much of our time on today's business and this month's business and this week's business. And if you think about your allocation of time, how much time are you spending preparing your brand or your company for the future? What are emerging consumer trends, especially now as things are so volatile? What about business model trends? What social trends, what environmental trends? And how are you trying to prepare scenarios to deal with these so that you can stay competitive and win in the future? We just don't spend enough time on that. And to me, the remarkable senior leaders and senior marketing leaders are intentional about spending time on the future and spending time on today's issues. And they're both important, but in most companies, there's far, we spend far too little time on preparing ourselves for the future.
Eric: How do you recommend that people do that? Because that's one of the advantages that challengers have over incumbents is they only have to care about the long term, whereas if you're an established business, you need to deliver on the short term while positioning yourself for the long term as well. So I'm curious, just advice that you have or maybe how you did it when you were CMO of Procter and Gamble, how do you balance those with the investment of time, resource and just alignment within your team?
Jim: Yeah, I mean, I think it's how you spend your time and who you spend your time with. So what does your calendar tell you and who are the people that you go to for counsel and advice and inspiration, and do you have a good mix of people who'd have maybe a more expansive view of the future than you do? And so I think it's just very important to think about your partners, your potential partners, and how you spend your time and leveraging the diversity of your team as well. How much of do you talk about this with your team? How much do you share with your team, your ambition to spend more time on what's around the corner and seeking their help in doing that? I can remember, this is back many years, but when I was at p and g, I shared with my team how I wanted to spend my time and what I was not going to deal with and what I was going to deal with. So they knew this is not an issue that Jim wants to deal with. This is an issue that Sally is going to deal with. I was very, very clear, I had a long chart about where I was going to spend my time and where I wanted to have a personal impact. And so I think it's, again, it's being intentional about that and looking at your time and the kind of people you talk to.
Eric: I think the calendar point is such a big one, and it's so easy to glance over of the calendar thing, but give me a hack for this. What gets prioritized gets done, and what goes in your calendar gets prioritized. And so looking at how you're spending your time, cause that's really all we got. The results, good or bad, are going to follow how you invest your time, and it's an easy way to give yourself a bit of a gut check. Dean, do you want to riff on this a little bit? I mean, obviously you're responsible for one of the biggest brands in the world, and with everything going on in your industry, there's a lot when it comes to short term and long term. So how do you balance those priorities?
Dean: Well, I just love the answer of Jim about what's around the corner, what's about to come, because we can be so obsessed about the short term and in marketing sort of geek them. This can also translate to just focusing on the articulated needs, but there are the unarticulated needs or needs that people don't even realize that they may need or they may want, and it's not one or the other. Sometimes there's this false binary. So Jim, again, some thoughts on that because similar to the whole area of it's not just about the product, it's about the union of the product and the brand. Would you also submit to that notion of, yeah, it's not one or the other because sometimes it's the wrong debate, it's about how you secure the short term, but also be prepared for a less certain longer game in the future.
Jim: Yeah, no, I think obviously they're both important. If you're an established brand, you have to a business, you have customers to make happy and to the short term is really important. And the short term is fun because it's all of the tactics of marketing. It's the stuff you put into the market, and we all get jazzed by that. But if you have a good organization and you should have a great organization, if you're a senior marketing leader, a cmo, you have to build a great team. Your team is going to be highly capable, they're going to be able to take care of most of those short term issues. You need to be brought in if you're a senior marketing leader, a CMO in very, very special moments and special times. But if the team knows what they're doing and they're hired well, and they're trained well, they're going to do a great job in the short term. So I think the best way to spend your time is to make sure your team is a high performance team and a collaborative team, and that opens you up and releases you to spend more time in the future while still being accountable for the short term. The accountability doesn't shift how you get the work done and the people that you bring onto your team to get that work done in a fantastic way.
Eric: I think Jeff Bezos at one point said that he views his role as focusing on two years into the future and beyond, and he's got people who work for him who focus on one year into the future, and then they have people who work for them that focus on the current year. And so maybe if you're not the c e O of a massive global company, you can still apply that model to whatever your remit is of. You need to be focused on a couple moves ahead. You need people who are going to be focused on one move ahead, and they need people who are going to be focused on the present. But I think the most important thing is making sure that all of those dimensions are taken care of, even if it's you that just has to operate in different gears to do those things. So Jim, looking back on your career, I'm curious to get your answer to this question, which is what do you think mattered most to getting you to where you are today?
Jim: Trust, reputation, how I work with people over the years. I mean, the most valuable thing any of us have, and Dean knows this and has spoken about this is your reputation, who you are as a human being. Have you met your promises? Have you met your commitments? Do people respect and trust you? And do people feel like they can be themselves with you? And there is no doubt if I think about the great leaders I admire, and I look back at my own career, I left p and g many years ago, I started my own thing. It's been a great experience. I've done well. I haven't done any outbound marketing. It's all been people who trust me, know me, and I worked with in the past who want to work with me again because of the reputation and because of how we work together. So of course I've made lots of new friends in the last 10 years. But I think one reason the podcast I do is fun and successful and growing is I'm trusted when people come on the podcast know that we'll have a really honest, helpful, useful, inspiring conversation about their life. So it's all about trust and reputation.
Erc: Hey everyone. We're going to have some of our own research to share with you very soon research that we've conducted on Attest. But for the next couple episodes, we're going to continue to share some of the stats that Attest has found in their research that's relevant to the conversations that we're having with guests. So one recent report on us, consumer trends found that 24% of Americans don't want brands to be political, but the majority do want them to take a stand on social issues. And the top issues that consumers want brands to be vocal on are poverty and inequality at 36%, racism at 36%, and climate change at 31%. So as you listen to this conversation with Jim and Dean around purpose, just know this is the direction that the market is going in. People want brands to take stands on these types of issues. So hope that that is relevant to this conversation. And if you have not yet checked out the Attest platform, head on over to askattest.com to run your free survey and access 110 million consumers to help remove the guesswork from your business growth.
Eric: And those answers could also be applied, at least in my opinion, to what makes a great brand if you're talking about a product and job we do as marketers, but is also has what made your personal brand and your career so successful. So I'm curious if you had the opportunity to start a C M O role over from scratch again today, doesn't have to be Procter and Gamble could be maybe one of those brands that you mentioned you're very passionate about right now, where would you start? What does from scratch Jim Stengel, CMO do, what does he focus on? What does he prioritize? What are the first moves you make as a new CMO?
Jim: If I were to join any brand right now, the first thing I would do is listen. I think, Dean, you said this to me a little while ago, two ears or greater than one mouth. And there is just no, every time I made a transition of my career that was successful, I went in with my ears wide open and I spent a lot of time to listen and I was clear with my management that I was going to do a listening tour that would probably take me whatever, six or eight weeks, and I would not have a firm point of view on my role or my contributions or my value until I'd listened. And believe me, in any organization, if you go and do the right listening tour, your agenda becomes very clear. So that's what I would do. I would listen and then I would bring my team together after we've listened and we would think about how we can help that brand and help that company reach their potential. I'm a big purpose person, so it obviously has to start there, but only after you listen and you understand the history of this company, the history of this brand and what people in the business think value and where they think you can add the greatest contribution
Eric: Has to go inside out.
Dean: Why do you think, Jim, sorry Eric, but I'm really curious <laugh> about this because indeed, if you're really genuinely curious, right? You're, you're going to come with more questions than answers. Why is it so difficult for some to just follow what sounds so true and so logical as an approach?
Jim: Dean, I think they get caught up in the maelstrom of the business and the new role, and they are, we're using this word a lot today, but they're not intentional of about the expectations of their first three months. And I think a lot of CMOs, there's a long courting process for most CMOs or senior marketing people to come into a role or a company. And once they get into the role, everyone's impatient for them to attend meetings, contribute, make decisions, and I think you get people get thrown into the machine, the execution machine before taking the time to learn and to think, and again, this is something really fundamental. I just think people lose control a bit. And so I think that's one big reason it doesn't happen. Then another one is everyone is a good listener and they're not self-aware enough to know that they're not a good listener and they don't value it. They don't think it's important, therefore they don't spend the time doing it. And I don't think those end well, those situations.
Eric: I think it's also tough because people starting new roles, there's a lot of pressure to deliver. And so for me, because I totally agree with you and take that approach the first 90 days is listening as much as possible, both because you don't actually know the right thing to do. You might think you do, but you don't know until you really hear everybody out. And also if you're there for the long term, if you want to drive purposeful, sustainable change, you need people to be bought in and people aren't going to follow someone that they don't feel like has listened to them. So when I started as CMO of 11:FS, I set that expectation up front with my c e o of like, look, just so you know, this is how I want to go about things. I'm going to help where I can and maybe make some short-term changes in the first 90 days, but it's really going to be about listening so that I can put together a plan for you at the end of that that's going to drive the long-term growth that we want. So I think part of it to get tactical for people listening, regardless of the level of the role you're coming in at is set that expectation with your boss of this is how you want to do it. And maybe that takes some of the pressure off.
Jim: Here's a nice tactical tip. I mean, I was promoted within p and g to be CMO years ago, and I was told about was off. I was offered the job months before it was announced, and I took that time to interview every living ex, c e o of p and g and every living ex CMO of p and g about what they thought I should do to add the most value to the company. And I also hired a few academics to do a study of how people within p and g marketing spent their time and it was cloaked to some other kind of study. People didn't know that I was behind it and so on but I had all of that data by day one, what every C E O and C M O felt, and no one cares more than those people. And I also knew how people were spending their time and it was not on the right stuff. So that gave me a lot of information before it was announced to the world that I was p and G's new global marketing officer. And it was massively helpful in getting off to a fast start.
Eric: So let's talk about purpose. I've had to hold myself back from diving into that because I know that's the world that better than anybody else, and I think you have so much value to share with the people listening. So the place I want to start, and the way that I want to frame it up is you published a book in 2012 called Grow How Ideals Power Growth, and at the world's 50 greatest companies. So you had 10 years of empirical research involving 50,000 companies in that book. And what you were able to show is that there is a cause and effect relationship between financial performance and the ability of these companies to connect with fundamental emotions, human emotions, hopes, values, and greater purposes. So let's start there. Why is purpose so important, not just for US marketers, but for the financial results of the businesses around these brands?
Jim: Purpose is important because it works. It's very effective in growing brands to me, the ultimate competitive edge. And so that's why I'm passionate about it. I've learned a lot more about it over the last 25 years. That book I wrote 10 years ago, I used the best data I could and I was looking for the correlation. I couldn't really claim causality. And I think the data's getting better and better, richer and richer, more and more specific. And countless studies have come out since I wrote that book about the impact of purpose on business results. If you look at Deloitte's latest 2022 global Marketing Trends and they interviewed 11,000 consumers and 1100 executives, purpose is the number one trend. And there's rich data in that report about the business impact of companies who activate purpose. So to me, it it's the right thing to do, but it's the right thing to do because it attracts talent, it delivers results, and it's a sustained competitive advantage.
Eric: So what would you say to, we talk to a lot of marketers, I'm sure you do as well, who are in businesses that are more sales led B2B businesses that are more sales led than marketing led with their growth. And so they have to fight this battle or push this agenda of, Hey, we need to be investing in brands. Do you have any advice besides go get the data and try to educate your CEO or CRO or whoever's responsible for growth, any suggestions for how marketers listening that are more those types of organizations that maybe haven't bought in yet, how they should go about getting that buy-in?
Jim: I think for any company, there are two reasons. I think a lot of companies embark on the purpose journey. The first one is their employees are not highly engaged, they're not putting everything into work. They don't have a meaning in their work. They don't have a deeper meaning. They don't feel like what they're doing every day has an impact on people's lives. So I would understand where your employees and your associates are in their feelings about the company and their affinity with the purpose of the company. Every company has some purpose, some are implicit, some are explicit. And then the second issue is leadership teams are often not aligned on the kind of company they're trying to create. And purpose is a vehicle for that alignment. And if you don't have a leadership that is aligned on the kind of company it's trying to create, that doesn't end well.
And I've been parts of companies that have not had the leadership aligned, and that's not a good scene or situation and purpose is a great way to bring a company together. And of course, I'm not just saying to create a statement or a video. I mean, where does this brand come from? Where is it going? What impact could it make in the world? How does that come to life in people's daily work? How does it affect your innovation? How does it affect your measurements? How does it affect your communication? So it's a way of doing business, it's an operating system. So I think my advice to anyone is talk to your employees and talk to your leadership. And I'm not saying purpose is the answer, but my guess is in eight times out of 10, purpose will help that company find a greater direction, a greater meaning for its customers and a greater meaning for its employees.
Dean: And I'm really happy how you unpacked what a genuine purpose really entails and how if it indeed is the right purpose and it's truly embedded in the way you conduct business, then it can nurture and nourish the success of your business, the commercial success of the business. Where does purpose sometimes go wrong or why is it sometimes that the purpose doesn't actually work out to be what it's could have been?
Jim: Well, I think Dean, often a team sees a purpose as a marketing idea or an ad idea or an E S G idea and not a company idea. I think it falls apart when everyone, it needs to be everyone's internalized by everyone. So if the legal group or the product supply group or the r and d group don't feel like this is right, it is genuine and it is something they can see changing their work, then it's not going to stick. So where it goes wrong is leadership teams do not fully engage and take the time to internalize this themselves as human beings talk about it among their leadership group and genuinely believe this is a better way, this will lead to a better way of doing business.
Dean: Yeah, you're so right about when it's seen as something that is extraneous to the business, that's when it's somehow even not relevant really, or sometimes even out of character to the brand or to the organization.
Jim: Yeah, I've seen many teams, I've been in meetings with dozens companies in the last 10 years where I've heard the comment, okay, we got to do the business and after we get that done, we'll do the purpose. No, no, no, no. The purpose is the business and the business is the purpose. And if that's not the case, it's likely not going to stick and it's likely not going to be successful.
Eric: So a lot of what we're talking about here in terms of how you get to having a clear, effective brand purpose that drives business results is really the people side and the cultural side of things. And that's something I fundamentally believe and have seen in the course of my career is the best strategy in the world, the newest technology, the greatest idea. It doesn't matter if you don't have the right people set up and bought in the right way to actually affect that change. So I'd like to touch on quickly some of the learnings and perspectives that you have from another book that you published in 2017 called Unleashing the Innovators. And it's about how mature companies find new life with startups. And I love one of the headlines from it that says, today's established companies must find new ways to reignite their entrepreneurial D n A and Jumpstart revenues or risk losing their weight. And of course, that's our business. We're called rival. We are about bringing challenger mindsets and models into more established businesses. So I'd love to talk about that for a couple minutes, maybe just sharing your perspective from writing that book and just your recommendations to people listening around, how do you create a culture of innovation?
Jim: I wrote that book because I was seeing so many big companies experimenting with startups and so many startups trying to figure out how to be relevant to big companies, and I didn't feel like there was a good playbook for that or good data on that. So I partnered with the research firm and we researched a whole bunch of companies who were working with startups and a bunch of startups working with big companies for the learning. And I just thought it would be a very interesting, as a intellectual exercise, a great way to spend my time. I wanted to learn about this topic, and nothing will surprise you in this, but what we found most fundamental was that those startups that helped big companies and vice versa, had deep respect for each other, had alignment on their purpose and taught each other. It was a very, very open and interactive relationship, taught each other the best practices and how they were achieving what they were achieving.
So all the stuff that we're seeing on lean, innovation and agile, which has been around for many, many, many years, this stuff is real. And startups typically work in a very agile way. And so many big companies have discovered that they're getting better at it. But I think learning how each other works and being humble enough to adopt maybe some new systems, new best practices, new ways of working, that's where that's really rich. And I just think it's young companies have so much to offer, big companies have so much to offer. Getting the chemistry right between those two can lead to helping big companies understand what's around the corner and helping small companies scale faster.
Eric: So Dean, I'd love to hear your perspective on that because your career, you've worked in some very big companies, but also as an advisor, as an investor, just with how, I know you like to spend some of your time outside of the world of Shell. You're involved in a lot of early stage startups as well. So with your perspective on both those worlds, how would you recommend people think about bringing them together?
Dean: Well, the first thing is I think big companies who attempt to be as agile as small companies have no chance if they don't want to unlearn or shed some of their practices that they have developed by being big <laugh>. It's almost like a daddy dance, trying to be hip, but dancing the same way that you would've danced regardless of the beat. Conversely, I think small companies should also learn what are the lessons of scale? What are the lessons where you're trying to play a bigger game? Sometimes the game that you can be destined to achieve, but you're not yet there because I think you've got to dream big as well and play to the long game and not just play to the short game. And so there is something to learn from each other. And I think it's also fashionable for big companies to have shall we say, resident entrepreneurs?
Yeah, I'm sure you've heard of, of the entrepreneurs in residence, that's because they're trying to ferment this sense of entrepreneurism or being entrepreneurial within a large organization. If the antibodies don't reject that, it can really empower people to think through different playbooks, introduce new value chains. But if it's just for show, it's not going to work, right? Because you are unwilling to unlearn and also free up some space in your cup so that some fresh tea can be poured into it. Otherwise there's nothing new that will happen. And that is the very definition of insanity. So doing the same things and packaging it in a different way.
Jim: Dean triggered something. One beautiful thing about that book was I spent so much time with interesting developing companies and the level of passion for the customer and the product they were building, the purity of that customer information was so precious that they were gaining customer information every day. They had this drive, this passion, this ambition to make a difference in the lives of customers. And they were just always working to make the product better. We get more complicated in bigger companies if we could have bigger companies thinking that single-mindedly about making customers lives better and improving products that we just get distracted in big companies. So one beautiful thing I found inspiring. The big companies that saw that felt that in the startups they were working with genuinely reevaluate how they were spending their time, where they were focused, what was important in those companies. And that's a really positive change.
Dean: Well, the trigger from that trigger is that when you talk about customer obsession is I think you're absolutely right. I just wish more people ask the question, why not? Just what? Because sometimes we treat, well, I don't know if you agree, Jim, but sometimes we treat customers as if they are doing our jobs. And sometimes I'm always intrigued by the whole Henry Ford quote about him. They were only asking for faster horses. And if we understood more about why they say they need or want something, I think it could come, it could result in a better conclusions or better ideas and innovations. Would you agree with that as well?
Jim: Fabrizio Freda, who is the CEO of Estee Lauder Companies, who's had a fantastic run there. He's an X P and G person. He talks about customer inspired innovation, not customer driven innovation. And I think that's a beautiful way to think about it. Customers can tell you if they don't like something fine, that's important, that's good, but they cannot tell you about what would just excite them beyond anything. And so I love that thought. Don't get too far away from your customers, but only realize that they're inspiring and the creativity, the innovation, the new thinking has to come from your team.
Eric: I think that's a great place to start to wrap things up. So the last question that we're going to ask all our guests, all our guests, Jim and Dean, I want to get an answer from you as well. What's the one thing that people should do differently after listening to this episode?
Jim: I would hope this has maybe inspired people to think about their intentionality in life and where they're spending their precious time in their work and outside their work. And are they happy with that and are they thinking that through deeply in terms of building the kind of life and relationships they want to build
Dean: I think a lot of the thoughts and conversations and purpose from the brand or from the organization, one thing that you do need to also intersect with that is your own sense of personal purpose. Because I think when you define a golden intersection between the two, you will flourish, you will thrive. And also, if you can't find that intersection, perhaps that's the world telling you and your own consciousness telling you there's another journey that's more appropriate for you.
Eric: All right, and with that, we are going to leave it. Jim. Dean, thank you so much for making the time. I really enjoyed it. I know that people listening will have too. Jim, if people want to find out more about you, what you're up to get connected, where do you want to direct them?
Jim: Thank your can go right to our, my website, my Twitter feed, LinkedIn, whatever's convenient for them.
Eric: Great. Thanks so much for listening everyone. Have a great day.
Dean: Take Care.
Eric: Scratch is a production of Rival. We are a marketing innovation consultancy that helps businesses develop strategies and capabilities to grow faster. If you want to learn more about us, check out we are rival.com. If you want to connect with me, email me at eric@wearerival.com or find me on LinkedIn. If you enjoy today's show, please subscribe, share with anyone you think might enjoy it, and please do leave us a review. Thanks for listening and see you next week.
